Q&A Webinar : September 12th, 2023

Welcome to the Succeed with Software podcast brought to you by SweetProcess. Today's episode is from one of the bi-weekly Q&A webinars. To participate live, just follow the link in the description to sign up and submit your questions. Be sure that you're subscribed on YouTube and following us on all social media to get the latest videos, updates about new and existing features. All right, so let's get started.

Okay, hello and welcome everyone. This is Mike. I'm the founder and CEO of SweetProcess. Welcome to our Q&A webinar here on Tuesday at noon Eastern Standard Time. All right.

So let's start off with everyone if I can get you to jump into the chat, please. Find that in your Zoom. Let us know where you're joining us from. Um just let me know that you can hear my voice. Hi Dave from Los Angeles and Jennifer from from We've We've spoken before.

Jennifer's been here before, I think. Yeah. Because we uh Is that Covington, Jennifer? Somewhere close by, I think. So.

My wife is from Cincinnati, so Jennifer and I know We know that We We got some stomping ground mutual familiarity going on. Okay. Very good. So what we'll do everyone is we'll go ahead and just get started. Hi Dave from Los Angeles.

Nice to see you. Yep. I see some questions from Dave. I see some questions from uh Jennifer, I think. Is Is it Tomorrow?

Same as Is that you, Jennifer? The last name matches up. I just want to make sure. Have some questions here that were submitted. Okay, good.

Okay. All right. So we we will start with some questions. Um But in general, if every anyone here is not yet started a free trial, just encourage you to do that. Hey Coach Tomorrow.

So that's uh I think we have a couple So Tomorrow um participants here from Bentonville. Yes, great. Uh Dave, so we'll do everything by chat. I'll be my voice, your chat. And I have your questions as they were submitted, so we'll can kind of start with those.

And then we will continue step-by-step. Try to get everyone taken care of. Uh I typically we're able to kind of go into the uh s- some detail, but not complete detail, complete build-outs, and complete thought processes in these kind of webinars because we don't really have the time, but that's what uh wizarding sessions are for. And we do offer those. Of course, at cost, so at the lowest cost possible to you to find to have someone face-to-face, human-to-human in on a Zoom meeting to go over your ideas if you need that.

And uh and signing up for a free trial can get you some of those sessions as a bonus. So you check that out on the pricing page. Okay, for those of you who haven't started a free trial, just encourage you to start a free trial. And along your way of learning, do not forget about the help documentation as we see here. And of course, SweetProcess Academy, which you can access from inside your SweetProcess account by clicking right here to Academy.

And this will take you And you can do this from a free trial. You don't need a paid account. It'll take you directly into the Academy where you can go step-by-step through very well-documented uh videos that can go very deep. Many of them and so we do our best to bring you into the software in that way. Okay.

So uh why don't we start with Dave, first one to jump in. So let's start with Dave. And let's see if we can get to some first understandings here. All right, Dave. So it's okay if I read about read out read your questions out loud and and uh go over those things.

Okay. Let me put the chat into the screen here so everybody can see. And caution, everyone can see now. So don't type things into the chat that you don't want everyone to see. All right.

So Dave is running a digital agency. Great. I'm familiar with that process and unhappy with current CRM and project management system. Agree. Was also familiar with that process and that's where everything started.

Um a decade or more ago, Dave. So good. Embedded contact form on my website to make make a lead in deals pipeline. How much exposure do you have yet, Dave, to SweetProcess as a system? Uh are you really early on in your journey here?

So I don't want to replicate some knowledge. Okay, good good good. So let's let's do this. The first thing you want to be thinking about is a kickoff form, Dave. So in our in our system, a kickoff form is sort of the very first thing that you want to be thinking about.

When you create a form, you'll have some options. Kickoff form, update form, and general form. And then not too very far into the future, like literally days, you'll also see a support ticket form that might come in handy for you. But we're going to be using kickoff form today. And essentially what this is going to do is kick off a process or a workflow for you.

And these are uh designed to be embedded or as stand-alone landing pages if you want to use it in that way. But yes, they're designed to be embedded and I'm going to go ahead and just go back and switch to one that's more uh built out, but I just wanted to show you that process starting with the kickoff form. Let's go with I was just doing here. I think any one of these would be fine. Uh so with your kickoff form, Dave, you're going to define your fields here and those can be uh consisting of company or contact, project custom fields, advance.

These are things that you'll have to understand. Typically, you're probably working with companies. So you'll want to add the company field here. And then you'll get the company name. And then you can add company custom fields and that will let you uh get data on the company.

And then your primary contact. You probably want to work in this configuration here. This is typically our most popular configuration for bringing companies into the system. And so what this basically does is creates the company name as a company and that's who you'll be working with. It will use the comp- company as the target for any assignments or automations, meaning you're working directly with the company.

The primary contact is just a person at the company that responds to emails, but that person could change as we all know. And so in this way, the company becomes the point that you're actually working with. And then you can plug and play that primary contact as needed along the process. Uh so this is why we always want to try to push you towards if if the if you are indeed working with companies, let's configure everything towards company. And then you can This gives you a couple options that are that make life easier in the future.

First, that you can switch to primary contact very easily without affecting anything in your system. Everything stays safe, stable. And the only difference is that a new person a new set of fingers and eyeballs will read emails and and respond to emails. But everything else is the same. Okay?

Secondly, if you uh start to work with another company that has the same primary contact, you can still do that as well because you can work say have uh say you have a client who has three or four businesses, but they that single individual needs to be the primary contact for all four, that is also possible. But only in the sense that if you set up each individual company as an individual um sorry, each company as an entity that you're dealing with separately, right? But then because they all have the same primary contact, that person is the uh sender of receiver of emails, replier of emails, the contact person for that. All right. So does that make sense in the in just a quick company first kind of thing?

Absolu- Absolutely, Dave. Let me get there. Yep. Dave's saying can Will this give me the ability to start a project based on company name? Yes.

All right. So uh you'll Let's go to the embed side. So let's go to link embed. Just wanted you to see this process. So you have an embed code here and you you'll be able to you'll know how that works.

This is a test form where we're testing different functionalities, so don't take too much from the design. Um but here's your embed code. And what we do that I think you will appreciate and most agency owners or someone familiar with how this works, we provide to you all of the design um elements here in the back, including custom CSS. So we let you do all the styling and design changes from our side so that when it arrives in your embed destination, uh it's already styled. And because as you know, it's going to be loaded in iframe, which is the industry standard way of doing things, and targeting elements inside the iframe is nearly impossible.

It's not impossible, but it's very, very difficult. Um as far as most people's capabilities. So, what this will allow you to do is set everything up so that it matches perfectly the place that you will embed it, including your your after submission uh options, etc. And then when you embed it, it'll look perfect in your spot. And then in addition, you can make it a direct link.

We see how they have the direct link here. If you want to uh create this form as a standalone form. And here's a good example, actually. I always keep this up just for an example. Uh this is a standalone kickoff form, okay?

So, notice the URL here. And that's achieved by using the friendly URL functionality. So, here's the direct link as it's coded, but we allow you to say um you can name it whatever you want. But here, you can say project kickoff form, something like that. And create your friendly URL, and now you have this very nice URL that you can say put on a business card or uh put it in the bottom of your email signature, or in any way pass this cleanly to someone who can use it, see it, understand what it looks what it does by the name instead of some uh undefined hash that you see here.

So, this is a little bit nicer. And you'll see in this case exactly that uh here. And so, all this is is this kickoff form is designed as standalone. It's got CSS for the background, a little card. And then here's the form part of it.

And when the form is submitted, then it works just like you would think. Um like a normal kickoff form. So, there's two options for you in the way to use it. Now, let's go back to the build. You're concerned your your one question is about kicking off a project.

I see proposals, contracts, e-sign, invoice. And you And you This is in the question you submitted. Uh subscriptions, etc. So, let's scroll down to here. And let's just go ahead and set this already set as client.

So, I'm going to set it as client because this will open up the most options below. If you set it as lead, you'll need to understand what that indicates. Um and in our world, lead, prospect, and client may not exactly match how you use those terminologies, but those are these are not set in stone nomenclatures. You'll need to just understand from our documentation exactly what it means. Very likely you'll bring them in as a prospect if after reading those definitions and understanding.

Okay, so you'll bring them in as a prospect. And in that sense, you can start here's a document template. This would be where you have contracts and e-sign. So, this template will be designed by you to uh include all of your static information. And then you'll include dynamic placeholders for things like name, company name, anything, any custom field you can put in here.

And those custom fields and and and data can be entered from this form. So, when this form is submitted, it'll send the data the data will be uh absorbed by this document template that you call by the And this will be uh processed on the submission of this form. The data will be inserted, and the document will be ready and sent based on the configurations in the document template. So, if you're looking to generate a a a contract immediately on the submission of the form, this is where you would do that. Okay?

And here in the document title, you see all the placeholders here. This is how you can uniquely name each contract based on data that's submitted. Uh now here's some additional assignments and uh automations, things like event generators, email marketing audience. Here's your proposal generator. So, you'll If you have a you'll have a predefined proposal.

It's conceivable. I see you mentioned that. Down here, you'll you'll find You won't find invoice generators yet. You won't find that kind of things because we need to be in uh client role for invoices to show up. But if you aren't using clients, you can uh trigger invoice generators based on that.

So, there's tons of options here. And And understand that each time this form is submitted, what we call the target, which is the person on the other side of this form, when they submit it, each one of these assignments and automations will be will be triggered relative to that target. So, any data submitted by that target will be used in all of these automations. So, each time this form is submitted, all of these automations that you have configured will be fired. Okay?

And you can have options here for sending sending invites to the portals so you can start them down that road, etc. So, there's a lot to learn here about uh kickoff forms. And why is there a lot to learn? Because this is really the very beginning of your funnel. This is the first level of your funnel.

And what you'll want to do, and I see there's lots there's a lot of complexity here in the way that you're describing, you're describing a lot of elements, but not necessarily a um a workflow. So, you'll want to sketch out on a paper uh or some software a workflow in order how you would like everything done. And then you'll be building uh generators, you'll be building um various you're using circles to control processes. You'll be doing all that. You'll create subscription plans.

I see you you say your um your business is based in subscriptions. So, let's look here. We'll go into the office and show you uh SuiteDash has its own subscription model. It means we don't just set up a subscription at at Stripe, for example. Uh you create the plans here.

We We run the entire subscription engine here at SuiteDash, which gives us all the capabilities to do anything we want regardless of the gateway you you choose. So, uh very, very powerful. And as you add your plans, this is the plan that will define the parameters of how the billing works, every so many days, never expires. You have all these options here. So, you're defining if they go on, say, what?

Like a $30 a month or $300 a year, or whatever your subscription is, you define it here. And then when uh that plan is used in an invoice and is paid with a credit card, then that turns into what is called a an actual subscription, okay? So, this subscription is unique to each contact that has a subscription, it'll be listed here. The plan, the gateway, all the details. And then you can adjust, or you can cancel, or do whatever you need to do from this UI, okay?

So, you can cancel from here. They can cancel from their side, etc. And these are automatic subscriptions, just so you know. So, that this must be a plan must be in on an invoice that is paid with a credit card. And when that happens, that then the subscription is started, and the credit card is used on the schedule defined by this the plan to uh bill automatically, like your Netflix subscription.

And I think that's what you're asking about. Okay? Does that make sense so far, Dave? How easy your client update their credit card? Okay, let me see if I can show that.

Okay. Is it easy for clients? Yeah, good. That's That's what I was actually looking at to uh So, if we go to uh this is a client login. Let me make sure this is it would be set up correctly here.

Pardon me. Yeah. Okay, so this one is you can add a new payment method here, and you can remove a payment method. There's some styling issues. I think I have some custom CSS running on this this account.

Uh but yes, here in this my billing dashboard, they'll see everything that has action needed. Uh these are typically like a estimate or an invoice. And there's lots of them in here. Again, this is a test account. Here's their active subscriptions.

Here's some uh reporting, some lifetime summaries, and those kind of things of open invoices, pending estimates, etc. And this is where they would control uh their subscriptions will be listed. Here's where they would control their bank accounts and credit cards that they have on file with you. Uh and if they have credit card on file, you're able to satisfy invoices even from your side using that payment information. So, it's very convenient.

Once you get their credit card or bank information on file, you're able to satisfy invoices manually from your side. They are able to use those cards when they are uh say if they were paying like a recurring invoice, which to be clear is different from a subscription. A recurring invoice means that they're going to come in each month is the most common and pay that invoice as it's issued. Come in and pay it, come in and pay it, but they have to manually do that as opposed to a subscription where it happens automatically. Okay, one sec here.

Okay, good. Yeah, very cool, right? Well, like I said, uh I ran agency for long time, 20 years, so something like that. So, I've run into all these problems and then um I wish wish that we would have tools like this back in the day and that's why they they exist now because we were so desperate for them and everything that we that we tried to use was just not quite right or the branding was really bad or the experience was bad in some way. So, uh really all grew out of of a very similar situation to find yourself in.

Um the automations are going to blow your mind. You're going to love it and someone in your position, Dave, I I just have to I'm I really have no no hesitation to say someone in your position with technical background, with technical uh probably very logically minded kind of thing. The more you dig into this, you're going to start being you're going to get really excited as you especially with the automations, especially once you start once you have your workflow going and you start to uh put things in and solidify and quantify and make things and then and start to design and your goal is going to be to create a a replicatable over and over process {slash} workflow that can be distilled down into um automations or at the the next step uh away from that is auto templates, okay? So, auto templates are essentially an automation of four you know, maybe a four or five step automation depends on it really doesn't matter how many, but you can create as many automations as you want and add them into this this stack, right?

So, let's just say I want to add another thing, another thing, another thing. This stack of automations is all going to be triggered ba- when this auto templates gets gets fired, okay? Uh so, it can be eight, it can be 10, it can be one, doesn't matter, but what we encourage you do in cases where you can't hook an automation uh to an at to a trigger in a way that doesn't require any human interaction. And there are many cases where uh you may have several scenarios. So, what you what we encourage you to do is create an auto template for each scenario and then when you recognize a scenario, you or your staff, it's very easy for you at that point to then just bring up the company that you're trying to work with.

You're saying, "Okay, now I just got off the phone with them. They gave me some information. They want scenario A." Doesn't matter what it is. Um and you know and you train your staff, when they choose scenario A, you come here and you choose uh trigger auto template, so here we are. Let's count the clicks.

One, two, three, four, whatever that is, scenario A trigger. Five. So, five clicks from the dashboard of of whatever. And then within five clicks, you've now um launched another who knows, four automations that move this person there and reclassify them in this other way and change the value of a custom field over here, launches a particular project generator, which is defined by which is exactly perfect for that scenario, etc. etc.

And so, you can really distill down uh what could take in your in your world 15, 20 minutes to send the right emails, to move the right spreadsheet, to do these kind of things, just a process that reality if you distill them down into these auto templates, which will do this automatically for you, then the auto templates do the work and five clicks later, you're on to the next thing. So, that's what you're you're going for at the least. And and just to be a little bit more clear, let me try to bring up something that I think I end up showing this like at every webinar. Yep, here it is, okay. Okay, so this is what I mean.

You know, what we what we try to encourage you to do is build these automations in your workflows. This is your workflow. This is your target, as we said, the the unknown person on the other side visiting your website or any page or whatever it is. This is the end result, the end of the ga- end of the game where you get paid, everybody's happy, okay? So, what we're in this kickoff form is going to be right here.

It's going to start a series of automations. It's going to start some things along um those things it's going to be in the their court, right? Things are getting data is getting sucked up and and moved to you. Then it lands at what we call a checkpoint or a human interaction point. And at this point, you'd I this is where you identify these scenarios because we understand that you can't fully automate every workflow, every process.

Let's let's automate the ones you you that we can, but there are places where a human needs to look and make a decision. And for these places, this is where we encourage you to create these auto templates to cover the scenarios and then your human only chooses which scenario and applies an auto template, which then kicks you back on this automation slide. Everything's happening automatically in the background until it kicks out again to this next checkpoint or maybe this is where all the work happens, right? And then you uh select an auto template for the approval automation process that you design. So, everything goes out and then maybe you have an automation process for after delivery where it educates them.

Okay, so now you have this website and you have this digital presence. Here are some things you need to be thinking about. Here are some realities that will happen, you will notice. Here's what we expect, here's what you can expect. And if you do this in an auto in a standardized way across and use the processes, you're going to have that same customer service level, really high customer service level where you have this after, you know, caring feeding process after delivery.

I mean, let's be honest, if you don't automate it, you're probably not going to have the energy and um time to do that with every client, but if you automate it and build it one time and constantly add to it every time you think of something new, then each one of these clients is going to get this super high level of customer service and and information and education. It's going to make your job easier. Those questions are going to be answered. They're not going to call you and ask questions. You're going to have a a reputation is going to be good.

Your word of mouth is going to be good. So, you know, the more things that you can do in that way, the better, clearly. Okay. All right. So, let's let's stick there for a second.

I'm going to read your question just a little bit more. Communication flows between me, my team, my client, can I pre-fill Yeah, so I'm going to stay I'm going to move on before and not jump into the project management side, but yes, project management I'll be a little bit um I'm going to try to do this in 2 minutes or so and then we'll move to some other questions. Project management is quite robust. Um it will take some time, but I'm going to recommend that you go to YouTube because there's a treasure trove here. youtube.com/suite- is our channel.

Go to videos. Um let's look for uh everything you need really should be here in one way or another um as far as deep like here's project generators. I would encourage you to watch this one when you relate it to projects. This will explain to you how you can predefine projects, predefine tasks, preassign tasks, put them in phases. Really, I mean, you can completely script out an entire uh website build for lack of anything, you know, more complex than that, but yes, you completely script it out, assign it to the correct people on your team.

Yes, the client can bring in tasks. Yes, the client can be involved in the project. There is project uh client talk and team talk messaging inside the project. Everything is very private, very controlled. In my opinion, it's just as it should be for the way most teams work in this kind of um paradigm.

So, try this one. Also, all these other ones are are great. Yeah, there's just so much so much good information here that you can spend a lot of time listening to my voice and uh and if that's not your your bag, I apologize, but um there's some Tay- there's some Taylor joints in here, too. You can listen to Taylor some. Taylor's awesome.

So, there's a lot there's a lot to to to go to here and go over. So, Dave, you you have a good long road ahead of you. What's great about it and what I want to make sure everybody understands is this is SuiteDash is intended be like an operating system for your business, okay? It's not just a software that you plug into and throw a few things at and get some benefit from. This is This is designed and capable of you creating an entire infrastructure, an entire workflows many sets of workflows that are friendly to your clients, to your staff, to you.

It's designed to let you um collate all of these tasks into very definable processes and packages that can be called like these auto templates. It's designed to let you uh build build and layer your processes over time, all right? So, on day one, your process might be in meh, all right? Uh on day five, you may go back and you do a little more work on it, it's getting better. But, think about on day 365 of you having experiences with clients going through it, experiences with your team going through it and you improve and get better.

It's going to take that. It's going to take a little time for it to really sync up with your business and the way you're doing things. But, after that and as you reach those points, you're going to see incredible gains in efficiency, uh reduction in mistakes, and as we said before, your clients will get incredible customer service as far as an experience because you're slowly layering and building this experience and exposing each client to the same consistent experience that you built over time using these processes. Okay. I love it.

Okay. All right, let's uh let's move on to uh you're welcome, Dave. I wish I could uh solve everything for you, it's just not doable. You don't so um don't know your business and the way you want to do things and 100% but I know you will figure it out and I think you will enjoy the process. Okay, so I also see um Jamie or Tamara, which one do you want here?

Jamie, can I say Jamie? Well, I see one and there's uh there's someone I think the question is whoever I'm I'm referring to. Hey there. Uh this calculating custom field issue, I would say the best thing to do is is please go through support. Um and if you can record a video, a screencast video showing exactly what you are trying to achieve and and showing your formulas, context, etc.

They helped you. Okay, good. Yes, because that's really in this in this forum, it will be a lot of back and forth until things are understood, so very good. Oh, really? Okay.

A browser extension. Probably a a password manager, mhm. I've had that happen before, yeah. Password managers or those kind of things like to uh-huh, uh-huh. Grammarly and I have had uh some some some fights before.

But, yeah. All those things are great, but they do like to jump into these text fields and and form fields and wreak havoc occasionally. Okay, good good good. All right, so that that was solved. Let's look at for some other Hey coach Tam Tamara, how are you?

Good to see you. How is How is How's the Propel business? Are you propelling? Great great name, ipropelyou.com. Awesome.

Okay, so let's go ahead and Yes, ma'am. Let's let's go through uh Tamara's uh questions and then Jamie has a question as well and we'll get to that, Jamie. Great. So, Tamara says, "Can we have multiple products and services in a proposal to give clients the opportunity to select, which will then generate an estimate, invoice and corresponding agreement?" Not yet, Tamara, but we are moving in that direction, absolutely. Uh so, I'll give you a little bit of insight as to the development process here.

So, we are building a new payment block is a good way to to reference it. We also call it a shopping block uh that will be backed by a payment block. But, essentially, uh on the front end and starting with landing pages, sales funnel builder, these are the kind of these publicly exposed places and then eventually into kickoff forms, your customers will be able to your targets will be able to uh pay directly in that place. In addition, they'll be able to choose like a shopping block, like a shopping experience from a predefined set of uh items, packages, add-ons, okay? So, we have an entire This is all predefined already and it's already in the pipeline, it's already in place in order as needed.

And then based on the amount totaled from those predefined packages and with their choices, the payment will be there for them immediately to make um and then move them into the next step of your workflow, whatever that may be. Okay? So, it's one of our major focuses to give you as many options as possible to define these packages and then have that sort of landing page experience where they choose, shop and check out. ETA is tough, um but I think for sure before the before 2024. So, you know, at the end of this year.

So, we're in we're in September now, so basically fourth quarter is what we're looking at. We're we're two, three days away from releasing support tickets. There's an ETA for you because that one has been coming for a long time. But, we're really really really there and it's just in the last final stages. That's been our real focus along with building the building blocks moving towards the payment block landing page experience.

Landing pages will be uh is a new concept, will be released this week. So, this the this week you'll see a lot of things become more clear on the path to where you are just asking about right now, Tamara. Yep. And what's awesome, so let me just kind of again get excited a little bit. Imagine though that in most platforms, you have the uh choice of these items that really might not mean that much, you know, it's an item that I type a title and description.

But, in our platform, we have the option to because we control all the pieces and parts, these items can be things like LMS products and um number like six appoint six video appointments with me, six appointments. Uh as an let's include that as an item as well. And uh maybe a time block, like 20 hours of work, you know, if you charge by the hour. And you can you can even, you know, not now and not the second it's delivered, but we this is our plan is to be able to create these item types, right? So, types of items that are related to functionality.

So, an LMS item type and a appointment scheduling item type and a time block item type. So, you can put together packages that says, "Okay, when you buy this package, you get access to this LMS path product, whatever you call it, you'll get six appointments with me and each time they use one, it'll be deducted, there'll be a tally. You'll get and you of course you'll define the appointment types and things like that. You'll get 20 hours of one-on-one help and then when when you that'll integrate tightly with the timer functionality, timer functionality, so that when you uh want to start a timer with that person, you'll choose their name and it will know the balance of the number of hours and then that timer will actually load the balance and when you click start, it'll count backwards instead of forwards from that balance until it gets close to zero and then uh it'll send an email to you. We have a configuration for how to as it gets close to zero, it will uh alert you or trigger some automation.

We could do anything we need there. And then just continue that, you know, like uh access to files, but we can create any type of functionality items that we want, package them together for a price and when that price is paid, each one of those things will um be validated for that person and they will own the that whatever was defined in that package and have access to it inside the platform, inside your portal. Uh so, these are really cool things and uh one of the things the first steps in that direction you'll see, which is coming soon, is this this ability to create items, packages, and add-ons. And as part of that, each one of those, each item will have the ability to trigger automations. So, just as you see here, imagine this is a list of items that you can add to invoices.

You'll be able to say, "Okay, when they add this item and pay for it and when the invoice gets paid that includes this item out I want you'll have access to to our entire automation Suite to trigger based on just the purchase of that item. So in that way you can control an item level what automations get triggered when they check out. So the flexibility and power of a system like that is is really unrivaled. It's going to be very difficult to find a situation that you can't deal with with those with those those tools. Good good good.

I know I know I wish it was today. I wish it was today but it is a like I said it's the development is one of the development paths that we have that is 100% got a huge bulldozer behind it and is pushing pushing pushing. Let's do it faster. Let's move this out of the way. Let's get these things out and uh so you can tell that I've that this has been thought about I think just from the way I'm describing it.

This is not first time that we are thinking about this. The whole path is defined. Now it's just step-by-step to create and you'll see it play out. You'll see it play out this quarter. Awesome.

Okay, so you say again or the next part of your question is trying to determine the best way to organize items and what's available for particular item item to i.e. items and invoice indicates clients four appointments. How do I set up Okay, there you go. There you go coach. All right, so you're saying uh So for that you're trying to use custom field math I think for the four appointments and how much to show right?

Okay, I think so. Uh let me look really quick. Let's go here. Okay. So this is not the one I was this is close enough.

This chart this is the not the same thing but I can show you this. This chart is powered by a custom field the value of a custom field. Okay? Same as these charts. These charts are that powered by the value of a custom field.

Which means it's individual for each client, okay? So let's let's look at what that would set up look like from this side. And where I'm going with everyone that's listening just to be clear what coach Tamara has done is set up a custom field for the sole purpose of tracking a tally which can be anything. It can be a score. It can be a number of referrals.

It can be a gamification. You can do just about anything with this but notice here I've said podcast onboarding progress, okay? And I set the company the type of usage and then here's the type. It has to be a number custom field. And then here in this this one I think.

No. Uh here I think. Yeah, okay. So here's notice this progress bar is one of the blocks that you can get uh in from the from here, okay? And I'll go and edit this.

Here's the value the label but when you go here you can set the source the data source. So the data source can be set as just anything which is boring, right? So what it means is no matter who looks at this page no matter which client looks at this page it's just going to show 90 which I I don't even know what the application there is. Maybe it's good for you in your the way you're using it but much more powerful is you say, "Oh, I want the data source for this chart to be a custom field value." Understand that custom field when you create one like podcast onboarding progress it creates a new column or a new cell in every single client's profile. A new empty data space, okay?

Each client can have a unique piece of data a unique value in that data space. So for you may have a thousand clients and that each their onboarding progress can be a thousand different values technically right? Each one of them can have their own unique value stored in that space. So this means that now this is dynamic depending on which client looks at this generic dashboard that you're creating for this workflow to be used over and over again no matter who which client runs through it which target uh it's going to go and find the value for that particular uh prospect or client and return it. That's why this says 50 right here.

Why does it say 50? Because we don't really know the value. We're just showing you yeah this what it would be if it was 50. Let's look at at a better example. Uh let me go back actually here.

This is always a good example to get across this. Maybe I should log in first. Okay. Cascade portal pages. What's this?

Go here. Okay, so this is a good example. This payroll dashboard is intended again to be a generic dashboard for clients fitting the description of payroll circle. They these clients do payroll with us. So you can create a dashboard that just in this one is just to illustrate the dynamic capabilities.

This single image the data source is a contact custom image the avatar of the client, okay? These are data placeholders for as you see first name last name company name and the same situation is going on here with these um charts. They're powered by custom fields. Now watch what happens when I preview. So if I preview it's saying, "Well, I can't show you a preview yet because I don't know which client you'd like to see this you'd simulate here." So now if I say, "Okay, well show me what it would look like when this client logs in." Now it's going to that profile and grabbing the data.

Here's the profile picture first name last name company name and these are the associated numbers in those custom fields now displaying properly to this client. Or if I change to a different client I get different numbers, right? So now you've created this this dashboard that's that's constantly feeding the correct data to the correct clients but it's only one dashboard that you build a workflow around. You say, "If you fit this certain description based on your circle affiliation typically you're going to land here and it's going to show you uh a static dashboard but with dynamic data, right?" And this is kind of usually what you'll be going for because it's less work. It's 100% replicatable and you create a workflow that goes from top to bottom in the same way every time for every client.

They see all the same experience but the data is unique. So what coach Tamara Tamara is trying to set up is um showing them which is quite easy actually. It's just something like this um where you show them a data placeholder that is uh the number of appointments you have left and then each time you have an appointment you will use an automation typically to uh here's a good example Tamara. Like if I was going to take this one and replace it with a uh custom field of some kind then it would return the number of the custom field there and you can just say you have this many left one or four or three. But let's go back to the automation side.

So the the goal I think and maybe what you're having a challenge with Tamara is this idea of after the appointment you'll want to somehow trigger the change of the value of the custom field which is using custom field math current value minus one. Let's go here. So one thing we don't have is the configuration of uh automations when the appointment is concluded. Cuz there's not an actual piece there's not an actual hook there. What all we could do is say, "Well, like if it's an hour-long appointment then we can just trigger this every time after if it's a 2:00 p.m.

appointment then we trigger it 3:00 o'clock every single time." Maybe that would work for you but if that was the case then then you could open this automation and say oops, sorry. When this automation gets fired I want to set the custom field value and here you'll choose this podcast. I'm going to choose that just to clear. Podcast onboarding progress and as you see here you can use this math. Okay, one sec.

You take current value in your case minus one. Okay? So this will always keep a current value minus one. And Oh, yeah. You know, I remember I have a perfect So, this will always work.

It'll take So, if it's a four, the result after this is triggered will be a three, etc. etc. And then the idea is you can use the logic engine to detect a zero a zero um condition. And then trigger another way forward there. So, let me look here.

I believe it's in this video. Let me just look really quick. Let me Hello and welcome everyone. This is Mike. I'm the So, in this video autopilot for your we go through this entire example, I believe.

It's this one. Yes, here it is. Okay, good. So, here's where we use the logic engine to detect when if the custom field value, as you can see here, one sec. Let me make this bigger.

I'll let this work. So, here we say if the custom field value And this is where Dave's going to start getting excited. He's going to eventually going to Dave's going to probably sitting there just rubbing his hands going, "Oh, boy. This is going to be fun." So, this trigger logic engine sits and and scans all the time based on your conditions, okay? So, if you use that process that that we talked about before tomorrow where you're saying current value minus one, current value minus one, that works until it gets to zero, right?

Cuz then it doesn't work. Then we start everything's going to go crazy and and they get free free appointments and whatever. Well, no, because what we'll do is we'll say, "We'll watch this custom field always and if that value custom field value equals, we choose it, zero, then configure this these automation fire these automations." And in this case uh we fire an on-demand invoice generator. Which means it's an invoice generator that's ready to go. All it needs to be do is called and in this case this on-demand generator you'll see if you watch the movie the uh entire process here, will send them an invoice for five more credits.

And also what we'll do here is somehow is I can't if I can't remember how we did it. Oh, yeah, I do know now. Yeah, watch this whole thing. It'll be really my eye-opening. Uh Essentially, it resets your process back to back to uh okay, now it's time for you to pay for five more credits.

Now you don't have access to create an appointment. Now you don't have access in the dashboard. So, we hid part of the dashboard uh based on the zero property or the zero condition. And then when they pay the invoice the invoice generator See? So, you see how we did that with an automation.

And then in an invoice generator you will define what automations will be associated when the invoice generated from the generator I said that right. is paid. Okay, so here's your invoice generator and this is not a an invoice proper. It's it's a factory that makes invoices the best way for me to describe it. Based on how you configure it here.

So, here's the going to be the name of the invoice. We're using placeholders. Here's the items that are going to be on the invoice. We have uh something called dynamic items, which is super cool. I'm going to do a video on that.

Uh and then here you can set the automations. And what you'll do here is when this invoice is paid, you're going to change the value of custom fields, right? You're going to call it um in this case you're going to say current value. Current value plus five. That way even if they pay the invoice somehow and they end up with have one, I don't know.

Maybe there's a situation where they have one or two credits. We move them back up five, now they have seven. Or if they were at zero, which is typically the case, they'll be back up to five. And you can um trigger any other emails etc. Or any other automations.

So, now this when the invoice is paid, boom, they'll be back to five. Boom, they'll be ready to start making appointments with you again. And this can be a cycle that does not need to be attended. Okay? It just constantly works on its own.

And the cool part is you're selling those appointment credits ahead of time, which as we all know is a great way to do business. Yeah. So, there's so many Let me see if I can make So, this is the autopilot for your business video. Uh the other thing I just referenced Oh, invoice generators. I would encourage you to to watch this one.

Invoice generators here. This one's fantastic. Really goes through all the the generator types that we have and the use case for each. Dave, I think you will totally love what's called accumulating generators, which I've never seen anywhere else and comes completely out of the uh world that that that we built, you know, that or the um agency world. And that is if you have a client that says "Just bill me every month for everything you do." Okay.

Uh so, what you do is you create an accumulating generator, you set it to uh produce an invoice every month based on what is currently sitting in that in that accumulating generator. So, it's kind of like a a holding place. So, what you do is every month as you are finishing up a timer as you are adding expenses maybe even you add them all to that accumulating generator. You go in there and you add it and save. You add it and save.

Nothing's happening until the schedule day arrives, the schedule of generation. And when that happens, it takes all the items that are sitting there and it creates an invoice from all those items and then it wipes clean the accumulating generator for the next month. You can make that when it creates the invoice, you can make it as draft. Or if you want to go fully automated and no checks, I'm not don't want to waste or spend any time doing these things. I'm very confident.

You can have that uh accumulating generator create a live invoice, send it immediately to the client. And what this does it helps you bill for everything, right? So, of course we know that if you don't take the time to go in make notes properly or or or add things to invoices properly, you can do a get a lot of things that are not paid for. So, you and your staff, your only job your only job is to go to the invoice generator, the appropriate one and add the items. So, here, let's go to accumulating generators.

Here we are. And here's one that's active, monthly legal standing services. So, I go in here and I'll just add the item. Notice there's no items here and that's because every one month this thing is generating an invoice from the items that are sitting here and then it wipes this clean. So, this is a way that you can constantly make sure that you just instruct your staff or you just go add it to this accumulating generator and that's the last time you have to think about it.

This accumulating generator will do the job of creating the invoice, sending it to the client and then they can pay it right away. But again, that's a short explanation. Watch the video, it'll be very clear. Jamie says, "Hi, Jamie. Great stuff.

Any way to add a comma to the number formatting?" You mean for thousands or for like the Europeans type of presentation? For thousands. I think there are numbers, but if if it's not where maybe it's a place or a situation that you can identify, send it to support. That'd be good. Yeah.

Just screenshot it, send it, say, "What's going on here? Shouldn't have a comma here." Anywhere that it should we will. Absolutely. Okay, Tamara says, "And guys uh for now if you're here, just start your questions in. Uh we're running out running low on time, so I'm going to move to the questions in the chat.

Is there a way to use a page or something else to act as a community post where comments collaboration is enabled? Like an article post or question to community where those who have access can comment, like, etc." Well, Tamara you are uh well, here's how I know that um you and I are on the same page, right? Cuz I know we personally talked about some a lot of these things about six months ago and uh for sure we have been moving in all these directions and so that I want you to remember that when I give this next answer because I'm not just saying all these things. Community is something we are already started on. Uh so, you will be able to create not just one community, even multiple communities that will act in very much the way you described.

Like of a forum essentially, a place where you can create a topic. You can in You can include any combination of your prospects, clients, or staff and is part of that community. And there will be the ability to have threaded conversation, comments, reactions, all those things as you might expect from any type of community forum. That is a feature that will be coming soon and in fact uh it is planned as a power-up. So, you should know that.

But, you should also know that we do plan to offer it at a ridiculously low price to customers who are customers when that sale is announced. So, you guys will have the ability to jump in early with a grandfathered price that is again very very low so that it's achievable. Of course, we can't make everything free, but we do our best. We're trying to give you guys any kind of advantage we can, especially for those of you who have been around for a long time and are part of the community. That's That's how we'll roll that out.

And that is again underway and I think it still can be realistic to expect it um in the fourth quarter of this year or first quarter of next year. That is the plan. Not a promise, but a plan. Okay? So, we're listening.

Yes, we are tomorrow and I think that's exactly what you're after. And again, that's going to be some an item like a a way a something that you can include in a package, you know, the access to that community. You know, maybe you have a uh a bronze, silver, and gold package and you have three different communities for different levels of um and very likely actually there won't be three different communities. We'll indicate certain uh sections or threads inside a community can be reserved for people in certain circles. So, you'll be able to uh adjust the look and feel experience and access to parts of the community based on these kind of levels if you so choose.

Okay? Curious if you show me how to find the roles and permissions. Uh the chat dog, yep, Mr. Kevin told me that's where I need to go. Sometimes Kevin is an AI he is an AI as you know and there's this thing called AI hallucinations and it's an industry-wide issue that look it up.

It's pretty cool to read about. So, this is something that um in chat GPT etc. It's proven to be very difficult from to keep the AI from just kind of making things up or pulling knowledge from places So, we've noticed that Kevin will give some answers occasionally that just like have no basis in reality. I don't know what what app he's talking about what but uh it's proven to be difficult for us to control. And in general if again if you search uh AI hallucination problem that's the term they've given to this hallucination which I think is comical a little bit.

Uh it's a tough one to solve. So, as AI gets better, I think Kevin will get better. The answer to your question is we don't have a adjustable roles and permissions or the ability to create your own custom roles. Our roles are defined in the uh help documentation would be where I'd say to start. And you can learn about the default ways that roles work here.

Leads probably these are our external roles. Staff is the internal roles. It's all described here. But it's not always completely along these lines in the way what I mean is is that in some situations we offer in some settings the ability for you to adjust who can see what who can interact with what. So, here's a decent example where you say allow all admins to view all projects.

This is I think by default off. I can't remember if it's default on or off in new pro new new accounts. But, maybe you don't want all admins to view all projects. Maybe you do. And then so there's granular controls that allow you to to make adjustments in places where it's very common for you to want you or someone else in the community want a different functionality but so we provided these here in places where they make sense.

Okay? Uh let me come back to that just in a second Jennifer. Is it possible to change a client back to prospect if they don't pay? Not yet tomorrow, but something we'll eventually get to. We hear that occasionally, but it's not the first thing on our list.

Possible to reorder and put some logical order in group sections. Yes, tomorrow. CRM custom fields, you would want to um yes, you can change the order and yes, you can group them. Not in sections, but the way that we provide to group them is and let's go to custom fields. Uh custom field categories.

I think the best thing That's the best thing I could say now without getting too deep. So, go to the documentation and type in custom field categories. Yep. Okay? And this is your article to read about this.

So, what this essentially allows you to do is if you have clients of different types and each type has a specific uh group of custom fields that's important for that type. You don't want to if you have 25 custom fields for each of those types, you don't want to see all the custom fields on every type. So, custom field categories help you uh show and hide the correct custom fields based on the type of client. And uh reordering, I think I have a dashboard here. Yes.

Okay. So, if you go to quick edit here tomorrow on any CRM dashboard you'll see that you have this this ability to select favorites and this will help you reorder uh in this view, right? So, once you favorite something like if you want to say uh okay, company values. This is the one I really want to see when I open this. So, once you favorite it, you can move it to the top.

And then each time you need to go and change this value if it's a value that you change often when you click quick edit, it'll be right there available to you first thing without scrolling. Another place to look for reordering is in CRM settings. You'll see the default fields are here. These can be enabled or disabled and here you have the all the custom fields can be set visible or required and reordered here. Okay?

But no, not sections in the way you say, but more so um uh divided the ability to show hide groups of them based on which client or type of client you're looking at. I think that's a little bit more accurate. Okay? Uh should two parts of writing the ad. Okay, things you don't quite both.

Well, uh visible to the client is kind of up to you. When this is visible to staff side staff side. But, on each custom field if I go to manage custom fields here, it's a shortcut. Uh for each custom field you have the ability to uh show to the client in their profile. So, they can they they can see it and edit it in their profile which they access from here.

Um and then as far as displaying the value if you if you don't want to allow that and you want to display the value back to the client, you'll do that with a dynamic data placeholder on either a dashboard or a portal page if that's clear. Okay, and then last question. This will be probably take us out. Jennifer says, and then how can I allow only the lead contacts to the salesperson to show up on their dashboard? Great.

Right now anyone not attached to the salesperson is showing on theirs. And only want the ones that are attached to them to show. Well, it's designed like that Jennifer. Now, I'll explain why and then uh I want to clarify with you how you would like to see it. So, salesperson functionality is designed around the idea that each company or contact can have a salesperson and then anyone that is does not have an assigned salesperson would be available for the sales people to claim.

So, imagine a table full of leads and the salespersons are walking all around the table. When they grab one off the table, that's claimed for them. At that point, no one else can see it depending on your settings. So, you can make it like that and let's go to CRM settings just to be clear. Here's salesperson visibility right here.

Salesperson claim visibility. And there's two options shared and exclusive. You can read about these in documentation. Shared is probably it's shared is the less uh the least restrictive and exclusive is very restrictive based on the uh rules explained in the text. But, it sounds like what you want and let's let's contrast what I what we have and what you want.

So, what we have is the ability that they're all visible to all sales person until in exclusive mode especially until a sales person claims one a client and then that client becomes invisible to everyone. I think what you want is that all leads plus slash all prospects that was we'll call them are invisible to all sales persons until a prospect is assigned to a sales person and then they are visible only to that sales person. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that's valid.

Yeah. So, what that would be for us would be we'd have to make it we we don't have that capability at this at this moment. But, it doesn't seem too far away from what we could accomplish. I was trying to think if you could So, here's one Here's Here's my thought process about how to maybe solve this in the short term possibly. Uh custom menus is super powerful way for you to uh define how this menu will look for each individual person in your staff or your clients, okay?

And you do that using this tooling here. So, if we went to CRM and we said, "Okay, let's let's manage visibility and let's just hide CRM completely from the sales person role." In this way, if we did this, then your sales person would never all sales person would not be able to see this necessarily. Um Now, I'm going to think out of the box here a little bit, so stick with me and I'm just and I will caution that this is probably not the recommended path, but this is what I would try if I were you and this is what Dave would try to. Dave knows. So, here's what I would do.

I would uh see if you look at the URL below this contacts here. You see at the bottom of my browser. That's a That's a static URL. So, I might copy this link and then I might make a new menu item called sales when I wouldn't call it this, but just for sales person CRM for uh for kicks here. And then I'm going to use a relative link which relative links will work like this.

So, basically it'll take the top level domain, whatever it is, and then add this to whatever it is. And that way you don't have to worry about any cross-domain kind of things. So, now we are linking to this and here's what I might do. I might say, "Let's go ahead and create an icon." Sorry, I noticed there's a little UI issue here with this button. Probably a little JS build action.

So, now I'm creating this new menu item for sales person CRM instead of CRM which I've hidden from sales persons. Now, I'm going to create this new menu item that hard links and I'm going to not show it to anybody except for sales person. Yeah, this won't work. Yeah, I realize now. Mhm.

What we need is a team menu item visibility. So, circles is our grouping mechanism for con- for contacts or externals. Teams is our grouping mechanism for internals. If we had that ability, you could, for example, not show to sales person. And if this was team, you could show it only for certain teams and then you could create an automation where when you assign that sales person to someone, you could add them to it add the that sales person to a team in which case they'd see this data.

It's not a good workaround. I should just stop. It's close though. It's a It's a direction, but it's not going to work for you. So, what you need is that little that setting that can hide all sales persons.

Okay. I I have a note. I have a note already. I I made it in my head and I'm going to get it down. So, that's possibility.

Yeah, that's It's not that far. It's really just a binary change from what from my initial thinking. Um but, as far as planning it and getting it out, we have so many priorities right now, but I will try to see if we can work it in if it passes the logic the logic test uh in the group. Okay. Does it seem like you um you'll be able to solve it though, Jennifer?

That's good. That's good. Okay, good. All right, Jamie. Thank you very much.

Yep, absolutely. Anytime, and you can come back as many times as you need to ask your questions get everything hopefully just some light bulbs. That's the best best I can usually do here. Uh we can try to follow this much as possible. But, uh there are other resources available to you and I would encourage that.

So, but again, thank you guys. A lot of great ideas come from you. We take a lot of value out of these webinars and and enjoy it. I often say this is sometimes the most enjoyable part of my day. I get to just relax and talk to you guys.

Okay. So, thanks everyone. Have a great rest of your day. I hope it was very helpful. See you again soon.

Thank you. Bye, Dave. Bye. See you.