Administrator Guide 2017
Concepts - Customers, Locations and Contacts

Customers are fundamental to magic5 in that every form must be completed for a particular customer at a particular location. Jobs are also allocated to a customer at a location and job and report pages are usually filtered by customer and, optionally, location.

In other words every system must have one or more customers, with each customer having one or more associated locations

A customer has associated information.  This is non-mandatory and often simply an address but it could include a Sage code or similar.
In some parts of magic5 a customer will not be shown without at least one location defined.  This can be set to a head office location.
When the actual customer is (for example) a member of the public, it might be impractical for each individual to be set up as a magic5 customer. In this case a magic5 Customer of (eg.) "General customer” could be used and the real customer details would be recorded in as data in part of the form.
A location refers to a site or part of a site or even a project that doesn't directly relate to a geographical location.  However it cannot exist without a customer.
Forms are always recorded against locations, and jobs are always allocated to locations.
A locations could be regarded as more fundamental than a customer with much more information can be associated with it than with a customer such as pricing calculators, drawings and plans, and supplementary items such as ward lists.
Contacts can be associated either with the customer as a whole (customer-wide contacts) or they can be associated with a location (location contacts). Contacts have a name and standard contact details such as an e-mail address, a phone number or a mobile phone number.
Permanent contacts are useful in magic5 because:
  • details can easily be selected when creating a job in the office, without having to re-enter data each time.
  • contact information can be available on the device, with “tap to dial” options, text messaging and direct e-mails.
  • e-mails can be sent automatically from completed forms to contacts with e-mail addresses already set up.  These can be location, customer-wide, grouped, or combinations of all three as well as being sent to e-mail addresses entered on the form and specified users.
A contact and a customer-type user account are not the same thing. A contact can receive e-mails but cannot login to the system. A user with a role of “customer” will be able to login to the system but won’t appear as a contact for the customer concerned.
If contacts need user accounts it is possible to automatically generate them when contacts are created.
See Also