Administration and Setup

Proper setup of SME and ongoing maintenance is critical to ensure proper and easy use of the solution for all users. Time spent on the initial setup is time well spent. The main parts of the setup include User setup, technician setup, company information setup, and lookup lists.

Note: Much of the business process is designed into SME. One important aspect of SME setup is the Lists. See SME Lookup Lists for more information.

Administration consists of initial setup and then ongoing maintenance. The first section goes into initial setup, then the optional sync with QuickBooks, and then the second section discusses ongoing maintenance.

Initial Setup of SME:

See SME Setup for initial setup steps by Implementation Manager at your company for SME.

Report Customization:

Your organization may want to customize reports such as proposals, service or install orders, or invoices. See the Report Customization help for more information.

Sync with QuickBooks (Optional):

This section only applies if you have purchased SQLink to link SME and QuickBooks.

You will sync with QuickBooks using the SQLink program. It is best to have SQLink run on the computer or server where the QuickBooks (QB) data is held and QB is installed. NOTE: Initial sync can take several hours and consume significant computer resources, it is best to run the INITIAL sync when users are out of QB. After the initial sync, it's fine to have users in QB, however the initial sync needs to bring over lots of past QB data.

See the SQLink help for more details.

User Training (Optional, but highly recommended):

Once you have completed the initial setup and optional sync with QuickBooks, the next step to to make sure everyone that will be using SME is trained. High 5 Software offers online training. A few hours of training will really help everyone's experience with SME. High 5 Software recommends each training session to be 1 to 2 hours only to hold people’s attention.

At the time of this writing, online training sessions are available for an hourly charge with unlimited users (up to 15 separate connections). To schedule training, email to training@high5software.com

For small organizations, it's recommended to have everyone attend one or two 1 hour sessions of training to go over all the aspects of SME. Small organizations tend to have people play lots of different roles, so it's best to have them cross trained for various aspects of the program.

For large organizations, it's recommended to have role specific training. For example, one session on Sales and other training session on Service Orders creation and Dispatch, etc.

Ongoing Maintenance:

Ongoing maintenance consists of the following items:

Backups: Backups should occur every night. Note that since SME is built on Microsoft SQL Server, special tools or scripts are required to perform the backup. You can NOT just copy the mdf and log files because MS SQL has a lock on the file. Special tools first stop the service or detach the database prior to backup. Also, the backup requires both the mdf and log files for a successful restore.

Business Process Tip: Always test the backup restore after setting up or changing the settings of the backup.

Updating Setup Lists: Users may request additional items for setup lists that you will need to add. It is recommended to never delete lookup lists that have been used, but instead make them inactive or change the name to something similar.

Reporting: The company may need you to create new reports or change existing customized reports.

Updating SME: The administrator user should have it set to "Check for Updates" to see if SME product updates are available. If an update is available, the administrator should plan to update off-hours.

Reindexing: Database reindexing will cleanup deleted files and streamline the database. Reindexing is not needed too often and usually happens with new updates. However it may be a good practice to reindex every month or so.