Administration – Accessing Global Settings

This is the main default Dictionary of phrases and terms used through multiple areas of the platform.  Many sub-applications available to you in various packages also contain their own dictionaries.  To avoid clutter, this main dictionary in Global Settings is the main dictionary as it has relevance to the solution irrespective of the sub-applications or major applications you have licensed or enabled in your platform.  We raise this to your attention now because some dictionaries are application specific; some are here in the Global Settings.  You’ll quickly find your way.  Usually the best place to check when adding new entries is in the sub-application ADMIN area first; and if you don’t find the dictionary terms there that you want to change then come and check this main dictionary selector here.

Use the Dictionary Type Selector Dropdown to access each sub-application Dictionary.  By default Trivaeo templates complete these dictionaries with common terms and phrases that are used by most industries.  Feel free to review them, remove, add, change or manipulate them as you need to for your business and its purposes.

When you select one of the Dictionary Types in the dropdown you will be presented with a list view of all contents of that Dictionary.  Use the item option buttons on the right side of the list to EDIT an existing entry with the PENCIL ICON, click the dropdown button to change the ordering or the TRASH CAN to delete the item.

It is good practice to review all the active dictionaries so you know where the terms are being stored in case you want to change them later on.  As your knowledge of the solution develops you’ll quickly master the terminology of your own dictionaries so that your company users are using something which feels very familiar with the terms and phrases used inside your business routinely.

You should also note that some dictionaries are DYNAMIC. In other words; they can have new entries added to them from inside the front-end applications by users.  We tend to limit this to the fields that require the most ‘volatility’ as a dictionary with 100 terms in it that say much the same thing is quickly less useful than intended.  In most cases your role as an Administrator is to prepare the content available to your users in dropdown lists across the solution to meet your business needs; no more; no less.

This is where you select the mail template settings that are used by the platform when sending out emails to your users, for example, notifications that a task has been assigned to them; or that an expense claim was approved and so on.  You may select a plan White Page Template or a Branded Template.  The branded template will include your company logo.  You set that up in My Company area of Global Settings.  You can also turn off the LOGO completely so that it doesn’t take up valuable real-estate or unnecessary network bandwidth in Emails. A busy business operations platform with hundreds of users will be sending a LOT of Email notifications each hour!

Note; if you do not upload your own LOGO to My Company areas in admin then it will default to the Trivaeo Logo if you select a template with the Logo option enabled. If you upload and set your own Company LOGO then please make sure it is as small as possible (within reason) and has been compressed or otherwise manipulated to have the smallest possible size (KB) whilst maintaining your brand standards.

You can also set the FROM address that emails appear to originate from.  If using your own email address of preference you should tend to use a no_reply convention so that your users do not attempt to reply to the notifications they receive. Their interactions with the platform are done so from inside; not externally.

Meeting Rooms are rooms or other venues across your business where your employees can congregate to hold meetings.  Good examples could be the ‘Monmouth Office Boardroom’, the ‘London West Office Conference Room’.  By adding them here they become available to the Calendar(s) that is an integral part of the business operations platform solution.  Before you can begin describing your meeting rooms by adding them here you need to have declared all of your office ‘Locations’ in the My Company area of Admin.  This allows your users to book a conference room or meeting room with zero ambiguity about which of your office locations they mean.

Use the simple form to add meeting rooms and their types.

Picture – A photograph, icon or picture of the room to that it may be readily recognised
Room Name – The name by which your employees refer to this distinct venue (It could be a room number or a room name)
Location – Select the Office Location (Town or Site) where the meeting room is situated
Room Type – Bookable is the default and recommended option so any user on your platform with access to the Calendar may reserve the room. Restricted meeting room types are not yet modelled in the solution; but would allow certain rooms to be booked by permission group holders for that venue; for example, a Personal Assistant can book a meeting in the boardroom but not the engineers.
Description – free text description of this meeting room; perhaps is maximum occupancy, directions etc
Notes – These notes are there for the benefit of the person recording the room and do not show on the Calendar in any form

Permission Groups allows your business to define access privileges for users across your business.  When adding a new user to the platform you select the required user permission group that they will belong to and all constituent applications and privileges from their permission group are applied automatically.

You could have a permission group called ‘CRM User’ that allows employees in that group to View, Edit or Change the Owner of Contacts, but not see information that is Special.  You could have a permission group that allowed your employees to see only the leads in the CRM system; not the entire base of Contacts you have stored there.

For each type of ROLE in your business you may wish to have a permission group to cover its typical needs.  That way adding a new user is a simple thing to do as all you need to do is add them to the permission group associated with that role.  Some companies do so based on Departments and on the Roles in those departments.

The initial Permission Groups you have available are determined by the ‘package’ and the ‘template’ that was used to create your business operations platform.  Please review those that you have been provided already so you can understand them and their purpose.

Each major application you have available in the platform will be listed; as will areas that are common to the platform irrespective of the application building blocks enabled.  They turn on and off automatically based on the licenses you have activated in your License Manager.

With each new Permission Group that you add you must give it;

Name – the name of this permission group
User Role – the default role of users within this permission group; where user is typically a company employee, a Self-Service user is someone you invite to log in to your platform who is not an immediate employee, for example, a contractor or external supplier or they can be a Purchase Administrator meaning they have the standard User group plus the ability to buy or cancel subscriptions to the platform
Is Default for Role – Tickbox.  If selected then this permission group will be the one the system defaults too if you don’t tell it which permission group to add a user to when inviting them to join you in the solution

All field with a RED background are mandatory and the new permission group will not be able to be saved and made available to the platform if they are not completed.

Simply work your way through the Privilege Sections on the left side of the screen and use the tickboxes to enable or disable the privilege in each case.  Until you are familiar with the solution then its often advisable to leave them unticked until a user asks you for a permission to be turned on because they need it or they cannot reasonably perform their role/job without it.

Remember; the data options you see is a direct function of the package or packages that your company has signed up to use.  The examples shown throughout our documentation may differ from those you see purely because of the absolutely dynamic nature of the platform and how its packaging works.

The Custom Tab Builder is a very powerful feature that allows you to extend the data capture capabilities of the solution to meet your businesses needs.  You can add fields to be shown on existing ‘records’ or you can add new ‘tabs’ themselves made up of multiple columns and fields.

The Custom Tab Builder has relevance across CRM, Companies, Assets, Contracts, Jobs, Quotes, Proposals, Orders and HR Roles.

When adding a new custom field you only need to give the form 4 basic pieces of information;

1. Form Name – so that you can manage the forms by name easily; make them readable so that when you have heavily extended the solution you can readily find the form you need to change or update
2. Record Type – A Tab (is like a new page) or simply add a single custom Field. A Tab can be made up of multiple columns with multiple data fields in each column.  If you use the option of a FIELD then the solution will put all the data assets you create into a new tab if there is more than one field in any case
3. Category – to which application area of the platform should this custom tab or field be added? Select the relevant application or sub-application area here in the dropdown list. This custom data element will only appear when the associated sub-application area is active for your users.  If you wish to use the same custom tab or fields in multiple places simply copy an existing one and change its Category according to your needs.
4. Published – Allows you to work on new Tabs or Fields without confusing your users with your work in progress.  Simply select the Published tickbox when you wish to publish the new tab

Example Custom Tab

To Delete a Custom Tab or Field select the Trash Can icon on the far right of the Custom Tab Builder List view.

Editing Calendar working times for a Monday

By allocating calendars based on team or department structure you avoid having a very messy and cluttered company calendar.

A good example here is a company that normally does not work at the weekends; except for the 3 weeks after Easter where it’s ‘All Hands on Deck’ to manage the seasonal demand.  You can create an exception for this block of 3 weeks so all days of the week in the time span are working periods and you can determine the allowed working hours in each.  This can become extremely useful when accepting timesheets from employees or contractors on projects.

History

All changes made to the working week or exceptions are tracked under the HISTORY tab so you can see who made changes to the calendar and when the change was made.

You need to set up standard working weeks and the exceptions for each Calendar your company creates.  You also need to indicate which of your Calendars, if you have more than one, is to be treated by the system as the default Calendar that is presented to users as they use the solution.  It may be more convenient to have the one which is used the most appearing by default; with the others available via the drop down list in each case.  The Default calendar is selected with the ‘Set Default’ option on the Edit Calendar form.

If your company takes orders or handles leads, opportunities, projects, quotes and so on that extend well out into the future then you need to prepare the financial placeholders for that activity to be trapped, recorded and reported on.

In many cases the information you provide here in this section drives the real-time widgets and reports across the solution; making your gauges and performance ‘Year to Date’ more meaningful and relevant.

It is standard industry practice to align your financial year with that of your book keeping, tax returns and other reporting obligations; rather than simply aligning to the Calendar year in each case.

When creating a new Financial Year the form requires the following inputs;

Year Start – The Date upon which this year starts, e.g. 1st April 2025
Year End – The Date upon which this year finishes, e.g. 31st March 2026
Start Point Value – What revenue target has already been achieved on year START (Typically zero!)
Annual Target – What is the combined NET total of all sales targets given to your sales operation, e.g. 20,000,000 – Note, no currency symbol is required.  If other areas of your business add to this total based on revenue they create through their activities this should be included.  It is the total revenue target for the entire organisation as a whole.

Use the Pencil to edit existing Years and Targets or the Trash Can icon to delete them.  Use the Yellow ADD NEW button on the top right of the screen to add new Years and Targets.

Click the blue box marked ‘EDIT DETAILS’ and enter the desired information;

Logo – Upload a small and ideally square formatted (or circular) company logo
Company – Your Company Trading Name in full
VAT Number – Your registered TAX ID or Value Added Tax ID
Company Phone – your main switchboard number
City – The main registered company City
Postcode/Zip – the main registered company Postcode or ZIP Code
Address – the full postal address, Nr, Street, Floor etc of your head office

Fields with a red background are mandatory.  Those with a white background may be ignored if you so choose.

Once completed and submitted all reports/PDF’s created by the solution will be topped and tailed (header & footer) according to the details you have entered.

In the ‘My Company’ area you define the complete parameters of your business, its office locations and its bank accounts. Click the yellow EDIT DETAILS button to edit the main corporate details and use the two tabs in the footer area to define your office locations and Bank Accounts.

You will need to add your Locations so that they can be used to create meeting rooms.

You will need to add your Bank Accounts so that your financial transactions can be tracked (natively or through an integration with Xero if you set this up).  The details will also appear on invoices and quotations so that your customers know how to pay your for your goods & services.

When editing your company details, the form requires all fields in RED to be completed fully.  Other fields with a white background are optional. The fields are as follows;

Company – Your full Company Name
Registration Number – Your Company Registration ID Number
Tax ID – Your company TAX or VAT ID
Company Phone – the main switchboard number for your company
Mobile Phone – use if your company has a mobile phone number it publishes; for example, to receive text messages
Fax – your company Fax (Facsimile) Number
Country – the main Country of Registration for your Head Office
State / County – the postal state or county for your Head Office
City – The postal City address for your Head Office
Postcode / ZIP – the postcode or zip code for your Head Office
Address – the postal address including number, floor, street, building name etc
Web – your main http or https web address for your company (domain)
Subdomain – On creating your company for the first time it will be allocated a sequential numbered URL at trivaeocloud.com or cloudworkit.net, e.g. company-3418.cloudworksit.net. Now, this is both difficult to remember for your users; but is also somewhat unimportant; as your users are automatically logged in to the correct company instance on login irrespective of which URL they use to access a valid login mask to the solution as a whole. They may use the main URL published here at the LOGIN prompt at Trivaeo.com or your own URL. Both are valid.  That said, it would be nice if your company could have a vanity URL at TrivaeoCloud or CloudworksIT that reinforces your company brand.  That is what this Subdomain field is used for.  If you want your company to be accessed via a vanity URL for example tes2ltd.cloudworksit.net instead of company-3418.cloudworksit.net then you’d enter tes2ltd as the subdomain.  Entering a new subdomain URL will require you to logout and log back in again to see the changes.  This may make it easier and more familiar to your users as they come to the solution for the first time.
Time Zone – enter the main Time Zone your company operates in here; all system messages to your users are date/time stamped in your local timezone so that they are less confusing to your users; especially if your timezone is a fair distance away from the standard computing date/timezone of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
Currency – your main trading currency with which you wish to conduct all financial matters and your reports against.

Note; making changes to the main Company Details may also update areas of the Report Template; accessible through the main settings area of Global Admin.  There is an auto-updating field called ‘Employees’ that takes its information from other application areas in the solution.  It is not editable under the EDIT DETAILS button.

Office Locations

Use these so that your office locations can be more readily accessed and referenced in the solution; including the subsequent creation of ‘meeting rooms’ or other bookable facilities where knowing the actual location is important.  In each office location you set the Location (by name), the Address and the Phone Number. Only the Location is mandatory.

Bank Accounts

You may add one or more Bank Accounts to the solution and in each case establish a relationship to an underlying Xero bank account.  Adding a New Bank Account requires the following fields of information, noting that those in Red in the solution are mandatory;

Account Name – how is the account known to your business by name
Bank Name – the holding institution or Bank where the account is held
Country – the country where the Bank account operates
Address – optional
Currency – the standard currency with which transactions are handled at this Bank Account
Account Number – the full account number
IBAN – the International Bank Account Number of this account.  It’s an additional bank account numbering scheme that helps overseas banks identify your account for payments. (IBAN may be up to 30 alphanumeric characters long and identifies country, bank, location and branch)
SWIFT/BIC – is a code given to your bank account that helps overseas banks identify which bank to send money to. (Typically 8-11 alphanumeric characters long)
ABA/Routing Code – Someitmes called a Routing Transit Number, is a 9 digit code that identifies Banks in the United States of America (ABA – American Bankers Association)
Sort Code – The sorting code of your bank account, usually a 6 digit number. It identifies the Bank and the branch where the account is held.  It is unique to bank accounts held in the United Kingdom.
XERO Bank Account – if you have already added XERO to your solution and you have created the integration to Xero then select the associated Xero bank account from the drop down list here.  Don’t forget to come back here and set up this relationship if you proceed to do your XERO integration after setting up your company!

Please note that editing the Company details under ‘My Company’ will give you the option of also updating the Report Template on saving the changes.  Some companies require their reports to be titled under a slightly different nomenclature or branding than their actual main entity; so you have the option of detailing your reports layout accordingly in the Reports Template management area of Admin.

In most cases, companies using the trivaeocloud or cloudworksit platform sign up for and select the business operations applications they wish to use.  On rarer occasions this may be done by Trivaeo or our business partner on your companies behalf.  In each case you will use the License Dashboard to manage your package and your entitlements to that package or even multiple packages.

The Trivaeo Solutions and Applications are modular and may be purchased, consumed and manipulated by your Company; as you see fit, as and when you desire.  The typical arrangement is a ‘subscription’ based model where you as the main company admin or the ‘purchasing admin’ control what your company is using and has entitlements to; plus the role of assigning those same application licensed entitlements to your users.

These entitlements and their status are always shown on your License Dashboard.  In most cases on first logging in as a company administrator you will have ‘self-served’ your sign up process and be running a package on a trial or other time limited basis.  There are literally too many permutations of packages to list them in any meaningful way in these user guides.  You know what you signed up for based on your own ‘onboarding’ experience and it is very unlikely it is identical to other clients at any time.  Broadly similar; yes, identical; no!

By updating your payment details you will be able to BUY the existing trial or demonstration package.  Please note; you will not see any of the other packages available from Trivaeo or our business partner until such a time as there is a valid payment card entered and the initial trial or other ‘taster’ package has been subscribed to.  Only with at least 1 x active subscription will all the other modular packages available to you appear in the dashboard.

The intent of this functionality is to keep you focused intially only on the package or capabilities that you first signed up for.  It would simply be overwhelming for most new admins to manage up to 79 applications across 20 genres in one foul swoop; so we take it steady so you can find your way with your initial software investment; and grow your interest and needs from there over time.

You can CANCEL any subscription at ANY TIME; noting that they will continue to run until the completion of the originally procured entitlement.  If you buy your package annualy the package will continue to run and be available to you until its original expiry date.  If you buy your entitlements monthly then your package will run until the end of that licensed period.

You can increase the number of users any any package you own.

You can buy additional new packages if they are packaged up and made available to you by Trivaeo or a Trivaeo Partner.

All payments are SECURE and handled by BlueSnap, the Trivaeo international payments gateway company.

You can also review your historic payments and download copies of any invoices on demand.

If you are on a TRIAL or other time limited package then you should ‘start subscription’ versus Buying a New subscription; unless of course you decide and know that you wish to use a different package from the one you originally signed up for.

The common practice is for Trivaeo or its business partners to package bundles of applications that meet the needs of typical businesses by size, scope or the nature of the business.  For example, CRM with Task Management and Document Management.  You may buy that as your starter package and then decide a few weeks later to add additional users.  Then your company wants to add ‘Document Collaboration’, so you can use your License Dashboard to do exactly this.  The modular nature of the solution means your new entitlements are instantly activated and available to you.

Don’t forget to add the entitlements to users though!  Buying them is step 1.  Step 2 is to then assign those applications or packages to USERS.

General usage guidance.  Use the BUY NEW button to see the packages available from Trivaeo or the Business Partner that created the package you are using NOW.  The package you sign up for determines what is visible to you from this point forwards!  Use the Start Subscription option to begin paying for a trial package you are using which you intend to keep on using.  Once a subscription in any form has been STARTED then you may manipulate the number of users that are able to access that package accordingly.

This flexibility means that Trivaeo or our Business Partners can also create a package that is ‘just for you and your company’. Tailored applications inside with tailored entitlements too.

This commercial strategy gives small companies the ability to use high-end CRM and ERP technology without the massive pricetags associated with the software typical in global markets.  Trivaeos’ aim is to put enterprise grade software within easy grasp of small and medium sized businesses that would never aspire, nor afford the high end tailored systems available from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Saleforce et al.  The technology offered by Trivaeo and our partners is just as effective; but orders of magnitude more cost effective and accessible; even for the smallest of companies on the tightest of budgets.

User Management gives you operational control of who is allowed to login and use your business operations solution.  You can define 1 of 2 user types when adding new users;

1. A normal ‘User’
2. A Self-Service ‘User’

A normal user is typically an employee.  The employee is a fixture of your business and will have rights assigned to them, by you, to access those areas of the solution that relate directly to their employ.

A self-service user is an external user who requires a login to do things on your solution, but is typically not an employee.  They could be a customer! They could be a partner! They could be a contractor; who needs a login, for example, to submit timesheets to you based on the work they are doing for you on one of your Projects.

Full Users typically have a deeper and more established need to access the solution. A self-service user has a shallower set of permissions to fewer application elements.

Each application package you buy has a set number of ‘Users’ included; or could be a set of ‘self-service’ user logins enabled.  With each package you buy you can extend the number of ‘users’ allowed to access each package.  In User Management you begin the task of assigning the applications and entitlements to your ‘Users’.

You can also see each Users Role, login details, their approval status, when they registered, their online status, their last logged in date, their permission group, their locked out status or the blocked status.  You have complete environmental control over all of these facets as the main administrator.

For each user on your solution you can EDIT their details or RESET their password using the dropdown next to the PENCIL icon in user list view.  You can also delete a user using the Trash Can.  You can also block them or lock them out of being able to log in if so desired.

Editing a User

Editing a User – Example

Fields with a RED Background are mandatory.  Fields with a white background are optional. Users once logged in are able to change many of these details; but not all. in some cases you as the main admin as responsible. In most cases the fields are self-explanatory;

Photo – upload or add a picture of the User as this personalises their experience throughout the solution
First Name – the Christian Name (Full, as given at birth for this user)
Middle Name – the middle name of this user if they have one; very handy if you have two x John Smith working in the Company!
Last Name – the full given Family name (surname)
Gender – Male/Female
Salutation – Mr, Miss, Mrs, Doctor, Professor etc
Preferred Name – Dave versus David, Bill versus William etc
Maiden Name – Surname prior to Marriage causing a change of family name
Primary Email – this cannot be changed and is fixed throughout the solution. It can only be changed by submitting a support ticket
Phone – preferred main telephone number
Mobile – preferred main mobile telephone number
Marital Status – Married, Divorced, Single etc
Ethnic Group – should your company wish to retain these record types
Preferred Language – free text to describe their preferred language
Religion – use if your company records this information for reporting purposes
Citizenship – use if your company records this information
Birth Date – Date of Birth
Status – employment status
Permission Group – the group that this user belongs to. It sets their permissions and privileges. (See Permission Group area of the documentation for details)
Job Title – their job title as it would be written on a business card
Location – from your Office Locations from Company Set Up
Time Zone – their normal working time zone so that calendars reflect their local time
Administrator – tick this to make them a main admin across the solution
Purchase Administrator – tick this to enable this user to manipulate package subscriptions and payment information/records/history

Note; this should be considered a basic ‘human resources’ management capability seen as a whole.  By adding the ‘Human Resources Management’ application package/suite you may significantly increase the range of information and data collected about each employee/user on your system.

You will not see any application management credentials until such a time as your company is actually suscribed to an active application.  For each package you own you will have a set number of users enabled in that entitlement; either by default or by adding users.  These elements only appear if you have an active subscription; they are missing in free-trials or other pre-subscription package types.

Where a subscription is ACTIVE you will see a PACKAGES tab on the left of the User Edit form.  Use this to enable access to a package/application for this user;

Managing a Users access to activated packages on your subscription

Simply tick the boxes to assign rights to this application/package for this user and then press the button marked OK to save it.

Before adding users we recommend that you set up your ‘Permission Groups’ first as the process of adding a user of either ‘type’ requires you to select the permission group to which they will be assigned.  You could set up a basic standard permission group which has zero entitlements to any privileges and use this as the default group when adding users; going on to change their permission group and permissions after they have received company training, for example.  You may define as many permission groups as you need; you could even have one for each employee.  More typical, though, is to have permission groups which are relevant departmentally or based on typical ‘roles’ throughout your company.  If necessary you can copy an existing permission group and tweak it slightly if a subtle change is needed for a handful of employees.  You should strive to find a balance between too many permissions groups; making things difficult to manage; versus too few; where you risk providing employees with access to something that they don’t fundamentally need.

UI stands for the ‘User Interface’. Trivaeo uses ‘templates’ that define the typical application building blocks which are enabled by default for any ‘package’ or ‘set of applications’.  You can tweak this as the main administrator by enabling or disabling high level application features so that the impact of these changes affects all users across your company who have access to those areas of the solution.  Obviously, creating a permission group that disables access to an application area will not override a decision by you in the default UI settings.  If you hide (deselect) the Room Booking system in the default settings no amount of enabling it in the permission group will make it appear.

Example of the Default UI Settings

UI Language

Please select the default user interface language. Trivaeo and its business partners are constantly working on supporting additional languages driven by our clients needs.  As of January 2018 you may chose a default UI language from English, French and Spanish.  This sets the baseline language not only for the user interface itself but the email updates, invitations and notifications that are transmitted to your users by the solution in the course of its normal use.  Each user also has the ability to change to their preferred language in any case.  The language you chose here simply sets the default that is assumed for all new users added to your company instance.

Application Items

Under ‘Application Items’ you may nullify (turn off or deselect) the routine presentation of applications and their sub-elements.  This is more senior than any settings you may establish in any permission groups; so manipulate your default UI settings first; then amend as necessary the associated permission groups.  If you deselect the ‘Room Booking’ sub-application then no amount of enabling it in a permission group entitlement will make it appear for users in that group that ALSO have the application enabled in their subscription package.

Note, you will only see the applications listed that your package/s give you entitlements to.  You won’t have to worry about configuring the default UI settings for applications that you aren’t interested in using.

Use the General section to enable/disable the standard common application areas which are common to all package types and then use the Application areas themselves to decide what application specific elements are shown to or hidden from your company users.

The CRM Application, for example, has over 20 main application areas that may readily be turned off in the default UI settings; including many other sub-application functions under the double-dropdown icons to the right of each application area.  Contacts Line, for example, enables a nested and dynamic relationship view typically used by multi-level marketing organisations to define additional relationships between the pyramid of contacts in their CRM application.  You may decide for your business that this additional level of contact managemement is not necessary; so turning off the ‘Contacts Line’ option would be a default setting that applies to all users in your Company that have any form of access to the CRM application.

Careful use of the Default Application Items makes it possible for you to set up your applications so that they are very simple and intuitive to use from Day One.  Over time you can gradually increase the application elements that are expressed in the solution as your users familiarity and confidence grows.  The system is ‘intelligent’ and you are not able to break the solution by turning things off or on.  Their latent functionality is protected.  You are simply causing them to be hidden so that they cannot be interacted with by your users.

Application Items with additional double drop-arrows have additional nested features which may be turned off.  Please be sure to ‘expand’ these and review them carefully.  If necessary talk to your departmental stakeholders about what they’d like to retain and what they’d like hidden.  This avoids unnecessary clutter and can significantly reduce the amount of time that it takes a user to become confident with the solution and find their way around.

Top down application management is a multi-faceted affair.  Not only does the user have to have the entitlement to the enabled applications; but they need to be in a permission group that supports the same applications and the default UI settings for the solution as a whole needs to enable them.

Feel free to experiment with the default UI settings until they are set up to your preference and tastes.

You should also note that some application areas appear in multiple places.  A good example is the ability of your users to ‘import companies’.  Whilst you may assume its only a function needed by a CRM user it actually touches many other application areas.  It is possible to enable the importing of companies into the e-HR application, the Project Management application, Contract Management, Asset Management, Service Desk Management, Resource Management and Stock Management.

Give some thought as to what makes ‘intuitive’ sense for your company based on how your users will commonly use the packages you have subscribed to.  Do you want a CRM user to be responsible for importing the companies available to your project managers or your contracts team?  Would you like to enable the bulk importing of this companies data to be done by your supplier management team only; so a CRM user cannot add companies unless your supplier manager has verified, qualified and completed all necessary supplier due diligence first?

The Trivaeo technology is highly configurable.  It is up to you to decide how you wish to present these capabilities to your users and how your procedures, processes and best-practices map to the configuration layer in Trivaeo.  But, this is relatively simple configuration; no coding or integration is required.  It is all pre-integrated and bonded so you don’t have to worry about it.  You turn things on; you turn things off.  You don’t engineer or develop anything!

It may be good practice to turn everything off to start with and then work quietly with your users in each application type to show them the other elements of the application and ask them whether or not they may find them useful.  Turn them on only when needed.  Using this methodology you can create an extremely intuitive user experience; which is far easier on your operations that turning everything on and tackling a significantly more complex suite of training to get the most out of your users.  We will leave that choice up to you.

Theme

As of January 2018 the solution is only available in a standard Trivaeo colour and font theme so you are unable to select from additional colour and font schemes.  Watch our social media content or newsletter for updates on new themes as and when we add them.

This is a tool typically used by a financial director to establish a baseline syncronisation of all financial transactions recorded in Trivaeo that relate to Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Expenses and Revenue. Think of this more as a report dashboard that is able to sync with advanced financial management tools like Xero.

Most organisations elect to standardise on their use of Xero for these purposes and in most cases that topology suffices.

This area is used to set up the naming conventions and rates (percentages) of local, state, county or national tax rates according to your own local jurisdiction and requirements.

For each Taxation type you enter a Rate Name (text) and a Tax Rate as a percentage. The Tax Rate is numeric and does not require the addition of a percentage character.  You can also select whether or not any particular entry is the default assumed tax rate for financial transactions recorded in the solution.

This currently supports a single integration to Redmine. It is used by clients who are in the software manufacturing industry to track bugs, issues and work associated with software development.

To establish a new link to Redmine use the yellow ADD NEW button and then provide a link name, select the Type as Redmine and then enter the URL to your Redmine instance.

Click SAVE to save the changes and activate the Redmine integration.

Trivaeo or our business partners may provide customised integrations for your company over time to other enterprise software assets that you routinely use.  If this does ever occur then this is also the area where those integrations are typically managed.

The Xero integration links the Trivaeo solution directly to your Xero accounting platform (with others like Sage, Quickbooks being published in the future).  Using this integration is as simple as logging into the Xero accounting platform once and then completing a simple set of forms to establish both the direction of the integration (Trivaeo Master or Xero as the Master) for all transactions synced from that point.

You will need an authorised Xero user to conduct this login for you once when you establish the link and to setup the integration type.  Once it is done it is complete and will not need to be touched again unless the link to Xero is disconnected.

To setup a new link you click the green button marked ‘START’ at which point you will be challenged to login to Xero using your existing Xero email address and password. On completion of the login you will be returned to the Trivaeo instance and the dashboard will now show the status as ‘On’ with the current start date, the main organisation name (from Xero) and the default base currency set.  A button is also enabled marked “Xero Initial Setup’ where you establish the nature of the integration between Trivaeo and your accounting solution at Xero; and the direction in which the integration flows.

You may review changes by date and time in the HISTORY tab.

In simple terms, you login to MailChimp once by clicking on the green button marked ‘START’.  On succesful login to your MailChimp dashboard you will be returned to the Trivaeo instance with a live sync in progress.

As of January 2018 any campaign created in Trivaeo CRM has its members (contacts/companies) directly syncronised with your currently selected MailChimp email marketing ‘list’.  This method allows you to search, filter and extract the targets of any campaign from your Trivaeo instance and have it automatically syncronised with MailChimp in the background.

The product catalogue opens by default into its base ‘list’ view.  Products are made up of 3 tangible categories;

1. Physical Products – Product
2. Value-Based Service
3. Time-Based Service

Where a Product is a physical or tangible product that you sell.  You may have purchased these items for resale, or your business may buy raw materials that you then turn into tangible products for sale.  A value based service can be used effectively to render professional services that have a fixed cost per unit – irrespective of the actual time taken to deliver them.  A good example could be the charges to complete an ‘installation’ which you may fix at £1,000 whether or not this work takes 1 or 2 days.  A time-based service is one where you bill by the hour, day, week or month at a specific rate of unit time and is often used in association with other areas of the solution suite including timesheets and the allocation and recording of work done against jobs and tasks.  Setting these up correctly will provide your business with incredible insights and control over your costs, margins and assist greatly in your overall management of resources, both physical and human in nature.

By default the list view opens up with its view centered on ‘Product’. Use the radio-button selectors at the top of the list to filter by Product, Time or Value based Services.

Importing your existing Product / Services Catalog

If your business has a well defined and extractable suite of products that it already administers then it may be readily imported into the Trivaeo solution using the IMPORT function.  Our IMPORT function readily accepts CSV/EXCEL format documents.  You don’t even have to worry about mapping the field names as this is done with a simple drag and drop interface as part of the upload and import function.  Simply select the type of import you are doing from either of Product, Value or Time based Service and select the small cloud upload icon to begin the import.

Once your file has been received by our service it will automatically attempt to align your field names with the field names in our data-schema.  Fields that remain unmatched will be left on the left hand side.  Use simple drag and drop to align your field names with the expected field names in Trivaeo.

Fields shown with a dotted RED outline are mandatory.  So, for example, in the importing of Products you will need to do an import that contains data-fields of your products for Product Name, Product Code and Price.

Example: Drag and Drop ‘your fields’ into the associated Trivaeo placeholders

It may be worthwhile checking your existing product catalog for accuracy before blindly importing large amounts of legacy data.  Perhaps you may consider this a good opportunity to conduct some data cleansing so that you don’t start up your new catalog in a messy and unreliable state?

If the intelligent automation in Trivaeo does not correctly align your data-fields to the Trivaeo DB schema then click the X to remove the association and drag and drop the field from the upper left to its correct position.  Once you are sure you have them correctly aligned then slect the option to IMPORT(number) where the (number) is the number of valid records.  You can also PREVIEW the IMPORT before executing it. To stop the operation hit CANCEL at any time.

When previewing the IMPORT a single record will be chosen at random from your data-set and it will be shown to you.  From the preview you can then IMPORT or CLOSE the preview.  Pressing IMPORT will initiate the IMPORT of all records in your dataset; not just the one you have been previewing.

Note; the price is a number; not a currency formatted field.  Use plain numbers to 2 decimal places to import your prices.  The base currency should already have been set in the CURRENCY field of My Company in the Global Settings.

Manually adding Products, Time or Value based services

Select the relevant Product, Value or Time based service radio-checkbox and click the yellow ADD NEW button to add a new product or service type.  Fields with a red background colour are mandatory.

Note, it is also possible to link any product or service to its associated entry in XERO. It is also possible to upload a picture or icon to further support the product making it more readily identifyable to your users as they select products and services in the relevant sub-application areas like CRM, Projects, Quotations and so on.

Feel free to experiment with a few examples so that you get a feel for the flexibility of each product/service to meet your business operating principles; and try using them in association with creating an example quotation in CRM so that you can see how margins, units, discounts and other rules you set with each product/service are applied.  You don’t need to complete all fields; only those marked with a red background.  The Trivaeo products/services catalog is rich in content structure to support the needs of even the most complex warehouse/distribution channels and is used to support the needs of even the largest global organisations.  Don’t worry if you don’t have all the potential data; over time your business may grow to consume all the capabilities.  Not everything is needed on day one in most instances.

Providers is simply a listing of all manufacturers or suppliers by company name through which you procure your products/services.  You may require complex orchestration of your supply chain where you consume a product or service from Company A but it is provided to you as a service by Company B.

Treat providers as a distinct listing within the confines of your products/services catalog. You should list your own company as a provider if you manufacture from raw product and then sell as a product.  You should also list yourself as a provider if you sell professional services as a value or time based service.  This acts as a basic placeholder for simple supplier management in the absence of using the Trivaeo Contract Management application suite which has much more granular supplier management capabilities within it; even linking directly with Companies that may be SUPPLIERS within CRM.  Please see those application areas for further details.

Note; Providers are automatically populated on a Data Import if you have batch imported your existing products/services catalog (on the assumption that you included that data in your CSV/EXCEL import).