The workflow area is where you and your employees will do the bulk of your day-to-day work on your website, because the workflow section is where every customer transaction can be found and managed. The main workflow page contains several filtering tools to help you locate the item you want to work with. You can select any item in the list to view detailed information about it, access any files that may be associated with it, send proofs to the customer, or update an order's status.

The two parts of the Workflow section

The Workflow page has two parts:

• The workflow list

  The main workflow list shows every customer item in your system. Whether it's a completed order, an estimate request, or a file sent from the customer, everything appears here. There are several tools available on the sidebar to allow you to filter the list so that you can find a particular item.

  Note: Every job is listed separately. If a user places an order for three different business cards, each of those will be listed individually with different job numbers, but all will have the same order number.

• Item details

  Selecting any of the items from the list brings you to a detailed report of that item. You can access files associated with an order, view the specifications provided by the customer for any of the jobs included in an order, view a customer's response to a proof, provide a price for an estimate request, and more.

The basic "workflow" of the workflow page is:

1. Locate an item to work with using the tools on the main workflow page.
2. Click its ID number or description to view more details about it.
3. You have the option to update its status, assign a price to it, mark it as completed, etc.

How to use the filter tools on the main Workflow page

You can filter the list by

• Type
• Date
• Keywords
• People

How to filter the workflow page by item Type

1. Click Workflow on the top menu bar.
2. Use any of the radio buttons in the Categories section of the sidebar to filter the list.
   • The list is automatically updated based on your filter selection.
   • Items go into the Estimates subcategory when the customer clicks the "Request an Estimate" button on an order form.
   • Items go into the Orders subcategory when the customer clicks the "Add to Cart" button on an order form.
   • The "In Estimating" category, located in the Orders section, is for items where the user clicked "Add to Cart", but no price was available.

How to filter the workflow page by Date

1. Click Workflow on the top menu bar.
2. Click the Dates section of the sidebar.
3. Type the dates (mm/dd/yy) in the Start Date and End Date fields to limit the list to items with activity between those dates (or pick from the date chooser tools that appear when you click into those fields).
4. The list is automatically updated based on the dates you have selected.

How to filter the workflow page by Keywords

1. Click Workflow on the top menu bar.
2. Click the Keywords section of the sidebar.
3. Type in any word that you think is in the order details, and click Search.
• By default, the "Search All Order Info" option is selected. If the keyword can be found anywhere in any part of an item's information, the Search function will find it.
• You can also use the more restrictive option, "Search Product Description".This option searches only the words that appear in the "Description" column.
4. The list is automatically updated to display only items that have matched your search.

How to filter the workflow page by Contact

Often, you'll want to locate an order placed by a specific user.

1. Click Workflow on the top menu bar.
2. Click the People section of the sidebar.
3. Use the tools to locate and select a Company, Branch or contact to filter the list to show only orders placed by that Company, Branch or contact.
   • Type any keywords into the first box to filter the company, branch and contact lists to display only accounts that match your input.
   • Then choose the Company, Branch or Contact you'd like to update from the filtered lists.
   • The search filter is "greedy": "Smith" will return "Smith", smith, Smithsonian, blacksmith.

About the item details view

The detailed view has two parts

• Transaction details

  This section lists the information that pertains to the entire transaction: shipping and billing information, the contact's details, pricing, and when the transaction occurred. These details are largely for information, but this section also provides the buttons for the major events, like the Complete Order button in the upper right corner

• Job details

  This provides the specifications for any particular jobs within an order. If a user completes an order form for Brochures, Business Cards and Posters in the same order, there will be 3 different jobs listed in this order: the Brochure, the Business Card, and the Posters.

  Orders with more than one job will also provide buttons for deleting, completing, and reopening individual jobs while leaving the others unchanged, and also offer a print-friendly view of the individual job.

A closer look at the job details section

The job details section has three tabs:

• Send a Proof
• Work in Progress
• Job Journal

Send a Proof

This tab contains all of the proofing information associated with the job: what proof files have been sent, who they've been sent to, and what their response was. Proofing is discussed thoroughly in the next Getting Started article, 13 - Proofing

Work in Progress

The Work in Progress section contains 4 sub-sections, which are accessed by clicking on the section name:

• Price

  You can use the pricing section to update the price for the job. Just type your price in the the Price field, and click the radio button to specify whether you are supplying the total price, or a price per unit. When done, click "Update Prices".

• Files

  All files that are associated with a job will show up in this section. You'll find files that were uploaded by the customer when they placed the order, as well as any uDesignIT! generated files if the job is for a uDesignIT!-powered order form, and the DesignEdit file if the order was placed using DesignEdit. You can also use the "Upload a File" button to attach new files to the project for the customer's use or for your own reference.

• Status Updates

  You can use the Status Updates section to keep your customer informed about the status of their job, reducing in-bound customer service calls and giving them greater confidence that their project is on-track and on-time. This simple interface allows you to drag-and-drop the job from one status to another. You can use as many or as few of the different status options as you wish. Once you've dragged the job to a new status, you'll have the option to notify the customer of the new status. They'll also be able to view the new status in their "Your Account" page on your website.

• Shipping

  This shipping tab allows you to include shipping details for your client, particularly any tracking numbers that are associated with the job. This is designed to be the last thing you do with the job — clicking "Job is Finished" saves your changes and marks the order as completed in the system...so be sure to double-check your shipping info before clicking the "Job is Finished" button.

Job Journal

The Job Journal allows you and your customer to communicate with each other regarding the job, and track all of those communications within that job. To add a comment to the Job Journal, just click "Click here to add a note to this job's workflow history", and type as long a message as you need. When finished, click "Add Note", and the system will add it to the job journal as well as send an email to your client with that message.

The next step

Next stop, proofing. Our next article shows you how to send proofs to your customers, and how they are able to respond to them.