Contacts PRO: First step to Webasyst CRM
September 18, 2014We have released a plugin for the Contacts app, which significantly enhances its functionality. You can quickly evaluate the difference by looking at the contact management panels shown in the picture below (before and after installation of the PRO plugin):
Important features of Contacts PRO
Advanced search by any field and various conditions including data provided by other apps; e.g., "find customers who ordered certain product within specified period". A search query can be saved as a permanent filter available in the left navigation bar for further use.
Field constructor enables you to add custom fields to contact profiles so that you can store additional information about your contacts, which may be required for your business needs.
Contact import from CSV files or simple text copied and pastes into a text field will enable you to quickly fill your contact database by transferring data from various address books and other sources.
Search and auto-merging of duplicate contacts helps to easily find contacts with identical email addresses or mobile phones and merge them to eliminate excessive records in your contacts database.
Online log of user and customer actions shows information about different actions performed in your Webasyst backend and in customers' online accounts: logins, logouts, adding and editing data, new orders, new support requests, registration, signup for newsletters, unsubscription from mailings, etc. This functionality will enable you to analyze online activity of your customers and employees to improve the overall efficiency of your business process.
Event planning in a common corporate calendar available to backend users.
Birthday list displayed on a calendar to help you remember the birthdays of all your colleagues, partners, and customers.
Email notifications on users' actions, birthdays, and scheduled events.
Notes can be added to any contact to store arbitrary text information about anyone.
Company is a new contact type. Person contacts can be associated with company contacts.
"On map" mode to let you view contacts' addresses on a Google map one by one or in groups.
Registration (signup) form is a tool for collecting contact information from your website visitors. They can submit their name, and email address or phone number. You can use these data to establish contact with your clients and thus create your unique contacts database to develop your business.
Special notes about transition from Contacts to Contacts PRO
After the installation of the PRO plugin, all your contacts and current settings will remain the same. Most basic functionality available in the Contacts app will also remain available with the PRO plugin. The most notable change is connected with contact categories. We have decided not to support categories, because in the PRO plugin we have introduced contact lists and filters, which offer more useful functionality and are a powerful replacement for categories.
In the basic version of Contacts there are two types of contact categories:
- System categories are automatically created, maintained, and completed by other Webasyst apps. For example, the "Store" category is created when the first customer places an order in your online store, and this customer is added to that special category. Similar to the store, the first registered author of the a comment in the blog is added to special "Blog" category.
- Custom categories can be created manually when you are using the basic Contacts app.
When the PRO plugin is installed, both of these category types are retained in the form of contact lists, and you can continue using the as before. However, once you delete any of them, you cannot restore it any more. Instead of that, you can run contact search by the conditions which were used to complete the previous category, and save your query as a permanent filter. A filter looks very similar to a category, but its internal operating principle would be different; a filter always displays up-to-date contact data returned at the time when you open a filter in your backend, while a category is completed and updated only when it is required so by the application it is connected with.
Example
Suppose a customer has placed his first order in your online store. This customer will be automatically added to the "Store" category. Later his order may be canceled. However, that customer will still remain in the "Store" category even though he has no new or completed orders any more and may even become your partner or colleague in the future.
Compare this behavior with that of a filter in Contacts PRO. Suppose that we perform contact search by condition "placed a new order in online store" and save this query as a filter named "Store (new order)". When a customer places a new order, he is taken into account by this filter and is displayed when you select this filter. When an order of such a customer is canceled, then the customer is automatically deleted from the filtered list. This is how you can use filter "Store (new orders)" to view an up-to-date list of your customers who have just placed new orders. Now let us create another filter "placed order which is currently in 'Completed' state". This filter will display all customers who have paid for ordered items and already received them.
So, instead of one system category named "Store" in Contacts app, you can set up an arbitrary number of various contact selection filters using Contacts PRO plugin; e.g.:
Placed order and chose shipping method "X"
Paid for order
Placed order which is currently being delivered
Purchased product "X" in September
Placed orders and sent support requests during past year
etc.
The purchase price of Contacts PRO is reduced at the start of sales: $89 $44.99.
This special offer remains valid until October 1, 2014.
Become one of the first users of this new software product! Contacts PRO will be the core component of the future Webasyst CRM, which we are currently developing. Your personal opinion and your suggestions will determine how the product will be developed and what features will be included in it.