Quick Start Guide for Administrators

Charitylog has been designed to be different to other CRM systems, in that we want you to have ownership of your system. The idea is that if you want something changed (an extra field added, list options changed, new project areas created, etc) you can do this yourself. The benefits are:

1. Throughout the build of the system, you will be able to control how it goes together, ensuring your organisation's needs are met
2. You will be able to change and adapt the system in the future for your changing needs
3. When changes are required, this can be done by your staff, for free - instead of having to pay for software development

Of course having every user of the system able to change the setup would be a very bad idea - chaos would reign! We recommend that if you're a customer organisation, you nominate a few people (usually between 2 and 6) to be your in-house administrators.

I'm an administrator... what do I do?

You'll be setting up the system with help from your Implementation Consultant. Some administrators might oversee the whole system - others might just have ownership of the part of the organisation they work in. Often, service managers administrate their own services, which means they can make sure that the data they need for reporting/performance monitoring is captured.

Then, once your system is up and running, the Administrators - you - will be left in charge. Of course we're not trying to pass all the responsibility of running the system onto you - there is support available:

• Help bubbles within the system tell you what certain features do
• Every page in Charitylog has a linked section in this manual
• The technical support line (01989 763 691) (Mon-Fri 9-5)

File:Qsadmin chart1.png

As you can see, part of the administration team's ongoing work is to help the end users with the system. When you first implement Charitylog, there will probably be a few questions, but over time the end users will become familiar with the system and are likely to be able to find the help content they need in the manual.

Internal Support Users

Optionally, anybody can be set as an Internal Support User. There is a drop-down field on the user record for each person to say whether they are an Internal Support User or not:

File:Qsadmin 1.png

If set to "Yes", this person will appear on a help screen if a user fails to log in properly. They will be shown a screen like this:

File:Qsadmin 2.png

Note that they are shown the email address and phone number listed in the user's record, so although the system may tell you that such an entry is invalid, it can be useful to enter an internal extension (as shown) so that the user knows who to call if they need help logging in.

File:Qsadmin 3.png

Setting up and running the system

You might see the system during the sales/tender process, or you might not have seen it until implementation day 1. Either is fine! The aim of this first day is for you to get a good grasp of the Charitylog system, so that you can think about the ways that it will work for you. Day 1 also provides an opportunity for your Charitylog Implementation Consultant to get to know your organisation well.

Day 1

On day 1 you will be shown the basic system, and taught how to:

• Log in
• Search for clients (and other types of Organisations or People) and create new ones
• Record contacts with them
• View the history of contacts that has happened with them
• See your outstanding work on the Action List

Depending on your organisation, and the pace of the day, you may well cover more material too.

After day 1

After day 1 your Implementation Consultant will leave you with some tasks to complete before the next day of implementation. These are likely to include setting up some Projects, and amending Drop-Down Lists.

What follows day 1 will depend on the needs of your organisation, and will be decided by your Implementation Consultant.

Helping users log in to test databases

As well as your live system, your organisation will have access to at least one "test" database - a replica of your live system for training and experimenting. This can be updated to mirror the current state of your live system at any time - click here for details: Update Replica Databases.

Users may need help logging into these systems, as the first pair of usernames and passwords are different to the ones that they usually use.

Once logged, page backgrounds will have the word "TEST" displayed to alert users as to which database they are logged into.

If you are using an Alpha or Beta version of the system, this will also be displayed on the background.

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Rob Kay - manual author (talk) 09:13, 19 January 2016 (GMT)