The iPath Home page is the main location for searching for customers, viewing their accounts, contact information, trouble tickets, billing cases, orders and inventory. It is one central location where all information about a customer can be accessed.
Additionally, this page is where Prospects can be viewed and created.
The main modules of iPath are listed along the top of the window. Home is the default page first displayed when logging into iPath (depending on your user role). The other modules are:
Sales (visible depending on role) - displays the Sales Module, allowing users to add to and edit their Funnel and Forecasts.
Tasks - displays the Task Management module, allowing users to see a list of all of their Tasks and access to edit Tasks
Orders - displays the Order Management module, allowing users to view a list of their Orders and access to edit them.
Trouble - displays the Trouble Management module, allowing users to view a list of their Trouble Tickets and access to edit them.
Billing Cases - displays the Billing Case module, allowing users to view a list of their Billing Cases and access to edit them.
Inventory - displays the Inventory Management module, allowing users to view Inventory and Inventory detail.
iPath has been designed to manage "Customers" around three basic concepts: Prospects, Customers & Accounts. These are outlined below:
Prospect - this is the first stage towards becoming a customer. A Prospect is created by the Sales team. These are potential customers that are in the Sales funnel and have not yet been "sold" on vCom. Once a Prospect signs a contract and agrees to be a vCom customer they will be converted by the system to a Customer. This occurs when Sales places an order in iPath for the Prospect. Again, there is nothing that needs to be done in the system to convert a Prospect to a Customer--it happens automatically when the first order is placed.
Customer - The Customer refers to the Customer as a whole. Meaning it includes all their locations. For example, ATI is a customer. That have a number of locations though and each of those locations are called "Accounts" (see below). The Customer represents all locations for each vCom customer has.
Account - As noted previously, an Account represents a physical location for a Customer. For example, the customer ATI might have an account called "ATI - Wilmington Delaware". Customer will also have an account for their "main" location (or corporate headquarters).
To clarify, there is always a Customer and always at least one Account. You cannot have a Customer that doesn't have an account. Similarly, you cannot have an Account that doesn't have a Customer.
The benefit to this structure is in searching for information in iPath.
The home page is divided into four sections as shown below:
The four sections are:
In this section a list of all vCom's Customer's are displayed. This is the primary searching section on the Home page. See the section on Searching for Customers & Accounts for instructions on how to search for customers.
Selecting a customer name (by clicking the Customer name) will update the other sections in the Home page. The Account section will be populated with all the Customer's Accounts. The Customer Summary section will be populated with summary information about the customer and the Activity/Inventory section will be populated with all of the customer's Activities (Orders, Tickets, Billing Cases, Tasks) and their Inventory.
Double-clicking a customer in this section will display the Edit Customer window.
Icons are used in this section to indicate
status: the 
icon indicates a Prospect, the 
icon indicates a Customer.
Checking the Include Inactive checkbox include Disconnected customers in the search. Checking or Unchecking the Include Prospects checkbox will include or not include Prospects in the search.
The Account section displays a list of all of the Customer's Accounts. As noted previously, these are the physical locations that customer has. You can also filter down this list to find a specific account. See the Searching for Customers & Accounts section for instructions on how to perform Account searches.
Selecting a specific account will have the following effect: the Activity/Inventory section will be updated so that only Activities and Inventory for that account are displayed. In essence it filters the Activity/Inventory section to apply only to the select Account. This can be helpful when trying to find inventory or orders that pertain only to a specific location.
Double-clicking an Account will display the Edit Account window.
The Customer Details section lists some high level information about the Customer such as the Primary Contact and their contact information, the assigned CRM etc. This information is edit by accessing the Edit Customer window.
This section contains multiple "Tabs" which have different information about the Customer or the selected Account.
NOTE: as previously mentioned, what is displayed in these section depends on what is selected in the Customer or Account sections. The rules are as follows:
If a Customer is selected and NO Accounts are selected - the Activity/Inventory section will contain information about ALL Accounts for the selected Customer.
If an Account is selected - the Activity/Inventory section will contain information only pertaining to the selected Account.
There are nine tabs in the Activity/Inventory section as described below:
Activity Summary - this tab lists all Open Orders, Tasks, Tickets or Billing cases for the selected Customer or Account. It is a very beneficial place to get a "snapshot" of what's going on with the customer. Selecting one of the records in this view will display the Order, Ticket, Billing Case or Task for editing purposes.
Tasks - this tab lists the all the current Open Tasks for the selected Customer or Account. See the Tasks section for instructions on creating, editing, & completing tasks. Clicking on a Task, will display the Edit Task window.
Orders - this tabs list all open Orders for the selected Customer or Account. See the Orders section for instructions on creating, editing, and completing orders. Clicking on an Order will display the Edit Order window.
Trouble - this tab lists all open Trouble Tickets for the selected Customer or Account. See the Trouble Tickets section for instructions on creating, editing and resolving Trouble Tickets. Clicking on a Trouble Ticket will display the Edit Ticket window.
Billing Cases - this tab lists all open Billing Cases for the selected Customer or Account. See the Billing Cases section for instructions on creating, editing and resolving Billing Cases. Clicking on a Billing Case will display the Edit Billing Case window.
Contacts - this tab lists all the Contacts associated with the selected Customer or Account. See the Contacts section for instructions on creating, viewing and editing Contacts. Clicking on a Contact will display the Edit Contact window.
Inventory - this tab lists all the Inventory for the selected Customer or Account. See the Inventory section for instructions on searching for and viewing Inventory. Clicking on an Inventory item will display the Inventory Detail window.
Document Library - this tab serves as a location to centrally store documents for a Customer. At present time this section is not being used. We will be updating it post-launch.
History - this tab is similar to the Activity Summary tab. The only difference is that this tab lists all Closed Orders, Tasks, Tickets and Billing Cases for the selected Customer orAccount.
All "grids" in iPath support exporting to Excel. Simply
click on the 
icon and the grid will be exported into a
formatted Excel document that can be saved to your computer.