Customers, sites and contacts

Everything in Tenvara hangs off a customer: its devices, tickets, contracts, alerts, documentation and backups. A customer has sites (the offices and locations it works from), contacts (the people you deal with) and, if you use them, departments. Get these right first and the rest of the service desk follows: email is matched to contacts, tickets carry the right site and the portal knows who can sign in.

The customer list#

Customers opens on Active: every active and onboarding customer, plus any made inactive in the last 14 days (shown quieter, such as "Inactive 3 days ago"), with its Status, Primary contact, number of Sites and Contacts, Account manager and Support tier. The sidebar's first items narrow the list by status (Active, Onboarding and Inactive), with All customers as a view, and Customers remembers the status you last chose. The sidebar also holds the other lists of the area: Sites, Contacts, Departments, Sign-offs and Erasures, then Onboard a customer and Onboarding findings under Onboarding, and Possible duplicates and Contacts to review under Upkeep.

Under Columns you can add Type, Technical lead, Part of, Monthly value, Contract and Contract ends, Open tickets, Overdue invoices, Health, Last ticket and Customer since, and filter by each. The built-in My customers view shows the customers you are account manager for, and the bulk bar has Change account manager.

Filter by text, Status, Alerts, Takeover mode and more, choose Columns, and save the filters you use under Views. Possible duplicates at the top lists customers that look like the same company (see Contact roles, merging and duplicates).

Search and Cmd+K find a customer or contact by phone number however it was written (spaces, brackets, +44 or 0 alike), by email domain or website, and by a merged customer's old name or code. The result says which field matched.

Tip: The All customers switcher at the top of every page narrows the app to one customer. The ticket inbox, time and contracts all follow it, which is handy when you are working through one customer's issues. The choice belongs to the browser tab: a bar under the top bar says "Only" and the customer's name, with Show all customers, so another tab can work across every customer at the same time.

Inactive customers#

A customer marked inactive is kept for its history and kept out of the way of new work:

• The customer switcher, every customer picker and Cmd+K list active and onboarding customers only. Show inactive (N) at the bottom of the list reveals the inactive ones for that pick, greyed with an Inactive badge. To always see them, turn on Show inactive customers in pickers under Working style in Settings > Profile.
• Home, Devices, Alerts, reports across all customers, customer health and the TV leave out inactive customers' devices and alerts. Devices, Alerts and the report builder have Include inactive customers to bring them back, and choosing the customer in the switcher always shows its own.
• When inactive customers still have devices in use or open alerts, Home, Devices and Alerts say so, for example "2 devices of inactive customers are still in use, 1 online now", with Show the devices and Show the alerts, so you can retire or silence them.
• Their old tickets, invoices, devices and reports still name them, with an Inactive badge, and still open.

Tickets are never left out: an open ticket is still work. Revenue, margin and utilisation figures keep inactive customers' past invoices and time.

Add a customer#

1. Go to Customers and press New customer.
2. Enter the Name.
3. Enter a Code or leave it blank to have one made from the name. The code is a short unique reference, such as HVDG, shown next to the name across the app.
4. Choose the Status: Active, Onboarding or Inactive.
5. Add the company Email, Phone and Website if you have them.
6. Choose the Account manager (who owns the relationship: new quotes are theirs, and they hear about accepted and declined quotes, poor ratings and the customer going inactive) and the Technical lead (the engineer who knows them best).
7. Choose the Customer type, such as Managed, Break-fix, Project only, Partner or Supplier. The list is in Settings > Customers.
8. Set Customer since if they were a customer before you added them to Tenvara.
9. Fill in Industry (their line of business in a few words, such as accountancy or dental practice) and People (how many people work there). Presentations and reports use both.
10. For a company in a group, choose the main company under Part of.
11. External reference is the company's id in another PSA, if you sync with one. Leave it blank otherwise.
12. Add any Notes for the team.
13. Under More details, check the rest: the Support tier, the Business hours calendar and SLA policy they follow (each starts on your default), and the billing country and currency.
14. Turn on Taking over from another provider if another provider still looks after them for now. The customer then starts in takeover mode: agents enrol and report, and nothing acts by itself until you turn it off (see Takeover mode).
15. Press Create customer.

A new customer starts in onboarding mode, so what Tenvara finds in its first days goes into one findings report instead of raising alerts and tickets. See Onboarding mode and going live.

As you type, Tenvara warns if the customer looks like one you already have, such as "Possible duplicate: Harbour View Dental Group (HVDG)", with Open it and Create anyway.

To change a customer later, open it and press Edit (or press e). The More actions menu on the customer page has Mark onboarding and Mark inactive to change the status quickly, Start onboarding mode and Start takeover mode, Run script on their devices, Maintenance mode for their devices..., Show a message to users, New quote, Search security events, Pin a note, Put on stop, History, Print, Mute notifications, Copy code, Download vCards of their people, Offboard customer, Merge into another customer..., Delete customer and, for administrators, Erase customer... (see Erasing a customer).

The customer page#

Open a customer to see it all in one place. The header shows the code, primary contact, phone, website, type, account manager, technical lead and how long they have been a customer, with New ticket, From template, Add devices and Edit.

The Overview tab opens with At a glance, what you need when a caller rings: the contract with this month's hours used and left (or No contract and the hourly rate), backup (protected devices, the last good backup and anything failing), their Microsoft 365 tenant, the last visit and who went, and the primary contact's phone. Below it are counts of devices, open alerts, sites and contacts, the open tickets, projects, recent chats, open alerts, device health, patching, backup, the health score and security. A customer with too little set up for a health score shows Not enough data yet. The other tabs follow the main menu, and most have a second row of tabs under them:

On a narrow screen the last tabs fold into More. Links to a customer's old tab addresses still open the right tab.

Groups of companies#

When one customer owns others, set Part of on each company in the group. The company shows "Part of" the main company in its header, and the main company gets a Group companies card listing them. Its tickets, Devices and Alerts tabs can show This company or the Whole group, and the customer list can filter by a company and its companies. A group is one level deep. Invoicing a group through its main company is covered in E-invoices and split billing.

Communications#

Communications, on the customer's Service tab, lists every email Tenvara sent to the customer's people: ticket replies, quotes and reminders, invoices, visit confirmations, portal invitations, surveys, reports and approval requests, with when, the subject, who it went to and whether it was delivered. When a customer says "you never sent it", this is where you look.

Sites#

A site is an office or location the customer works from. Contacts and devices can be placed at a site, and a ticket records the site it is about.

1. Go to Customers > Sites and press New site (or use Sites on the customer's People and sites tab).
2. Choose the Customer and enter a Name, such as "Leeds head office".
3. Choose the Country and fill in the Address, Town or city, County, Postcode and Phone. The Time zone and Public holidays follow the customer unless you choose others.
4. Turn on Primary site for the customer's main location. Only one site can be primary.
5. Press Create site.

Opening hours and site contact#

On the site page, the Opening hours card shows whether the site is Open now. Press Edit to set the hours:

• From the business calendar of your choice, or Their own hours by day,
• Closures: days the site is shut beyond public holidays, such as a refit or the summer shutdown,
• the Site contact: who engineers ask for on arrival.

The site page also lists the site's devices, people, printers and cameras, with Supplier contracts and Policies tabs beside its Overview.

The hours and the site contact show on the site, its hover card and every visit, with the access notes. Booking a visit outside the hours, or on a closure, warns you.

Contacts#

A contact is someone you deal with at a customer: who raises tickets, who approves work, who to call. Customers > Contacts lists the active contacts of your active customers, plus anyone made inactive in the last 14 days, with their customer, site, email and phone (the Inactive and All views hold the rest), with filters for Customer, Site, Roles, Department, Active and more. Contacts to review at the top lists people found in Microsoft 365 who are waiting for a decision.

Add a contact#

1. Go to Customers > Contacts and press New contact.
2. Choose the Customer and, if you like, the Site.
3. Enter the First name, and the Last name, Job title, Department, Email, Phone and Mobile.
4. Add Notes, such as what they look after or how they like to be contacted.
5. Tick their Roles: Primary contact (the main person you deal with, one per customer), Billing contact, Approver, Decision-maker (signs off decisions for their company and answers the Net Promoter Score survey), Technical contact, Out-of-hours contact, Site contact, VIP and the rest. Roles decide who gets invoices, quotes, reports, outage notices and approval requests (see Contact roles, merging and duplicates).
6. Set the switches:
   • Active: turn off when they leave.
   • Customer portal: let them sign in to see and raise tickets. Turning it off signs them out.
7. Leave Language, Dates and numbers and Time zone on their customer's, or choose their own.
8. Press Create contact.

Note: The email address matters. Mail from that address is matched to the contact, so their tickets land on the right customer with them as the requester.

The contact page#

A contact's page shows their photo, details and badges (their roles, and Portal on), how to reach them, their Identity checks with Verify identity (see Verifying who a caller is), their Tickets (open or all, with New ticket), Their devices (with Remote in), Quotes they were sent or signed, Invoices sent to them for billing contacts, chats, visits, their Microsoft 365 account if they have one, documentation linked to them, notes and activity. The right-hand side shows the customer, their portal access and their site.

Their devices lists the computers they use: ones set on the device page, and ones they sign in to, marked "probably theirs" with Confirm.

Also writes from holds any extra email addresses. Mail, portal sign-in and chat recognise all of them; replies go to the main address.

A photo can be uploaded on the contact page (JPEG or PNG), or taken from Microsoft 365 for contacts matched to a user in their tenant. An uploaded photo is never replaced. It shows wherever the contact appears: the hover card, the ticket and chat.

The header has Send email, Call and Edit. The More actions menu has:

• Start a chat, in their portal while they are using it,
• Decision-maker or Not a decision-maker, to flag them for the Net Promoter Score survey,
• Invite to portal, which emails them a sign-in link,
• Mark inactive,
• Copy email, Copy name and email and Email from your own mail app,
• Download vCard, to put them in your phone,
• Merge with another contact... and Move to another customer...,
• History, Print, Pin a note and Privacy request,
• Delete contact.

Email a contact#

Send email writes to them from your support mailbox, with canned responses and files. It is kept as a ticket, left Waiting on customer or Resolved as you choose, so their reply comes back to it.

Portal access#

When Customer portal is on, the contact's portal permissions decide what they can see and do there: their own tickets or every ticket for the customer, billing, quotes, devices and more. Their roles add permissions of their own, such as billing for a billing contact. The Customer portal card on the contact page shows their access, when they last signed in and a Send sign-in invitation button. See Portal permissions and people.

Departments#

A customer's departments are records of their own, with an optional cost centre code, a manager and a parent department. Customers > Departments lists them for every customer, and Departments on a customer's People and sites tab lists that customer's. Contacts and devices have a Department column and filter, and SLA policies and approval rules can follow a department. See Departments.

A web enquiry form#

Settings > Sales > Enquiry form gives you a form for your own website. Turn on Take enquiries from your website, choose the Fields on the form and which are required, How they heard about you, Who owns the new lead and Who hears about each enquiry, and the Thank you message. Link to the form's page on your portal's address, or add your website under Websites that may show the form and paste its snippet. Each enquiry becomes a lead from the website, with the message as its first note and a duplicate check against your customers and leads. See Leads.