xxUser Guide

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

• File upload sizes are limited on FranchiZeManager, if you try to upload a large file (>50mb) it will be rejected, please try zipping files prior to upload to save space.

• The File names for the documents you upload must not contain any special characters such as & @ # * these will return an error when attempting to upload.

• The File names must not be too long, for example “FranchiseAgreementForGreaterMelbourneJohnJones.pdf” will return an error when trying to upload.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Pre-requisites for using FranchiZeManager are:

• A modern Internet browser such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer V10+

• Please note that any version of MS Internet Explorer less than V10 is NOT supported.

• A PDF reader is required to open many of the PDF generated reports. Most modern web browsers today have inbuilt plug-ins that allow you to read these documents. If not, you can download the free Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader.

• If you are using MS Internet Explorer and experience a problems when downloading files from FranchiZeManager then please ensure you always “Save As…” when downloading. If you are not given this option then check these settings: Tools>Internet Options>Security Tab>Custom level button and change ‘Downloads/Automatic prompting for file downloads’ from Disable to Enable.

• FranchiZeManager system is a web based or “cloud” system. You must have an active internet connection to use the system.

We strongly suggest you use either Google Chrome or Safari as your browser. FranchiZeManager will be faster and display better when using one of these browsers compared to MS Internet Explorer.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

When you first sign up to use FranchiZeManager you will be provided with one “Franchisor_Admin” access level login. This user is able to create other users, reset passwords and make users active/inactive on the system. Go to your login page and use your username and password to sign in.

If you have forgotten your password please use the “Reset Password” link on the login page, Hatchit support cannot tell you your password as it is encrypted and we cannot read it, support can only reset it for you – which you can do yourself using the link on the login page.

When you first receive your username and password it is recommended you update your password to something of your choice, to do this: Click Admin> Change My Login Details in the top menu bar, then enter your new password and click Save.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The first place to start is to enter your data into FranchiZeManager, you should start with your Franchisee data as the Franchisee records are related to many other items in the system. Therefore having Franchisees entered first will assist you with other data entry.

To add a new Franchisee click Franchisees > Add New Franchisee. You will be presented with an empty form and you can start filling in the required data. Note the recommended naming format as shown below:

“Franchise Name” (or sometimes called “Store Name” or “Company Name”) is how you refer to the franchisee – it is the typically the area/territory e.g. “Balmain” or occasionally the business name (for service businesses).

“Franchisee Name” is the name of the person/s who holds the franchise, for example “Rodney Boyd”.

As soon as you Create/Save a record the updated information becomes immediately available to all other users of the system. For a description of the Franchisee module see the section below.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

With the assistance of Hatchit it is possible to import data through the back-end of FranchiZeManager, this makes the initial establishment of the system much faster and allows you to enter historic data rapidly.

Data can be imported for any module in the system.  It is recommended you enter one record manually using the front end of the system into the relevant module first. This will help you to understand the system and ensure all the fields you require are in existence before we import your data.  When you have one record imported we will email you a CSV template file that lists the column headings and your sample data record.  You simply complete the CSV file, adding your data in a new row for each record, then mail it back and we will import the data and notify you when complete.

Importing User Data

This is a guide to importing your User data into FZM. You would probably only use this when you are first implementing FZM, or starting to use a new module.

1.  Download the following template file here: FZM_UserData_ImportTemplate (File > Download As > Microsoft Excel .xlsx)

2.  Open it in Excel or a spreadsheet program of your choice.

3.  Enter your User’s data into the spreadsheet, matching your data to the column heading.

4.  Email the completed spreadsheet to Hatchit support.

5.  Hatchit will import your data and inform you by email when it is in the system.

A few things to pay attention to:

• you must set up your departments in the system before we can import your user data, you do this under Admin > My FZM Settings in the Departments tab

• if using the TimeZone field it must match exactly the options in the drop down on the user field, if you leave this field blank it will default to Sydney, Australia time

• the notification field refers to when the user will receive FZM Notification emails

Importing Franchise Data

This is a guide to importing your Franchise data into FZM. You would probably only use this when you are first implementing FZM.

1.  Download the following template file here: FZM_FranchiseeData_ImportTemplate (File > Download As > Microsoft Excel .xlsx)

2.  Open it in Excel or a spreadsheet program of your choice.

3.  Enter your Franchise data into the spreadsheet, matching your data to the column heading.

4.  Email the completed spreadsheet to Hatchit support.

5.  Hatchit will import your data and inform you by email when it is in the system.

A few things to pay attention to:

• if your franchises are being assigned to a User in the system (eg an Area Manager) you must set up your Users in the system before we can import your Franchise data

• there are two sheets in the template the first sheet provides a description of the fields and recommends a minimum number of fields to try and collect before import (eg Franchise names, contact details etc)

• you don’t have to collect all the fields in the spreadsheet, start with what is readily available so you can start using your system

Importing Franchise Partner Data

This is a guide to importing your Franchise Partner data into FZM i.e this is for the owners of the Franchise. You would probably only use this when you are first implementing FZM.

1.  Download the following template file here: FZM_FranchisePartnerData_ImportTemplate (File > Download As > Microsoft Excel .xlsx)

2.  Open it in Excel or a spreadsheet program of your choice.

3.  Enter your Franchise Partner data into the spreadsheet, matching your data to the column heading.

4.  Email the completed spreadsheet to Hatchit support.

5.  Hatchit will import your data and inform you by email when it is in the system.

A few things to pay attention to:

• your Franchise Partners are going to be assigned to a Franchise record in the system, this Franchise record must be set up first before we can import your Franchise Partner data

• there are two sheets in the template the first sheet provides a description of the fields and recommends a minimum number of fields to try and collect before import (eg Franchise Partner names, contact details etc)

• you don’t have to collect all the fields in the spreadsheet, start with what is readily available so you can start using your system

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Before adding users it is wise to establish your “Departments”. These are used in the Timeline feature for colour coding activity by department.  A department is typically an area such as Operations, Finance, IT, HR, Support, etc.
To set your departments go Admin > My FZM Settings and click on the Departments tab. To add a department click on the Add New button and enter the name. The Hex colour code will be automatically set for you when you click Save, you can change this by clicking on the cell to adjust it (if required). Click Save on My FZM Settings when done.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Adding A New User

To add more users simply click Admin > User Management > Add New User (note this option is only available for users who have the “Franchisor_Admin” access level).

You must complete all the details on the form. If you select the Access Level as franchisee then you must also select what franchisee the user is related to (therefore you must have created the franchisee in the system first).

Note that the Login Name (or username) must be unique – the system will check to ensure this. We recommend you use a person’s First and Last name combined as a username as it makes it easier to maintain. Login names can also not be changed once they are entered, so we recommend developing a login name protocol and sticking with it. For example “RodneyBoyd” or “RBoyd” or “RodneyB”. Usernames are NOT case sensitive, but passwords are.

Viewing / Editing Users

To view users of the system, and edit a single user, click Admin > User Management > Search Users. Note this option is only available for users who have the “Franchisor_Admin” access level.

A list of users, sorted by their access level, will be displayed. You can further filter the list of users by searching by variables in the top search box. When you find the user you wish to edit just click on the row or the View icon.

Removing (deleting) Users

In FranchiZeManager you never completely delete a User instead you make the user “Inactive” and therefore prevent them from accessing the system. This means that there is always a full history of users stored within the system and it prevents “orphan” records (records with no owner) being created in the system.

To make a user inactive, first find and edit the user record using Admin > User Management > Search Users and then uncheck the User is active? tick box and click Save.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Dealing With Company Owned Outlets

Many franchisors run company owned outlets as well as franchised outlets.  In this situation it is recommend you make an entry for each company owned outlet in the Franchisee module and simply change the Type field to Company Owned.  This is important if you are using modules like the Scorecard benchmarking module as you will need a franchisee record (for the company store) to enter KPI data against for reporting purposes.

Dealing with Multiple Outlet Owners

If you have a franchisee that owns multiple outlets or stores we recommend you create an entry in the Franchisee module for each store and simply enter the same name in the Franchisee Name field.  This makes it easier to manage items such as field visit notes, warning letters, benchmark figures in ScoreCard etc since this data typically relates to a store.  Also this makes it easier for situations where there is a store manager in an outlet and you may want to provide them with a “Franchisee” access level login to FranchiZeManager.  Finally it “future proofs” your installation in the situation where a store may be sold or closed.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

In the situation where a store is closed or sold to a new franchisee you should leave the franchisee record in the system and simply change the Type field to Franchisee – Inactive (Closed, Sold, Terminated).  It is important to leave the record in the system as this retains the history and allows it to remain there for future reference.

 
In the situation where you have sold the store to a new owner you should first change the Type field to Franchisee – Inactive (Closed, Sold, Terminated) and change the name of Company Name field to include the word (closed) after it e.g. change “Balmain” to “Balmain (closed 2 Feb 2011)”.   Then create a new franchisee record to record the new owner.  This will allow users to quickly and easily differentiate old closed stores from new ones. As your system ages we can add another attribute to assist in differentiating records but initially this is not required until you have a history built up in your system.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

FranchiZeManager comes with a standard 3 access levels.  An access level defines the rights of the user, what records they see, what menu options they have and therefore how they can use the system. The three standard access levels are:

Franchisor_Admin: This is the highest level of access in FranchiZeManager and is for administration users at head office.  It provides full access to the system including the ability to add new users, and make users inactive and change other user’s access levels.

Franchisor: This is the same as Franchisor_Admin except this access level cannot add other users nor make users inactive nor change user’s access levels.

Franchisee: The franchisee access level is used for franchisees to login, they have restricted rights in what they can see and do.  For example they only see Field Visit notes that relate to them and they only see Calendar appointments that they are listed as an Attendee.

NOTE:  Before issuing franchisee logins you should create a dummy franchisee user and login to view exactly what they will see and ensure you are satisfied with this access level, changes can be made to the franchisee access level by contacting Hatchit.

Access levels can be changed and new access levels can be added, just contact Hatchit to ask for a customisation.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Click on the “Forgot Password?” link on the login page, enter your username and a temporary password will be emailed to your registered address on your user record.

If you do not receive your email please check your junk or spam folder.  Anyone with “Franchisor_Admin” access level can also reset users passwords using User Management.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

What are they?

Notifications are a simple way to send a short message to another FZM user. Just click the green “share” button on the top right of a form that looks like this:

Then type in your message and select who you want to send the notification to.

It is designed for messages that relate specifically to something in the FZM system, e.g. a Contact, a Franchisee, a Task, a Field Visit etc. For example, you have just entered a note against franchisee and you want Joe to know about it. Or a recruitment candidate just got interviewed and now you need to let HR know. Or a field visit that the Ops Manager should know about.

When you send a notifications it will appear on your homepage, or on the activity bar, of the person you sent it to. They can right click on the notification to go straight through to the related record, i.e the field visit or the note etc. You can also right click and archive the notification to remove it from view or mark it as read.

But what if I haven’t logged into FZM, how will I know about my Notifications?

Well we haven’t left email out entirely, every user can choose if they want to get sent an email immediately when they receive a notification. You can choose your own frequency, such as “immediately”, or “daily” or “never”.

Why use them?

• It’s easy to send a notification

• It’s all within FZM, there is no need to switch to email

• It’s “contextual” – this mean your recipient knows exactly what/who you are talking about, the visit/note/franchisee etc.

• You’re helping everyone by getting rid of emails and are one step closer to achieving that mythical “zero-inbox”

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Timeline is a feature that track histories for Franchisees and Users. An example is:

For Users:

Whenever a user undertakes a major action it gets recorded in their timeline. This timeline can be viewed on their User record. This is useful to see how a particular user is utilising the system. Therefore you can use it to answer the question “what has the user John Doe done in the system?”.

For users the following actions are tracked by default:

• Appointments (calendar items)

• Tasks (general tasks)

• Opener Tasks (eg Store Opener)

• Notes

• Emails sent (from the FZM system)

• Topics and replys posted on the SoapBox forums

• Franchisee field visits

• Comments on Tasks, Store Opener Tasks, Project Tasks and Feedback Cases

• Enquiries & Opportunities

For Franchisees:

Whenever a user undertakes a major action on a franchisee record it gets recorded on the timeline of that franchisee. This timeline can be viewed on their Franchisee record.

For Franchisee records the following actions are tracked by default:

• Appointments (calendar items)

• Tasks (general tasks)

• Opener Tasks (eg Store Opener)

• Notes

• Emails sent (from the FZM system)

• Franchisee field visits

• Customer feedback received

Note that for a Franchisee timeline the entries relate to the Franchise record regardless of who created the entry. It is a history of things that have happened to the Franchisee record (not things the Franchisee has done in the system).

General Features of Timeline:

• it is ordered by create date descending by default

• it is colour coded according to the Department of the person who undertook the action eg Marketing is Green, Finance is Blue etc

• each timeline entry can be clicked through by double clicking or right clicking and choosing the View action

• each entry gives you a brief description of what the user did.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The recruitment area of FranchiZeManager (FZM) is designed to manage your recruitment of new franchisees. It will assist you to manage a prospect/lead from first contact all the way through the recruitment process until they become a Franchisee.

FZM (as with many CRM systems) has the dual concept of Enquiries (Leads) and Candidates (Opportunities).They are kept as separate items of information, even though they may sound similar. The distinction between them is that an Enquiry (lead) is a person’s name, and/or company name, which has come to you in a way such that you cannot be certain they are truly interested, or satisfy your requirements, to become a franchisee. That is, they are not yet “qualified”.

A Candidate (opportunity) is what a lead becomes once you have been in touch with the person and confirmed that they do have a genuine and qualified interest in becoming a franchisee. Therefore the Enquiries module allows you to capture the information and store it before it becomes a Candidate.

In summary:

• Enquiries module:  this module is the first place where leads/enquiries are stored in FZM. This module should be used to capture ALL leads, regardless of if they are good quality or poor they should be captured in this module.

• Candidates module:  when a lead (or Enquiry) gets qualified as being of value (i.e. decent quality) it gets ‘converted’ to a Candidate. The candidate module manages the candidate through the recruitment process.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Enquiries module is found under the Recruitment menu in the top bar.

The Enquiries module should be used to capture ALL leads/enquiries made by people who are interested in becoming a franchisee. Most of the information captured here is basic contact information such as name, address, phone number, email address.

In addition users should try to capture information about where the enquiry came from, for example a Franchising Expo, the company website, or an online franchise directory or consultant. This information can be useful to collect and analyse over time as it can provide information to marketers about what type of marketing campaigns have been most successful in attracting new leads.

TIP: We can customise FZM to have leads automatically load into the system from sources such as:

• your website i.e. the “become a franchisee” form

• the Franchise Council’s directory: www.franchisebusiness.com.au

• Independent directory sites such as www.whichfranchise.net.au

• Other online directories

Also, if you use recruitment consultants we can also provide them with limited access to FZM where they can only view the recruitment modules and the entries they have made.

Understanding the work-flow of Enquiries

The process of working on an Enquiry will usually involve providing information to the lead, obtaining information from the lead and activities such as telephone calls and emails. The initial purpose of these interactions is to determine if the lead is of good quality and should be considered a recruitment candidate. As you work the lead you will change the Status of the lead.

Enquiries have the following Status:

• New:  when an enquiry is first created it will have a status of ‘New’ – this status is particularly useful where leads are loaded by other people or automatically from other websites as it allows you to see the new Enquiries that haven’t yet been actioned.

• Work In Progress:  if you are working on an enquiry you can change the status to Work In Progress. This status is useful if you are awaiting a lead to return a phone call or answer an email.

• Converted:  this indicates that the enquiry has been “converted” into a Candidate (see below).

• Dead:  this indicates the enquiry has been qualified and deemed not appropriate.

TIP: A common recruitment task is to send emails and information documents regarding your franchise business to the lead. FZM can add template emails to this module to allow users to quickly send a templated email response to leads. An unlimited number of template emails can be added and they can utilise smart tags to merge data such as names from the enquiry form into the template email.

Converting an Enquiry to a Candidate

Having spoken and/or emailed with the lead, if you deem him/her to be worthwhile then it is “converted” to a Candidate using the Convert To Candidate button at the top of the Enquiry form. Using this button will:

• change the status of the Enquiry to “Converted”

• create a new Candidate record and copy across key fields such as the name, address etc to save re-keying information.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Candidates module is found under the Recruitment menu in the top bar.

The Candidate module is used to manage the candidate through each stage of the recruitment process. It is used to store information such as contact details, discussion notes, archived emails, and importantly the probability that the Candidate will successfully become a franchisee. This data is used to manage the pipeline of candidates and provides valuable reporting.

As the candidate progress through the recruitment stages the user should update the candidate’s Recruitment stage.

TIP: A common area of customization is to adjust the different recruitment stages to suit your own recruitment process. You can do this using the menu Admin > My FZM Settings and then navigating to the Recruitment tab.

The Candidate form also provides a simple check-list to record that certain actions have been performed. You can also adjust the check-list at the bottom of the Candidate form using the options in the Admin > My FZM Settings menu and then navigating to the Recruitment tab.

The Candidate In Detail tab allows you to record additional information regarding the candidate. This data is usually obtained from the Candidates application form and entered manually. If you are using the Online Applications module of FZM then as the candidate completes data online this tab will fill with information.

If you also utilize our profiling tool ‘The FranchiZe Profile’ ( www.franchise-profiles.com.au) then any profiling reports for the candidate can be stored on-line or contact Hatchit to have your profiles automatically load into the candidate record when the candidate completes the profile.

TIP: Remember that automated reminders, email or tasks can we set up within the system to occur when certain events trigger them. So if you are running a complex recruitment process we can assist with developing an automated work-flow.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

In real life the FZM system would be used like this:

1.  Any Enquiry (from any source) should be logged in the system as an Enquiry. One of the main benefits of logging all Enquiries is to measure your marketing efforts. This can be particularly useful if you capture the source of the enquiry and can therefore measure the ROI on your marketing spend. You have a few different options for how they get in there:

• manually enter it in the system using Add New Enquiry

• set-up an auto-load form from your website, or from any directory website

2.  You will then need to qualify the Enquiry in some way, usually a phone call or an email conversation. The purpose is to determine if they are a real enquiry with real potential to become a franchisee. At this stage you have 3 options:

• they seem good so you “Convert to Candidate” by hitting the button on the top of the Enquiry form. This will copy the key details across to a new Candidate record and set the Enquiry status to ‘Converted’

• they are not a quality enquiry, so you set the Status as ‘Dead’. You may also tick “Do not call” if you don’t wish to contact the Enquiry again in the future.

• in the situation where you couldn’t make contact with the Enquiry, perhaps you left a message or are waiting for an email reply, then you change change the status to “WIP – Work in Progress” – this will help you manage your work and quickly find them again

3.  You should aim to quickly work through your Enquiries list. Moving the good ones to Candidates or marking them Dead.

4.  Candidates now work through your Recruitment Stages that you have set up in the system. As a Candidate progresses you mark the stage complete by entering the date that they completed the stage. During this process you will do actions like interviews, phone discussions, emails, document gathering,  psychological profiling (such as The FranchiZe Profile) etc. All these actions should be recorded against the Candidate record in the system.

5.  If you are using the FZM Online Applications module, you can send the Candidate an Invitation to complete their application form online, you do this on the ‘Online Applications’ tab (of the Candidate form) by hitting the button ‘Send/Resend Online Application Invite’ – you will typically do this quite soon after converting the candidate

6.  If you are using The FranchiZe Profile then typically you will send the the candidate an invitation about 70% of the way through your recruitment process. This should be set up as a Recruitment Stage in your system.

7.  Candidates will remain a candidate until an ‘outcome’ has been reached. That outcome is typically 1 of 3 options:

• Appointed as a franchisee

• Declined by us – meaning that we have decided not to appoint the candidate as a franchisee

• Declined by candidate – meaning that the candidate has decided not to proceed with the application

8.  At this stage the Candidate module is finished and all tasks and processes related to Store Opening and on-boarding the new franchisee are handled by the Opener module.

9.  When the store opens the Franchisee module manages the lifecycle of the franchisee through as many terms as they may have with you.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

This is a sample franchise recruitment process. It shows how your recruitment stages interact with FZM and how you can use the FZM system to support and automate your recruitment workflow. Feel free to use and adjust this process.

Please note if you are republishing for a blog or any form of published article then you must quote the source as ‘FranchiZeManager’.

Click to download (PDF 564Kb):  FZM-Franchisee-Recruitment-Process

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The on-line application module is designed to remove all paper from your new franchisee application process. Using this module you can:

• invite candidates to complete their application online

• send the candidate an email to login to the system

• customise your online application form to have as many questions in any format you wish

• track how often and how long a candidate logs into the application site

• set up notifications and reminders for when a candidate submits an online application

Understanding On-line Applications

The on-line application is just an extension of the Candidates module. It’s similar to how you may ask a candidate to complete a paper application form, however instead you send them an invitation to the system and they can complete their application on-line.

It is helpful to understand that by sending an invitation you are actually allowing the Candidate to access your system in a very restricted manner. So any Candidates are essentially provided with a login username and password, and will appear with a certain access level called ‘On-line Application’ on your user list.

How to Send An Invitation

To send an invite to a Candidate:

1.  Open the Candidate record (Franchisee > Recruitment > Search Candidates)

2.  Click on the Online Application tab

3.  Click on the button “Send / Resend Online Application Invite” and you will be asked to confirm (or change) the Candidates email address

4.  The system will create a user account for this candidate (with a username and password allocated automatically) and email the invitation to the Candidate

5.  The Candidate can now login and complete the application. At any time they can print a PDF of their application for their records.

6.  When the Candidate has completed the application they hit the button “Submit This Application”. You will be notified by email when a Candidate submits an application.

The standard application consists of 10 steps (pages). The Candidate can save their work as they complete the application and login/logout over as many sessions as they need to complete the application. This is useful because franchise application forms typically require a lot of information (such as referees and financial data) and Candidates will usually have to source information from their advisers and the like.

You can view the number of times a Candidate has logged into the the system and also how long they spent in the system on the Online Application tab of the Candidate record.

You can customise the application to suit your particular franchise system. Add, change or subtract questions to suit your needs. Just email the list of your changes to Hatchit Support and we will send you a Systems Change Quote.

How to Review a Completed Application

To view the completed (or even a non submitted application) simply click on the button “View Online Application Form”. From here you can see each of their answers in each of the steps. You can also print a PDF of the online application form.

How to Send An Application Reminder

If you have sent a Candidate an application and they haven’t submitted it, you can quickly send them a reminder email by clicking on the “Send Application Reminder” button. This will send a friendly reminder to the Candidate with their login details again.

How to Deactivate a Candidate

After the Candidate submits their application the system will automatically deactivate their user login. This prevents the user from logging into the system again and changing any of their application details. However in some situations you may wish to allow a Candidate to re-access their application form, for example they may not have provided enough information or some questions may have been missed or incomplete. To re-allow access simply click the button “Activate / Deactivate Candidate Login”. You will note the indicators on the Candidate record change, you can now resend the invitation or reminder.

Before you start using this module it is recommended you enter yourself as Candidate and complete an on-line application yourself. This is the best way of seeing how the on-line application module works in action, from both the Candidates point of view, and also your own. If you are thinking of undertaking any changes to the form, or the process, you should complete an application first.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Introduction

The Opener Module helps you manage openings of new franchise outlets. Here, you define tasks commonly associated with a store opening, assign these tasks to specific people in your team, and set due dates for these tasks before and after the store opening date. Some examples of tasks before a store opening include registering the business name, opening bank accounts, fit-out, and training store personnel. Tasks that may happen after store opening include post-opening reviews, marketing campaigns and reviewing furniture layout.

Normally, you create tasks in a template so that you don’t have to define them again every time you schedule a new store for opening. However, you can add – or remove – tasks to a new store opening project, or Opener, at any time.  

If you have different types of franchise outlets, e.g. kiosk, high-street, and shopping center, you may want to define separate templates for each, as each store type may require different tasks. The same thing may apply when you have different brands in your network or different geographic locations, where the tasks may be the same but the assignee will differ.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Creating a Store Opening Template

Before everything else, you should create a template of tasks associated with a store opening. Although you can create an Opener without a template, it is recommended that you create a list of tasks in a template, this means you can create an opener quickly using the template. After creating the template, you can proceed to creating an Opener.

To Create a Store Opening Template

1. From the FZM Menu, click Opener, then Manage Templates.

2. Click Create New Template.

3. Under the Details tab of the Store Opener Template window, enter a name for the template. You may also enter a description, although this is not required.

4. If applicable, enter key milestones for the template by clicking the Add New button under the Key Milestones box. Key milestones are the major tasks associated with the store opening, they are used in an opening process to track the top 5-10 milestones, later you will see they are also used in the Milestone Gant chart.

5. Click Save. You can then add tasks to the template.

To Add a Task to a Template

1. Click Opener, then Manage Templates.

2. On the Store Opener Template window, click the template you want to add tasks to from the list.

3. When the template opens, click the Tasks tab.

4. Click Add New Task.

5. On the Opener Template Task window, select a category, then enter a name and description for the task.

6. Enter the task’s due date, which may be any number of days or months before or after the store opening. For example, if the task must be completed within a month before the store opening, enter either 30 days or one month before the store opening.

7. Click Assigned To, then choose the team member you want to assign to the task from the list.

8. Click Continue to save the task and close the Opener Template Task window. On the Store Opener Template window, the task you just added appears on the grid under the Tasks tab.

9. To add more tasks to the template, repeat steps 4-8 above.

NOTE: FZM has a Task Module that you can use for adding general tasks. The Add Task function in the Opener Module is specific to tasks related to store openings, these are called Opener Tasks. As a guide most franchise system have between 100-150 tasks in a template, and 4-7 milestones.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Creating an Opener

After creating a Store Opener template, you can proceed to creating an Opener record for your store opening project.

An Opener allows you to track the tasks for the store opening to completion, making it easier for you to manage store openings. With an Opener, each store opening is treated as a project, making it easy for your team members to know their assigned tasks, and when they are behind or ahead of schedule. Tasks under an Opener can easily be viewed on FZM, saved to PDF, exported to .xls, and even printed out. You can check the status of your store opening project at any time using the Opener record.

To Create an Opener from a Template

1. Click Opener, then Create Opener from Template.

2. A message asking you to confirm the operation is displayed on your screen. Click Yes to continue with the operation.

3. Check the box to the left of the template you want to use for your Opener, then click Continue to create the Opener record. Depending on the number of tasks in the selected template, this process may take a while, as it recreates those tasks in the Opener record.

4. Once the Opener is created, the Store Opener window opens. In Fig. 13, the Opener window shows the following:

A. The record number, which is automatically generated.

B. The status, which is set to Open.

C. The store or franchise, which you have to select from the list. The names on this list have previously been set up in FZM’s Franchisees module.

D. The franchisee name, which is automatically displayed based on your selected store or franchise.

E. The open date, which you have to select from the calendar. The open date refers to the store’s opening date. This field is very important as it set the Due Dates for all the tasks. Note after you select the date you must hit save for the task due dates to be updated.

NOTE: Due dates for the tasks in the Opener are derived from the open date. For example, if the open date is June 1, 2016, then the due date for a task set 30 days before the store opening is May 1, 2016.

F. The assigned team member, which you have to select from the list. This would be the project manager of this store opening.

G. The key statistics, which show the percentage of Open, Overdue and Complete tasks in a chart.

H. The key milestones, which are the major tasks in the Opener. The Start and End Dates are editable fields, if you click on the cell in the panel you can use the date selector to set the Start and End date for each milestone.

NOTE: The Opener’s key statistics are a count of the number of tasks in the Opener as follows: Closed refers to the count of tasks that have a status of Closed. Overdue refers to the count of tasks that have a Status of Open AND the current date is after the date due, indicating that the task should have been completed now but it is still Open. Open refers to the count of tasks with a status of Open AND the due date is after the current date, indicating that the task is due sometime in the future.

With the Opener created, you can now utilize the Opener record to manage your store opening.

To Add a Note to an Opener

1. With the Opener record open, click Add Note. This is useful to store generic notes/comments about the Opener.

2. On the Note window, enter a subject for the note, then the note itself.

3. Click Save.

4. On the Store Opener window, click the Notes tab to see the notes added to the Opener. The Notes tab has a number indicated above referring to the number of notes on the Opener.

To add more notes to the Opener, repeat steps 1-3 above.

To Add a Task to an Opener

Although it is recommended that tasks be added to templates and not directly to an Opener record, you may still add a task to an Opener. This is particularly useful for one-off tasks that may not apply to other store openings.

1. Click Add Task to open a Store Opener Task window. FZM automatically assigns a task number to the task. The franchise or store name and the store opening date are taken from the Opener record and displayed on the window as well.

2. Click Assigned To, then choose the team member you want to assign to the task from the list.

3. Select a category, then enter a name and description for the task.

4. Enter the task’s due date, which may be any number of days or months before or after the store opening. For example, if the task must be completed within a month before the store opening, enter either 30 days or one month before the store opening.

5. If you want to attach files to the task, either click Select files or drag the files to the area marked Drop files to upload.

6. Click Save. The task is added to the Opener’s tasks, which you can view under the All Tasks tab on the Opener record.

To Delete a Task from an Opener

Tasks can be deleted from an Opener in case they are not needed. You normally delete a task right after creating the Opener since you will know if it is not needed or not right from the start.

1. Search for the you want to delete from the All Tasks tab.

2. Click to open the task.

3. Click the Delete button to delete the task from the Opener.

4. Click Save to confirm your changes to the record.

To View the Tasks in an Opener

To view all tasks in an Opener, click the All Tasks tab on the Store Opener window.  Overdue tasks, when viewed from the All Tasks tab, are highlighted in red.

To view all tasks due at the end of the current week, click the Due This Week tab.

To view all overdue tasks, click the Overdue tab.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

To Simultaneously Mark Several Tasks in an Opener as Complete

Several tasks, or even all tasks, in an Opener can be marked as Completed simultaneously through FZM’s Mass Edit tool.

NOTE: For instructions on how to mark a single task as complete, see To Mark a Task as Complete.

1. On the Store Opener window, click Mass Edit. This opens a window showing the tasks in the Opener.

2. Look for the tasks you want to mark as complete, then check the boxes to the left. If you want to mark all tasks as complete, check the leftmost box at the header row, or the box to the left of the Category column.

3. Once you’ve marked the tasks, click Mark Checked Tasks Complete at the top. All tasks marked as completed are now highlighted in gray.

4. Click Save.

To display a printer-friendly format of the tasks, click the Printer icon (the leftmost icon) on the top right.

To download tasks as a CSV file that can be opened in Microsoft Excel, click the File icon (the second from the leftmost icon)  on the top right.

NOTE: The Mass Edit also includes a in-line edit feature, where you can click on some cells in the grid to edit them. This is useful to quickly update multiple dates or assignees rapidly. When using the mode the row will save immediately when you move your cursor off the row.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

To View a PDF Report on an Opener

A PDF report on an Opener can be generated. You may  then provide this report to someone on your team who may not have access to FZM for whatever reason.  

On the Store Opener window, click View Report (PDF). This opens a window, where the report on the Opener is displayed. You may close the window once you’ve downloaded or printed the report.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

To Send a Notification about an Opener

You can also send notifications about an Opener via FMZ’s Notification feature, which sends an email on to the recipient.

1. Click the Share button.

2. Enter your message, the recipient’s name and/or email address, then click Send. FZM then forwards your notice to the recipient.

NOTE: The same notification feature is also available on the Task form too, so you can send a staff member a notification relating specifically to a task.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Managing Opener Tasks

When we create an Opener from a Store Opening template, the tasks attached to the template are also created in the Opener (see To Create an Opener from a Template) . We can also add a task directly to the Opener (see To Add a Task to an Opener) . We will now tackle the operations we can perform on specific tasks in an Opener.

To View a Task’s Details

1. Search for the Opener or the Opener task (see To Search for an Opener and To Search for an Opener Task).

2. Select the task from the list, then click the right arrow on the rightmost column to open the task in a separate tab.

From here, you can add a comment to the task, add attachments to the task, download or delete attachments from the task, adjust the due date for the task, mark the task as complete, and send notifications about the task to specific members of your team.

To Add a Comment to a Task

In case a task is overdue, you may want to add a comment that gives the reasons for the delay and/or the steps that need to be done for it to start moving forward again.

1. On the Task Details tab, click Add Comment.

2. Enter your comment, then click Post New Comment.

On the Task Details tab, the comments are now added to the task.

To Attach a File to a Task

Tasks can contain file attachments. You can add any number of files to a task.

On the Task Details tab, click Select files, choose the file to add to the task, then click Open to start uploading the file. Once the file is uploaded, you will see it added to the Attachments box.

To Download a File Attachment from a Task

If a task contains a file attachment, you can download it by clicking the file, then saving it to your local drive when asked.

To Delete a File Attachment from a Task

You can delete a file attachment by clicking the rightmost X icon. When ask to confirm file deletion, click Yes.

Warning! Deleting a file attachment will permanently erase it from FZM. Make sure you have a copy of the file in case you have to use it again in the future.
To Adjust a Task’s Due Date

You can adjust the due date for a task at any time by entering the task’s new due date, which may be any number of days or months before or after the store opening.

To Mark a Task as Complete

As soon as team members finish tasks assigned to them, they must tag the tasks as Complete. This ensures that the Opener record‘s key statistics, which shows the Opener’s status at a glance, are updated.

1. Search for the task that you want to mark as Complete from the All Tasks tab. If you know that the task is due for completion at the current week or is already overdue, you can search for it from the Due This Week or Overdue tabs, whichever is applicable.

2. Click the Mark Complete button. The task marked as completed becomes highlighted in gray.

To Send a Notification about a Task

Notifications about tasks can also be sent to specific team members, and are essentially the same as the notifications for an Opener.  For instructions on sending a notification about a task, see To Send a Notification about an Opener.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Searching for Store Openings

Openers, even when completed, are still retained in FZM so there is a record keep. Also, you may have several, or even many, ongoing Openers at the same time. To ease searching for specific Openers regardless of status, FZM includes a Search Opener function.

To Search for an Opener

1. Click Opener, then Search Store Openings.

2. On the Search Store Opener window, you may search for the Opener using any of the following parameters:

a. Opener Number

b. Open Date

c. Franchise / Store Name

d. Status

3. Click Search. The records that meet your search criteria are then displayed on the grid at the bottom of the Search Store Opener window. Records with Open status are un-highlighted while those with Completed status are highlighted in grey. The name of the team member assigned to the Opener, i.e the project manager,  is also displayed on the grid.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Searching for Opener Tasks

There is also a search function for Opener tasks. This is particularly useful when you want to know how many tasks a certain team member has or has not completed. This search works across all Openers so you could quickly answer questions like ‘What are all the Opener Tasks assigned to me, across all store openings, that have a status of Open?’

To Search for an Opener Task

1. Click Opener, then Search Opener Tasks.

2. On the Search Opener Tasks window, you may search for the task using any of the following parameters:

a. Category

b. Status

c. Task Name

d. Assignee

3. Click Search. The records that meet your search criteria are then displayed on the grid at the bottom of the Search Opener Tasks window. The due dates for the tasks are also displayed on the grid.

TIP: To search for all tasks, regardless of status, that have been assigned to a team member, just enter the team member’s name, then leave all other criteria blank.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Generating a Milestone Gantt Chart

Using FZM’s Milestone Gantt feature, you can generate a Gantt chart of the key milestones in your open store opening projects, allowing you to view at a glance the status of each Opener on a monthly or weekly basis.

To Generate a Milestone Gantt Chart

1. Click Opener, then Milestone Gantt.

2. A Gantt chart of all your open Store Opening projects is displayed on the left.

By default, the chart displays the timeline for the current month. For example, if today is March 31, the Gantt chart will display the timeline for March. If you want to see the timelines for the previous months or the next few months, click the left and right navigation buttons on the top left.

To view the weekly timeline, click the Timeline Week button on the top right.

To display a printer-friendly format of the Gantt chart, click the Printer icon on the top right.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Franchisee module is where it all comes together. This is where your history of the franchise is built and maintained. The franchisee module is tightly integrated with many of the other modules in the system. So everything that happens with this franchisee can be viewed from the franchise module; field visits, customer complaints/feedback, leases, contact notes etc, are all stored and viewable here. Plus this is where you will store your crucial franchise related information, such as fee structures, franchise agreements, renewals & option periods etc.

Building a centralised store of franchisee information and a history of franchisee interactions is crucial to the successful management of your franchise network. Anyone in your national support office that interacts with a franchisee should have access to FZM and this module. They should be able to enter contact notes and view histories.

You will have a record for every store / van / outlet / location in your franchise network. Here are the tabs on the franchisee form explained:

Details: This is the contact info of the franchise. Note the suggested naming convention in Enter Franchise Data section (click here).  The ‘Assigned to’ field is usually the Area Manager/BDM that looks after that franchise.

The ‘Franchise Partners / Directors’ panel is where you record the individuals that own the franchise. So if a husband/wife own the franchise there will be two cards here, or if four business partners own the franchise then there will be four cards here. This is actually a separate module and entries here are also accessible from the ‘Directory’ menu on the top menu bar.  Note you can click on these cards and the Franchise Partner record will open in a new tab.

The  ‘Timeline’ panel shows the history of major events that have occurred regarding this franchise. You can read more about timeline here. Note that you can click on any timeline event and you will be taken through to the related record, eg the task, visit, note, etc.

Notes:  This tab shows notes that relate specifically to this franchisee. You can add notes to the Franchise record by clicking the Add button on the top of the form. You can click on a note to open it in a new tab. And also search and sort using the controls on the top of the note panel.

Directory:  This tab stores all the related Contacts and Staff for this Franchise. These entries are actually part of the Contacts/Staff modules and are also accessible from the ‘Directory’ menu on the top menu bar.  Note you can click on these records and the Contact / Staff record will open in a new tab.

Contacts are usually general people that relate to this franchise, they might be used for the franchisee’s accountant, or solicitor, or even the shopfitter that built the store. Staff are actually people that work within the franchise.

Visits:  This tab stores all the related Field Visits for this franchise. These entries are actually part of the Field Visits module and are also accessible from Franchisee > Field Visits on the top menu bar.  Note you can click on these records and the Field Visit record will open in a new tab. You can add a Field Visit note to the Franchise record by clicking the Add button on the top of the form.

Agreements:  This tab stores all the Agreement information for this franchise. You can set key dates, set reminders – that will generate an email for the selected person – and even upload of copy of your key documents such as Franchise Agreements, Software and Licence Agreements, Disclosure Documents etc. You can also enter key information regarding the franchise here, this information is usually sourced from the schedules of the agreements.

For Enterprise Accounts: you can use this additional data to have the system automatically generate template letters and notifications. This is useful for Franchise Agreement renewal reminders, breach letters and other legal required documents. This is a customisation that can decrease the admin burden of managing a large franchise network.

Tasks:  This tab stores all the related Field Visits for this franchise. These entries are actually part of the Field Visits module and are also accessible from Tasks > Search General Tasks on the top menu bar.  Note you can click on these records and the Task will open in a new tab. You can add a Task to the Franchise record by clicking the Add button on the top of the form.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Reminders help prompt you to do something. They will send an email to the specified person with the reminder memo included. Reminders can be set on Franchisee and Lease records. They are typically set to remind you to about important issues like Franchise Agreement renewals, Franchise Agreement option dates, Lease renewals and option dates.

Reminders can be set for any user of the system and you can set multiple reminders. Here are some usage tips about reminders:

• A reminder is set from the top of the Franchise or Lease form by hitting the alarm button  and completing the details in the pop-up

• From the top of the form you can click the View Reminders button to view all reminders set for that particular Franchise or Lease

• You can access ALL reminders in the system from the main menu Reminders > View Reminders. Note that in this view you can edit the date of the reminders and the memo’s by clicking in the cell.

• On the date of the reminder an email will be sent to the person nominated in the drop down. An email will continue to be sent every day until the Reminder is Archived.

• To archive an email just right click on the reminder and select Archive.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Introduction

The Field Visits Module empowers your area or territory managers with a set of powerful tools to more efficiently arrange and run a schedule of visits, record discussion notes, as well as set up and track agreed action items resulting from the visits. When used with our Franchisee module, your area or territory managers will have easy access to the entire history of interaction between your franchise support office and the franchisee, allowing for ample, efficient preparation prior to the actual field visit.

Using the Field Visits Module, your area or territory managers can set up and view field visit calendars, record notes and standardize checklists for evaluation purposes, document agreed action items for future tracking, send copies of your field visit notes to franchisees, and notify their supervisors of issues concerning your franchisees.

Creating a Field Visit Template

Before scheduling a new field visit to a franchisee, you need to create a field visit template containing the items for evaluating your franchisees during actual field visits.
To Create a Field Visit Template

1. On the main FZM page, click Franchisee Field Visits, then Manage Templates.

Fig. 1. Click Franchisee Field Visits, then Manage Templates

2. On the Field Visits Template tab, click Create Template

Fig. 2. Click Create Template

3. On the Visit Template window, under the Template Details tab, enter a name and a description (optional) for the template.

Fig. 3. Enter a name and description, then click the Evaluation tab

4. Still on the Visit Template window, click the Evaluationtab, then click Add Item.

Fig. 4. Click Add Item, then enter Rank, Category, Item, and Points

5. Enter the rank, category, item and points lost for the item.

• The Rank sets the Order in which the evaluation item will be displayed on the Field Visit form (Evaluation tab). You can enter decimal places herel to accommodate items that are added at a later date.

• Category may be left blank, until you have set up the categories you can use with the template. For more details, see To Add a Category for a Field Visit Template.

• The Points Lost are the number of points that will be deducted from the total score if the franchisee fails the evaluation item.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all the evaluation items have been added.

7. Click the Save button.

To Add a Category for a Field Visit Template

1. On the main FZM page, click Admin, then My FZM Settings.

Figure 5. Click My FZM Settings

2. On the FZM Settings window, click the Field Visit Tab.

3. Click Add New.

Figure 6. Adding Categories for Use with a Field Visit Template

4. Enter the category name then click Save.

5. Repeat step 4 until all categories have been added.

6. Click the Save button.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Creating a New Field Visit

Prior to visiting a franchisee, you need to create a field visit record to allow data gathered during the actual visit to be saved to FZM.

There are two ways to add a new field visit record in FZM. We discuss both of these methods below.

To Create a Field Visit Record Using the Field Visits Module

1. On the FZM Menu, click Franchisee Field Visits, then New Field Visit.

Figure 7. The Franchisee Field Visits Module

2. On the Field Visit Templates window, select a template by checking the box on the left, then click Continue.

 
Figure 8. Select a Template, then click Continue

3. On the Field Visit window, perform the following:

A. Select the franchisee to be visited from the list.

B. Enter a start and end time for the visit.

C. Enter your name on the Visit By field, note this has multiple select available, so all attendees from Support Office can be added too.

D. Enter the attendees on the franchisee side. These are the names of the people you will be meeting with during the visit.

E. Enter the agenda for the visit.

Figure 9. Setting Up the Field Visit Record

Click Email Franchisee Appointment to notify the franchisee about the scheduled field visit.

Figure 10. Click to Send Email Notification to Franchisee

4. Click Save, then click OK on the message to confirm that you are saving the record.

To Create a Field Visit Record using the Franchisee Module

1. On the FZM Menu, click Franchisees, then Search Franchisees.

Figure 11. Click Search Franchisees

2. On the Search Franchisees window, enter either the franchise or franchisee name, or both, then click Search.

Figure 12. Searching Franchisees

3. On the Results section, click the Details button to the right of the Franchisee record.

Figure 13. Click the Details Button

4. On the Franchisee window, click Add New, then Add Field Visit.

Figure 14. Click Add Field Visit

5. On the Field Visit window, perform the following:

A. The Franchisee drop down will auto complete with the Franchise name.

B. Enter a start and end time for the visit.

C. Enter your name on the Visit By field.

D. Enter the attendees on the franchisee side. These are the names of the people you will be meeting with during the visit.

E. Enter the agenda for the visit.

Figure 15. Set Up the Field Visit Record

6. Click Email Franchisee Appointment to notify the franchisee about the scheduled field visit.

Figure 16. Click to Send Email Notification to Franchisee

7. Click Save, then click OK on the message to confirm that you are saving the record. On the Franchisee window, the record is added to the list of field visits, which you can view by clicking the Visits tab.

Figure 17. The Visits Tab shows a List of Field Visits

NOTE: To get the email notification about the scheduled field visit, attendees must have their email addresses defined on their Franchise record in FZM.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Evaluating Franchisees During Field Visits

During a field visit, area or territory managers discuss the agenda items with franchisees. They also inspect the franchise store’s premises and rate the franchisee based on the evaluation items set up in FZM (see Setting Up the Field Visit Evaluation Form).

To Evaluate a Franchisee During a Field Visit

1. Search for the applicable field visit record of the franchisee you are visiting (see Searching for Scheduled Field Visits)

2. On the Field Visit window, click the Evaluation tab. The franchisee evaluation form is displayed under the tab.

Figure 18. The Evaluation Tab

3. Start rating the franchisee based on the items in the evaluation form. If the franchisee fails an item, click the Fail button on the right. This highlights the item in red and subtracts the points lost from the franchisee’s score.

Figure 19. Click the Fail Button

4. Once you have rated the franchisee based on the items, click Save.

To Add a Task to a Field Visit

During your discussion with the franchisee, you may need to agree on actions items to make the franchisee compliant with your standards. You need to add tasks to the field visit record to allow tracking of these action items to completion.

1. Under the Visit Details tab, go to the Tasks & Agreed Action Items section and click Add Task.

Figure 20. Click Add Task

2. On the Add Task window, perform the following:

A. Select the assigned resource.

B. Set the task priority, e.g. Low, Medium, or High.

C. Enter a start and due date.

D. Enter a name and description.

E. Add an attachment, if applicable, by clicking Select Files, looking for the file on your system, then clicking Open.

F. Click Create.

Figure 21. Set up the Task, then click Create

3. Under the Tasks & Agreed Action Items section, you should now see the task added to the list.

Figure 17. The Task is Added to the List

4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you’ve added all the agreed action items for the field visit.

To Add a Photo to a Field Visit Record

You can also add a photo to each evaluation item in the Field Visit record.

1. Under the Evaluation tab, click the Camera icon for the selected evaluation item.

2. On the Upload Photo window, click Select Files, look for the photo on your system, then click Open.

3. Click Upload to save the photo. On a tablet you will be prompted to select either the Camera or your picture Gallery. Once completed, you should see the uploaded photo under the item’s Photo column.

To Add a Comment to a Field Visit Record

You can also a comment to each evaluation item in the Field Visit record.

1. Under the Evaluation tab, click the Comment button for the selected evaluation item.

2. On the Comment window, enter your comment, then click Save. You should see the comment under the item’s Comment column.

To Add Franchisor Notes to a Field Visit Record

You can also add franchisor notes that are not visible to the franchisee in the Field Visit record. This is useful if you want to maintain confidential notes related to the field visit.

1. Click the Franchisor Notes tab.

2. Enter your notes, then click Save.

To Email the Field Visit Results to a Franchisee

You can email the field visit results to a franchisee at any time.

1. Open the Field Visit record.

2. Click the Email Note to Franchisee

3. On the confirmation message, click Yes.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Deleting a Field Visit Record

To delete a field visit record, click the Delete button.

Figure 23. Click the Delete Button

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Searching for Scheduled Field Visits

You may need to search for scheduled field visits while using the Field Visits Module.

To Search for a Scheduled Field Visit

1. On the FZM Menu, click Franchisee Field Visits, then Search Field Visits.

Figure 24. Click Search Field Visits

2. On the Search Field Visits window, enter the franchisee name, then click Search. The franchisee name is then displayed on the Results section at the bottom.

3. Click the Details button to the right to open the franchisee’s applicable Field Visit record.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Viewing the Field Visit Schedule

You can view your scheduled field visits at a glance using the Field Visit Schedule functionality.
To View your Field Visit Schedule

1. On the FZM Menu, click Franchisee Field Visits, then Field Visit Schedule.

2. On the Field Visit Schedule window, you can see your scheduled field visits presented in a Gantt chart. Click the corresponding button on the top right of the window to view the schedule by day, week or month.

You can also click on the navigation buttons or the calendar widget at the top left to view the schedule.

Figure 25. The Field Visit Schedule

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The News module is an easy, effective way to get your message across.

What is SlideShare?

SlideShare is a presentation delivery service, which we have allowed you to embed into FZM.  You can create a free account at www.slideshare.net or you can use ours.

How would you use it?

Create your content using anything you like PowerPoint, Word, Video, Images etc.

• Import your work into SlideShare

• Copy the embed link

• Paste the embed code into FZM

• Now publish it so your Franchisees can view it

For what purpose would you use it?

• To communicate with Franchisees

• Newsletters

• Photos of conferences

• Promotions

• Training

• Anyway you like!

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Introduction

The Business Planning module allows Franchisees to build and maintain a business plan within FranchiZeManager. It is designed to be simple and fast to use for franchisees and franchisors. It is based on the “Balanced Scorecard” approach to business planning, which is described in detail below in Section 2.

As a franchisor the benefit of this module is that you get full transparency over the business plans of your franchisees. You can see who does and does not have a plan, as well as if the plans are up to date. And perhaps most importantly it provides a medium for you to discuss planning with your franchisees. It gives you a structured methodology to review business performance allowing you and your franchisees to reach agreement on a plan of action.

The “Balanced Scorecard” Approach to Business Planning

The format of the business plan is based loosely on the strategic planning and management methodology called “Balanced Scorecard” that was originally developed in the early 1990’s by Dr. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton. It has been continually refined and successfully used and recognised by leading companies worldwide.

One of the central philosophies of the balanced scorecard is that your business plan should not be a “passive document”, it should not be something that is written and then left in the bottom drawer and never referred to again. Rather the business plan is an “active document” that is updated regularly and adjusted, it clearly lists the goals and measures of the business and becomes the “marching orders” for the franchisee on a monthly and even weekly basis.

It also provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps franchisees identify what should be done and how success will be measured. So in summary the Business Planning module enables franchisees to clarify and document their own localised strategy and then translate it into a firm action plan.

The structure of the plan is shown in the diagram below:

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

You will be given a .csv file to use as a template to load and import your data. The template will have column headings for each field and you will need to match your data to the column headings. Please check your data to the specifications:

1.  Prepare your file. Your file should have the following format:

a)  It must be .csv format – if you are using Excel choose “Save As…” and CSV as the file type

b) All dates must be in the format DD/MM/YYYY for example:

• 28/01/2011 = Good
• 07/03/2011 = Good
• 28 Jan 2011 = No Good (this will not work)
• 28-01-2011 = No Good (this will not work)
• 28/1/11 = No Good (this will not work)

c) All dollar amounts should contain no formatting for example:

• 25876 = Good
• $25876 = No Good (this will not work)
• $25,876 = No Good (this will not work)
• 25,876 = No Good (this will not work)

d) All percentages should be as numbers with no formatting for example:

• 25.67 = Good
• 0.2567 = No Good – will not work
• 25.67% = No Good – will not work

Make sure your file has no “empty” rows at the bottom of the sheet. Sometimes when manipulating data in excel it will place empty (ghost rows) at the bottom of the sheet. These can be imported as empty rows. Just to be sure highlight empty/blank rows underneath your data and delete them before saving your file as a csv.

2.  Import your data. Log into FranchiZeManager, choose ScoreCard>Import ScoreCard Data and follow the onscreen instructions.

3.  Have patience, larger data set can take a while to upload and process and be validated.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The HR module is a light weight module to deal with managing staff and contractors that typically work at the National Support Office i.e. for the Franchisor.

The module will allow you to record, track and manage the following items (per employee):

• store name, address and contact/background details of employees and contractor

• upload a photo

• store information relating to recruitment, such as resumes, referrals source of hire etc.

• record current compensation details

• maintain an employment history of positions, compensation levels etc.

• record education and training details

• for contractors record insurance, workcover and other company details

• record staff leave and manage approvals

• upload notes, and documents and emails

• send template emails

This module is typically useful for franchisors with less than 30 staff members working. Clients with over 30 staff will typically benefit from a dedicated HR system that integrates with Payroll and your accounting system.

Note that the HR module is intended to hold employee/contractor details for staff working at the Franchisor (not the Franchisee’s staff members). For Franchisee staff members there is a separate module called Staff that is accessed under the Directory menu, you can read more about the Staff module here.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

This small module is used to manage staff leave within your company.

It’s features are:

• Allow staff to submit a leave request on-line

• On submission the staff member’s manager gets notified by email

• The manager can log in and view Leave Requests and either Approve or Decline the request

• When approved/declined the staff member is notified of the decision

• If it was approved the Leave Calendar is updated to show the staff member is away

How It Works

• Each user in the FZM system has a “Reports to:” field on their user record. It is important that this field is completed for any staff member that will be using the leave manager. This is the person that must approve/decline the staff member’s leave requests

• Leave manager is accessed under the Admin > Leave Manager menu

• The menu has the following options:

• Submit Leave Request: used by all staff to submit a leave request to their manager.

• My Leave Requests:  used to view leave requests that the Staff member has submitted i.e. their own leave requests

• View My Staff’s Leave Requests: used by managers to view leave requests that staff have submitted to them. When you need to approve/decline leave you will access the requests here.

• View All Leave (Admin):  only the HR manager can view this item, it is used to manage all leave requests

• Leave Calendar: this shows a calendar view of staff that are on leave. Note it can be adjusted to show a day, week or monthly view. It can also be resized by dragging the right and bottom corners.

Understanding Leave Status’s

• When a leave form is first created it has a status of DRAFT

• When it is submitted it has a status of PENDING – all pending approvals require action from the manager to either Approve or Decline the leave request

• The status is then updated to either APPROVED or DECLINED – at this stage no further action is required

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Lease module is designed to store information about your property leases. It will enable you to:

• Store an unlimited number of leases, and keep an ongoing history of lease information.

• Upload lease documents/files, in any format such as .pdf, .doc etc.

• Set reminders to be notified of key dates such as Option dates and Expiry dates.

• Store key financial terms and other data such as usage clauses, store sizes, guarantors, bank guarantees etc.

• Through customisation make this lease data available with modules such as sales data to provide high value reporting to your property team.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Lease module is simple to use with most fields being self explanatory for anyone experienced with property management. Note that some fields may not be relevant to your type of franchise and these can be removed if required, just submit a customization request.
The key parts of the form are as follows:

Top Panel

• Type: this indicates if the lease is current, expired or in a hold over period. Note you never should delete a lease record – unless it was incorrectly created. If the lease has finished/expired you should set this Type to Expired.

• Reference: this is a free text field that allows you to record your own reference number against the Lease.

• Lease Document: by default the system allows you to save up to three documents on the lease record.

Related Franchise & Lessor Details

• Used to store the related Franchise (Store) in the drop down, note this list is populated from your Franchisee module.

• Lessor information is also entered here.

Lease Details

• This is where you can store key information relating to the lease. It includes date fields such as Start, Expiry and Option dates.

• The Usage Clause field is particularly useful for food based franchise systems that have restricted leases about what activities can be carried out on the premises.

Occupancy Table

• The occupancy table is used to store the annual lease information, the rent increase info and key financial data relating to the lease.

• Each year of the lease should have an entry. So if you hold a 5 year lease, with an annual increase amount, then you would expect to have 5 rows within this panel. Each row will have an effective date and the related information for that year.

• Note often lease increase amounts will be dependant on unknown future figures, such an an increase being ‘CPI + 5%’. In this instance you would only enter the rent amount figure once the effective date has passed and the CPI amount to be applied is known. Prior to this you can still create an entry for each row, record the ‘Method of Rent Increase’ as ‘CPI + 5%’ but leave the ‘Rent Amount’ blank. This way users can understand how the rent will be calculated when the time comes.

Reminder

• The reminder panel allows you set a reminder for a specific person on a specific date.

• You must check the tick box to activate the reminder, then you can select the reminder date and to whom the reminder should be sent.

• On the day of the reminder an email will be sent to the selected user.

Managing Agent (tab)

• Used to store names and contact details of the managing agent.

Centre Details (tab)

• If the property is located within a shopping centre it is useful to record the centre management contact details here.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

This menu item (Lease > Display Lease Reminders) will provide a list type view of all leases and lease reminders within the system.

This is useful in case you want to view all leases, key dates and see what reminders are set/not-set. The standard features apply here:

• Click on a column heading to sort Ascending/Descending.

• Click on column heading arrow to select/deselect columns.

• You can drag and drop columns to rearrange ordering.

• Use the small icons in the top right to download as a .csv or print as PDF.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

The Staff module is accessed under the Directory menu on the top menu bar.  This module will hold details on the Staff that work for Franchisees (and Company Owned stores).

The module will allow you to record, track and manage the following items (per staff member):

• store name, address and contact details, including Birthdays

• record start and end dates and roles held within the franchisee

• record the franchisee they are working for

• store notes against the record

• store any related Customer Complaints/Feedback (if using the Feedback module)

• provide access to the Training Programmes and Events (if using the Training Events module) including viewing Event invitations and acceptances/declines plus recording

• provide access to the FranchiZeTrainer online training system (if using the FranchiZeTrainer.com system – see franchizetrainer.com) including viewing Courses completed and sending reminders etc.

Note that this module is typically used with Franchisee access to FZM enabled. This way the Franchisee becomes responsible for maintaining their directory of Staff members, removing the burden from National Support Office (i.e. the Franchisor). In FZM a few Staff Entry/Exit forms are created to allow Franchisees to self manage the staff members.

Why record Franchisee Staff member details in FZM?

There are many reasons why a Franchisor may wish to keep their own directory of Staff members working at the Franchisee, for example:

• Maintaining a current directory allows the Franchisor to open a direct line of communication with their front-line staff. This is usually accomplished by a regular email or a newsletter. It can also be used to deliver incentive schemes and awards to staff members.

• In order to track and record on-going professional development. Some FZM clients operate in Financial Services, Professional Services or Healthcare where on-going training is an industry requirement. This module is easily adapted to measure and track this mandatory training requirement.

• To provision other equipment and tools such as email addresses or uniforms for Staff members.

• To deliver on-line training courses through FranchiZeTrainer – see http://franchizetrainer.com

• To send invitation to training events organised by the National Support Office.

Applicable accounts:   ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

HatchitMail is a fully-featured mass email marketing application. It is similar to MailChimp or Campaign Monitor in its functionality. You can manage your email campaigns, lists, create/modify templates, track opens/clicks/bounces on your campaigns.

When considering HatchitMail it’s important to understand the different types of email that can be sent with FranchiZeManager (FZM) and HatchitMail (HM). Each has a different purpose and different use:

Transactional Email & FZM:

FZM is designed to send large volumes of transactional emails. A transactional email is from one individual (eg the user) and sent to one recipient – they are not sent to multiple recipients. These emails usually contain personalised information, with the FROM address being the sender (ie user). FZM sends many of these emails directly, and has an inbuilt templating system accessed from the “Email Templates” menu to assist you. Usually these emails will have a simple text body and can be set-up with a designed/branded HTML footer. FZM does not track opens/clicks for transactional emails.

Mass Emails & HatchitMail:

HatchitMail is designed to send high volumes of mass emails, where one person sends an email to many recipients at the one time. The recipients are organised into Lists and you can segment and send to a smaller section of a list. Usually you maintain HTML email templates that are used to create campaigns and send the emails. You can have multiple templates for different uses; such as Newsletters to staff and franchise partners, and Product Announcements to customers, etc. Email campaigns are usually highly branded and contain a lot of HTML/pictures etc. Furthermore, HM allows you track opens/click/bounces at both a campaign and individual email level.

Why are they different systems?

Transactional email (in FZM) and mass marketing email (in HM) have different purposes and require different systems to effectively manage them. Mass email marketing is more likely to be marked as spam and sending reputation, blacklist avoidance and abuse & anti-spam laws are an important consideration that require unique management methods. For this reason the systems are segregated, they run from different servers, with different IP addresses, etc.

How do FZM and HM work together?

HM, as with most mass email systems, uses the concept of Lists of recipients to send campaigns to. In HM you can manually create and import as you normally would but in addition you have the option to auto-sync lists of people that you have stored in FZM, usually this may include FZM modules such as:

• Staff members (under the Directory menu in FZM)

• Franchise Partners / Directors (under the Directory menu in FZM)

• Stores (under the Franchisee menu in FZM)

• FZM users (under the User Management menu in FZM)

• Enquiries & Candidates (under the Recruitment menu in FZM)

• Customers (under the Customers menu in FZM)

Hatchit Support can set-up HM so any list will auto-sync between FZM and HM. This is a customisation and done at standard hourly rates. This means there is no need to import/export lists between systems. Also, stats relating to opens/clicks/bounces to recipients can be pulled back to FZM to allow you to see what communications have been sent and read from right within FZM.

Please ask for the full HatchitMail User Guide for instructions on how to use this system.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

1.  Go to this link on your phone, download the file and click to install the AlertZee app:  https://franchizemanager.com/static/alertzee/AlertZee-1.3.apk

2.  When you open it, go to settings page (pic 1 left) and enter details below and click “Update Settings” buttons (pic 2 right).

3.  You are now connected up to the FZM Demo site. You are registered as “Rob Hopkins”, so on the demo site if you go Directory > Search Staff Members  you will see.

Some examples of what you can do:

a.  Just send a message to one staff member (eg Rob Hopkins):

• in FZM go to Directory > Search Staff Members

• open Rob Hopkins staff record

• click “Send Alert”, fill in details of the Alert, note that Rob has already been added to the send list

• click “Send”

• What happens next?

• Rob Hopkins will be sent an alert

• the push notification will inform him

• when it is read you can go to the “Viewed History” tab on the Alert record and see who read it, when and how many times

b.  Send a customer complaint notification to a staff member:

• in FZM go Franchisee > Customer Feedback > Search Feedback cases

• open any case, and click “Send Alert” button

• note the Alert is created and all the Complaint details are automatically carried across

• in the “Send to Staff” panel click “Add Target Staff”  button, filter and select the staff you wish to send this alert to

• click “Send”

c.  Send an Alert to group of staff/franchisees:

• in FZM go Directory > Send Alert

• fill in the details of the alert and add target staff

• click “Send”

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

FranchiZeTrainer is a separate system to FranchiZeManager but they are related and share data. Following are some points that will help you understand how the two systems work together:

• FranchiZeTrainer (FZT) is an online learning management system (LMS) and this sits as a separate system to FranchiZeManager (FZM)

• There is a connector between both systems to push data back and forth

• Logically FranchiZeManager is used to store staff records, grant those staff members access to the FranchiZeTrainer system, assign courses to a staff member and report on the results of quizzes and completed coursework at both an individual, a franchise and a consolidated level (ie all franchisees)

• The FranchiZeTrainer system is used to create learning content and deliver that learning content to Staff

• The FZT system is visually different to FZM, it will typically be heavily client branded, it works very well on mobile devices (where a large percent of on-line learning takes place), it is built upon a common Content Management System, called WordPress, so someone at your National Support Office can easily author learning content with only a short learning curve

• Hatchit is also able to provide support and contract services to assist with this instructional design and the transfer of your traditional training content into FranchiZeTrainer. If you are interested in this please contact Hatchit Support.

FranchiZeTrainer – Understanding Back-end and Front-end Access Levels:

There are two sides to the FranchiZeTrainer site:

• Frontend: this is the side where courses are delivered, lessons and quizzes are completed. This is where your franchisees and staff will see and use the system.

• Backend: this is restricted access to the site where Support Office staff members (i.e. Franchisor staff) can load and author content and control how the FranchiZeTrainer site works. It is restricted to those with Editor access (see below). If you have editor access you will have an Admin menu in the top right of your FZT site on the frontend.

FranchiZeTrainer – Access Levels

Note: these access levels relate to the FranchiZeTrainer site, not your FranchiZeManager system.

FranchiZeTrainer will come pre-configured with four main access levels (also called Roles), they are as follows:

• Editor:
  This role is used by staff at the National Support Office. It provides access to the back-end of the FranchiZeTrainer site. It is the highest level of access and is used to author courses and lessons and quizzes. It can also be used to administer the FranchiZeTrainer site, such as creating badges, certificates and adding/editing content on the site. Typically this access level is used by the HR/Training manager at the Franchisor office.

• National Support Office Staff:
  If you use the FranchiZeTrainer site to deliver training to staff at the National Support Office then you will assign them this access level. When users login with this access level they will see courses that are available for this access level. Note this level only has access to the front-end of the system, they do not have any back-end access to the FranchiZeTrainer system.

• Franchisee:
  If you use the FranchiZeTrainer site to deliver training to Franchisee’s then you will assign them this access level. When users login with this access level they will see courses that are available for this access level. Note this level only has access to the front-end of the system, they do not have any back-end access to the FranchiZeTrainer system.

• Franchisee Staff:
  If you use the FranchiZeTrainer site to deliver training to Franchisee’s Staff Members (ie the staff that work for franchisees) then you will assign them this access level. When users login with this access level they will see courses that are available for this access level. Note this level only has access to the frontend of the system, they do not have any backend access to the FranchiZeTrainer system.

Note: as a customisation Hatchit Support can add more access roles. However it is advised – for simplicity’s sake – to start initially with the four main access levels.

Additional access levels and roles can be added as a customisation.

Course/Lesson/Topic Structure & Quizzes:

Your learning content is structured into three levels. Note you don’t “have” to use all four levels for all courses, however it may be useful where there is a lot of content to be delivered.

1.  Courses

A course is the highest level “container” for your learning content.  Lessons, topics and quizzes are held within a Course. A Course is usually targeted at a specific Role (eg Franchisee Staff). You can have unlimited courses.

2.  Lessons

You can have an unlimited number of lessons assigned to a course.  At the bottom of each lesson will be a MARK COMPLETE button that is auto-generated by FranchiZeTrainer.  When clicked, the user is automatically redirected to the next lesson.

You can assign Quizzes to a Lesson so that it cannot be marked as complete until it is successfully passed. This is a great way to ensure that users understand the content before being allowed to move onto the next Lesson.

3.  Topics

The Lesson Topics feature allows you to break your lessons into further “sub-lessons”. A lesson can have an unlimited number of lesson topics, much like a course can have an unlimited number of lessons. Lesson Topics adopt the same progression functionality as lessons. If you require lessons to be completed in a chronological order, then Lesson Topics also must be completed in chronological order. A lesson cannot be marked complete until all lesson topics have been marked as complete.

By no means do you have to use Lesson Topics to break-up your Lessons. Some Lessons may have more content than others, and the Lesson Topics give you the ability deliver it in smaller “chunks”. Just like you can do with your Lessons, you can assign Quizzes to a Topic so that it cannot be marked as complete until it is successfully passed. This is a great way to ensure that users understand the content before being allowed to move onto the next Topic.

Adding Franchisee and Franchisee Staff as FZT users:

FranchiZeManager has a directory of Franchise Partners (i.e. Franchisees) and Franchisee Staff, this is where you add staff and grant them access to the FranchiZeTrainer site.

To do this go:

Directory > Add Staff Member (for franchisee staff member), OR;

Directory > Add Franchise Partner (if they are a franchisee).

When you have completed their details be sure to set the Staff Role as either Franchisee Staff or Franchisee and click Save. Then click “Enable FranchiZeTrainer Account” – this will send an email to the user with their login details etc.

If you are a first time user it is wise to set up a dummy FZT user with your email address to test the process and login as them.

Customising Pages in FranchiZeTrainer

When you first login there are 2 main pages where you can add content about the site for your users, these are the Home page and the About page.

When you are logged into the front-end with your editor access level you will see a little “edit” icon on these pages that allows you to click and edit them directly from the front end. Alternatively, from the backend you can click on the Pages menu and find the Welcome and About pages, just click on one to edit. You can also change the featured images used in the top header to be more in line with your branding.

Getting Ready Before You go Live

When you first start using FZT there are a number of set-up steps you must undertake, these include:

• Set-up your Home-Page and About page, by logging in with editor access and writing some copy about your new training site.

• Consider branding & pictures. FZT comes with a number of standard pictures as headers and banners on the pages. You can customise these with your own branded content, pictures etc, just login with editor access and upload your own “Featured Image” on each of the pages.

• Set-up your Courses/Lessons/Topics and Quizzes. This is the most work, if you have existing content you can re-purpose it to work on FZT. Note you can also use Hatchit support services to help set these up for you, this is often wise as it gives you a starting point that you can then configure and use.

• Set-up your access levels that provide access to specific courses for certain roles. As described above there are four access levels by default, you may want more added to focus content to specific roles. Please contact Hatchit support if required.

• If you are using Certificates, you will want to customise the content of these.

• Test! There is only one way to ensure that FZT is working as you want, and that’s to test it. It can be boring but it is necessary. Create a dummy staff member in FZM (you will need a few), send an invite and work through the course material to ensure it is presenting as you wish.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Almost every installation of FranchiZeTrainer is customized. Therefore your system may look different to the screen shots displayed in this guide.

1.  When logged into the Backend (as an Editor) navigate to LEARNDASH LMS > COURSES > Add New

2.  Enter a Course Title

3.  Enter a Course Description

This should be a brief description of the course. Usually a few sentences or a short paragraph will suffice. This description is shown to students before they join a course. Note you can upload pictures, video etc using the “Add Media” button and also you can utilise shortcodes to create tabbed items, boxes, etc.

4.  Fill out the Course Options

• Course Materials: Enter a description of any materials needed for the course. In most cases this field will be left empty. Note this field accepts HTML markup if you wish to use it.

• Course Price: In most cases this field will be left empty. There is an option to charge users to undertake a course and pay using PayPal, if you wish to use this feature please contact Hatchit Support.

• Course Price Type: This should be left to default as “Buy Now” unless you have activated the ability to charge for courses. There are five options (Open, Closed, Free, Buy Now, Recurring).
  • Open: User is not required to login or register in order to access the content.
    Can also be used if protecting the courses with a non integration membership plugin.
  • Free: User is required to register and login in order to access the content.
  • Buy Now: Leveraging our built-in PayPal, user is required to purchase the course in order to access its content.
  • Recurring: To charge recurring payments using our built-in PayPal.
  • Closed: Can be used for internal training, where only users being manually assigned to the course can have access. Also useful if using one of our shopping cart add-on – fill out the URL box and the ‘Take this course’ button will link to the shopping cart product.

• Billing Cycle:  This field is only visible when “Recurring” is selected as a Course Price Type (which you should not have done unless you have confirmed with Hatchit Support)

• Course Access List: Users who join the course will have their UserID inserted here automatically via comma-separated-values. The UserID is always a numeric value.

• Sort Lesson By:  Determines how lessons are sorted for the course.

• Sort Lesson Direction:  Determines the lesson direction.

• Course prerequisites: Use this if a user must successfully complete a different course before they can start this one.

• Disable Lesson Progression – When checked, users can take the lessons and quizzes in any order they prefer.

• Associated Certificate – Assign a certificate to the course. The certificate is made available on the Course page after successful completion of all course content, including lessons, topics, and quizzes.

In most cases your Course Options should look like the picture below:

5.  Set-up the Content Permission (Access levels) to the course

The Content  Permissions box deals with the who is allowed to access the course. It is based on the roles of user. You can select one or more roles that you wish to have access to the course, simple tick the relevant role. Note this doesn’t change the menu structure of the system.

See in the example below only Franchisees and Support Office Staff will be able to access this course:

6.  Add a Featured Image (Optional)

You can set a featured image for the course. This will display an image above the course. Just click the link “Set featured image” and follow the onscreen prompts.

7. Add a Category (Optional)

This is useful if you plan to list your courses by category using the Course List shortcode. By default FranchiZeTrainer will have a category for each access level, but you can create additional categories to group your courses in any manner you want.

 Note: The Categories page (Courses > Categories) displays any categories that you have created for courses, lessons, and quizzes. You can create categories on this page, or on the courses, lessons, and quizzes you are creating using the categories meta box (pictured above).

8. Add a Tag (Optional)

This is useful if you plan to list your courses by tags.

Note: The tags page (Courses > Tags) displays any tags that you have created for courses, lessons, and quizzes. You can create tags on this page, or on the courses, lessons, and quizzes you are creating using the tag meta box (pictured above).

9. Click PUBLISH

When you are ready to push your changes live then hit the Publish button.

10. After publishing, your Course Association is created

The Course Association is what you will use to map lessons, topics, and quizzes to your course.

Important note:
Do not un-check this association.
Do not add more than one association to a course.
Doing so will prevent users from being able to navigate through the courses properly.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Creating a lesson is similar to creating a course in FranchiZeTrainer. You can have an unlimited number of lessons assigned to a course.  At the bottom of each lesson will be a MARK COMPLETE button that is auto-generated by FranchiZeTrainer.  When clicked, the user is automatically redirected to the next lesson.

1. Go to LEARNDASHLMS > LESSONS > ADD NEW

2. Enter a Lesson Title

Tip: You may find it convenient to number your lesson names, such as ‘Lesson 1: xxx’ and ‘Lesson 2: zzzz’ however this only works if you plan on not reusing lessons across multiple courses.

3. Enter Lesson Content

Enter lesson material in the text editor. You can simple type, use shortcodes to format data, embed videos, pictures or presentations.

4. Fill out the Lesson meta-box

• Associated Course: Assign the lesson to a course.

• Forced Lesson Timer:  Requires a user to stay on a lesson for a specific amount of time. The MARK COMPLETE button is not active until the timer reaches zero (optional). Leave this blank to not have a timer.

• Upload Assignment: When checked, the MARK COMPLETE button is replaced with a field for the user to upload a document. User cannot progress until the Administrator marks the assignment as complete. Admins can mark an assignment as complete, or delete it, by logging in and navigating to the lesson page (optional).

• Auto Approve Assignment: When checked, all submitted assignments are approved without the need for the Admin to review first.

• Sample Lesson: This option should be left blank as it is unlikely to be used (it makes the lesson accessible to users prior to purchase or enrollment).

• Make lesson visible X days after sign-up: Allows you to specify when the lesson is available for viewing (in days). Timer begins after a user clicks the JOIN button, or the course is purchased.

Tip: In most cases for franchisee and staff training you can leave these settings as the default settings, similar to those displayed in the picture above.

5. Set-up the Content Permission (Access levels) to the Lesson

The Content  Permissions box deals with who is allowed to access the lesson. Similar to courses it is based on the role of users. You can select one or more roles that you wish to have access to the lesson, simple tick the relevant role. Note this doesn’t change the menu structure of the system.

See in the example below only Franchisees and Support Office Staff will be able to access this lesson:

 6. Set Lesson Order (Optional)

Set the lesson order from the Attributes box, this can be used to order the Lessons in a course.

7. Add a Featured Image (Optional)

You can set a featured image for the course. This will display an image above the course. Just click the link “Set featured image” and follow the onscreen prompts.

8. Add a Category (Optional)

This is useful if you plan to list lessons by category using the Lesson List shortcode.

Shortcodes was discussed on the previous article Creating a Course.

Categories  was discussed on the previous article Creating a Course.

9. Add a Tag (Optional)

This is useful if you plan to list your courses by tags using the Course List shortcode.

Shortcodes was discussed on the previous topic Creating a Course.

Tags  was discussed on the previous topic Creating a Course.

10. Allow Comments (Optional)

You can allow your users to leave comments on your lessons. Usually this is best left as both unticked, as shown in the picture below:

11. Click PUBLISH

Additional Options for Lessons

The Options for Lessons page is where you can indicate the default settings on how you want your lessons to display.

1. Go to LESSONS > OPTIONS FOR LESSONS

2. Configure Options

Sort By – Determines how lessons are sorted for the course.

• Title – Title of the lesson.

• Date – Date published.

• Menu – Based on the number entered in the Attributes box within a lesson.

Sort Direction – Determines the lesson direction.

• Ascending – Alphabetical/numeric order.

• Descending – Reverse alphabetical/numeric order.

• Posts Per Page – Number of lessons you want available on a Course page. Ensure that this number matches the Blog pages show at most number on the Settings > Reading page. By default this is set to 10 and should be left this way.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Basic Process

The Lesson Topics feature allows you to break your lessons into further “sub-lessons”. A lesson can have an unlimited number of lesson topics, much like a course can have an unlimited number of lessons.

Lesson Topics adopt the same progression functionality as lessons. If you require lessons to be completed in a chronological order, then Lesson Topics also must be completed in chronological order. A lesson cannot be marked complete until all lesson topics have been marked as complete.

This is how you create a new Topic:

1.  Go to LEARNDASH LMS >  TOPICS

2.  Click the ADD NEW button

3.  Enter a Topic Title

4.  Enter Topic Content

Enter topic material in the text editor. Similar to how you did for Courses and Lessons.

5. F ill out the Topic meta-box

• Associated Course: Select which course this topic will be part of. When you select the course, the Associated Lesson list will populate with applicable lessons.

• Associated Lesson: Assign the lesson topic to a specific lesson.

• Forced Topic Timer – Requires a user to stay on a lesson for a specific amount of time. The MARK COMPLETE button is not active until the timer reaches zero (optional). This is a useful feature if you want to try and avoid students just clicking through lessons.

• Upload Assignment – When checked, the MARK COMPLETE button is replaced with a field for the user to upload a document. User cannot progress until the Administrator marks the assignment as complete. Admins can mark an assignment as complete, or delete it, by logging in and navigating to the lesson topic page (optional).

• Auto Approve Assignment – When checked, all submitted assignments are approved without the need for the Admin to review first.

6. Set-up the Content Permission (Access levels) to the Topic

The Content  Permissions box deals with who is allowed to access the topic. Similar to courses and lessons it is based on the role of users. You can select one or more roles that you wish to have access to the topic, simply tick the relevant role. Note this doesn’t change the menu structure of the system.

7. Set Topic Order (Optional)

Similar to lessons you can set the topic order from the Attributes box.

8. Add a Featured Image (Optional)

You can set a featured image for the topic. This will display an image above the topic. Just click the link “Set featured image” and follow the onscreen prompts.

9. Allow Comments (Optional)

You can allow your users to leave comments on your topics. Usually this is best left as both unticked, as shown in the picture below:

10. Click PUBLISH

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Please note that FranchiZeTrainer comes with two different types of quiz:

 

1. Simple Quiz. This is an easy way to quickly create a quiz, but it is more limited in it’s options.

 

2. Advanced Quiz. This provides significantly more quiz options and better reporting. We advise in most instances that you use Advanced Quiz for your testing needs.

 

Note that an Advanced Quiz after it’s created needs to be ‘embedded’ in a Simple Quiz. So even if you only use Advanced Quizzes you will still have simple quizzes.

Creation Process

1.  Go to Quizzes > Add New

2.  Enter a quiz title.

3.  Enter a Quiz description which will appear before the user starts taking the quiz.

4.  Scroll to the Quizzes meta-box.

• Repeats – Enter repeat attempts allowed for the quiz.

• Certificate Threshold – Enter the percentage (between 0 and 1) that a user must obtain to get a certificate, i.e. “0.8?. If you do not want to award a certificate, set the threshold to “1.1?.

• Passing Percentage – Enter the score a user must obtain in order to pass the quiz and mark it complete.
• Associated Lesson – If the quiz is a “Lesson Quiz”, assign the quiz to the desired lesson. If not assigned, it will be a final quiz for the course.

• Associated Certificate – Select the certificate that a user can obtain after successfully meeting the Certificate Threshold.

• Advanced Quiz – Select an advanced quiz and it will be used in place of the simple quiz.

5.  Select an associated course under Manage Course Associations.

6.  Click Publish.

• If you used an Advanced Quiz, then no further action is needed.

• If you want to use a Simple Quiz, then continue.

Adding Simple Quiz Questions

Scroll down and you will now have the ability to add simple questions.

1.  Enter a Quiz Name.

2.  Main Copy – Brief description shown to user before taking quiz.

3.  Result Copy – Enter the message to be shown after the quiz is taken.

4.  Knowledge Levels – Enter the levels that a user can obtain after taking the course. This MUST be filled out.

5.  Click Add Question

• Question – This is where the question goes.

• Correct Message Response – This is shown when the answer is correct.

• Incorrect Message Response – This is shown when the answer is incorrect.

• Answer – Enter the possible answer choices, click the ADD ANSWER button to add more fields

• Correct Answer – Select the correct answer(s) using the checkbox next to the correct selection(s).

Options for Quizzes

(the Quizzes > Options for Quizzes menu option)

The Options for Quizzes is only applicable for Simple Quizzes.  The Advanced Quiz has its own options page that you configure for each quiz specifically.  The settings put on this page become Global Settings.

Fields and Descriptions

• Start Button Text – The text that is displayed in the Start Button.

• Check Answer Text – The text that is displayed after an answer is selected.

• Next Question Text – The text that is displayed in the button clicked to move onto the next question.

• Back Button Text – The text that is displayed in the button used to move back a question.

• Your Score Text – The text that is displayed preceding the obtained score.

• Your Ranking Text – The text that is displayed preceding the earned ranking.

• Disable Quiz Message – The message that is displayed when a quiz is disabled.

• Missing Quiz Message – The message that is displayed when a quiz cannot be found.

• Knowledge Level 1-5 – The earned level/ranking names based on a user’s score.

• Select Certificate – The default certificate for each quiz; can be overridden.

• Correct Response Message – The message that is displayed when an answer is correct; can be overridden.

• Incorrect Response Message – The message that is displayed when an answer is incorrect; can be overridden.

• Random Sort Questions – Questions are randomly sorted when selected.

• Random Sort Answers – Answers per question are randomly sorted when selected.

• Disable Next – Removes the NEXT button.

• Disable Responses – Removes the correct/incorrect responses.

• Completion Responses – Removes the quiz completion responses.

Buttons

1.  Update Options – Saves changes.

2.  Reset Options… – Resets options to default.

3.  Export Quiz Data – Exports quiz related data to Microsoft Excel.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Please note that FranchiZeTrainer comes with two different types of quiz:
 

1. Simple Quiz. This is an easy way to quickly create a quiz, but it is more limited in it’s options.

 

2. Advanced Quiz. This provides significantly more quiz options and better reporting. We advise in most instances that you use Advanced Quiz for your testing needs.

  
Note that an Advanced Quiz after it’s created needs to be ‘embedded’ in a Simple Quiz. So even if you only use Advanced Quizzes you will still have simple quizzes.

Advanced Quiz offers more types of questions including:

• Single Choice Question Example
  The single choice question is a classic: many options, yet only one correct answer.

• Multiple Choice Question Example
  The multiple choice question has many correct answer choices.

• Free Text Choice Question Example
  The free text question enables the user to type the answer. There may be one, or many possible answers, depending on your preference.

• Sorting Choice Question Example
  The sorting question type requires the user to specify an order of items.

• Matrix Choice Question Example
  The matrix question enables the user to match different elements with specified criteria.

• Fill-in-the-Blank Question Example
  The fill-in-the-blank question enables the user to fill answers within text or equations.

• Survey Question Example
  The survey quiz allows you to poll users and display response specific message.

How to Create an Advanced Quiz:

1.  Go to Advanced Quiz > Add Quiz

2.  Enter a quiz title.

3.  Scroll down and select a Quiz-Mode.

4.  Enter a Quiz description which will appear before the user starts taking the quiz.

5.  Save and click Back to Overview.

6.  Under the new Quiz title, select Questions > Add Question.

7.  Enter the question.

8.  Select an answer type.

9.  Enter the potential answers and mark the right answer as correct.

10. Save and click Back to Overview > Back to Overview.

Assigning the Advanced Quiz: (mandatory)

This step is mandatory to use your Advanced Quiz within the system. You need to create a Simple Quiz and then connect it to the Advanced Quiz you created above.

1.  Go to Quizzes > Add New

2.  Enter a quiz title.

3.  Enter a Quiz description which will appear before the user starts taking the quiz (Optional).

4.  Scroll to the Quizzes meta-box

• Repeats – Enter repeat attempts allowed for the quiz.

• Certificate Threshold – Enter the percentage (between 0 and 1) that a user must obtain to get a certificate, i.e. “0.8?. If you do not want to award a certificate, set the threshold to “1.1?.

• Passing Percentage – Enter the score a user must obtain in order to pass the quiz and mark it complete.

• Associated Lesson – If the quiz is a “Lesson Quiz”, assign the quiz to the desired lesson. If not assigned, it will be a final quiz for the course.

• Associated Certificate – Select the certificate that a user can obtain after successfully meeting the Certificate Threshold.

• Advanced Quiz – Select an advanced quiz and it will be used in place of the simple quiz.

5.  Select an associated course under Manage Course Associations.

6.  Click Publish.

Note there are many options for an Advanced Quiz and they differ for each question type. There is a good explanation of each option on the site, and as always it is recommended you trial an option to see if it is what you require.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Certificates are awarded on the completion of

1. Create a Certificate Template

Create a template in your favorite image editor (i.e. Adobe Photoshop) with the optimal size for a certificate image is “Letter” size which is 8.5 by 11 inches which is 215.9 mm x 279.4 mm

2. Go to LEARNDASH LMS > CERTIFICATES > ADD NEW

3. Enter a Certificate Title

4. Click on the TEXT tab

This is where you enter text that will be overwritten onto your certificate image. All text you enter on your certificate should be entered onto the “text” tab to avoid errors in formatting.

5. Enter desired Certificate text

Enter the text and/or certificate shortcodes you would like to use. See the screen shot below for an example of certificate text. If you are having trouble entering your Certificate text please contact Hatchit Support for assistance.

6. Upload a Featured Image

Remember the optimal size for a certificate image is “Letter” size which is 8.5 by 11 inches which is 215.9 mm x 279.4 mm

7. Click PUBLISH

Options for Certificates (menu item Certificates > Options for Certificates)

The most important aspect on the Options for Certificates page are the Shortcode Options. Each shortcode has a description and example. The purpose of the shortcodes is to allow you the ability to customize your certificates with information like quiz scores, date the certificate was earned, the user’s name, etc.

The Sort by, Sort Direction, and Posts Per Page fields have no impact on how certificates are displayed. These fields were included for previous versions of FranchiZeTrainer and will likely be phased out in a future release.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Introduction

FZM features an email archiving function that you can use to keep copies of your email communication with your franchisees, team members and other franchise-related contacts within the system. Such record-keeping is often needed for compliance and other purposes.

When you sign up with FZM, your company will be given an email archive address. When sending franchise-related emails, your team members can CC (or BCC) this email address if you want FZM to keep a copy of the email on the system.

With this function, backing up your important business-related emails somewhere is one less task you need to do. By simply opening a record, you can retrieve archived emails associated with that record at any time from within FZM.

Aside from your emails to franchisees, contacts, and staff members, you can also archive emails related to franchise partners, enquiries, and candidates, among others.

Viewing the Email Archive Address

FZM users can view the email archive address assigned to them at any time.

To View the Email Archive Address

1. On the main FZM page, click Admin, then My FZM Settings.

Figure 1. Click My FZM Settings

2. On the FZM Settings window, click the Email Archive tab. You can see your assigned Send to email archive address under the Email Archive Address section.

Figure 2. Click Email Archive to View Your Email Archive Address

NOTE: Inform your FZM Users to CC or BCC this email address if you want to keep copies of their emails within FZM. We recommend User create a contact in their email client for this address and call it “FZM Archive” or similar.

Registering Email Addresses

To keep spam from flooding the system, only users that you define within the system will be allowed to send emails to your Email Archive address.

To Register an Email Address

1. On the main FZM page, click Admin, then My FZM Settings.

2. On the FZM Settings window, click the Email Archive tab.

3. On the Registered Emails section, click Add New.

4. Enter the email address of your contact, then click Save.

Figure 3. Registering an Email Address

To Delete an Email Address

You may delete a user’s email address if you no longer want FZM to archive emails from that address within the system.

1. On the main FZM page, click Admin, then My FZM Settings.

2. On the FZM Settings window, click the Email Archive tab.

3. On the Registered Emails section, select the email address to be deleted, then press Delete on your keyboard.

4. Click Save.

Viewing Archived Emails

You can view archived emails associated with your contacts/franchisees/staff etc at any time.

For illustration purposes, we will view archived emails related to your contacts in the next procedure.

To View Archived Emails from a Contact

1. On the FZM Menu, click Search Contacts, then search for the contact whose archived emails you want to view.

2. Click the Details button to open the contact’s record, then click the Emails tab.

3. Click View Archived Emails. Note that the number of archived emails related to the contact is displayed on the button.

Figure 4. Click Emails, then View Archived Emails

4. On the Archived Emails window, the contact’s archived emails are displayed. Click an archived email to view its content.

How Archiving Emails Works

When FZM receives and email into the archived address it will do a number of things:

1. Check to ensure the person attempting to archive the email is registered in the system. If not registered the email will be ignored.

2. Extract all email addresses within the To, CC and email body, and look for the email address within FZM, then relate the email to that record.

Therefore in order for Email Archive to be successful you must:

• Have users email address registered in My FZM Settings.

• Have the email address in FZM system for your Contact/Franchisee/Staff/Enquiry etc.

• Have the email address in the To, CC or email body of the archived email.

When we use the built-in search function in FZM, the results are displayed in lists or grids. Let’s discuss how to work with the data found in such lists. Note that this productivity tip works across all of FZM.

Let’s look at a typical FZM module with search capabilities – the Directory module. As we all know, the Directory module is where we add contacts, franchise partners and staff members. It also allows us to send Alertzee alerts to our contacts, Alertzee being FZM’s companion app for franchise communications. The Directory module’s Search function allows us to search for contacts, franchise partners, staff members and Alertzee alerts. In this particular example, we’ll look at the Search Contacts functionality within the Directory module.

First, let’s click Directory on the FZM menu, then Search Contacts.

By default, there are 20 search records to a page (you can see the total number of records at the bottom right of each page). Thus, the total number of pages for the search results depend on the number of contacts you may have in your directory. For example, if you have 100 contacts, then you will have five results pages, since 100 / 20 = 5. You can scroll through each page using the navigation bar at the bottom.

Without any search actually being performed yet, we refer to this as the Default view. We will get back to this default view near the end of this article, so please bear this in mind.

Figure 1. The Default View, with the Downward Buttons and the Number of Records Highlighted

At the top section of the Search Contacts page, note that we have five default search criteria, namely:

1. Contact Name

2. Company

3. Owner

4. State

5. Country

As an example, if we’re looking for a certain contact, we can enter the name on the Contact Name box, then click Search. To narrow down our search results, we fill up as many of the search fields as possible.

NOTE: The top section can be customized depending on your requirements. For example, if you frequently used Title when searching for contacts, you may want to add Title to the search fields. If this is the case, open a support ticket and we’ll be more than happy to assist you with your requirement.

With an actual search being performed, the view is now termed as the Search view. Again, please keep this in mind. We will get back to this later in the article.

Below the search fields, or on the lower section of the Search Contacts page, we are presented with a grid showing our contacts. By default, our contacts are presented in descending order based on the first column on the left. In the image below, our contacts are arranged alphabetically based on their last names since Full Name is the first column on the left.

Figure 2. The Search View

To the right of each column name, note that there is a downward arrow (see Figure 1). Click this arrow to see the four options available underneath:

1. Sort Ascending

2. Sort Descending

3. Columns

4. Filter

Sort Ascending, as its name suggest, sorts the column in ascending order.

On the other hand, Sort Descending sorts the column in descending order.

The last two options, Columns and Filter, both have right-facing arrows. When you click these arrows, you are presented with other options.

The Columns option shows all the fields in the Contacts module. Check the corresponding box to add a field as another column on the Search Results page. Thus, if you want to show the Created Date column on the Search Results page, check the Created Date box.

The Filter option allows you to further narrow down your search criteria. This is particularly useful if you want to filter a result set by date. For example, if you want to search for records that were created after May 1, 2016 but before May 21, 2016, you will filter the results the way they are presented in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3. The Filter Option

Feel free to play around with the Filter option to know more about the various other ways to filter each column.

You can also drag the columns in the order you want. Thus, if you want Created Date to be shown first, just drag it to the leftmost column. This will move the Full Name column to the right.

This is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Dragging the Created Date Column from the Right to the Left

Next, on the top right of the Results section at the bottom, there are five icons.

Clicking the leftmost icon displays the search results in a printer-friendly format that you can then print or save on your computer.

Clicking the second icon from the left exports the query results to a CSV file, allowing you to manipulate the data from outside the system, e.g. Excel pivot tables. Note that if you have a very large data set in the list it may take a minute to download, please be patient.

Clicking the icon in the middle restores the default grid settings, in case you change them earlier. The changes will take effect the next time you run a search.

Clicking the fourth item from the left saves the grid’s width, height and column settings, which you can manipulate through drag-and-drop, allowing you to override the default settings, with the new settings becoming your default view.

NOTE:This is where the distinction between the Default view and the Search view becomes important (see our discussion on the Default and Search views earlier in the article). The default view of the Search Contacts page, or any Search page in FZM for that matter (when no search has been performed yet), is different from the view that is displayed when an actual search has been performed. Thus, to override the settings for each view and make them uniform, you have to:

1. Apply the changes first to the Default view, then click Search Contacts again to refresh the view.

2. Click Search, then apply your changes to the Search view (which is different from the default view in Step 1).

The above is illustrated in the next two succeeding screenshots.

Figure. 5 below shows the default view, without any search being performed yet, and after adding the Created Date column and saving the new settings.

Figure 5. The Default View, after Adding the Created Date Column and Saving the New Settings

Figure 6 below shows the view after a search has been performed. Note that it still doesn’t have the Created Date column.

To make the Search view uniform with the Default view shown in Figure 5, you need to add the Created Date column, then apply your changes by saving the new settings.

Fig. 6. The Search View, still without the Created Date Column shown in the Default View

Lastly, clicking the rightmost icon hides the search results; clicking it a second time displays the results again.

That’s it. Hope you’re now able to understand how to manipulate your data in FZM a little better after reading this article.

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

Occasionally someone in the FZM support team may ask you to ‘clear your browser cache’.

Why clearing or refreshing your cache?

Your browser has a folder in which certain items that have been downloaded are stored for future use. Graphic images (such as buttons and icons), photo’s, and even entire web pages are examples of items which are saved or cached. When visiting a webpage your browser checks if a copy of the files on the page is in its cache already. If so, it will save the visitor some downloading and make webpages load faster. Some browsers refer to it’s cache as Temporary Internet Files

Cache refresh

There are some situations when bypassing your browser’s cache is preferred Just clicking the refresh button (or hitting F5) won’t be sufficient in this case, because this reloads the webpage while still using the old files from the cache. You need to refresh your cache first! Refreshyourcache.com contains step by step guides to clear your browser’s cache forcing it to download all latest data from a website. Use the link below to learn how to clear your cache, it is different depending on your browser and also your operating system, see http://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/home/

This can be a complicated error message to understand and fix. In the example above it states “Invoice” but this could be any module or record within FZM.

It has two causes;

1. Two people are working on the same record at once, ie the same Invoice, Customer, Franchisee etc. If the other person hits save before you then the version of the form you are looking at on your screen is now ‘out of date’, so the system is telling you to refresh the form as there is newer data available. While this can be the cause of the warning it is not common that this occurs, just check you don’t have the same record open in two separate tabs, as it might be you causing the error to yourself.

2.There is some business logic on the form/record that is triggering something that adjusts the form in the background, and consequently the version you are looking at is now ‘out of date’ and needs to be refreshed. This is a bug of sorts, meaning Support can fix it by changing the business logic on the form if we can replicate it, so we need to know the exact detailed steps (ie the buttons to press and the data to enter) to replicate the issue.

What should you do when this happens?

You don’t need to close FZM or even the record, just hit the white refresh icon on the top right of the form (in the blue banner). This will fetch the latest version of the form from the server, but it will mean you lose any data you have entered since your last successful save, so if there is a lot of text you may wish to copy it before you refresh the form, so you can paste it back in.

 
Then make a note of your steps and see if you can replicate the issue again, with this information please submit a ticket to support.

View the online version here:  FZM Implementation Guide

You can also download the check-list at: FZM-GoogleDocs-Implementation-Checklist

Applicable accounts: ‘Regular’ Account   ‘Enterprise’ Account

If you find something that isn’t working correctly, then you need to submit a ticket to the support email address.

Submitting clear and accurate support ticket assists the FZM Support Team in pinpointing the issue you have encountered, which can drastically reduce the time to resolution. The support team can address detailed, clearly-written tickets quicker and more efficiently than those which are unclear or lack the necessary information and detailed steps to reproduce the behaviour.

For a full understanding of how to write a good support ticket, please read through this entire article.

The most important thing to remember is: we must be able to replicate your error. For us to do this you need to write clear and detailed reproduction steps. If we can’t reproduce the problem you’re encountering it is very difficult to take action on the issue. Always tell us:

• who was logged in (we need to know the access level)

• what buttons were pressed/actions performed to result in the error

• what the error is i.e describe the error we should see

• what device they were using (desktop, Mac / PC, phone, iPad, Android tablet etc)

• probably what browser and browser version they were using

Here’s some more tips:

• Sending a screen shot in your initial ticket, showing the error is usually a great idea.

• If you’re not sure about the device/browser version etc, just visit http://supportdetails.com/ and send us a screen shot of that page

Write your report clearly so that anyone can sit down and reproduce your bug. Avoid using jargons or abbreviated words because the person reading the bug report may not know what you’re referring to. If you have difficulty following your own steps for reproducing an issue, chances are we’ll find it difficult too.

Test your issue report before submitting it. Do the steps to reproduce your issue result in the same error or issue every time? Did you forget to write down a step? Walking through an issue report before submitting it helps ensure that your report is accurate and complete and contains enough information for us to research the problem effectively.

Spending the necessary time up front to ensure that your support ticket is easy to read, and that all of the pertinent information is included, allows the FZM Support Team and developers to spend more time working on the issue and will help you avoid the frustration of having to backtrack in order to provide missing data.