We have added a new form for the initial set up of a user, a group, a department and organization (if you run multiple organizations with our system) as well as address book entries. We refer to users, groups, departments, organizations and address book entries as 'Entities'.

Organization module

The organization application for entities, also called 'Users and Groups' (which is part of our core modules available with all our packages), is very flexible and scalable and it is created with the idea in mind that entities only need to be entered once.

Here are some feature examples of this module.

If you have a customer, for example, who is also a vendor, they only need to be set up once. No need to have to maintain their address or phone numbers multiple places.

Another feature; entities can start out as entries in the address book, then later be converted to a user (or group or department) in the organization. This is handy if you want to grant customers or vendors access to business workflows on your website. If you already have all their information in the Address Book, you can convert them in the system from being just an address book entry, to being a user of the system with password etc. without having to re-entering them. A great time saver. You can read about how to do that here.

Entities of any type can also be linked through relations (Used in our CRM module). Example: If you create a record for a company and a record for each of the employees in that company, you can link all the records together for easy navigation. This is particularly helpful as your business grows and you have many entities to keep track of. Relations can be updated and new ones added as a person moves from one company to another.

About the new form

When setting up new entities to the organization or address book we have added a new initial form to include fields for Address, Phone, Email and Web address all on one screen. This should make it much quicker to add new entries with the most usual information for a new entity in a single form.

The information in these fields will be added to the regular records under their applicable tabs (addresses under the address tabs, phone numbers under the phone number tab etc).

The reason we have tabs for these details is so that you can handle even very large accounts where an entity has multiple addresses, phone numbers etc. You will find this line of thinking throughout our system. Everything is set up with growth in mind.

After you have completed the initial set up of a new entity, you can, as always, enter additional information under these tabs.

When setting up a new user we have recently made some changes to how initial user passwords are generated. Read more about that here.