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**Support Team** · December 22, 2008, 11:01 AM

Re: Pre-Sales Questions

Hi JO,

answers below...

1. I work mostly with sub contractors. Do I need to buy 1 employee licenses for each? There's a few of them that I give them a job once a month or even once every 3 months, although I still would like to maintain a calendar for them mostly for following up purposes. My current system sends an email automatically to them when I open a ticket and assign it to them, only a few of them would access the web interface (those that I give work almost on a daily basis, 2 or 3 people). If you can elaborate on this answer as much as possible and/or if you have some white papers about it that you can provide I would greatly appreciate it. None of them would ever access the Windows Client, but I still need to maintain their calendar for tracking and being on top of them so they make it on-time to appointments.
If you wish to assign tasks to sub-contractors, dispatch them the job and manage their work per contractor, the easiest way to go about this is adding the sub-contractor as an employee. This requires an additional employee license, however, it provides the most complete solution. You can restrict the privileges for this employee to be very limited, allow them to view only their own tickets, etc. so they will be able to login to the system (even via the Web Interface) ans see their jobs (see more details on employee privileges below).

If you have several contractors, you may consider an alternative of having them as users, but make them active only when they receive an actual job. If you do not need all of these users active at the same time, this can save you some active employee licenses, since you can deactivate and activate them as required, keeping the same amount of overall active employees at a time.

Another alternative, which is more limited, can provide you a simpler way to track their jobs internally (without letting them login to the system and manage their jobs on their own). You may consider using a single "contractor" employee, and use another field in the ticket which will hold the contractor's name. For example, you can utilize the Field1, Field2 fields (if they are not used yet), rename them to "Contractor" (double-click the field to change it's name), and set the values list to your available contractors names. You can then filter tickets lists and reports by this field, so you will be able to track each contractor separately. Note that in this case they will not appear individually in the dispatcher window, and you will need to send them the notification email on your own (by clicking the Email icon in the ticket window). This may have some draw-backs, however, it may serve your needs well.

2. sybase database. Is each user logged in to the web interface using a concurrent license? or is the web interface as a whole using 1 license (regardless of number of clients or employees surfing thru the ticket system)? If I decide for this program I would buy all the add-ons, would each add-on use a database connection?
The answer is the second option - the web interface as a whole uses 1 concurrent license. The RangerMSP SQL Database (CSD) is an optional add-on which is usually required for large networks or when using server-based remote access technologies, such as Terminal Services or Citrix. The CSD is licensed by the number of concurrent users working with the system at the same time. When using the Web Interface, this uses a single license. This means that you can have all of your employees (and customer if you choose to use the Customer Web Interface), login to the system, and the will all be using a single concurrent database license.

3. can customers update their info (contact info) thru web interface?
Currently customers can only add and update ticket information.

4. can customers see and pay their bills (if connected to merchant account) thru web interface?
When using the Customers Web Interface, they can see their open balances (i.e. charges in RangerMSP) and contracts status. RangerMSP handles the billing management up to the payment phase and the payment itself should be done externally.

5. Can employees add notes to ticket (for internal purposes only, not viewed by client) thru the web interface? can they add notes external notes as well (that everyone can view)?
Yes, employees can add general notes and history notes to tickets via the Web Interface. They can basically update any information they need when working with the Web Interface. You can also use History Notes and set the system not to show them to customers. You can also manage private notes for accounts and contracts, which will not be available for the customers when using the Web Interface.

6. can employees be assigned to see the info of only hand picked clients, or they would see everyone?
You can set different privileges to employees (assign them with privileges groups), which will limit what they can view and update. This will affect both the application and the web interface. You can go to the Privileges managements window from Files > Users & Privileges > Privileges. Here, you can set privileges groups, and set each group with its own restrictions. You can create new groups from the Privileges Group menu (blue, on the top-left corner), and set this group to the user (in the Employee tab).
We may add additional flexibility for this to allow restricting employees to specific accounts, as we see how helpful this can be.

In order to prevent your employee from having access to the full Accounts list, you can restrict the following privileges:
1. Accounts � this will prevent them from having access to the Accounts window, and they will not have access to Accounts reports.

2. Export Data � this will prevent them from having access to Tools > Export, so they won't be able to export the accounts list to files

3. To be on the more strict side, you may also consider the following:

- Contracts � Manage (won't have access to contracts window and reports)
- Other Employees' Tickets
- Other Employees' Opportunities
Anything else you can think of�
I believe this will cover what you need. This means they will be able to view their tickets (which are assigned to them), their appointments and tasks, see the account name and general information in the ticket window, etc. however, they will not be able to view the account full details, or the full accounts list. Note that they will still be able to see the accounts list when selecting an account for new tickets, however, this will show them only the name, and they will not have access to all the details.

7. is the info that I have in the notes/body part of the contact card of the client also synchronized to RangerMSP via the outlook sync add-in?
The information which is synced with Outlook is the General information (in the General tab - such as Names, phones, fax...), and the Address and Details tabs. This includes the Notes field, and any other details in these tabs.

8. Can I add attachments to client files that clients can also see thru the web interface?
Customers can currently download attachments to Knowledge Base Articles which are marked as 'public'. This way you can allow them to download general information files and resolve issues on their own. As for 'personal' documents which are linked to the customer, in our coming release they will be able to download these too (again, only documents which are marked as 'public').

9. In regards to the following FAQ I found on your website:
Can I create more than one web user for a customer? Yes, you can add as many web users as you need for each of your customers (accounts). Each will have their own username and password.
The question is, If 2 usernames are created for the same client, will those 2 users see the same info? or could each user be customized to see different info? For example that the billing contact person can see contract info, etc and the 2nd user in this case the IT contact can only see tickets?
Yes, customers' web users always see all of the account's info. In general the customers privileges, such as showing charge information are global and once you set this up, this takes effect to all of the web users.

I hope this provides you with the info you need.

Sherry

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