PicaPica - Spectacular CRM » General

PicaPica Browser support

test — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:35:52 +0000

The following list are the browsers that are officially supported by PicaPica. Any problem occurring in any of the following browsers will be treated as a bug. If there are problems that occur in other versions of the browsers, we will not officially treat them as a high priority bug, and they may or may not be solved. We have chosen the following browsers, because we know they support every feature we implemented.

Chrome 7+
Firefox 4+
Internet Explorer 9+
Opera 12+
Safari 5+

If I cancel my account, what happens with my data?

test — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:06:04 +0000

This question has passed us several times over the years, and therefore we thought it would be a great idea to actually have a place for it in the support section.

First let us explain how the data is saved in the first place, so you have an idea how it looks like.

The main data and records are all saved in an object-relational database, which is managed by our database server.
The uploads being made from PicaPica are stored on our NAS server.
Daily backups (up to 2 weeks) are saved on our backup server.

When you cancel your account we – of course – wait until your time runs out and after that we will beginning to remove the data. In effect this means that if your account runs out on the 5th of October 2013, we will begin removing data from the 6th of October 2013.

Your environment will first be deactivated so nobody can login any more, after that we will first remove all the uploads through a secure deletion method called British HMG-IS5, which is one of standards used in secure data removal. This secure removal will also be done on the database server, rendering the database useless for recovery.

The only thing left that is still referring to your data is our backup, which is made every day and stored up to two weeks. This means that the last final bit of your data will be destroyed 15 days after your account removal, for our example that would be the 21st of October 2012.

After that there is no one that can still actually retrieve any of the data, as it is has been passed by military grade data removal software.

Working with the Opportunity Section

test — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 10:46:55 +0000

As of the 20th of July 2012 we have changed a lot of the opportunity screens. This blog post aims to give an insight in how to use the new screen (or for new users just to learn how it works). For the more experienced users this post might include pieces that have not changed and therefore will be of no interest to you, however for completeness we did add it as well.


Setting up the Sales Stages Protip: You need to have an Administrator role to do this. The first thing that should be done before actually beginning to add opportunities is defining your sales stages. Defining your sales stages.Defining them is easy, but you need to be an administrator to do this. First click on the 'System' icon in the menu bar, then click on the blue link saying 'Opportunity Tasks / Sales Stages' in the new screen.
Once the new screen has loaded you will see PicaPica comes with a couple of preloaded sales stages for you to use. You are free to use the ones we have put into your system, however we do advice you to update it according to your own sales stage. By clicking the 'Add new Task' link you will create an empty task for you to define (more later). By clicking the pencil behind the task, you will edit it (more later).
By clicking the pencil next to the sales stage you are entering the edit mode. This changes the field slightly and makes it easier to edit the current record. First of all make sure the sales stage has a simple name that covers it all. More than a couple of words is not necessary, if you have more to tell you better use the description field for that. The description fields covers the basics of the task that needs to be done. The order of the task describes where in your sales track this sales stage belongs. Beginning with zero (0) and ending in the highest number. We like using multiples of 10 so that we still have loads of space left to put another one in between if we like. Don't forget that you cannot edit or delete a task any more once it is being used in an opportunity.
The probability field is to define what the chance is that an opportunity in this stage wins. Of course this is very difficult to measure, but time will tell you what the probability probably is. Days after is a field that is being used to notify the assigned user (or the user who changed sales stage last) that a task is due to do. If zero (0) is used, it will not notify anyone, if it is above zero (0) it will send a notification daily to tell the user about the task. Is the opportunity complete (i.e. lost or won) then just tick this box. Once this all has been set up it is time to make some money, or at least test out the opportunity section a bit..

Working with the Opportunities Overview Protip: A user with any role can do this. After the Administrator defined the Sales stages it is time to start using it! The first thing you want to do is actually going there first. You can do this by clicking on the piggy bank icon with the label 'Sales'. This brings you to the Opportunity Overview, which on arrival always displays the open opportunities. Searching in opportunities couldn't be simpler, just begin typing part of the name - that you still remember - and the system immediately searches your query.
Clicking on the tick box 'Show closed opportunities' switches the list with open opportunities to closed ones (e.g.. won or lost). When you click on the 'Chart' button on the left side of the screen, it will show you two charts that display the current value of opportunities per sales stage (Pipeline Value Forecast) and the amount of opportunities per sales stage (Opportunities Per Sales Stage). Clicking on the 'Chart' button closes the screen again.
If you like to go to the opportunity that are in the list, simply click on the title and it will go to the requested record. Protip: Only users with Read/Write roles can add, edit and remove opportunities. If you would like to delete records, tick the box in front of them and a new -small- button appears on the top of the list with the title 'delete'. When clicked it shows a confirmation if you really want to delete the opportunities. Watch out though as it really deletes the opportunities and there is no way to retrieve them again.

Adding new Opportunities Protip: Only users with Read/Write roles can add opportunities. To add an opportunity simply click on 'Add Opportunity' when in the Opportunity Overview screen. In the new screen you will only need to give the new opportunity a name, but other optional fields are available through the 'show more fields' link. When the form has been correctly filled in, the button below the form will go green, indicating the form has the minimal values needed. Remember like in any other form, only the bold fields are actually required.

Working with the Opportunity details Protip: Only users with Read/Write roles can edit opportunities. If you are a read/write user, you simply click on any red-underlined text and you will be able to change that field immediately. For some actions though you are required to go to a new screen (i.e. details of an activity, upload a new document, go to account). If you are not sure what certain fields are, simply click on them to see a simple explanation for them. To change the sales stage, simply drop down the select box and select another sales stage. This will immediately update the record, so there is no need to save!
You can also add an activity to the current record by clicking 'add new activity'. It will then display a pop-up where you can select the activity type, and easily at it to the current opportunity. After adding the opportunity it will refresh the activity list and you will see your newly added activity. You can edit (and delete) your activity by clicking on the activity title which transfers you to the details of the activity.

How to navigate through PicaPica

test — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:24:55 +0000

We created a collection of images (below) that are helpful getting your ‘grip’ on PicaPica’s navigation. Simply click on the images to see the zoomed in version.

What is the terminology of PicaPica?

test — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:52:35 +0000

For people who never have used a CRM before the terminology might be a bit confusing. To take that confusion away a bit we compiled a list of phrases that are frequently used.

Terminology

Contacts

A contact is a person where your company has an immediate relation with. Think about customers, partners, resellers, etc. etc.

Accounts

An account is most of the time a company which contains all the contacts related to that account (for contacts this is probably the company where they work).

Leads

A lead is someone who is not yet directly related to your company but has a strong chance of becoming one. Think of a lead as a potential customer that has requested a quote or proposal, of course this can be in several other forms as well; this highly depends on how your company gets their customers.

Targets

Targets are people that are not related to your business in any way, they are probably people that you have met at trade shows or those who have subscribed to your newsletter. Targets can come from any where and are important to keep track of, as targets can be converted to leads, who can be converted to contacts.

Trackers

Used within campaigns to see the impressions made for the tracker. The tracker can be used to redirect users to a different website and track the amount of impressions that it receives.

Target lists

These are collections of contacts, employees, leads and targets that make up the target of a certain action. Helpful for registering newsletter subscribers, or people that you like to send promotional items. Of course this can differ per company.

Campaigns

A campaign is a simple registration of a marketing campaign you are planning, executing or done with. It can is a simple tool to let you see what your expected budget is, your actual costs and the amount of impressions your trackers received. You can also link up target lists to see who your actual target are in this campaign.

What are the system requirements for PicaPica?

test — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:06:53 +0000

Although virtually any modern computer with Internet access can use PicaPica it only has been guaranteed to work on the following modern browsers.

Compatible browsers:

Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 8 and higher
Google Chrome
Apple Safari
Opera

All these browsers must have JavaScript enabled and must have a minimal screen dimension 1024×768 or higher. It is recommended that the latest browser version is used when using PicaPica.

How to use Custom Fields

test — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:59:38 +0000

Defining Custom Fields

The thing you need to do is to just start adding them. How to add them? Go to the record to which you’d like to add a custom field (at the moment this can be an account, contact, opportunity, lead or target) and look in the bottom right corner of the details.

Custom Fields at the contact details.

As you can see in our example there are no Custom Fields defined just yet. To add a Custom Field simple click on ‘Add custom field’ and a little menu will scroll down. In this menu you can type a field name, or select an existing one you have already defined, by clicking on the little arrow pointing down.

Adding a new Custom Field.

Once you have typed (or selected) a field name and a field value, just simply click on ‘add’ to add the custom field to the record. In our case we added the field name ‘project’ with the value ’0034′.

A new Custom Field is added.

Whenever you open the ‘Add custom fields’ from now on, you will see that (in our case) ‘project’ is already being preselected. You can easily just type something else in that field or – if you have any other Custom Fields defined – select another Custom Field from the list.

To delete a custom field you just click on the green ‘delete’ link behind the Custom Field. Once a field isn’t being used any more, it will automatically stop displaying.

How to search Custom Fields

Once you have defined fields, it is of course important to be able to search them. To search for the Custom Fields you first need to click on the ‘Search custom fields’ link in the menu.

The ‘Search custom fields’ link takes you to the required screen.

A new overview will open with search options on the left side and the search results on the right side. When the screen initially opens all the available fields are being loaded, displaying every custom field that is saved.

Initial screen.

To search Custom Fields simple fill one or both of the fields on the left side. The top field can only be selected, and the bottom field is a search field that searches on any keyword inserted.

Searching is simple, fill out what you like and click on ‘Search custom fields’.

When the results are being shown on the right side you can either click on the title to go to the record in which the field is defined, or click on the ‘toggle’ button to expand it with a bit more information.

Expanding the result can show some interesting data.

Q & A:

Why can’t I define different field types like tick boxes, date/time fields etcetera?

As our eternal mission is to create a simple CRM, we have decided it is not beneficial for the simplicity if we add a bunch of complexity to the system. A tick box can simple be solved by just typing ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and a date/time field simply by typing the date/time itself. This CRM is not made for big corporations that has strict policies on usage, we provide a CRM that is simple and dynamic, just like you like it.

How many times can I use the same field in a record?

As much as you like, it is all up to you.

How to export my contacts from Microsoft Outlook?

test — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:38:02 +0000

The picture gallery underneath explains through pictures how you can export contacts from Microsoft Outlook (2010 used in the example).