Hi there! This guide will take you through launching your website to your customers by importing customer accounts to the admin area using the customer import feature.
The customer import feature allows you to create an account in the website's admin area for selected customer accounts in Infusion, simply by setting a web flag in one of the custom fields.
This process will create an account for the customer in the admin area, link their account to Infusion for pricing and sales orders, and send the contact a welcome email inviting them to login to the website and start ordering.
To set-up this feature, first login to the admin area and locate the 'Customers' menu item in the navigation bar and select 'Sync Settings' from the drop down menu.
This takes you to the configuration settings where you can set the attribute field, a web flag value and then send the contact a welcome email.
Here are some details of each field that you see on this page.
Show on Web Field - Click on the drop down menu and select the field you will use to determine which customer accounts should be imported and created on your website. Usually the Checkbox Fields are dedicated are used to flag customers for the website so select the check box field you will use. Checkbox Field 1 is the first check box, field 2 is the second check box and son on.
Show on Web Value - Insert the value that you'll use in the field you selected in the 'Show on Web' field. In the screenshot below, I've selected the Checkbox Field 1 to flag the customers and since it's an Infusion check/tickbox, we'll have the word "True" on the Show On Web Value field. With this, all customers that has the ticked Checkbox Field 1 will be imported to the website.
This is how it will look like on your Infusion screen if you select 'Checkbox Field 1':
Send Emails - This field turns on the welcome email that is sent from the site to the customer, when the customer's account is imported to the admin area for the first time. It's recommended to first test the customer import with this setting to No and then when you're ready to test the email, update this setting to Yes.
The Welcome Email
To view and edit the welcome email that is sent to the customer, locate the 'Content' menu item in the navigation bar and select 'Email Content'.
Find the 'CUSTOMER_SYNC' email and click on 'Your account has been created'. Note that this is the subject of the email and this text will be updated if somebody has already changed it.
This email uses tokens which are described in the list of 'Available Tokens' list below the email content.
The third, fourth and fifth lines in the text include the tokens for the email address, password and website address link (url). These three tokens should not be deleted as they supply the critical data that the customer will use to login to the website.
The 'email_address' token is the email imported from the customer's account in your accounting software and your customer will use this email as the username when they login to the site.
The 'password' token is a password that the Web Ninja system generates during the import process. This is stored in the database and the customer will use this password to login to the site. Note that you do not have access to this password.
The 'url' token is your live website address.
You can edit any part of this email but make sure that the email content includes the email address, password and url tokens or you will find that your customers won't be able to login to the site!
Run the Customer Import Process
Once all the settings have been configured and you're satisfied that the email content is ready for your customers, locate the 'Sync' menu item in the navigation bar and click on 'Status'.
Click on the 'Sync Now' button located on the 'Customers' task.
Once this completes, you should see the account in your customer list.
Summary
You're all set to go! The best way to start using this feature is to test the import with a staff account or update a customer's account to use your own email. First test by importing the account with 'Send Emails' set to 'No'. Once you've confirmed that account has imported, delete it, then set 'Send Emails' to 'Yes' and import the account again and send the welcome email out.
Important Notes
Point 1: The welcome email is only sent to the customer during the initial import and creation of their account. If the customer account already exists in the admin area when you run the customer import, the system won't send this customer the welcome email.
Point 2: The customer import feature checks both the email address and the customer's account number during the import process. If either of these two elements already exist in any account that's already been imported or created in the customer list, that account will not be imported. This is to stop duplicate accounts from occurring.
Point 3: For customer accounts who have multiple contacts ordering for them, you can only import the first contact and create an account for them. Other accounts can be created using the 'Add Customer' link.
Point 4: Every account in the customer list must use it's own unique email address. You cannot have two customer accounts that use the same email address.