Topics included in this article

• Introduction 

• Syrinx Configuration 

• Logging into the Admin Program

• Setting Configuration Options

• Creating and amending roles

• Setting up Syrinx CWS Users

• Customer Alert Messages 

• News

• Custom Reports Management

• CMS Files

• Custom Pages

• CWS Menu

• Using Syrinx CWS

• Web.Config file 

Introduction

Syrinx WS is an optional module that allows you to provide a website for your customers to log in and view information from the Syrinx database, such as equipment currently on hire, hire rates, invoice details, and custom reports.

Syrinx® WS is made up of three components:

• SyrinxCWS: This is the main application that your customers will log into, and it should be installed on a web server that is accessible from the Internet.
   
• SyrinxCWA: This is used by your administrator to set up new user accounts, configure SyrinxCWS, and control access levels to the SyrinxCWS application. This should be installed on a web
  server that is inaccessible from the internet.
   
• SyrinxCWO: This allows you to deploy a website to allow your customers to place orders for hire and sales. It is a separate website from Syrinx WS, so you can link to it from Syrinx WS and from your own website. The setup and usage of SyrinxCWO are explained in a separate user guide, ‘Syrinx WS Online Ordering’.

Note: After changing the configuration settings described in the following sections, you will need to Log out and then log back in before you can see the changes.

Syrinx Configuration

There are several options that may be set in the Syrinx Configuration program that govern various aspects of Syrinx WS. To access the Syrinx WS Options screen, choose ‘Options’ on the Syrinx WS tab on the ribbon:

Equipment On Hire

Most of these options dictate which documents users can download from the Equipment on Hire page:

The ‘Don’t Show Hire Rates’ option will hide the ‘Hire Rate’ column in the search. The ‘Include Accessories’ option will let the user include accessories in the search results; if unticked accessories are not shown,

The Customer drop-down at the top of the screen lets you set the default options for all customers or a different set of options for a particular customer.

Note: The Crystal Reports document files that are used to render the Syrinx documents (Hire Contract, Service Certificate, etc) are held on the web server in the folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\SyrinxCWS\CRDocs.

Previous Hires

These options dictate which documents users can download from the Previous Hires page.

Find Hire Rates

These options determine which hire rates are displayed in the Find Hire Rate page:

Advice Notes

These options dictate which documents users can download from the Advice Notes page.

Customer Equipment

These options dictate which documents users can download from the Equipment List page.

Logging into the Admin Program

Setting up the Syrinx CWA Admin User

You must set up an administrator user to log into and manage the Syrinx CWA application. The administrator is a designated user from the existing set of Syrinx users. To indicate which of the users is to be the administrator, go to the ‘Logon Users’ screen in ‘Syrinx Configuration’.

Double-click on the user you want to make the administrator, and on the ‘Options’ tab, tick the ‘Customer Web Site Administrator?’ checkbox.

If required, you can set more than one user to be an administrator of Syrinx CWS, but it is recommended that you choose one person who will be responsible for the administration.

Logging into the Administration program

To start Syrinx CWA, type in the browser http://localhost/SyrinxCWA, replacing the word ‘localhost’
with the computer's name or IP address where the application is. In the login screen, type in
the Syrinx username and password for your Syrinx CWA Admin User:

Setting Configuration Options

The Configuration Page under Options provides the main page for configuring the system. It is broken up into multiple tabs. You can make amendments on multiple tabs and then press the save button; switching tabs will not lose the changes made on the current tab.

SMTP Tab

Configuring SMTP settings allows the system to send emails out. Emails may be sent out to:

• Inform new Syrinx WS users (i.e. your customers) of their usernames and passwords
• Log any errors encountered
• Inform the depot when a Syrinx WS user makes an off-hire request
• Verify email addresses when cash customer create their own online ordering login
• Informing staff when someone on hold raises an order via the online ordering site
• Informing staff when someone places an order via the online ordering site

The following details may be provided:

New User Email Tab

Assuming valid SMTP settings have been provided, this allows for the customisation of the email
sent to users when their login credentials are created.

Error Email Tab

An email will be sent when errors are encountered in the system.

Details

Headers and Footers: The final four tabs allow HTML editors to amend the header and footer of the site and the PDFs generated from customers' search pages.

Depot Emails

When sending an off-hire request, the request is split by depot, and an email is generated to each depot. The ‘Depots’ page, accessible from the ‘Options’ section of the menu, allows the entry of the email address associated with each depot. If no email address is provided, the system will fall back to the ‘Offhire Fallback Email To’ field configured on the ‘Configuration’ page.

Creating and amending roles

Roles are used to group users and restrict access to menu options. Each Syrinx CWS user has to belong to at least one role. By default, a single role called ‘Full Access’ is defined. By default, users of that role will have access to all menu options.

To create a role or to amend an existing one, click the ‘Roles’ option in the menu under the ‘Roles’ section.

The Name and description are for internal reference purposes. Clicking the magnifying glass icon will display a list of all users associated with that role. The Show Provisional field determines if Provisional items can be searched for when performing On hire and Off hire searches.

Set up menu options for roles

After creating the role(s), you must choose which menu options the users assigned to each role will have access to. Select ‘Role Menu Options’ from the ‘Roles’ section of the menu.

Pick the role you wish to set up; the list of all possible menu options will be displayed. Tick the options you want users in this role to have access to. Changes will be saved automatically. Selecting or deselecting a Root item (such as Home or Hires in the menu) will cause all child items to also be selected or deselected. The changes to roles will show as soon as a CWS user refreshes a page or navigates to a new page.

Setting up Syrinx CWS Users

Your customers will require a username and password to log into the Syrinx CWS application. Each customer contact to whom you are granting access will have an associated Asp.Net user who is authenticated using Asp.Net’s own authentication provider.

Creating Users

Your Syrinx CWS users are associated (one-to-one) with customer contacts in Syrinx. Before you create a new user in the Syrinx CWS application, you must first create the contact in Syrinx if it does not already exist.

To create or amend CWS users, select ‘Users’ from the ‘Users’ section of the menu. By default, it will list all contacts for your customers with at least one CWS user set up. Use the ‘Search Criteria’ area at the top to refine your search:

Filters include:

Alongside each contact is a ‘Create User’ button (if there is currently no CWS user for the contact’) or ‘Get Details’ and ‘Delete User’ buttons (if a CWS user has already been created for the contact).

When you press the ‘Create User’ button, you will be prompted for an email address for the contact
if one has not already been set on the contact. The Name and initial Password of the new user will
then be displayed:

The default name consists of the customer’s account number followed by an underscore and the
name of the contact.

You should then Copy and Save the User Name and the Password – they will need to be passed on to
the customer contact to allow them to log in to the Syrinx CWS application.

Please note that you can configure it to send email messages to your new users automatically via the ‘New
User Email’ tab in Options / Configuration.

The contact can then be assigned to one or more roles. Press the magnifying glass icon and click on
the Roles tab. From the drop-down list, choose the roles to which you want the user to belong.

Amending User Details

The ‘User’ tab of the ‘Contact’ window contains information about the user and buttons for changing the user’s name or password, plus the user's locking/unlocking.

To change the user name from the default, you simply amend the name and then click the ‘Update’ button. Please note that all users must have unique names.

It is recommended that you adhere to the standard account number prefix for all Asp.Net usernames. Changing the username will generate a new password. 

Passwords can be reset by pressing the ‘Reset Password’ button. Note that the password will be randomly generated; only contacts can customize their passwords from the Syrinx CWS application.

Ticking the ‘User Locked?’ box will lock the user out of the Syrinx CWS application. The application automatically locks out a user after five unsuccessful login attempts. Use this tick-box to lock a user out manually when you want to temporarily block them from accessing the Syrinx CWS application.

Amending Site Access

The ‘Sites’ tab lets you restrict users to filtering and viewing details of particular sites only. Ticking ‘User Site Restricted’ and pressing the ‘Update’ button will display the site selection section. Sites can be selected from the drop-down and removed once added by pressing the ‘Remove Site’ button.

After restricting the user to the given site(s), they will only be able to see contracts, invoices, etc., located at those site(s) on the various search pages.

Child Companies

If you have multiple account customers in Syrinx for a group of related companies, you may want a customer contact to access multiple accounts using a single login. This is possible using the ‘Child Companies’ tab. Once a contact of such a company has additional companies associated with their login, they will be able to filter by the company when using the Syrinx CWS system, and generally, their searches will return results for all companies with an additional column indicating which customer the result is associated with. On the ‘Child Companies’ tab, type in the account number of the company you wish to link to and press the ‘Add Company’ button.

Syrinx - Customer Records

When a Syrinx CWS user is created for a particular customer contact, the system automatically sets a ‘Web Login Enabled?’ flag on the customer record in Syrinx (on the Account tab). This flag may be manually unticked on the Accounts tab to temporarily disable access to the Syrinx CWS application for all customer contacts.

Note that removing the last Syrinx CWS user for a particular customer will automatically un-tick this flag on the customer record. This tab also shows the date of the most recent login by any of this customer’s contacts.

Customer Alert Messages

The Syrinx CWS application allows users to display alert messages when they log into the website. An alert message can have an associated icon, be specific to one contact or customer, or be shown to all customers who log in. The message can be plain text or entered as HTML.

Alert Messages can be entered and managed either within Syrinx (on the CRM menu) or from within the Syrinx CWA system (the ‘Alerts’ option in the section News/Alerts): 

If the Contact field is left blank, the message will be shown to all customer contacts. A role can also be specified to further narrow the list of recipients.

The ‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ fields let you specify a particular time period when the message will be shown. Both fields are optional.

The ‘Icon’ drop-down list holds the icon's name, which will be shown alongside the message. The dropdown list will display the icons available to give a better idea of what will be displayed to contacts. 

Finally, the content of the alert itself can be added. This can either be plain text or HTML.

News

In addition to alerts, you can also set up News items via the ‘News’ option in the ‘News/Alerts’ section.

News items can be customised with the following fields:

 
The news item(s) are then displayed when the user logs in:

Custom Reports Management

The Syrinx WS system allows your customers to access custom reports that have been defined through Syrinx. Access to these reports can be restricted to particular Roles and Companies. The Reports page is accessed from the ‘Users’ section.

When a report is run through Syrinx WS, the user is presented with the same parameters that are available in Syrinx. Note that the customer parameter is hidden and fixed to the user’s own company when the report is run through Syrinx WS.

The following Parameters are supported by Syrinx WS in reports:

The Reports page displays all the custom reports in the system with their description. The WS Enabled column indicates whether any companies or roles have been given access to the report. The magnifying glass displays the info popup, where access to the report is configured.

Note: Any report file(s) that are to be available within Syrinx WS need to be copied to the C:\inetpub\wwwroot\SyrinxCWS\CRDocs\Custom folder on the web server.

CMS Files

The ‘Files’ option under the ‘CMS’ section lets you store images and documents on the website so they are available when creating custom pages, news items, alerts, site headers and footers, and PDF headers and footers. 

The files can be organised into folders:

The folders you create here and the files you drag in are stored on the web server under the folder C:\inetpub\wwwroot\SyrinxCWA\Shared\Files. 

Selecting one of the folders will bring up the ‘Add File’ popup window. Here you can select the folder in which you wish the file to be placed. It will default to the folder selected to open the window, but you can type into the box to search for the other folders or type a new folder name in:

You can then select a file from the dialog window that appears when pressing the ‘Select...’ button or simply drag and drop the image into the appropriate spot, as indicated below. (Note: drag/drop is only available in the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera):

After picking/dragging the file(s), a new folder under C:\inetpub\wwwroot\SyrinxCWA\Shared\Files is created if required, and the file is copied into the folder.

In the main Files window, selecting a file from the page will bring up the ‘View File’ popup window. This will display the file if it is an image and provide a link to the file, the folder it is held in, and the date it was uploaded. Pressing ‘Delete File’ will remove it from the system.

Custom Pages

The CMS Pages option in the CMS area lets you add your own pages for including in the menu system.

The Custom Page editor provides a WYSIWYG editor that operates like a standard text editor. It allows you to change font size, colour, and style, as well as other text formatting options.

Inserting Images

Clicking the insert image icon will produce the insert image popup window; there are three tabs
that provide three options for adding in an image:

CMS Image	A previously uploaded image (see CMS Files above) can be selected from the tree view on the left-hand side; selecting an item will produce a preview image on the right.
URL	A URL can be supplied here for an image hosted on a different server.
New CMS Image	As can be done when managing CMS files, you can upload an image into the CMS system from here (see CMS Files above). Once the image is uploaded, the CMS Image tab will be displayed, and the uploaded image will be available for inserting.

Inserting Hyperlinks

Links can be inserted into your pages throughout the CMS system or by entering the URL manually. Clicking the insert link icon will open a popup with two tabs:

Source Editing

The editor allows direct editing of the HTML source code by clicking the source icon. 

Page Access

Once you have set up your custom page, you need to specify where it should appear within the menu and which users should have access to it. This is achieved via the Menu option, as detailed in the next section.

CWS Menu

The ‘Menu’ option in the menu section ‘CMS’ allows for the customisation of the Syrinx CWS menu visible to your users. The checkbox next to each menu item determines the overall visibility to the item. Checking or unchecking a root item (such as ‘Hires’ and ‘Invoices’) will also check or uncheck all the child items associated with it.

The Menu can also be rearranged by clicking on items and dragging them to a new location in the hierarchy. Any CMS pages created in the system will also appear here. Pressing a menu item will open the settings popup. This has three tabs:

Settings

Roles

Which roles have access to the menu item. Select ‘Add new item’, and a dropdown will appear with a list of unassigned roles. Press ‘ Remove’ to remove access for that role.

Customers

This lets you limit the menu option to just the specified customer(s). Select ‘Add new item’, and a dropdown will appear with a list of unassigned customers. Press ‘ Remove’ to remove access for that company. If no customers are selected, all customers will have access to the menu item.

CMS

On menu items that are CMS pages an additional tab will be available. This allows the editing of the CMS page content. This is the same editor that is on the CMS page.

Using Syrinx CWS

To start Syrinx CWS type in the browser http://localhost/SyrinxCWS, replacing the word ‘localhost’ with the name or the IP address of the computer where the application.

A welcome window should be displayed:

Pre-Login Area

The Syrinx CWS application is divided into two separate parts. The first part (‘Pre-Login Area’) is accessible to anyone who knows the URL. The second part (‘Login Area’) is accessible once a user has logged in. 

The Pre-Login Area shows those custom pages you have added and marked as accessible to either ‘All Users’ or ‘Not Logged In Users’.

Login Area

To log in to the site, click the ‘Login’ link at the top; this is also the default page when entering the site. A new page will be shown where you must type a username and password. After pressing ‘Log in’, it first authenticates the given username and password with Asp.Net and IIS. If this fails, the user is left on the login page. The possible reasons why access could be denied are as follows:

If the login is successful, it takes you to the site and displays the News and Alerts page.

Changing passwords

When a user first logs in, it is recommended that they change their password given by the administrator. To change the password, click the ‘Account’ item on the top menu and then click the ‘Change Password’ menu option.

Consideration for Staff Training

The Syrinx CWS application gives your customers direct access to their data within the Syrinx database. This removes the need for your staff to have to manually print off reports and then email/fax them to your customers – the customer can access the information directly. However, please note that if you manually print and send reports, you have the opportunity to check the information before it is sent; no such checking will occur when your customer accesses the
information directly.

Therefore, consideration should be given to training staff on the importance of recording accurate, customer-facing information within the Syrinx database.

Web.Config file

Timeouts

The Syrinx CWS application is configured to automatically log users out after 30 minutes of inactivity. When a user has been logged out, the next time they press a link or button they will be taken back to the login page. This time period can be configured via the Timeout setting within the Authentication section in the web.config file.

Locking out users after unsuccessful logins

The number of unsuccessful login attempts is set up in the ‘web.config’ file in the section ‘Membership’. 

Password Generation

Passwords are generated/validated using rules specified in the ‘Membership’ section of the ‘web.config’ file (located in the root folder of the web application).

By default, a password consists of 5 characters with at least one non-alphanumeric character.