System Setup Guide

This document is a walkthrough of the Administration menu, which contains almost all of the settings used to administer your whole Charitylog system. This is a long document, and at times it's quite involved, so don't panic if not everything makes sense straight away!

If you haven't already done so, it is strongly recommended that administrators read the Introduction to Charitylog for Administrators and the Quick Start Guide for Administrators before this one.

Accessing the Administration section

Clearly, to set up your system you are going to need access to the Administration menu. It is at the bottom of the main menu which appears in almost every Charitylog screen. If you can't see it, it is because you do not belong to a user group which is granted access. You need to contact one of your system administrators and request to be moved to one of the relevant User Groups.

Our Details

Contact email address

This is the reply-to address that will appear on system generated emails. It's worth checking this before your system goes live; sometimes in pre-implementation it is set to the email address of the main contact in your organisation, which is often the chief executive. Leaving it set like this may lead to users sending out emails which appear to have come from your chief executive.

It's important to have something filled in this box, as without it, system generated emails will be sent as if they have no sender, which often means they get diverted to spam folders. Note that the system won't check this email address for validity, so it's up to you to format it properly. Alternatively, you might like to use a "donotreply@" address.

Standard Document Setup

Publication Setup

Standard Letter Templates

Standard Letter Types

Upload Settings

Drop-Down Lists

Membership/Skills Groups

This list is a list of the groups, committees, skill areas, or interests which carers, staff, volunteers and trustees may either belong to or have. They are usually referred to as "Groups and Skills". There are many places that they can be used in the system, and so the list you enter here may be quite diverse - there's nothing wrong with this. A common set of Groups and Skills might be set up to do with the various volunteer roles that your organisation might need. Creating Groups and Skills for volunteers such as "Befrienders", "Gardeners" and so on will enable users to look within these categories when assigning volunteers to clients.

Projects and Referral Entries

Project Set Up

Project Subcategories

Referral Templates

Security

Extension Databases

Extension Databases provide a way of adding to your Charitylog system, if you find that the standard setup doesn't quite do what you want. They can be used in all sorts of different ways - you can create them:

• To appear on every Client Details screen (or indeed on any Details screen required)
• To appear on the Client Personal Details tab (so you can restrict view access to them if required)
• To appear on a Club or Clinic Details screen
• To appear after recording a contact - either once per chain of actions, or after every action in the chain

You can use them in the following ways:

• Store extra data about organisations or people
• Store extra data about clubs or clinics
• Run reports on them using Extension Database Reports
• Include them with other reports as part of the KPI Report Designer
• and more!

Extension Databases are a big subject, so full details of how to set them up and use them can be found here: Extension Databases.

Input Field Rules

There is another place that Input Field Rules appear - in Operational Rules. There is a field which lets you set your system to apply the standard Input Field Rules to the Client Record itself. Use with caution, as it can slow/frustrate data entry, but if you want your users to be prompted frequently to preserve the data you store for clients, it's there if you need it!

File:A system ifr 1.png

Input Field Rules for anonymous contacts

Recording anonymous contacts has a slightly different relationship to Input Field Rules - namely that recording of anonymous contacts will not function until you have set up some Input Field Rules to suit. To create some Input Field Rules, click the "Create Anon. Rules" link as shown:

File:A rac 1.png

Even if you don't enter a requirement for the "Name" field, it will appear on anonymous contacts anyway. Although it seems a bit silly to require a name from an anonymous contact, this field is important for two reasons:

• Recording an anonymous contact doesn't just "lose" the person; rather, it does create a client on the system, and that client is named "Anonymous Client". Over time, a lot of anonymous contacts will create a lot of clients with the same name. This isn't ideal, but it does mean that if a client who was previously anonymous comes back to have some work done with your organisation, you at least have some chance of finding the relevant anonymous contacts and merging the client records. Creating a new client each time also means that your reports for "how many client contacts have we had" will have the correct numbers in.
• This field, when used for Recording an Anonymous Contact, allows the end user to look up surnames on the system and check that the client is not, in fact, already on the system. This commonly happens when clients have involvement with one project more than others - they may not realise that everyone is using the same database.

Integrated Add-on Software

eziTracker Settings

Postcode Anywhere Settings

Text Anywhere Settings

Operational Rules

Client Record Rules

Use People/Organisation ID as Account Code

Setting this to "yes" will carry someone's unique Charitylog ID number into their Accounts Code field on the "Client Details" screen, in order to create invoices for them from the Accounts Module. You may be given accounts codes by your funders, or you may already have them created - but if not, using Charitylog IDs to do so is a neat solution.

If using this option, it will not simply go through the system and fill all boxes in - you will need to go to each record and manually re-save it (using a "Save Details" button or the equivalent). This will create the code.

Prefix for Account Code (If Using Org IDs)

This relates to the above option. If "Use People/Organisation ID as Account Code" is set to "Yes", this prefix will be added to the automatically created accounts codes.

Miscellaneous Rules

Standard Letter setup

This relates to standard letters and emails:

• Sending Emails: Review Emails Before Sending? If set to "Yes", users creating an email from a Details screen (Client Details etc) will be prompted with a final check of the content of the email before sending. IT can be quite useful to have this set to "Yes", as it isn't always easy for users to realise that the system is actually about to send an email on their behalf - often they're expecting a mailto link of some sort.

• Email Footer (Company Information) Legal Text - this text, if entered, will appear at the bottom of system generated emails under a horizontal rule. It does not override the standard footer set up on that letter template, but appears in addition to it - the standard footer will be above the horizontal rule, and the legal text will be below.

Changing Menu Order

Once you have finished working with Operational Rules, you may notice that there is an extra button across the bottom of the "Operational Rules" screen, "Save Details and go to Menu Order" - as shown:

File:A system menu 1.png

The screen which follows allows you to change the order and structure of the main Charitylog menu, which all users see down the left hand side of the page. The most common reason to change the standard menu is to make your most frequently used options accessible, and to make using the system easier.

After clicking the "Save Details and go to Menu Order" button, you will be taken to the "Menu Option Structure" screen.

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The columns show the following:

• The first number is a number associated with that menu item
• Option name - the name of the menu item
• Standard Program Section - where to find the menu item in the default menu setup
• Submenu Of Option Ref. Number - if this menu item is within a submenu, the number of that submenu heading will be shown here. The main menu itself is number 0, and any menu item with a 0 in this column is part of the main menu.
• Option Display Order In Section - the "weight" associated with that menu item. Items with the same weight will be ordered alphabetically.
• Option Help Text - text entered here will become available as a pop-up help text box on the menu.

To demonstrate how to use all these, let's walk through the most common change to make to the menu structure; moving the "clients" link out of the "Organisations and People" submenu, and putting it at the top of the main menu.

This is how the menu looks as standard, with "Clients" located in the "Organisations and People" submenu:

File:A system menu 4.png

First we need to find the line associated with the "Organisations And People" submenu heading...

File:A system menu 2.png

...and also the one associated with the "Clients" menu item:

File:A system menu 3.png

Notice that the "Organisations And People" submenu heading is in section 0, which is the main menu, and has the number 262.

The "Clients" link is in section 262 - that is, in the "Organisations and People" submenu.

We want to take the "Clients" link out of the "Organisations and People" submenu and put it at the top of the main menu. So all we need to do is to change the "Submenu Of Option Ref. Number" entry for "Clients" to 0...

File:A system menu 5.png

...and if we want it to always appear at the top of the main menu, we should change the "Option Display Order In Section" entry to 1 (giving the item a "weight" of 1, and making it rise to the top of the menu).

File:A system menu 6.png

Now scroll to the very bottom of the page and click "Save Menu Order and Continue"...

File:A system menu 7.png

...and you should now see that your new menu order has become active, with "Clients" being displayed at the top of the main menu.

File:A system menu 8.png

Making a new menu grouping

Another common alteration to the menu is to create a new submenu, to keep the most commonly used menu items together.

To demonstrate this, let's make a new submenu called "Common Options", and put "Clients" and "Record an Anonymous Contact" in it. At the very bottom of the "Menu Option Structures" screen is a button, "Add New Menu Grouping".

File:A system menu 9.png

Clicking this button will take you to a screen where all the standard submenus are displayed. You can now specify what the name of your new group is going to be, and whether it's going to belong in the main menu or within another submenu. We are going to head the new submenu "Common Options", and put it within the main menu.

File:A system menu 10.png

Once these are filled in, click "Add New Grouping".

You will be taken back to the "Menu Option Structure" screen, where your new grouping will be displayed. You can now move it, or put other menu items in it, as before. Here's the new "Common Options" submenu, with "Clients" and "Record an Anonymous Contact" in it.

File:A system menu 11.png

User Settings

Group Access

The Group Access screen allows administrators to control what each User Group has access to throughout the Charitylog system. It is one of the most powerful tools that administrators have in running the system, and is covered in its own document here: Group Access.