Using AsiaPac CAPTURE Version 2 1

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    CAPTUREVersion2.1.05

    Using CustomerAnd Project Tracking +Usage Reporting ExtensionsA free CRM application from Asia/Pacific Computer ServicesVisit our web site at asiapac.com.au ( eb server in Australia) or notestracker.com (server in

    USA)

    The CAPTURE database was designed to be easy to use, so the following guidelines are kept toa minimum.

    Use the additional information incorporated as Help Text, and as "hotspot pop-ups" (identified

    by the icon), placed where it is needed throughout the various forms. In many cases this Helpinformation is visible only when you are editing documents.

    The Relationship between CAPTURE Document TypesParent Customer Profile

    \ \ \_________ ail Memo

    \ \\ \___ Customer Action

    \ \________ Mail Memo\

    Customer Profile| \ \ \_________ ail Memo

    | \ \

    | \ \____ Customer Action| \ \____ ail Memo

    | \

    | Contact Profile| \ \_________ ail Memo

    | \| \____ Contact Action

    | \____ ail Memo

    |

    Project Profile\ \______________ ail Memo

    \

    \____ Project Action\____ ail Memo

    Creating and Editing CAPTURE DocumentsTo enter a new CUSTOMER PROFILE in the database:First make sure that the customer does not already have a Customer Profile document in thedatabase. For example, select the view "Companies by Name" and then type the first few

    characters in the company name. If a Customer Profile document already exists, you will see it.

    If the customer does not have a Customer Profile document, select Create - Customer Profile tocreate one. Fill in the basic description of the customer (name, address, etc) and then otherdetails (positioning information, our relationship with the customer, products used by the

    customer, and any useful background information about the customer). Save the document.

    Only when you have created a Customer Profile (company profile) document can you proceed toadding projects, contacts and action items against that customer. This prevents you from adding

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    "orphan" projects and action items.

    To enter a new CONTACT PROFILE or PROJECT PROFILE:Open the Customer Profile document and then click on theNew Contact button or the NewProject button respectively. Key relevant information from the Customer Profile document(name, Sales Rep, etc) will be inherited into corresponding fields in the Contact Profile orProject Profile document. Some of these are fixed, others (such as address or phone number)

    are editable. Fill in the additional fields on the form. Finally, save the document.

    To enter an ACTIVITY against a customer, contact or project:Open the appropriate Customer Profile, Contact Profile or Project Profile document, then click

    on the Activity button. There are four different form types in the database which you can use torecord different kinds of activity between us and the customer:

    Action Item (including the assignment of tasks and the controlling of their timely resolution)Phone Call Report (whether initiated by us or by the customer/prospect)Sales Call Report (when you meet with the customer/prospect)Miscellaneous Activity (anything not covered by the above three items)Automatic Header Field Synchronisation:At the top of each customer-related document is a common header section that holds basicinformation about the customer. For example:

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    There is an important but not-so-obvious feature of CAPTURE needs a mention. Whenever youchange any of these fields (Customer Name, Parent Customer Name, Customer Category,Sales Branch Location, Sales Region or Sales Representative Name), the changed field values

    are automatically propagated down to all of the descendant documents of the Customer Profile(projects, contacts, actions, etc). More than that, these fields are onlyeditable from within theCustomer Profile, so this propagation mechanism leads to consistency of information in the

    descendant documents.

    In CAPTURE Version 2,1 a "special" comments field was added to each form, enabling you tohighlight individual documents in the database and have special actions performed against them

    (see later, in the section about NotesTracker).Note: throughout CAPTURE, while editing documents you are encouraged to us the Spell

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    Check buttonso as to improve the quality of your documents.To merge a Notes Mail memo into the CAPTURE document hierarchyBeginning with Version 2.0 you have the powerful capability to select any document (ordocuments) in the CAPTURE hierarchy -- a Customer Profile, a Contact Profile, a Project

    profile, or any Action against one of these -- and then insert one or more of the memos in theInbox of your personal Notes Mail immediately below the selected document (or documents).

    In most cases you would merge a single Notes Mail memo against a single CAPTURE

    document, but you are not restricted from merging multiple memos against multiple documents.Note that you cannot merge a mail memo against a previously-merged memo.

    An example of the simple merge procedure now follows. First, you select the CAPTURE

    document below which the memo is to be inserted. You can do this by highlighting the documentwith the dark rectangle, for example the phone call with subject "Introduce new version ofJADE":

    Note: you could also use the selection margin and place a check mark (tick) against the desired

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    CAPTURE document (or even against multiple documents anywhere in the hierarchy .

    Next, you click on the e-Mail Merge button (circled in red), which presents the followingconfirmation dialog:

    Assuming that you click on the "Yes" button, you will see the contents of your own Notes Mail inbox,looking something like this:

    If you click theCancel button at this stage, you procedure is cancelled and no mail merge occurs:

    If you click theOkay button instead, the mail memo document that is highlighted (via the darkrectangle) will be merged into CAPTURE. If you don't want his to happen, select one (or more) of yourmail memos using the selection margin, like this:

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    Next, click the "Okay" button. You will be offered a final chance to drop out of the mail mergeprocedure:

    If you click the "No" button, then you will be given confirmation that the procedure was cancelled:

    Otherwise. you will see that selected mail memo(s) merged underneath the desired CAPTUREdocument, like this:

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    You will find that this mail merge procedure is very quick and easy to use. It is a far more convenientand efficient way to incorporate vital information from your Notes Mail than other alternatives (such ascutting and pasting text).

    Activities and Action ItemsAgainst each Customer Profile, Project Profile or Contact Profile you may log one or multiple

    "activities" (which are stored as child documents, or in Lotus Notes terminology "responsedocuments"). You create an Activity document by clicking on the New Activity button:

    This causes display of a dialog box from which you select the type of activity, as follows:

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    If you select, for example, the "Action Item" task type, then a new Action Item form is displayed, whichfor a Project Profile parent document might look like the following:

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    You select the person(s) with primary responsibility for the Action Item by clicking one of thefollowing buttons:

    which presents the list of names stored via the "Sales Reps" lookup list views (under

    ADMINISTRATION). Otherwise, you may type the name(s) directly into the Assigned To field. (Youmust keep in mind that these must be valid Lotus Notes mail addressees.) Starting with CAPTUREVersion 2.1.05 you may also select secondary assignee(s) who will also be alerted about the ActionItem by e-mail.

    An important feature of Action Item documents is the ability to have alert Notes Mail messages sent

    out, both for the initial creation of the Action Item document and for any subsequent modifications ofan existing Action Item document. Whether or not an alert mail message is sent out is governed by theYes/No setting of the radio button as follows:

    - - - - - - -

    Securing and Configuring the CAPTURE databaseSecurityNote: with Version 2.0. the CAPTURE database comes with its ACL (Access Control List)set as follows:

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    When you put CAPTURE into production you must modify the ACL appropriately to meetyour own security and functional requirements. This is "business as usual" for any Notesdatabase -- you must control who is allowed to read, create, edit and delete documents (oreven delete the entire database)!

    Notice the [Admin] and [NotesTracker] roles, are new as of CAPTURE Version 2.0 and areexplained below.

    Note: To better encourage secure local copies of the database (for example, on a travellingsales representative's notebook computer), the Access Control List has -- in its "Advanced"section -- the property "Enforce a consistent Access Control List across all replicas of thedatabase". ( This might cause you some problems in accessing the database, so you mustproperly understand how this setting works.)

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    CONFIGURING THE DATABASE:A user must have Manager-level access or be in the [Admin] role before being able to:

    - edit the CAPTURE Database Profile document

    - edit any of the Lookup List documents

    The CAPTURE Database ProfileThe database profile document (added in Version 1.1) allows you to set up several

    database-wide variables related to your organization's environment: the organization'sname, whether instead of "customer" you use a term such as "member" or "client" or

    "associate" or "partner", and so on. You can set the various values in these lists via theAdministration function (that is, by editing Lookup Lists).

    Starting with CAPTURE Version 2.1 you can also specify the refresh interval for theBreaking News view, previously fixed at 60 seconds but now configurable between five

    seconds and two hours.

    You create/edit the database profile by running ( from the Action menu):Edit the CAPTURE database profile

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    Starting with CAPTURE Version 2.1.01, the value that you select for the "Customerdesignation" field displays in the title field of the "Customer Profile" document. In the above

    example "Member" is selected as the designation, therefore you would see "MEMBERPROFILE" as circled in pink in the illustration that follows. This is an improvement on prior

    versions of CAPTURE, where the heading "CUSTOMER PROFILE" was always displayedno matter what was the "customer" designation..

    Note: Unfortunately, it is not possible (in current versions of Lotus Notes) to cause analternative designation to appear in the navigator on the left of the display . You will always

    see the designation "Customer" here:

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    Lookup ListsCAPTURE adopts a "table-driven" approach for selectable items, so as to provide you withflexibility in the way you use the database. For example, if yours is a manufacturing anddistribution company, most likely you have "sales representatives" and "projects". If yours is

    a multimedia/advertising group, then you might instead have "account executives" and

    "campaigns". CAPTURE uses tables of names -- or "lookup lists" -- that allow you to tailorthe terminology used for such things. If the provided lookup l ists don't quite meet yourneeds, please contact us and request a change in the database design. We will considerenhancing the design, if your request is not too complex and fits into the CAPTURE design

    philosophy of providing widely useful function while retaining simplicity of structure andoperation.

    Most of the forms in the CAPTURE database contain multi-value lists, and it is the content ofthese that you control by editing various Lookup List documents. Here is an example of the

    entire set of Lookup List documents, followed by an example of the possible entries in the"Sales Rep Designation" lookup list:

    Starting with CAPTURE Version 2.0 only people having the [Admin] role can see theadministration views, one of which is the Lookup Lists view:

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    To create a new Lookup List document, click on the Create new Lookup List documentbutton, select the type of lookup list by clicking on a radio button at the top (such as

    "Customer Category") and enter the desired values in the list at the bottom of the form, likethis:

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    Click on theSave button to save the list values, and on the Close button to exit the LookupList document.

    Note: as you might expect, you are prevented from saving more than a single Lookup Listdocument for a given type (such as Customer Category).

    Select an existing "Lookup List" document such as "Sales Rep Designation" and click on the

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    Edit Highlighted doc. utton in order to amend it. Notice that the radio buttons are notdisplayed for an existing document:

    If one of the Lookup List documents is missing, you will see the message " (lookup list error)" and will know that you have to arrange with the database administrator (somebody havingthe [Admin] role) for the creation of a Lookup List document for that particular field.

    Note: in the special case of the Currency field, you should enter the values like this,:

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    Notice in this illustration theDocument Revision History at the bottom, to keep you informed

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    in a simple fashion about who updated each Lookup List document and when.

    When you edit the currency field in a Project Profile document, the entire list displays

    exactly as shown in the Lookup List document, but only the part to the left of the Equalssymbol is stored in the Project Profile. For example. "STL = Pounds Sterling" would bestored as just "STL", like this:

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    This makes the abbreviations used for foreign currencies less cryptic.

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    - - - - - - -

    About NotesTracker, and its use within CAPTURENotesTracker

    TMis a unique software development toolkit ( SDK) from Asia/Pacific Computer Services,

    and you can enjoy its benefits in the CAPTURE database.

    When NotesTracker is included in the design of a database -- such as CAPTURE -- you can preciselyand comprehensively understand document usage in the database. both at a broad level (showing

    document usage trends) and at a highly-detailed level (potentially every action performed againstevery document in the database by every user).

    CAPTURE Version 2.2 incorporated NotesTracker Version 5.0 with its numerous enhancements.

    Some of the many possible applications of NotesTracker are:

    Content Effectiveness and Timeliness - see who accessed a specific "hot" document (like aNew Product Release, HR Policy, Discussion Topic, Meeting announcement, or Security alert)Content and Knowledge Management - determine the main knowledge contributors, and seehow content is being changedRecognising Knowledge Contributors / Team Building - use NotesTracker to easily measurecontributions and promote knowledge sharingDocument Life Cycles and Usage Trends - identify popular content, determine usagepatterns, know when "stale" documents should be freshened, identify rarely-used documents

    that are safe candidates for deletion or archivingDomino Administration - monitor changes in critical databases ( such as Server Documents),build dynamicAlert viewsNotes Design and Development - discover the heavily used forms and views, so worth finetuning (or even views worth removing)Application Usability and Evaluation - audit a database to see if it is being used as intendedWorkflow tracking, Troubleshooting, Help Desk - solve issues like "Who wrongly changed mytravel request?" or "Who changed my customer's credit limit ?" or "Who deleted my recent

    Expense Claim document?"Training Effectiveness - follow the trail of a student's database usage, to measure andenhance application trainingNews Feeds - display the latest Notes documents on your corporate intranet and Internetportals - construct dynamic Breaking News and What's New embedded filter views. There is asample Breaking News view in this CAPTURE database.Security Audit - detect undesirable or suspicious database activity and unwanted fieldchanges or document deletions."Special" documents - you can nominate documents as being especially important, for anyreason, merely by typing some meaningful/relevant text into the "Special Comments" field(which appears on most of the forms).

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    These important documents are highlighted via a red exclamation mark in the views.

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    Receive e-mail alerts for specified actions (Create, Update, Delete, etc), and also ffor"special" documents. The e-mails can be sent immediately, or via a scheduled agent (delayedand delivered some time later according top the agent's schedule setting).

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    Track actions performed only by specified users rather an everybody using the database.(This is a new NotesTracker V5.0 feature.)

    This is not the appropriate place to describe NotesTracker in detail. General information aboutNotesTracker can be viewed at the Asia/Pacific Computer Services web site, from either of:

    ** http://asiapac.com.au/UsageMetrics.htm** http://notestracker.com/UsageMetrics.htm

    TheNotesTracker Guide is the main source of information about NotesTracker and its administration.You can download a free copy of the guide from either of:

    **

    http://asiapac.com.au/UsageTracker_Download.htm#NOTESTRACKER_DOCUMENTATION**

    http://notestracker.com/UsageTracker_Download.htm#NOTESTRACKER_DOCUMENTATION

    In Version 2.0 of CAPTURE, a set of typical NotesTracker usage views have been built in, thus:

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    Note: only people having the [NotesTracker] role can see the usage tracking views (circled in red),and only people having the [Admin] role (circled in green) can edit the NotesTracker ConfigurationDocument and access the NotesTracker archive procedure.

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    - - - - - - -

    The "Breaking News" ViewFrom Version 2 onwards, the CAPTURE database includes a "Breaking News" or "What's New" viewcapability, which presents you with all those documents in the CAPTURE database that have been

    created or updated (via either a Lotus Notes Client or a web browser). The documents are presentedin descending time sequence, with the most recent additions/updates at the top of the view. For theLotus Notes Client only, this view is automatically refreshed every 60 seconds, and the "selected

    document" pointer is moved back to the top of the view (thereby highlighting the most recentlycreated/updated document -- the latest arrival in the view).- - - - -

    "Special Documents" and e-Mail AlertsFrom CAPTURE Version 2.1 onwards, the database incorporates NotesTracker Version 5.0, whichleads to a number of extremely useful capabilities. (Refer to the NotesTracker Guide Version 5.0 for afull description.)

    One of these is the ability to specify (in the NotesTracker Configuration document) that e-mail alertsshould be sent out whenever various actions occur (such as fields being updated, a document beingdeleted, a document being pasted into the database, and so on).

    Another enhancement is being able to enter any meaningful text (for any reason that is useful orimportant to you) into a "Special document" comments field (which has been added to the Level1through Level5 and Memo forms). Such documents are highlighted in the CAPTURE views by meansof a red exclamation mark in the leftmost column. This makes it very easy for you to notice any"special" documents.

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    You can specify that the e-mail alerts are either "immediate" (sent out at the time that the action

    occurs) or "scheduled" (queued for sending in batches, via a scheduled agent. Because theCAPTURE database is distributed as freeware, its design is hidden so that the built-in NotesTrackercommercial code is not visible to non-paying (unlicensed) users. This raises a small problem for, the

    free CAPTURE version. The e -mail alerting agent is distributed in unscheduled mode in order not todisrupt normal operations of your Domino production servers. Due to the hidden design, the

    CAPTURE administrator cannot even see the agent and certainly cannot switch it to run at anyscheduled interval.

    Therefore in CAPTURE Version 2.11 a button was added to the alerts views, as shown circled in blue

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    in the following il lustration

    The button is visible only to people having the [Admin] role. When clicked, it runs the e-mail alertingagent, and (assuming no errors) you see the following dialog box:

    You should see that the unsent e-mail messages have changed to "Sent" status, like this:

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    On the whole, with CAPTURE it is probably easier to select the "immediate" mode for the sending of

    alert messages. (The "scheduled" mode was designed to offer a modest performance improvement forheavily-utilized Domino servers, and there may be little difference between the delivery modes in mostcircumstances,)

    - - - - -