Communications Dashboard

The SuccessWare®21 Communications Dashboard is your hub for configuring and monitoring communications within SuccessWare21. Operating in the background is a communication engine that is responsible for sending all email messages from within application. Anywhere in the system that you choose to send an email it will be routed through this engine. To configure SuccessWare21 communications you will need to:

1. Setup your email server
2. Configure the communication classes

Email Servers

To access the screen for setting up your email servers select Setup | Email Servers from the menu on the Communications Dashboard. An email server is an application or computer in a network whose sole purpose is to act as a virtual post office. The server stores incoming mail for distribution to local users and sends out outgoing messages. In SuccessWare21 you have the ability to configure TWO different email servers:

1. A server that handles the pages/messages that you send to your technicians, this is called the Message/Paging Email Server
2. A server that handles all other email messages is called the General Email Server.

For each server you will need to enter the following settings:

• E-mail Server – this is the IP address or URL for this email server.
• Sender Address – this is the email address that will be used by default for all emails sent using this server. Email clients and spam engines look at this ‘sender’ address and compare its domain to the domain of the sending email server. If these do not match, the email may be marked as spam. For this reason, it is important that the domain of this ‘sender’ address matches the domain of the email server. For instance, a sender of ‘joe@mybiz.com’ will work well with an email server hosted at the address mail.mybiz.com.
• Connection Encryption – the SSL encryption method required by your email server. Either NONE, TLS, or STARTTLS. When using NONE or STARTTLS, the port is usually 587 or 25. When using TLS, the port is usually 465.
• E-mail Port – this is the port number this email server uses for SMTP email. Commonly used ports for SMTP are 587 or 25.
• Daily Email Limit – some providers limit the number of emails you can send in a single day. They may disable your email if you exceed this limit. If you enter that limit here, SuccessWare21 will inform you as you approach that limit.
• Use Authentication – select this option if your server requires authentication when sending email, in other words you login to your email separately from your network. When checked, a User ID and Password are required.

For additional information pertaining to email servers please see the Email Server Guidelines document.

Testing your Email Server

On each email server setup screen is a Test button, simply click it and enter your email address. The system will then attempt to connect to that email server and send you a test message.

Abilities

To setup email servers you need the “Setup Company” ability in SuccessWare21.

Communication Classes

All communications sent from SuccessWare21 have been separated into communication classes. To access the configuration screen for these classes select Setup | General Communications from the menu on the Communications Dashboard. The following classes have been predefined in SuccessWare21:

• Billings – These include invoices and statements that are emailed to the customer
• Job Notifications – These include job notifications that are emailed to the customer. Please see the Job Notifications document for configuring and using this feature.
• Marketing – This class is used for pruning a Marketing List
• Surveys – This is an alternate class available for Marketing List pruning
• Tech Pages – These include messages and/or pages that are sent to your technicians.
• Appointments – These include appointment emails that are sent to your technicians and contain an attachment so that the appointment will appear in the technician’s calendar
• Reports – These include any other report that can be emailed from within SuccessWare21
• eOrders – This class is used when emailing a purchase order, as an eOrder, to a vendor

Custom Communication Classes

You can create as many additional custom classes of your own if you desire. At present these custom classes can only be used as a mechanism for pruning marketing lists.

Marketing Strategy

For each communication class you have two options for how you would like SuccessWare21 to send email messages to your customers:

1. Opt In – With this option only customers who have given you their express permission to receive these messages will receive them. For marketing and other promotional messages this is the recommended strategy. To configure this option for a class simply check the Opt-In Required checkbox.
2. Opt Out – With this option ALL your customers will receive these messages unless they explicitly indicate that they do not to receive them anymore. For the Billings and Job Notification classes this is the recommended strategy. To configure this option for a class leave the Opt-In Required checkbox blank.

Reply-To, CC, BCC

For each class you can specify one or more email addresses as the default Reply-To, CC and BCC.

IMPORTANT: It is recommended that you set a Reply-To for your communications classes as this can be used to provide an appropriate return contact if the recipient decides to reply to your email message. When not specified the email server sender email address will be used by default.

Reports

When emailing reports the Reply-To field of the applicable communication class will automatically be applied. In addition, the CC and BCC you specify in the report email dialog will be merged with any CC or BCC settings from the communication class.

Abilities

To configure communication classes you need the “Communications Setup” ability in SuccessWare21.

Communications Dashboard

The SuccessWare®21 Communications Dashboard is your hub for configuring and monitoring communications within SuccessWare21. You access it by choosing Communications from the main Setup menu. At the top of the form is a Setup menu that provides access to all the communication ‘setup’ screens. Click the Send Now button to process all waiting emails immediately. Click the Messages button to open up the Message Review form which is detailed below. The dashboard also contains four panels of information to keep you informed as to the status of the engine.

Error Messages

The top panel displays the last error message (if any) and when it occurred

Messages

The messages panel provides information about the number of messages for today, including any messages that could not be sent.

Notifications

The Notifications panel indicates if the job notification service is enabled or running, and if it is in a ready, busy, or locked state. If the service needs to be restarted or unlocked you can do so from here by clicking on the red hyperlink. The number of notifications waiting to be sent is also displayed. Please see the Job Notifications document for configuring and using this feature.

Server Limits

The Server Limits panel displays the number of email messages that have been sent today. This is important to you as some email providers may have limits on the number of emails you can send in a given day. If you provide this information we will indicate the current usage percentage, and warn you as you near your limit.

IMPORTANT: SuccessWare®21 cannot track emails sent from other sources. These emails may cause you to exceed your limits without a warning from SuccessWare®21.

Refresh

When left open, the Communications Dashboard will be refreshed every 30 seconds, however the running status of the job notification service is displayed in real-time.

Abilities

All SuccessWare21 users can use the Communications Dashboard.

Message Review

Click the Messages button on the Communications Dashboard to access the Message Review form. This form displays all messages of every communication type, you can filter the list by various criteria including date or type. Some of the information displayed includes the current status, the date/time it was queued, the date/time it was sent and any error messages that prevented it from being sent. The background color of each message in the grid provides you with a visual alert as to its status:

• Blue – The currently selected message
• Red – This messages failed to send due to an error
• Yellow – This message is pending and should be resent.
• Gray – This message was not sent. The status column will indicate the reason.

Viewing Messages

Double-click on a message to view more detailed information about it, including the actual message itself and any attachments.

Resending Messages

For messages that were not sent, simply right-click on them, choose Resend Message and SuccessWare21 will attempt to send it again. You can resend multiple messages by holding down the CTRL key as you click on each message.

Abilities

All SuccessWare21 users can use Message Review.

Miscellaneous

• Generally SucessWare21 will accept the entry of multiple recipients (To, CC, BCC) where there is an email address field for data entry. These kinds of entries must be separated by a semi-colon.
• Where possible SucessWare21 will check the format of email addresses, including entries specifying multiple recipients, when input into the system and inform you when an invalid email address is entered.
• An Email Cleanup Utility is provided to assist in cleaning up any invalid email addresses that may have been entered into the system prior to the introduction of email format checks.