Users
Overview
Users can be added to tFLOW in several ways: Manually adding in the system settings via the User Manager, importing a CSV file, adding a user to an Order or Job with the Add User menu option, or upon Order or Job creation via integration with an MIS or W2P system.
User Manager
To access the User Manager, click on the settings icon in the upper right of the window and select Users:
You may edit any user by clicking on their name in the list. To create a new user, click the blue Add User button at the bottom of the page. The user configuration window is divided into four tabs: Main, Assigned Companies, Email Alerts and Email Logs.
Main
- The image area at the top is for the user avatar. Drag and drop any JPG, PNG, or BMP less than 2 MB into this window, or click to open the browse and select window to choose the desired image file.
- Company defines to which company this user belongs. While users may view Orders and Jobs of other companies if configured to do so (see Assigned Companies), all users must belong to one company. If you are configuring tFLOW, all users in your company should then also belong to the same company, while all of your customer users will belong to their own companies.
- User name – the name that will appear in the UI and also be used as a salutation for email alerts.
- User password – it is recommended to use a generic password such as “changeme” which the user can later change to their own password.
- User password confirmation – assures that the entered password was correctly typed in.
- User email –email address is the primary identifier of users in tFLOW, and every user must have a unique email address. In addition to login and user identification, this address will be used for all email notifications.
- User Role – this setting defines the permissions this user will have in tFLOW. See Roles for more information regarding configuring or creating additions User Roles. By default, your company will have an Instance Company Manager role which enables all permissions. For every customer company you create, an additional User Role will automatically be created for that company. For example, if you create a company called Acme, tFLOW will create a role called Acme customer role. This will be the only option you have to choose from here. While this default setting is generally sufficient for most uses, you can create additional user roles for any company with different permissions.
- Default job view – when artwork is uploaded to the system, tFLOW creates both proof and production files. Normally customers view proofs, while site owners can view both. The default setting for all users is Proof. For other users in your company, you can select Production if needed.
- Notification link type – tFLOW can send email notifications with two types of links: private and public. Private links require the user to login with name and password in order to access the job or order, while giving the user access to other parts of the system such as the dashboard, Order and Job lists, etc. (Note: customer users (non-site owners) with this access can only see the jobs and orders of their own company, unless expressly configured to see more). Public links give access to a particular job or order and do not require login. A user who clicks on a public link will go directly to the proof or order view, but not have access to any other orders or jobs in the system unless they login.
- Language – defines the application interface language for this user. This setting is for this user only and does not affect the system setting or language selection for other users. Note: preflight messages remain in the language of the system setting and are unaffected by any choice made here.
- User phone – field to store phone number for reference.
- Artwork Upload – You can provide each user with a personal link that can be used to upload artwork. When enabling this option, enable any other options you wish to include with this such as Job Name, PO Number, Product, Splitting Scheme and Notes.
- Show only own orders – When unchecked, this user will see all orders which assigned to any of the companies which are visible to them, regardless of whether they are assigned to the particular order. If checked, then the user will only see orders to which they are assigned.
- Auto assign this user to new Orders – During manual order creation, users may be assigned or unassigned to orders by clicking in the checkboxes next to their names. This setting is useful to avoid having to constantly check or uncheck users, by setting the default behavior to either automatically add or not to any new order. Auto assign is also important for automated workflows where orders are created automatically by external systems such as MIS or W2P. By checking or unchecking this box, the user will be automatically assigned or not to any new orders created in tFLOW for companies the user is assigned to.
- Auto assign to new companies (site owner users only). This option only appears for users which are part of the site owning company. When a customer company is created, all users which have this box checked will be able to view orders and jobs for any newly created companies.
- Enabled – activates or deactivates the user account. When not checked, the user may not login.
Assigned Companies
All users belong to their own company (shown by the grey checkbox which is not editable in this window), but company assignment permits them to view Orders, Jobs, and Users from other companies. By default, customer users (non-site owners) are only assigned to their own company when created. If a User “John” is created for company Acme, he will be assigned only to Acme by default in this window. Site owners are also assigned to their own company (Site owner), but can also be automatically assigned to other companies depending on the checkbox “Auto Assign to New Companies” in the Main tab.
To allow the current user to view/not view Jobs and Orders for any company other than to the company to which they belong, select or deselect from this list accordingly. The most common practice is the following:
- Customers (non-site owners) – only their own company checkbox is marked.
- Production personnel – all companies are marked
- Sales personnel – only companies which correspond to their accounts are marked
There are exceptions, of course, such as in the case of collaborating advertising agencies, print brokers, and others, but if you are unsure of which setting you should use, the default, or general guideline above should serve.
Email Alerts
One of the most challenging steps to setting up tFLOW correctly is deciding on a plan for email notifications. Finding the right ground between sending out too many email alerts, and not alerting important events in a timely manner will take some experimenting and testing. Because practices vary so widely from company to company, no one setting is going to work for everyone, which is why tFLOW gives you a great deal of flexibility in configuration.
Alerts are divided into three sections – Order, Job, and Messaging and the options in each section apply to those items respectively.
Order Alerts
- Created – alerts the user that an order has been created, the second it is created. This is useful for alerting the user to upload artwork into an order. It is generally not needed if artwork will be uploaded by someone other than this user, as there are other alerts for approval or reviewing the order once jobs have been created.
- Review/Approval – see section “Order Review” for more information on this alert type as well as additional settings. This checkbox applies to automated Order Reviews set at the Order level by “Planned number of jobs”. This setting does not apply to manually sent Order Reviews, which are sent regardless of this setting.
- Status Report – provides a digest-like email with a summary of the order. When checked, additional configuration options will appear:
- Send every – defines how often the report will be sent in hours and minutes. Note that a report will be sent only if there have been changes within the defined period. For example, if the Send every is defined at 1 hour, but there have been no new activities in the order within the last hour, no report will be sent.
- Send report only on these days – allows the user to define which days to receive the report. For example, Saturdays and Sundays are usually left unchecked.
- Turn off all notifications until – provides a calendar to pick a date at which status reports will resume. This setting is normally used to cover vacation periods and avoid unwanted order reviews during these periods.
- Report Content Max activity entries – the dropdown selector defines how many activities will be listed in the email. After the limit is reached, a “More” button will appear in the email which the user can click on to view the additional activities. If this number is set to a high value, and the number of jobs in an order is also large, the resulting Status report can be quite long.
- Include Order Activity – In addition to the Order Summary which is always visible, the Order Activity option includes items such as messages, new jobs added, and changes to the order settings.
- Include Job Activity - In addition to the Order Summary which is always visible, the Job Activity option includes items such as messages, job state changes, etc. for each job.
- Only include Jobs which have updates – limits the jobs listed in the Status Report to jobs which have had activity in the time specified in “Send every”. For example, if the order has 10 jobs, but only three have had updates within the last hour, with this option checked, only those three jobs would be included in the Status Report.
Job Alerts
- Attach PDF Proof to Approval eMail – embeds the tFLOW generated PDF proof into the Awaiting Approval job email alert. This only applies to the Awaiting Approval alert. This is useful in cases where customers insist on receiving PDF proofs, without having to export out the proof and send in a separate email application. Note that proofs can get large even at low resolution if the page count is very high, or the dimensions of the artwork are large.
- Job Preflight Alerts
- Preflight Errors (On Hold) – sends an alert when the uploaded file fails preflight. In some cases, these alerts are sent directly to the customer so that they can provide new artwork, others are handled by the prepress dept, while in others it is the CSR who manages failed artwork cases. You should be sure that this option is checked/unchecked in each user account according to your workflow
- Job Approval Alerts
- Approved – sends an email when the job has been approved. Usually turned on for CSR’s.
- Awaiting Approval – sends an email when the file has finished processing successfully and is waiting for the customer to view the proof and approve. Used in cases where job count is low in each order and a quick
- Job Revision alerts
- Awaiting New Revision – sends an alert if the job is awaiting a revision.
- Job Creation/Cancel alerts
- Created - alerts the user that a job has been created, the second it is created. This is useful for alerting the user to upload artwork into the job. It is generally not needed if artwork will be uploaded by someone other than this user, as the Awaiting Approval alert is generally used for those cases.
- Cancelled – The job has been cancelled.
- Job Production Alerts
- Sent to Production – alerts the user that the job has been sent to the production area – could be a RIP or imposition program. This is the final state for tFLOW and only takes place after approval.
- Resent to Production – alerts the user that the job has been sent again to production. Useful in cases of reprints.
- Job RUSH Alerts - sends an alert when a rush has been requested or cleared.sets the job status back to normal.
- Messaging Alerts - sends an alert when messages have been added, edited or deleted to an order.
Email Log
This screen will provide you with detailed information on emails that have been sent to the user including the time and date the email was sent.