The process and collaboration area in Administration is where various functions associated with business workflow, processes and activities are managed or created. On first creation of your company solution, instance templates in the solution will automatically create a set of standard processes and dictionaries. These may be readily amended or used as templates to create your own.
This area in administration allows you to control, define and create various powerful functions that affect user notifications (ticker) and to create and manage how processes in your business work.
The ticker functions as a text based scrolling newsfeed to all users that are currently logged in to your solution. You may use it to define news updates, critical notices or to act as a useful reminder of important dates and activities that you want all of your users to be aware of.
It is best to restrict the use of tickers to critical information as the routine display of non critical information will only lead to users beginning to ignore it.
Example ticker entries
For each new ticker you define you will need to set a start date and an end date; plus the contents of the ticker itself. Once configured they immediately start scrolling across the top of the page in all applications across the solution. All logged in users will see the updates.
Use the Pencil Icon to the right of each ticker entry to edit an existing entry, or the trash can icon to delete them. You may also use the Enabled selector to the left of each entry to enable/disable entries accordingly. It is good practice to keep good housekeeping of your entries so that they don’t become too cluttered and unmanageable over time. Keep those you wish to reuse and delete those that will never be used again.
Click on the yellow ADD NEW button to add a brand new entry;
Adding a new ticker
As all three fields have a red coloured background shading they are mandatory. By deselecting the Enabled option the new ticker will be saved on pressing the OK button but will not be published to your users. If you want to immediately publish the ticker then leave the Enabled option to ticked (true).
You can cancel the addition of any new entry at any time by clicking on the CANCEL button. You will be asked if you wish to confirm that you want to close the form without saving it.
The application process flow acts as a ‘selector’ whereby you can select which Workflow will apply to various sections of the business operations platform. You will normally find that the deployment template that was used to create your company instance has only a single ‘ungrouped’ workflow as an example that contains a workflow called ‘Line Manager Approval’.
Various applications in the suite are able to leverage the workflows you have created or edited. Use the Dropdown list alongside each application type to select the workflow that you wish to apply to each application area.
If you don’t want to use any workflow in a particular application area and you are going to rely on other methods to pass workflow around your business then you may select an empty workflow against each application.
By default on most new solution templates you will have the ‘Line Manager Approval’ as the default workflow for all applications except for Objectives, which is part of the eHuman Resources Application Suite.
In normal ‘good practice’ you will define your workflows first in the process flow builder and then come back to this section to apply those workflows as necessary.
Trivaeo constantly updates the application areas that are capable of using Workflows, so you should check back regularly to see if any applications you are using have been updated in any release to embrace workflows.
The process flow builder allows you to amend, delete or create new Workflows across your business. As indicated in the Application Process Flow (above) a default and simple ‘Line Manager Approval’ is typically included by default on any new ‘instance’ of the solution being created. Use this ‘line manager approval’ workflow to get a feel for how workflows work.
The process flow builder will ask you which GROUP you want any new process to reside within; so consider creating a new Group using the Workflow Group Dictionary before setting out to create a new process flow. Then come back to the process flow builder to crew a new process flow and immediately assign it to its relevant group. Groups are used to keep workflows seperated from each other as you may have a complex set of business practices and policies that will result in a lot of potential workflows. Instead of storing and administering them all under a default group of ‘Without Group’ you can put your workflows into groups that make them easier to manage.
To edit or amend an existing workflow you will need to expand the GROUP on the left side of the screen first using the arrow to the left side of each GROUP;
Click the arrow to expand the GROUP
Once you have expanded a Group you will then see the Pencil icon to edit, the dropdown to select the COPY function and the trashcan to delete each process flow.
Use the existing Line Manager Approval workflow as an example and copy it using the COPY function available under the dropdown on the right of the line manager approval workflow process.
You will then see a new Process has been created with the name Line Manager Approval_Duplicate. The Group dropdown will be blank as this is an ungrouped workflow. Change the description according to taste.
The Builder itself is a step based engine. In this example, the workflow for a line manager approval has only a single step and this step is called ‘approval’ The approvers section is set to [Line Manager]; so for each employee in your business their assigned line manager (by role) will receive a notification that the employee has submitted something. If they approve the data submitted, for example, a holiday booking, then the process will continue. If they deny the submission then the process flow is returned to the originating user; typically with a request/note/task or other input from the line manager asking for something to be changed/updated.
If you have purchased a Trivaeo solution package that does not include eHuman Resource (eHR) then you will be unable to use roles or positions as targets for new process flow approvals or notifications. Instead, you should use named USERS. The advantage of having eHR is of course that your processes are now tied to positions and not to specific people; which means as your workforce grows or changes that your processes will not stop working. Trivaeo’s standard deployment templates include very basic workflows using nomenclature that makes sense both with or without the eHR application enabled in any package.
To add a new process flow click on the yellow ADD NEW button. You will then be presented with the following application builder form;
Process Builder Application
Process Name – your preferred workflow process name. (Mandatory!)
Group – the group within which you wish this process to reside
Description – a description of this process and where you intend it to be used
The builder itself is used by creating single STEPS. In each STEP you decide who needs to approve the workflow, who may be included in the Skip-List so that they are informed but don’t need to conduct an approval and finally for each STEP who is notified of its state change.
Create as many steps as you think are necessary to support the workflow as a whole.
Finally there is a blanket notification option which sits underneath all steps in this workflow where you chose which roles/departments (if you have eHR) or USERS if you have used named persons should be notified each time any step changes its status.
This way, you can have certain entities updated when the status of a step changes and others notified when any step changes at any time. Using this simple Workflow process builder you can actually create fairly complex workflows that support the underlying applications including Asset Management, Expenses Management, Holidays Management and Timesheet Management.
There is an additional workflow process for eHR Objectives. eHR Objectives is actually a detailed 8 step process. This is detailed in the eHR administration guide.
Once you have created a new workflow process you return to the Application Process Flow administration area to select it from the dropdown list against your chosen application area.
Please NOTE that application workflows that are in mid-flight and have existing users using them then they cannot be amended or deleted. To make changes to existing workflows you will need to copy the existing one, make the necessary changes and then publish it. Set it as the new workflow for the relevant application area and the next user calling upon that workflow will receive the new workflow experience. Existing users in mid-flight will continue finishing off their existing workflows using the old originally published workfow. Once no users are left in ‘mid-flight’ then you’ll be able to delete the now redundant workflow process to keep your solution tidy and accurately representing the processes across your business application areas.
Skip List
The skip list is a really powerful function that allows you to manipulate ONE process so that it works differently for each department or group using it. For example;
If you choose to have the sales Team’s part to be pre-approved by the Sales Manager, but you want the rest of the company NOT to be pre-approved, you can add the Sales manager to the first “Approval” but then add all other departments / positions or even specific names to the “Skip List” . Then you can add the other names to “Step 2” so they can use their own approvals. This use of a Skip list will enable you to create highly complex processes.
The process and collaboration dictionaries allow the administrator to configure both workflow group names and the event types available in the solution.
Workflow groups allow workflow processes to be organised and grouped according to where they will be used in the processing collaboration area. They are free textbased and you are free to choose whatever workflow groups you prefer.
Over time, your business may collect a large number of workflows and processes. Grouping them according to where they are used will help you to manage them more easily.
The solution supports as many calendars as your business needs to represent the company as a whole, individual departments or even individual users. Any new calendar event may be classified by its event type. This dictionary allows you to pre-configure the event types available to your users.
Opening the event types dictionary will show you a list view of all current types with at least one set as the default. Each type of event has an associated colour that makes it easy for users to become familiar with the content and structure of calendars.
To add a new event type click the yellow coloured and new box. The only mandatory field is the type name. Enter a type name and select any one of the preconfigured colours or even a custom colour of your own choosing for this event type. If you wish to make this the default calendar event then select the is default checkbox.
Click save to apply the new event type or select close to cancel your changes and return to the event types list view.
The team space area processing collaboration allows you to configure team rooms available to your users in the solution.
By selecting the option for team rooms you are taken to a list view of all active or archived team rooms across your company.
To add a new team room click on the yellow add button and the had team room form will open.
The convenience of your users you may add an image, icon or photograph that represents the team room. Provide a name for the team room in the team room field. This being the only mandatory field on the form. Use the description field to describe the purpose of the team room as this assists users when they are invited to join the team room with its intended purpose.
All further configuration of the team room occurs within the team room itself, including adding new users or inviting self-service users to join the team.
When a team room has completed its useful life they may be archived so that they no longer appear on the list of available team rooms. Of course, the option to delete them would not make sense otherwise you will lose all context, documents, wikis and user interactions contained within the team room for ever. Therefore team rooms which are no longer needed are archived rather than being deleted.
The activity area of process and collaboration allows you to configure a range of activities and their associated statuses that may then be used by your users to capture the status of completion of various tasks, activities or processes relevant to multiple areas across the solution. Activity statuses are relatively simple; for example, not started or completed. The activity templates manager may be used to describe common activities associated with areas of the solution that you want users to complete routinely when handling a particular area or application in the suite. For example, what things do you want your users to do every time they promote a lead to an opportunity in customer relationship management?
By defining activity statuses and their associated templates you can ensure that all activities associated with how your business works day-to-day are completed accurately and that key actions are not forgotten or undocumented.
Once defined, your users are able to pick from the available templates in the relevant application areas to assist them in completing these set series of tasks. It also provides all users with access to those application areas with an incident and top-down view of how far along the various activities are.
Clicking on activity statuses takes you to a list view of all activity statuses currently stored in your solution. Depending on the nature of the template used to deploy your company instance some may already have been prepared for you or it may be blank.
To add a new activity status click on the yellow coloured add button towards the top right of the screen.
This opens an add activity status form. An activity status is comprised of only two elements. A status name and an activity type. Both of these elements are mandatory.
By default, if this is the first activity status you are adding then it will have a red coloured TODO status as the preselected option. This means this activity status has not yet been started in any form. For example, set the status name to not started and the activity type will default to a red coloured TODO. Click save to save this activity. You will now be returned to the activity statuses list view and you will see a new single entry with the status of not started with the red coloured left side splash.
Let’s add another activity status.Click the yellow add button and a new ad activity status form will open. You will note that a new default activity type has been suggested by the platform, this time with the yellow coloured in progress activity type. Set the status name to in progress. Click on save to add this activity status.
You can see where this is leading. You can add a third and final activity status which will have a green colour code and the status type of completed. Now your business may decide to use this type of simple three step status monitoring or you can be far more granular by adding as many different status types of either of not started in progress or complete that you need to accurately represent the status of various tasks close across the applications you have provided to your users. At a bare minimum you need one each of not started, in progress or complete.
Another typical use case is to have a single not started status and a single completed status with a range of in progress statuses at 10%, 20%, 30% and so on. This type of activity status monitoring is very useful when activities span a range of time and your users would like and at a glance view of how far along certain activities have progressed.Try to set a reasonable range of activity statuses that will encourage your users to use them effectively. If you have too many they actually have an opposing effect and your users will move activities in broad ranges rather than in small steps. It also doesn’t help your business if you only have a single in progress status giving you no idea whether this task will complete in one hour or one week.
Let’s use the example of a cabinet maker. When building a new cabinet it may take up to 5 days to cut and prepare all the wood necessary to assemble the cabinet but then only one day to fabricate it. Try to break down this typical manufacturing process into process indicators that more accurately reflect the details of how far along the process is. This way, not only will the carpenter doing the work be able to select more accurate activity statuses but other users waiting for the cabinet to arrive for painting will know when they can reasonably expect it to arrive.
The activity templates manager allows you to define new templates of activities that are available to your users in various process areas of the solution. When you first start with this business application suite this is invariably empty with none defined.
Use the process area drop-down list if necessary to filter activity templates by application area or the status drop-down filter to review all, draft, active or retired activity templates across the solution.
To add a new activity template click on the yellow coloured and new button to the top right of the screen.The add template form will open. Fields with a red coloured background are mandatory and these include the template name, the process area, and the template status.
The template name is arbitrary and is your own choice; try to make it readily identifiable as it is easy to cause templates overlap across various process areas and applications.
The process area drop-down sets the application area where this template will be available to users across the solution. These include leads, opportunities, roles, proposals, quotes, work orders, invoices, contacts, companies and supplier due diligence.
Let’s create a new activity template for handling leads in the customer relationship management application. Set the template name field to lead capture and leads from the process area drop-down list. Leave the status to draft as we don’t want to publish this template until we have completed working on it and it’s ready for users to enjoy.
This activity template will only be available to users when they are in the leads section of the customer relationship management application. It will not appear as an available template in opportunities or any other application area.
It is up to you to define the range of tasks that you would require any user to complete when registering a new lead in your CRM application. Let’s use a couple of examples;
The first task may need to qualify the lead in the second task may be to ask the lead how they found out about your business. A third task may be to ask the lead if they want to sign up for your customer newsletter to receive vouchers, discounts or other offers from your business.
By laying out the standard tasks by application area you can ensure that your users are completing all necessary activities and their critical information your business needs for the future is not forgotten. With careful design it is even possible to limit the amount of training you need to give to new users as they will always have templates available to them that tell them what they need to do.
Now, the activity statuses we completed in the previous section of this guide apply wholeheartedly. Any user of your CRM application that attempts to register a new lead will be able to select the new lead template and then indicate quickly with a drag-and-drop interface how far along with each of these three tasks they are and whether they have been completed or not. This gives your sales manager an instant overview for all leads in the system as to their current status and what needs to be done next.
Don’t forget to change the status of this new template from draft to active otherwise it will not appear for your users in their available templates. If you wish to discontinue the use of an existing template then set it status to retired so all current leads that have the template applied are not invalidated by the deletion of the template. Setting a template to retired status allows those in midflight to continue but prevents the same template from being picked for the next new lead added to the system.
You may add as many templates as you need including multiple templates for similar tasks in the same application process areas. Work orders, for example, could have an entire task set for every product that you manufacture which would allow for very granular operational oversight of everything being built in the factory at any given moment in time.
Adding a New Task
The task name is mandatory as is the type field in the due date section. For each task you add you can set the due date is either being today, the document date, the number of days after or a specific date. You could say, for example, that a new lead must be qualified within two days of recording the lead.
You may set the task type and the task category. The priority and task status fields are mandatory and set the defaults when this template is first applied by any user. Complete the rest of the form is necessary and click the save button to apply this task to the template. The task status drop-down field sets the initial status of this task when used within the template and does not fix it to the task status set here. It is only the initial task status which is set by this drop-down.
Activity statuses and their associated templates come into their own as a very powerful feature of your solution that ensure that all critical path tasks are completed professionally and within your business service levels
Activity statuses and the activity templates unify in the user experience so that the status of activities may be changed in real-time with a powerful drag and drop user interface.
Adding templates to the various application areas allows your business to ensure that key steps you want your employees to undertake in each application area are not forgotten and that they can be readily reviewed for status by other team members or supervisors.
For example;
External web forms allows your business application solution to interact with your website so that you can capture content and information from your web users that is automatically published inside the solution. For example, you may publish a newsletter signup form on your website so that users on your website can sign up to receive your newsletters. The technology cleverly screens all inbound submissions for validity and publishes the content to the relevant sub applications in the suite.
Clicking on the contact from web link opens up a list view of all contact submissions forms that you have created. With a brand-new company installation this will be blank. If any have already been created then you will see them listed by source domain and the owner of the form.
To add a new contact from web form click the yellow coloured and new button to the top right of the screen.
Adding a new Contact from Web Form to capture leads from your website (example)
The contact from web form has three navigation fields to its left with the first being the general information about this form. The service request the service request link enables the form to trigger a helpdesk or service desk enquiry to your business.
Example use cases include the simple ability the subscribers to your website to sign up to receive your newsletter or a more advance use case is the ability of a customer using your website to submit a trouble ticket support via via the same methodology.
Under the general information link the two mandatory fields of the domain and the owner of the form. The domain field restricts the submission of new form content to your business application suite from a matching domain only. This prevents the spurious use of your form by others from their own websites. Please enter the full domain name including the main extension with the www.prefix where you intend to publish this form, for example, www.thetidwells.org. Whilst it is possible to allow subdomains on the main parent to be used we typically recommend that you create a new form if the form is going to be published at the specific sub domain name, for example, news.thetidwells.org. This increases the overall security of your web forms and means it’s less likely for your automation to be corrupted by changes in your domain naming conventions.
The notify the owner checkbox instructs the solution to notify the owner of this form whenever a new record is submitted through it and is a useful feature to enable when you have first configured forms for testing purposes. Once you are confident the form is working accurately and correctly you may disable the automatic notifications to the owner.
By default the add contact from web form will add the submitted details to the CRM application as a customer contact record. The groups drop-down checklist selects the relevant CRM group where you would like this newly submitted information to reside. For example, you may create a CRM group (from within CRM admin) called newsletter and all new forms submitted through this contact from web form will be automatically added to your newsletter recipients group. This makes the sorting distribution and filtering of CRM contacts the campaigning and general administration far easier. Remember, that this business applications suite supports the capability of any company or contact to be resident in multiple groups at the same time. It allows your customers to sign up for and then unsubscribe from any number of newsletters or information periodicals that you publish explicitly group by group rather than from all as a default unsubscribe option.
By default the contact from web form collect’s first name, last name, Company name and email address with the first, last and email being mandatory. By selecting the use fields for phone or website you are instructing the solution to also ask for this information as well.
If you wish to capture custom information use description field checkbox; as doing so will enable the custom description link on the left side of the form allowing you to add as many new or additional fields as you need to satisfy this forms purpose.
If you wish to create a service request on successful submission of this form click on the service request link on the left side of the edit contact from web form and take the box marked create service request. Then select the target helpdesk and set the priority accordingly. You can also trigger customised notifications and add additional members (users) that will be able to access information submitted through this form on that helpdesk.
Once forms that include a service request have been received by the solution from your website they continue to be handled in an identical fashion to helpdesk tickets that are raised internally to the solution.
Once you have completed your new contact from web form click the save button to apply the changes. A text box will pop open that includes a self-contained form wrapped in JavaScript with basic CSS that you can readily copy and paste into any HTML container on your website.
If during testing your new form you receive authentication errors then that is a good sign that the domain upon which the form was published does not match the domain entered in the form itself, or, that the authentication token copied in the script no longer matches the authentication token included in the form original. You should check both of these for accuracy. Once accurately completed the form will submit all contained information either to a new contact record in CRM or to a new helpdesk ticket according to your configuration.
You may apply changes to the in-line CSS in the JavaScript if you wish to do so to align the look and feel of the form with your existing website. Be careful when making changes to this script that you do not inadvertently destroy its intended functionality. If you do make an error it is often easier to copy the code again from the drop-down to the right of the pencil icon on the offending form and make your CSS changes again on the new copy.
The event from web form functionality behaves identically to the contact from web method described above except it has its focus not on creating CRM records or helpdesk tickets but on accepting calendar bookings as events.
By setting an owner, a relevant event type and an assigned person with a segment length you could even automate the entire bookings process of a barbers or hairdressers salon!
Users on your website would be able to set their own calendar appointments with your business based on their own availability and either receive a confirmation that the slot they picked was available or suggestions for alternative dates and times according to the loading of your calendar and the assigned person at any time.
Additionally, the event from web automation can also remind both the booking party and the booked party of the appointment and can conditionally alert the assigned person that a new booking was created.
You can further customise the booking event from web functionality by adding text or long text fields as additional fields to the booking event; perhaps to capture further instructions from the booking party about their expectations or needs.
Note; the functionality does not show the person making the booking appointment every available slot, as you will appreciate, in some scenarios this may be a security risk. Instead, it shows;
To access any platform level Administrative features of the platform your logged in user account must be in a Permission Group that includes the ‘Administrator’ function. This is a simple once only ‘tick box’ applied to a user. This way any user in any permission group can join the main administrators group. You could also have ‘administrator’ privileges over a single application rather than the solution as a whole. These attributes are defined by the user permission group you are a member of. By default, the first sign-up that claims your company name as its instance has the fullest Administrator privileges.
The name of your permission groups when you have first signed up for a Trivaeo package in any form is a function of the package you signed up for and may be different to those shared below. For example, in a CloudWorksIT ‘full’ type of set of packages the Administrative Users may be defined by their membership in the ‘First User’ permission group. Each package of application/s created by Trivaeo or our owner operator business partners may use different sets of credentials from their ‘templates’. For example though; a fully enabled solution from any of our partners may include a package has two basic user permissions set up which look like;
They may create a package for your company that includes something that looks like this;
Yes, you are getting the idea. The Trivaeo technology is flexible. This flexibility means it is impossible for us to describe all potential things you may see. The documentation in this section highlights the key things which are common but the details of what you see in your instance is purely a function of the templates used, the nature of the package/s you signed up for and how it was prepared for you. Sometimes our business partners or Trivaeo help our clients get started. Other clients are happy to do it all on their own; and that is valid too. Either way this documentation will provide a handy fallback option for you to review and understand; especially if you are ever unsure whilst getting things set up for your company.
Of course, you can proceed to add as many permission groups as you like. Trivaeo technology uses ‘templates’ to define how any package or set of packages (we call them packs) may appear on your first login. This includes the demo data which is included by default, the starting permission groups, the user experience, hints and tips, getting started hints and much more. We cannot possibly document all the effectively ‘infinite’ options available. Please treat what you see in these user guides as examples. It is unlikely that what you see will ever exactly match what the guides have been written against.
For more information see the Permission Groups details below. If you are the person who signed up for your company package then by default you will be an Administrator and have platform administration capabilities. If you haven’t then the package you have been provided was incorrectly set up and you should approach the business partner concerned for it to be rectified.
It is possible for your user group permissions to add an application level administration capability to a user of that application. This way, a power CRM user, for example, could be given the ‘Application Administrator’ option so that they can manipulate the Admin functionality; but only of the CRM application; not the others.
To access the overall platform administrators area of the solution you only need to log in with the credentials of a user that has the option ‘Administrator’ ticked as YES (ON) in their user profile. Once logged in you can move away from the Coversheet (if there was one on your package) and you will see a link on the left of the page, called ‘Administration’; like this;
If necessary click on the ^ to dropdown the extended Administration areas. You will see all Administrative functions over which your user account has the administrator option applied. As indicated earlier the elements you see are a function of your ‘permission group’. As the main administrator you will see all administrative functions for the entire platform including those for all applications available in the package your company (or you) signed up for.
The Global Settings area is where all major system functions that are not tied specifically to underlying application elements are managed. Think of these as ‘blanket’ settings that apply across the entire platform; irrespective of which application packages you have actually subscribed to. These are ‘common’ areas shared by all applications and sub-applications.
You should note that when the instance is first deployed for your Company that most of the dictionaries and other configuration items have already been set and partially completed with dummy data or placeholders. This means in each case that you have working examples to follow that great assist you in getting everything set up they way you need it for your operation.
The Global Settings area is broken down into 5 main areas.
Let’s take a detailed look at the configuration options within Administration / Global Settings and the Main Settings area.
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;
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.
With exceptions you define an exception name and a period or span of time over which the exception is to be true. You can define each exception as either working non-working periods. This allows you to be flexible to your companys’ operating procedures; especially around national holidays and so on. If you set an exception as a working period then enter the times below during which the working periods are true.
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.
Let’s take a detailed look at the configuration options within Administration / Global Settings and its User Management area.
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;
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.
Firstly, buy the package/s in question. Define your user permission groups for that application package or make changes to existing permission groups so that the application can ‘show’ itself where relevant. Then add your users to the solution if they aren’t users already, then add those users to that permission group. Get any one of these stages wrong and you’ll quickly notice! Don’t let it daunt you; it is not challenging; just think about the natural process you would follow in a non-software scenario of the same type.
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 area of global administration is concerned with finance management. It is comprised of two main tools.
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 area of global administration is concerned with core integration to 3rd party software platforms that require blanket authentication and registration on behalf of all system users. Note that other integration points exist which are administered at a per user level through their own integration needs once logged into the system as a standard user. Good examples include the linking of the solution to Google or Office 365 for contacts and calendar syncronisation at a per user level. This area relates only to core system wide integrations that become accessible and available to all users across the solution that have the rights and the entitlement to access them.
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.
This area of global administration is concerned with your companys’ suite of Products and Services. By recording or importing your catalog of products and services you enable them to be used effectively by your users so that proposals, quotations, invoices, projects and many other areas will accurately reflect your commercial activities. In keeping with the other parts of the Administrators area the Trivaeo templates will create a range of demo/example products and services that may act as a template for your business. Feel free to delete these whilst referring to this user guide to set up your own.
The product catalogue opens by default into its base ‘list’ view. Products are made up of 3 tangible categories;
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.
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.
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).
The first signed up ‘user’ is immediately established as the ‘Main Administrator’ of any TrivaeoCloud or CloudWorksIT Company instance. Someone has to go first right? Having signed up and claimed the underlying Company by name for the instance the first user is set up as the main administrator. Unlike other IT Administration gigs the role with the Trivaeo Business Applications Suite is one of ‘configuration’ versus ‘installation’.
Once you have logged in for the first time as an ‘Administrator’ our templates will typically establish you with a role that includes ‘Administrator’ and ‘Purchase Administrator’.
Administrator sets up roles, permissions, access to applications and configures the overall platform to suit the needs of the company concerned
Purchase Administrator has a primary role associated with paying for and monitoring the use and entitlements/access of a company users to its business applications
Don’t be intimidated by the Administrator role. There is nothing ‘technical’ about the role, it is more an operational role that is responsible for setting up the platform so that it meets the operational needs of the company using it. There are no command scripts, shells, SSH or backend interactions of any form. All administration occurs in the same ‘user interface’ and front-end that your company users use and see. It is configured so that if your user permissions include the Administrator function that menu links to Administration Tasks and Options will appear for you. There is no secret back-door login, or other way of administering the platform. You do it all as a regular user of the solution but with more entitlements and privileges.
The entire Trivaeo Business Applications Suite is deployed as a single instance; globally. It is heirarchical in nature. Each level of the heirarchy defines what is expressed to users at that level, what they can see, what they can use and how it presents itself.
This means that the entire global user community enjoying the benefits of using the platform are doing so on what is effectively a single ‘instance’. But, each Company is strictly limited to seeing and manipulating their own data. It is impossible for data to leak from one part of the heirarchy to another.
The layout of the ‘instance’ at a Company level is defined by deployment templates that Trivaeo manufactures. The templates control the look, feel and in many cases the underlying functionality. It’s all on the same substrate but can look and behave differently depending on the solution type you sign up for, the packages in that solution and the templates used to support that package.
This architecture makes it possible for a global network of Trivaeo Business Partners to package and present the Trivaeo platform distinctly to their own customers and clients; with all the moving parts they need; in the language they need; with the functionality and components they need.
This has resulted in an identical substrate being able to support the intrinsic business operations needs of Banks, Currency Exchange Banks, Charities, Large National Companies, International Pharmaceuticals Distribution and Logistics all the way down to the local Plumber, a local Brewing Company or the hairdresser. It’s all the same solution bedrock; with the behaviour, look and feel described by the templates that were used to create the packages. The packages contain the applications.
As an Administrator signing up to set up your instance for your company you are doing so on the basis of having selected the appropriate package. The package contains the applications you needed, is priced transparently and is usually prepared well in advance by either Trivaeo or our Business Partners. The very cool thing about this type of ‘bundling’ of applications is whilst you sign up for Package A at a specific rate per month/annum per user you can then use the Administrative features to purchase additional packages; often containing different applications and entitlements. Think of it like LEGO™ – the package you buy is like a Kit. It contains everything you need to do what the kit contains. But, the Kits work together and you can use parts of Kit A to make something new with Kit B; often beyond the wildest dreams of the product managers at Lego themselves!
Trivaeo technology is made up of about 79 (always changing!) application elements. For example, Customer Relationship Management is a single major application; but is made up of a lot of sub-applications; like Leads, Contacts, Orders, Companies, Opportunities and so on. When Trivaeo creates new applications capability it is always completely integrated with everything else in the entire suite. As an administrator; you don’t have to worry about integrating one thing with another. It is already done. Just like with Lego, you know you can buy any kit and the bricks will snap together. This is exactly how Trivaeo technology works. It lends Trivaeo incredible advantages. These include;
In simple terms it means you have nothing too complex to worry about! You can focus on deciding how you want your users to work together, what they can see and use and what the application contains at a user interface level.
But, and big BUT, is that the Trivaeo technology is modular, it is packaged in many different ways; which means it is almost impossible for Trivaeo to describe in advance what you should expect after logging. Broadly we can do so, but not in great detail. The package you bought may use templates created by a business partner; meaning that what you see and what you need to do will differ somewhat from the generic information provided here in these user guides and manuals. However, that said, there are lots of overlaps and most of the templates orientate themselves around the same underlying core principles. But, for now, just have in the back of your mind that what Trivaeo exposes here in our standard user documentation may look and feel different to what you are using; hey, it’s not our fault. That’s what happens when you play with Lego!
But, now the good news! Most of your role as the company administrator is to get things set up using simple forms and tick boxes! You require no coding experience, you don’t need to be a developer and you don’t need a Masters Degree is Computer Science to understand the terminology. Our technology is designed to be enjoyed by business people; not techies! Our solutions are used by Yoga Instructors, Plumbers, Hairdressers and you can be sure of one thing; no matter how great their primary product and services are very few will also be computing whizzkids. Our entire Administration layer is designed to recognise that your business and your company operation is your primary objective. Our job is to make that easy for you; not hard or complex.
If the package you signed up for only includes the CRM element then all you’d see is Global Settings, Process and Collaboration and CRM Admin. As your business adds additional applications from the Suite then the relevant Admin layer appears automaticallyl.
The administrators users guides in this section fully describe every element of each configurable option in each administrative area.
Let’s assume you’ve just signed up for a Trivaeo solution package in some form; perhaps from one of our Global Partners. After logging in you should expect to configure the solution for your business first at a high level; and then at a more detailed level for your users. That is exactly how to go about it. In simple terms; these are the typical things to do, and they don’t take long at all;
That’s it, that’s the basic bits. The rest are a function of your package and what you want to configure at the next level. The next level of configuration effort usually includes;
Well, you are just about done! The other configuration items are all application specific. There are some additional cool things you might like to try experimenting with as your familiarity with administration, like;
Day to day your administrator role may include adding new users, adding self-service users, manipulating dictionaries or tweaking workflows and processes that your business uses. As a purchasing administrator (if it isn’t you) you will be assigning application licenses from your package to your uers, cancelling or purchasing new subscriptions within your package or packages and keeping the commercial side of your use of our technology in order. You may review invoices, download them and so on. Note, you have zero backup responsibilities or other system administration tasks at all.
If your company has purchased a package that includes the Service Desk functionality then you will see an ‘Administration’ link to administer it under the menu link for Administration, Service Desk Admin in the navigation links on the left side of the screen.
It may be quickly accessed by pressing the ‘Administration’ Panel on your coversheet after first login and then selecting the ‘Service Desk Admin’ area, again, on the left of the screen.
Service Desk and Help Desk are two terms often used rather indiscriminately by users. They broadly define the two main scenarios within which the technology is used by companies.
A service desk is typically an internal function to your business where users can raise ‘tickets’ that cause actions to happen. For example, the completion of an approvals process for an expense claim doesn’t end with the authorisation of the claim by the line manager and its approval, but requires that an instruction is sent to the finance team to actually pay the expense claim. In this case the Line Manager, or the employee who submitted the claim could open a service desk ticket with finance asking for their claim to be paid as it has now been authorised. If your business has also purchased eHuman Resources Management then this goes even further; that a service desk could have ‘members’ who are in the finance team; thereby allowing you to create business process workflow in your company that doesn’t target individual users, but targets the departments within which they work.
A help desk works similarly to a service desk, indeed, identically, but typically has the ability to face internally or externally to your business. You may use a help desk to support your workforce and their I.T. questions, password resets, or requesting upgrades to their PC’s, monitors and so on. Another help desk could be designed to support traditional customer service and to act as a general ‘front-office’ to your business so that customers can submit requests for assistance with products or services that they have purchased from you.
In either case the underlying functionality is identical; but the target audience and service levels may differ in each case; as well as the means by which users access the various help or service desks your business creates.
The Service Desk Admin area is where all of this setup and configuration occurs. Access to and from Service Desks is enabled in the permission groups (See Global Settings in Admin). It is even possible to provide self-service logins to your customers so they can take part directly in the help desk functionality by submitting tickets only by logging in to your business portal! They can then review all of their own tickets across your organisation in their ‘My World’ view which includes a ‘My Tickets View’. The same is true of permission group capabilities for Users as well.
In summary, service desks and help desks may be accessed internally to the solution by any logged in user with the necessary permissions. With those permissions they can review their own tickets and submit new ones. It is also possible to use a help desk where new tickets are created through an automated process of harvesting trouble tickets in the form of emails from a monitored email inbox. This mix of capabilities across Users, Self-Service Users and external email inboxes gives your business all the tools it will ever need to support both internal or external support and help desk activities; including customer care, employee support or even simply a place to assign ‘actions’ to groups or departments across your business.
Think beyond the confines of traditional help desk software which is simply a ticketing system. The technology Trivaeo has created is far more malleable than that simple set of use cases.
Note that the business application suite includes Knowledge Base as a function of its Help Desk technology. The knowledge base builds automatically if so desired through the activity of your users as they use your help desk to handle tickets or it can be added to in the absence of actual tickets. There is no administrative area for the Knowledge Base; all interactions occur as a result of tickets themselves or through the main Service Desk Application itself. You can hide the knowledge base by removing the permissions in your permissions groups too if you want to.
Establish and administer integrations to Email inboxes that are scanned for new help desk tickets
The Products/Services is a handy link that takes you straight into your companies products and services catalog. Accessing it from here is identical to accessing the products and services catalog through main Administration, Global Settings and Products/Services.
It is placed again in this administration area as a matter of convenience as your help desks often relate directly to the Products or Services that your business prepares or manufactures.
Status is a list (dictionary) that define the status that any help desk ticket can have at any time. A common error when setting up new help desks is to have failed to have defined relevant ticket statuses that accurately reflect the process your business goes through when dealing with both internal or external requests.
By default, you need to have at least one Status Name of ‘Open’ or something similar and this ‘Request Status’ must be tied to ‘Start-Up’; the underlying intelligent automation that the solution uses to push tickets through triage to remedy.
Eventually a ticket will be closed in some fashion, but not necessarily closed and resolved. It could be that a ticket was opened in error; it still needs to be closed but not recorded as a valid ticket. In this case you may have two ‘closed statuses’;
For both of these closed options you would set their ‘Request Status’ to Closed. This removes the ticket from the live help desks of your users and puts them into an archived state; but at least your historical reporting will be accurate. It won’t help your business much if all your tickets are closed; but you are unable to measure why they were closed. You want at least to know how many were resolved versus those that were closed as unsolveable!
So, give some thought to how your business looks after its employees and customers. When a ticket is OPENED you reasonably expect a member of staff manning that help desk to investigate the issue, then potentially assign the issue and then mark it in progress whilst it is being remedied and when a resolution has been found to change the status again, leading ultimately to the status of the ticket being closed.
Hints and Tips! – always give your ‘Status Name’ a numbered sequence so that you can order them correctly; perhaps using a numbering scheme that allows you to add new ones in a logical way if your users ask for new ones to be added at a later stage. Remember, at least ONE status must have the status of Start-Up (to trigger the help desk business process in the solution) and at least ONE status must be of the ‘Request Status’ as Closed. Without these two then the business process will not run!
When first enabled, the technology deploys Service Desk from a template that includes a few examples, but please note; these do not necessarily automatically include a Start-up or Closed ‘Request Status’. You should check the example that gets deployed when you activate Service Desk in any package your company subscribes to and align it to your needs.
Here is a worked example with explanations;
Example Status Names and Request Status setup
In the picture (above) we have set up a series of Statuses that broadly reflect the typical ‘triage’ that any ticket will go through. Of course there has to be a starting point; and we have set that to 1.0 Open with a ‘Request Status’ of Start-up. Again, Start-up is the naming convention of the helpdesk process engine used by the technology in the business applications platforms that monitors and pushes tickets through the system; and measures the service level and so on.
We have used decimal numbering conventions so that if we want to insert a new status between OPEN and COMMUNICATION STARTED we could do so by giving it the next number in sequence; for example, 1.1 or we could pick 1.5 if we wanted too as well.
The numbering and naming of the ‘Status Name’ gradually matures unto a point where the ticket can only be closed. But, we needed multiple options to close a ticket; some valid and others invalid. You can define as many of these with a ‘Request Status’ of CLOSED as you need but at least one of your ‘Status Name'(s) must be of the request status of ‘Closed’ otherwise the solution will not know when to move a ticket from a live helpdesk to the archive.
Note that we have included a status option for ‘Transferred’ too. This is because the person who gets assigned the ticket by a help desk member may refuse to accept it and needs to assign it to someone else for investigation. Reassigning the ticket makes sense in this case, but the status would drop back to Investigation when the ticket is received by the new assignee and they should reset the status to reflect this. For the person receiving the reassigned ticket, seeing its status as reassigned helps them too, as they can infer that the ticket has been looked at by someone else and there may be history there worth perusing and understanding. So, a trouble ticket status can ebb and flow in keeping with its actual status across your users. Eventually though all tickets get closed and we have created enough Status Names to deal with most eventualities and scope to add more easily if needed.
Help Desks is the main administrative area where you edit existing help desks or create new ones.
Example – Help Desks Overview
When first deployed for your company the technology may use a template to create an example help desk or two. Use the trash can icon to delete them if necessary or edit them to your taste.
Once you have created at least one or two help desks you may notice that some have arrows to their left side in the overview and others do not. Help desks without the arrow indicate that no staff (employees or users) have been assigned to man the help desk! Clicking on the arrow will expand the help desk to show you its currently assigned staff.
The template describes how the help desk changes its layout or its behaviour according to different applications available in the business applications suite. Here is a quick overview of the templates and how/when they are typically applied;
In most cases the routine templates you will be using include IT, Simple and Assets (if your company uses the Asset Management application packages). IT, as it leverages your products and services catalog and Simple when you don’t need to associate a ticket with a product or an asset. Assets is useful if your employees use equipment or assets which require maintenance or other forms of hands-on support to keep them in good working order. A car, for example, owned by the company is an asset that needs servicing. An employee that uses this company car may need to submit a help desk ticket asking for the service to be authorised and conducted.
As an end-user employee of your company they will only ever have direct access to create tickets against help desks setup with the templates from Assets, On-boarding, Simple and IT in nature when attempting to create a new ticket in the Service Desk application proper. So, you can see that some templates are used to drive business processes and others dictate the information available to users when creating new tickets. Use the descriptions (above) to guide you as you set up your first help desk or two. You will soon be able to see and test the differences on your own help desks.
Before thinking about adding a new help desk you should complete all relevant areas of Service Desk Admin, with a special focus on your ‘Status’ dictionary,, the priorities, categories, types, channels and Request Status Process. Once you’ve completed all those then you may proceed to set up the help desks themselves.
Adding a new help desk is a quick task and takes only a minute or two to complete. You must provide 3 mandatory elements to save a new help desk. These include;
Members – which users on your solution are ‘manning’ this help desk? It is typical that only a few members of key staff in each support or departmental area are responsible for its help desk tickets; just as a receptionist is responsible for all visitors to your building. Select the members from your current pool of users. Members of a help desk will see tickets from all help desks that they are a member of (if you have set the relevant permissions in their permission group of course; see Administration, Global Settings, Main Settings and Permission Groups and be sure to have added the relevant permissions in General and Service Desk areas for the group that these users are members of). You can even set their permissions that the members of a help desk can only see the tickets that have been assigned to them versus all possible tickets in any particular help desk. You could set them up so that they can view all help desk tickets but only edit those that they have been assigned. You can also remove the ability of a user to reassign help desk tickets to other users or access the Knowledge Base and more! Be careful with your permissions!
Notifications – Members of a help desk always receive notifications on all tickets that they have privileges to see or interact with. If you want others, who aren’t directly associated with a help desk as a member to be notified when new tickets are raised, then add them by name, or by role or event department. Departments and Roles are managed in the eHuman Resources application. If your business applications suite package does not include eHuman Resources then you will be limited to adding named users to the notifications.
On completion of the initial set up of your new help desk you can press the green OK button to save it. It becomes immediately available to your users.
Priorities act as triggers that set both the importance and the associated service levels of any tickets raised across your help desks. You may find that on initial deployment of your company instance that some have been set up for you.
For each priority you add or edit you will need to establish its severity (level), the time to fix according to your business service level strategy and the allowed response time to the opening event of a new ticket.
You may have as many, or as few as your business needs. By default most businesses would operate with at least 4 priorities;
Obviously, a ticket raised as Critical is going to have a severe or significant impact on your customer/client/user and has the potential to impact your business, brand, goodwill or customer loyalty. Set up your priorities in accordance with your business objectives and strategy. At least one of the priorities should be set as the default. Customers tend to ‘increase’ the assigned priority because to them the issue is the most important thing in their Universe. We do not recommend setting your P1 highest level priority as a default; otherwise all help desk tickets you receive will be measured at the highest service level! It is possible for your help desk members to change the priority; but it is good practice to do this in conjunction with a discussion with the client so that they agree the change in scope of their ticket or complaint.
Try and make your priorities readable and undestandable to a layman. Using ‘vanity’ priorities like the names of animal species may seem fun but won’t help your customers pick the relevant category when submitting a ticket.
The fix time is the time you allow yourself to fix a reported issue or bring it to a natural resolved status once the ticket has been ‘accepted’ by a member of your staff. The response time is the time you allow yourself to even begin the process of looking at the tickets waiting in the queue to be dealt with. Your teams performance against these objectives is monitored on your real-time dashboards as a ‘service level’ (last hour) and the overall ‘service desk quality’ too.
The response and the fix times are notified to your complainants when they raise trouble tickets to your help desks based on the working days established in your company default calendar! For example, assume your company default calendar has working times configured as 9am to 5pm on Mondays through Fridays with no available working times scheduled on a Saturday or Sunday. You set your helpdesk so that tickets always arrive with a medium priority. Let’s further assume that you set a 24 hours response time and a 6 hour time to fix for a ticket with that severity. A complainant raises a ticket with you at 9pm on a Sunday evening. They will receive an email auto-response indicating that their ticket will be looked at by 9am on Thursday morning! This is correct! Why? It covers 3 x 8 hour days leading to the time when the service level for a response will be breached. Remember, your default calendar is set to 8 working hours per day, so Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will have to completely elapse before you would be in breach of your response Service Level. Thinking about this a little more, if you want a single working day to elapse for a medium priority ticket then the response time should be set to 8 hours; not 24! The time to fix begins at the end of the respnose time.
Some helpdesk templates across the platform will present a time to fix in email notifications to complainants based on these variables; others do not do so. If your company works shifts then your calendar should contain the starting time of the morning shift and end when the late shift completes work. This would give your default calendar a working day, for example, from 8am to 10pm each day; a span of 14 hours. Set your priorities accordingly!
This is a frequently asked question. Yes, it is possible to set up priorities that reflect various available service levels in your business. If you have VIP clients that will receive a different service level then you may set them up on an individual company basis.
To do this, please ensure the company is in your CRM system as a company and that you have the ‘is customer’ radio-button selected. If you want a custom service level for an individual in your CRM system then you can do this too; but you’ll have to add them to their own dummy company in order to do so. Just use the persons surname with an underscore and a term that makes them easily filterable, for example, Ttidwell_VIP, or Claxton_VIP as their company name and add the ‘individual’ to that ‘holding company’.
Ticking the ‘is customer’ option if important alongside the Account Type = Customer
Again, in recap, if setting up a CRM Company record as a Company that should receive a custom service level on your help desks you need to tick the ‘Is Customer’ radio-check box. If you want a custom service level for a CRM Contact then you can do this too by adding a dummy CRM company that they can be a member of that you do the same thing with. This methodology ensures that a trouble ticket raised by any complainant who is recorded in your CRM as being a member of a company will receive the service levels associated with that company. It is failsafe!
Once you have added the underlying company then return to the Company List View.
Note the pencil icon to edit has a drop-down field next to it? Click on this dropdown as this will expose the option to edit the Company Preferences.
The ability to customise the priorities and the underlying calendar used to determine the working hours allows your business to setup very customised help desk service levels; indeed; at a company by company level if you want to. You can do this by having 3 tiers; representing 3 underlying calendars; or you can have a custom calendar and custom priorities (defaults) for any particular company in your CRM. Either way you have a very flexible and easy to manage help desk solution that satisfies both internal users as well as external customers.
Users can be employees as full users in the system with a user login. They can also be self-service users (externally invited entities like contractors, clients, suppliers or even your customers if you provide them a log in). Amend these users permissions groups so that they can access the helpdesk to submit new tickets. User may submit new tickets through the native service desk application with the PLUS BUTTON to add a new ticket; or they can access the list help desk tickets (which they will see as being empty if they aren’t a helpdesk user member!) and then click on the yellow ADD NEW Button. They can also use My World, My Requests and Add a new request and review all their own open/archived tickets.
Or, you can setup the monitoring of an email inbox which the solution will poll regularly (every 5 minutes or so) for new emails. Any new emails found in that inbox will be targetted to your chosen help desk, automatically creating a new helpdesk ticket once the Email has been harvested by the platform. (See Email Requests further down this page).
Categories arrange your help desk structure by identifying the nature of the enquiry received by that category in each case. For example, a general Customer Service help desk may have a range of typical categories;
By defining categories you are better able to indicate to your help desk team what each ticket is about and the nature of the enquiry contained within it. You can create as many as you need; but don’t make the list too long otherwise your complainants will only ever choose the top option in the list; negating its intrinsic value to you.
Use the pencil icon to edit existing categories, the trash can to delete them or the yellow Add New button to add new ones.
Don’t be too specific with the Categories. You add additional detail with the Service Desk TYPES a little later on. For example, the Category you call ‘Change of Address’ may actually have 3 underlying types;
The mixing of Categories and types allows your help desk to remain easily targetable yet uncluttered with long lists of potential targets for your users to find. The additional structuring of tickets by Category and Type helps you with your historical reporting and potentially identify areas where your business may improve how it does business.
This function allows you to define which of all available ‘Statuses’ is deemed to be the one where the first communication with the complainant will occur. This is important because until the status of a ticket changes to this state the customer will have no idea that the ticket is actually being looked at or investigated by a help desk member.
Remember, the time to fix service level is tagged at the beginning of each ticket to the default calendar and has a forecast date/time based on all of the time to respond plus time to fix being added together. In order for your customers to get a better idea when to expect some form of resolution to their enquiry you should select the status in your help desk setup that will be deemed to be the moment when the 1st communication with the complainant is made. You will not be able to select step 1 or the final step of a multi-step process. Why? Because step 1 always OPENS the ticket (via the Start-up process) and the final step always CLOSES it (via the Closed business process). The first communication with a complainant happens at some stage between these two points.
Please pick the point closest to that moment based on how your company deals with its customer or user enquiries typically. When do you expect your users to be interacting with the complainant on the phone or via email? If you want to add a new step to your process you can edit these and add a new one in the admin area called Status in Service Desk Admin. Your service level for Time to Fix is triggered by this moment in time when a ticket status changes to the selected entry!
The business application suite assumes that your time to fix service level can only begin once a ticket has been physically opened by a helpdesk member and that they are doing something with it. If you feel that your service levels are too wide; then you may give thought to reducing your time to response service level. Adjust to taste.
Channels are where you define the acceptable media or means of communication by which trouble tickets may be opened. This assists your help desk members in understand how a complaint or ticket was raised; especially in cases where another employee is opening up a ticket on behalf of a complainant. A good example is a customer phones your front office to make a complaint about a product they just received from you in the post. The front office worker will open up a new trouble ticket for that customer and on their behalf indicating the channel was ‘By Phone’.
Add the channels your business typically uses when interacting with the world around it. Don’t forget forums, online, social media, walk-ins, shop fronts, in person, Email, Fax, SMS…..and so on. If your business will accept enquiries by this channel type then record it in this dictionary. The data is used by the complainant or the person submitting on their behalf when raising a new ticket.
Again, this helps a lot with historical reporting and data accuracy in seeking continuous business improvement.
Types is a dictionary that adds additional detail to the high level categories across your helpdesk. Referring briefly to the example posted in ‘Categories’ (above) your ‘Change of Address’ Category may contain Types including;
When a complainant raises a new help desk or service desk ticket inside the solution they will pick a category and then the dropdown list of associated Types will show. This provides additional context to the employees manning the help desk in each case.
New Help Desk tickets raised by polling an Email inbox will target a help desk but will not have a predetermined category or type selected when they are created. In these cases the help desk member is responsible for setting the relevant category and type when they have read and understood the body of the complaint when accepting the ticket.
The Series of Email Events is a powerful function that may assist you in automating some of your help desk or service desk activities. It automates the delivery of ‘comfort’ or other messages in the form of Emails to the complainant at times set by your configuration of its behaviour.
You may want a single email to be sent 1 minutes after a ticket has been submitted that acknowledges receipt of the new ticket; with a polite reminder to your complainant what your standard service levels are and then another email an hour later confirming that the ticket is with the team and someone will be responding in due course. Set up your own ‘comfort messaging’ as determined by each help desk you create.
In more advanced scenario’s; especially with internal help desks then its even possible to automate an entire business workflow over an extended timeframe; for example, a new employee joins your company;
Use the series of email events to completely automate a series of Emails which is initiated through the simple triggering of a help desk ticket. Remember, that when you set up a help desk with its underlying template set to use the ‘Series of Email Events’ that the ticket may be opened in a CLOSED state. It will be immediately archived; but the series of email events will still be triggered. Your help desk users will not have to interact with the ticket in any form or fashion.
Click the yellow Add New button. You will be presented with a form asking for a Template Name. Make it unique, yet easily understandable; especially if you have a lot of email based automation so you can find them again readily when you need to.
Once you have created the new, but blank template, it is a simple process of adding Events. The order of events doesn’t matter as each has their own timings;
You may design each email using the WYSIWYG Editor (What you See is what you Get) or you may use standard HTML. Hit preview to see the Email in its current form at any time.
Please note; the timings selected actually break down into epoch seconds; so entering 1 Day is the same as entering 24 Hours or 1,400 minutes. To send an email 1 hour into the second day you could set the time to 1 Day and 1 Hour, or you could set the hours to 25. Use whatever sequencing you like, but tend to stick with the some strategy in all Series of Email Events templates to avoid confusing other administrators (or yourself!) at a later time.
Emails are transmitted by the platform based on their REAL time ordering; not based on the sorting or ordering in the administration area.
Once a template has been established with at least 1 event in it then any receipt of a new ticket to a help desk that uses the ‘Series of Email Events’ as its underlying business process will trigger the sending of Emails.
To edit an existing series of email events; click once on the Template Name. Click the pencil icon to change the template name. Click on the trash can to delete it.
To review the contents under each ‘Delay’ click the arrow to the left of each entry as shown in the picture (below);
Example; New employees onboarding series of email events template
Receiving and accepting new help desk tickets based on Email submissions is relatively commonplace; but frequently abused. The prevalence of SPAM and the attaching of viruses and other malicious executables to Email means that your help desk needs to be protected from abuse.
You can protect yourself from help desk abuse by either requiring your users to submit tickets by logging in as a user or a self-service user and using the Help Desk application suite or via the submission of an email to an email address that is monitored for this purpose. Typically you will not expose the details of this Email address publically as it will be trawled and used maliciously.
To further protect your Company from abuse and Email SPAM the Email Requests arriving into the solution MUST have an entry in the CRM platform for the complainant. In other words; if the email address is not in your CRM platform then the ticket will be refused. The complainant will be asked kindly by an automated business process to resubmit their ticket using the email address that you hold on file for them. This is a powerful and useful feature that will also assist your company in light of the new GDPR regulations (General Data Protection Regulations) which come into force in Europe in 2018. It doesn’t matter if your business is not based in Europe; if you aim to do any form of business into Europe then GDPR will affect your business!
With all that background set, it is possible to set up an Email inbox that will be checked every 5 minutes by the business applications platform for new Emails that it hasn’t seen before. It will collect those new emails and import them into the solution. It will then validate if the sender exists in your CRM solution. If they do then the ticket will be accepted and created. The complainant will receive an Email confirmation that their ticket has been accepted. If there is no matching Email address then the ticket is rejected and an appropriate response in this light is sent to the complainant automatically.
Opening the Email Requests area in Service Desk Admin will open a list overview of all current active/inactive request channels you have created. By default with a new installation this will be blank.
To create a new Email Requests solution click on the yellow ADD NEW box to the top right of the screen.
Adding a new Email Request based help desk channel
On completion and submission of this form, by clicking the OK button the system will put the new email harvester in a ‘pending’ status. During the servers next polling sequence it will attempt to log in to that Email inbox and it will send a test email to it and attempt to retrieve it. If succesful the status of the Email harvesting will change to Active. Any new emails submitted to that Email inbox from the moment the solution becomes ‘Active’ will be harvested, imported and used to create a new help desk ticket. The complainant will be the email address of the submitting user, the help desk the assigned help desk used in the form (above) and the service level based on the defaults established for that help desk. Please note the category and type of request will be blank and should be completed by your downstream help desk users as they open and deal with tickets in the system.
If for any reason the polling of the target mailbox fails then the account will go into an Inactive status. Repair the issue that caused the failure in your Email settings and if necessary resend the Test Email by clicking on the dropdown list next to the listed inactive help desk to ‘Send Test Email’.
The Email address used to accept help desk tickets should be resilient, trusted and hardened to high levels using enterprise grade antivirus and spam gateways (these are offered by default with cloud based services like GSuite, Gmail, Office365 and many others. You should avoid publishing links to the Email address publically so they can be easily trawled by bots/spiders. Use Javascript to mask the Email address from bots if necessary. Do what you reasonably can to prevent SPAM being targetted to the Email inbox. A good way of doing this is to use a form on your website that subsequently sends an email to the inbox without ever actually publishing details of the Email address itself.
e-HR (e-Human Resources / Human Resources Management) is a pivotal application within the business applications suite just like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Document Management are. The application is often underrated and under utilised by smaller businesses who assume that hands on management of staff in real-time generates the best mid and long term results. This simply isn’t true.
e-HR gives your company as a whole the opportunity to set its goals and objectives in each year and the company owner can words with the management team to describe objectives for departments or even individuals. e-HR is not just an employee records keeping application; it is the bedrock that empowers any companies most valuable resource; its people. e-HR also covers holidays, expenses, timesheets and 360 degree peer review processes; all intrinsic critical elements of maintaining a focus on investing in your people, managing costs and understanding the deep value hidden in your employees, their talents, skills and desires for the future.
Whilst it is entirely possible to use the business applications suite as a whole with the absence of e-HR we do strongly recommend that it is included in any organisation that is departmentalised in any form. If your business is not planning on using the e-HR suite then you will be limited to assigning business processes, workflows and tasks to named individuals. By adding e-HR your business will be able to utilise process, workflows and automation across departments and roles. This adds incredible flexibility to how you set up and use your processes as you will be able to target positions (roles) with your workflows and not just named users. This makes your business applications flow seamlessly; unaffected by the routine migration of staff in and out of your business or their migration within it through promotions or substansive role changes. It also opens up the ability to consider using Resource Management, Projects and other features of the suite that leverage skills, experience and the rates (hourly, daily, monthly for each employee) your business charges for these resources so that the planning of resources, costs and margins is entirely automated as you prepare quotations, projects and more.
Your business will also have the ability to utilise enhanced e-HR functions such as 360 degree reviews and employee feedback management as a powerful tool in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your workforce.
You can set objectives that are company wide, departmental or individual in scope and measure your performance against these objectives with a fully automated workflow supporting your users throughout. You may create and distribute your own 360 degree reviews, asking the questions you want and scoring them they way you think will be most beneficial to your continuous business improvement strategy.
The e-HR Admin area makes available to you the tools necessary to set up, configure, administer and keep your e-HR functions up to date. Some elements of the Admin area relate to e-HR processes but most of the Admin area concerns itself with Dictionaries of terms that are used by the e-HR suite.
Commercially, e-HR incorporates individually licensable applications including Holiday Management, Timesheet Management and Expenses Management. This allows your business to leverage commercial benefits by investing in the applications within the e-HR suite that best fit the needs of your users. You could, for example, purchase and make e-HR available to your managers/executives but purchase Holiday Management, Expenses and Timesheets for those resources that only need one of those applications on a casual basis. Yes, you can assign timesheets as an application to an invited resource, like an external contractor you hire to work on one of your projects so that this external resource can submit timesheets to your business each week as an external self-service user. You should however purchase the full e-HR capability for any users that you will want to do 360 degree reviews of or those that will be measured at a performance level against Objectives (Company wide, Departmental or Individual). The purchase of an e-HR license provides access to e-HR and all of its sub-applications including Timesheets, Expenses and Holidays Management. In other words, if you purchase an e-HR license you do not need to purchase Timesheets for the same user.
With Permission Groups you are in charge of who can see ‘confidential’ information that you business holds about its employees. Please make sure that you set up your permission groups accordingly. In most routine scenarios an employee should be able to view their own Objectives, Timesheets, Expenses and Holidays. They should also be able to see the List of Employees but only be able to edit their own details whilst being able to see the Company Org Chart. A standard employee should not be able to view ‘all user details, reports or delete anything. An e-HR Admin or your main human resources manager should be able to see all records including absence, emergency contact details, CV, medical, warnings, accidents and so on. We recommend that you start with a reduced permission group assumption set and expand upon it as the use cases your business deploys are activated.
You should also note that the e-HR function is smart enough to understand that your employees ebb and flow. Some stay with you for life, others may only be with your company for a few months or years; even if permanent in nature on their initial employment. The solution as a whole allows your business applications suite to be senstive to current employees, versus ex-employees so that the validity of your data throughout the solution over time retains its validity. Your Organisation Chart is entire automated; but isn’t forced to show employees that have left the company simply so that the CRM records they own aren’t deleted. You will be amazed how frequent this type of problem is with some basic ERP solutions available in the market. These issues do not affect you in this business applications suite! It would be of no use to your organisation if the firing of an employee required you to delete the employee and by default all records across the entire solution that they owned, created, edited or otherwise took part in. Your data audit trails remain valid over the long term no matter how volatile your workforce is. Churn and change is inevitable; but you must be able to rely on your business data, so this business applications suite has its focus on long term validity and reliability.
The detailed instructions below are ordered naturally and in accordance with their ordering in the e-HR Admin panel. This does not suggest their importance. All areas are equally important. But given much of the e-HR Admin functions are related to dictionaries of words available to your users and HR managers then they can be addressed during routine daily use of the solution. Other areas need to be set up first so that you have a working solution from day one.
Please see the detailed instructions below which emcompass all areas of e-HR Admin for further details.
NOTE > Objectives is the only application within the e-HR suite that requires a minimum of a Two Step process workflow to be in place to support it. This is because there are distinct submissions and approvals that are triggered by the built-in workflows. The template used by Trivaeo or the Trivaeo Partner to package your application suite may or may not include the necessary two step approvals workflow. If you see errors when attempting to assign a Workflow to the Objectives Source in the application process flow (Process and Collaboration) then this will be the error causing the issue. The underlying business processes for Company Wide, Departmental or Individual Objectives are hard-coded but still require some form of two-step Workflow to be in place. The Source for Assets, Expenses, Holidays and Timesheets may continue to be single step Workflows if you so desire.
A high level introduction to the Admin areas in e-HR and their functions. Please see the detailed instructions which follow for the detailed explanations and typical usage scenarios of each Admin element.
This is a dynamic list dictionary that controls the acceptable holiday limits in each financial year for the departments or employees across your business. You must set the companies Financial Year(s) before attempting to edit this list function! To do so, go to Administration // Global Settings // Company Financial Year and Target. With your Financial Years and revenue targets set you may return to this list to complete it.
In each Financial operating Year you may define the default holiday limits which would apply to all departments and employees. You set the statutory holidays allowed as per your policies and the typical number of Public (Bank) Holidays in that Financial Year. These two figures are added together to provide the default annual Holiday entitlement of any employee/department. Having set the company wide defaults you may then proceed to the lower section and amend the entitlements by Department or by Employee according to your HR policies or employment contracts with each employee.
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For the 3 answers in section 1 a total of 30 points were available as a perfect score. The combined net score is 5+7+6 (18). The Rating Criteria for this section of the questionairre was set up as follows;
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Most configuration of Projects occurs during the setup of each Project in the main Projects Application itself. Therefore the amount of enterprise wide preconfiguration and preparation that needs to occur from a main administrative perspective is quite light. Especially so, when compared with some of the other application genres in the combined business applications suite.
That said, the Project Management application suite is no slouch and is a powerful tool. It is deeply integrated into many other areas of the solution set including assets, resources, employees, self-service users, contracts, CRM, e-HR and more. It is therefore heavily reliant on the effective setup and preparation of your entire company ‘instance’, employees, calendars, task management and so on. For example, when a CRM user promotes an Opportunity into an Order they click a simple yes/no prompt that asks them if they’d like a Project to be created against the Opportunity. All historic data, documents, drawings, quotations, proposals, communications and activities/tasks that lead to the Order are immediately attached to the new Project including everything that took place before the opporunity was even created (it’s history as a lead by way of further example). No transfer of documentation, no kick off meetings, no scrambling project office trying desperately to gather all the requirements; all over again. It all happens; instantly!
Once correctly prepared, Project Management is a deeply integrated software solution that works seamlessly and effectively as a horizontally integrated element that utilises and leverages almost every other facet of the entire solution suite. If you use Contract Management then it uses that too; if you use e-HR it use that and so on. It is fully able to leverage your internal and external resources, companies, clients and employees. Assigning tasks is no longer a standalone activity handled by a project manager who then has to scramble to orchestrate those resources. They simply build out their project task by task, laying out the prerequisites and dependencies and the task matrix is generated automatically; including the charts, plan, run time and overall expenses. This is the type of tool that most project managers have always dreamed about; but never been able to realise effectively. For more details on using the Project Management Application please refer to the relevant user guide. They are listed at the bottom of this page.
We will now describe the administrative features that will need some attention by your main administrator so that the groundwork is ready for the application proper.
The most important asset to any business is its employees. Following them in a close second are the tangible, physical or real assets that a company owns. These assets are managed in the business applications suite so that they enjoy a complete lifecycle, monitoring their intrinsic value, maintenance status and who in your business currently uses each asset your company owns.
Assets work hand in hand with your support desks or help desks and even allow the routine safekeeping, health monitoring and status monitoring of each asset.
A standalone mobile application that is capable of scanning the asset tags (QR-Codes based) also exists within the suite; but this does not require any administrative set up or configuration.
The Asset Management application suite has a basic administrative overhead which is centered around the categories of assets your business owns, where you buy them from, their current status and their physical locations.
Don’t forget to set the preferred business process workflow for your assets so that employees requesting repair or maintenance of the assets they are using can be suitably offered. This includes the workflow for approvals of course. Each asset that you business owns has a value on purchase and then this value degrades over time. The solution will automatically track the inherent value of all of your assets and it links seamlessly to contracts management, supplier management and help desks. For example, if an employee/user or a technician changes the status of an asset to ‘needs servicing’ then not only is the authorisations process kicked into gear but a trouble ticket is opened with the facilities team so that they can get one of their sevice engineers to conduct the service. Approvals, Notifications and Actions; automated.
Contracts Admin is a title that does a sheer injustice to the inherent functionality of this application suite area of the business applications platform!
Within the main Contracts application suite your users will be able to completely manage suppliers, conduct supplier due diligence, measure suppliers compliance and manage the contracts that underwrite your business relationships with suppliers.
From an administrators perspective your focus will be on a series of dictionaries and a basic set of settings that support automation of the supplier and contracts management process. This is exposed in 3 administrative areas. These are described below.
HINT – before attempting to add a new contract or a new supplier anywhere in the main Contracts application you MUST have identified the CONTACT or the COMPANY as a supplier in the CRM application first.
This is not JUST the Account TYPE field, but the radio-option button for ‘Is Supplier’! It must be ticked otherwise the company or contact cannot be selected as a target for any activities in Contracts Management. Remember, a company may be listed in CRM as a Customer, but could also act as a SUPPLIER to your business on some occasions. So, in those cases, leave the Account TYPE field set to ‘Customer’ and check the ‘Is Supplier’ tick box so that it enables the Company to be used in Contracts Manager as a target.
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When using the main contract manager application you will generally follow the following order of activities;