Overview
Modern Retail's newest development is our Onboarding Center. New clients who want to integrate their POS or ERP system with their website with us will use our onboarding center to organize & assist the integration process. This article will give you a brief tutorial of our onboarding center & our onboarding process, so we can all get started on your project as soon as possible.
Getting in to the Onboarding Center
After purchasing an integration from Modern Retail, the email account associated with your purchase should receive an email inviting you to create an account. You can also head to the following URL:
And click on the Login & Support link in the upper right corner.
From there, you can select the "Forgot your password" button to create your new account. (or to reset your password, of course).
You only need to configure your account once, and from there you'll be able to log in to the onboarding center whenever you want to check in on your project.
People
The first screen you'll be greeted with is the "People" page. This is where you can enter the information for any of your employees, or any 3rd-Party contractors who'll be working on your integration project. Your own information should automatically be entered in the top set of text boxes, but please be sure to review it just in case.
In order to add employees, select the Add User button located over your company name, and fill out that employee's first name, last name, and email address. If the person you're adding is one of your employees, select your company name from the options below. . If they're not an employee, but a 3rd-Party Contractor or something similar, select Other instead. Be sure to correctly enter their full email address!
When you're done, hit the Save button. Remember, you can always go back and add more users later if need be.
Roles
You can also select & determine user roles from the People page. User roles determine what they can do (or what their "permissions are") regarding any services Modern Retail is providing you. Below is a list of each of the roles you can assign, along with a description thereof.
The Owner role has all potential privileges for control over your project. Once your project is complete, the owner can add or remove any of the ecommerce services Modern Retail offers; owners can also add or remove users of any level. We recommend only the owner of your business be given this role.
The Administrator role functions in much the same way; once the project is complete, they can add or remove services & users. The difference between owners and administrators lies in what kind of users they can add or remove; owners can add or remove any type of user, including administrators, while administrators can only add or remove users lower on the totem pole than them, so to speak. We recommend assigning the administrator role to the employee(s) you wish to leave in charge of the ecommerce side of your business.
The User role has access to your integration backend, but cannot add or remove services or other users. The User role should be given to any other employees you want to have access to the backend for your integration once your project is complete.
Please note that once your project is complete, you'll be able to modify the permissions each of these users has, as well as add or remove new users.
The Billing checkbox on the right controls who receives billing invoices for your integration project in their listed email address.
Once you're done assigning roles, hit the Next button in the bottom left. This will send an invite to each of the users on this list, using the email account associated with that user. You can return to this page later to check on which invites have been accepted, re-send invites, or to assign roles to new users you've added.
Tasks
The tasks page is where you'll spend most of your time in the onboarding center. Here we have an organized list of all the tasks involved with your integration project, split between tasks relating to your POS/ERP system and tasks related to your ecommerce platform.
This screen will look slightly different depending on which POS/ERP System & which ecommerce platform you use, but the general structure will be the same regardless. As you can see, it's a list of tasks; you can see an indicator on the left showing whether a task is complete or not. Let's go over the different essential elements:
1. In the top left you can see a tab for your ecommerce platform (here BigCommerce) and your POS system (here Counterpoint). Clicking on these tabs will show you a customized "to-do list" for your project, complete with crucial information like who each task is assigned to, relevant help articles, and completion status.
2. The rightmost column is where you can send and receive messages relating to any task. This is how you'll be able to stay in touch with your Modern Retail project manager over the course of your project. We'll use this messaging system to answer any questions you might have, request anything we might need from you, and more.
You can write your message in Write A Message textbox, and then hit Send to send the message. The Upload Files option lets you upload photos or videos, to help provide clarity if you're having an issue. The Add Recipients button lets you choose which of your employees you want to be notified when you send a message (by default your Modern Retail project manager will always be notified of new messages).
The Onboarding Center also has forms for you to fill out crucial information we need to complete your project. You can see these by looking for any task that has the orange "Tasks" button in the Assign column.
Click on the orange Tasks button to open the relevant form. Then, fill the form out to the best of your ability (if something is particularly confusing, consider sending a message to your project manager!) and hit the Confirm button on the form.
Once you've filled all the required fields out and hit Confirm, this information will be securely transmitted to Modern Retail, and the task will be marked as complete. If something is filled out incorrectly, we may mark the task as incomplete again and notify you of what the problem is.
Onboarding Process
Every integration project is assigned at least two team members from Modern Retail:
- Project Manager
- Integration Engineer
Engineers and developers are amazing at what they do, but let's face it, they aren't always the best communicators. That's why we assign both an engineer and project manager to every integration project. This allows the developer to do what they do best, freeing up the project manager to give the customer some personal attention and make sure the communication keeps flowing.
Support
After your integration is up and running and has passed acceptance testing, you will be turned over to Modern Retail's support organization. For more information about how Modern Retail handles ongoing support and upgrades, please read:
Thank you for choosing Modern Retail for your ecommerce integration experience! Please feel free to get in touch with your Project Manager if you have any additional questions.