First of all, let's take a look at my dummy installation of the extension. I created a few dummy records of all types the extension uses (employees, departments, positions, telephone numbers and events) in the users sysfolder (which has to be set as Startingpoint in the plugins' configuration).
Employees are simply the front end users of your website. You can create them in the users sysfolder and set all their values. The extension adds some extra fields to the standard user administration page. They should be pretty self explaining, but I will explain the most interesting ones here:
Field | Description |
Name | The employee's name has to be entered in the format 'surname, first name'. The extension will split the name at the comma. |
Departments | The employee's departments are represented by the website's frontend user groups. |
Positions | Positions have to be created manually. One could imagine positions like IT-Guy, Manager etc. The employee's position with the highest priority defines its overall priority. |
Birthday / First entry | These dates have to be entered in the format YYYY-MM-DD. The extension will split the dates at the dashes. |
IP address / Last logon to Windows | These fields will be used by the Presence List. I leave it to you how you fill these fields (I do it in the Windows logon script). |
Collective numbers | I don't know if anyone has a use for this, but my company has telephone numbers I call collective numbers. These are telephone numbers customers can call from outside that are routed to a list of employees instead of just one. This field is used to create lists that show which employees are assigned to which number. |
Working hours | Here you can enter information about the employee's working hours if he/she is a part-time worker. If you enter any text here, the employee will be shown as a part-time worker in lists. |
Departments are simply the frontend user groups of your website. According to the employees I will explain some fields added by the extension here:
Field | Description |
Column / vertical position on the telephone list | I designed the telephone list to be printer friendly, so it has more than one column. You can define where the department shows up on the telephone list with these settings. Simply count the columns from left to right over all pages to find out the right column number and all the departments in one column from top to bottom to find out the vertical position. Example: If you configure the telephone list to have 2 columns (that's the default) and want to show the IT department on the first column on page 3, right behind the management, you would enter 5 for column and 2 for vertical position (of course you would have to set vertical position to 1 for the management department, too). |
Positions are new database record types the extension offers. You should also create them in your users sysfolder. Positions have only two possible fields: name and priority. Name should be self explaining.
The priority is needed to sort department lists and assign configurable CSS-classes to the employees with the given priority on any list the extension can create. The higher the value for the position's priority, the higher the employees assigned to that position will appear in a list of the departments their in.
Take a look at the screenshot of the department list: the position Director has a priority of 99, Manager has 65 and 'normal' workers (like IT-Guys ;-) have 50 (the default value). The list gets sorted by the positions' priorities and the employees get a certain CSS-class, according to my configuration (e.g. the director gets the class 'highestPriority' which will result in a dark red background).
Telephone numbers are also new database records the extension offers. They represent a single telephone number that is not assigned to a single employee (e.g. the telephone central) but should appear on the telephone list. Furthermore a telephone number can also represent a collective number, that can be assigned to many different employees (collective numbers will not show up on the telephone list). I will explain the meaning of the fields here:
Field | Description |
Belongs to group / Group of numbers / Position on the telephone list | If you set the current telephone number to be a group of numbers, it will be not really a single telephone number but a 'container' for more numbers on the telephone list (like a department is a container for employees). You can assign other telephone numbers to such a group and it will appear like a department on the telephone list on the configured column / vertical position (see explanation in section Administer Departments). The position settings will have no effect, if the current number is not defined as a group. Single telephone numbers have to be assigned to a group, or they will not show up on the telephone list! |
Collective number | If you define the current number to be a collective number, it will not show up on the telephone list, but on the list of collective numbers, and employees can be assigned to it. The settings for the telephone list position and the group will have no effect at all. |
Events are also new database records the extension offers. They represent an event that takes place in the company, like the Christmas party etc. The employees can sign up for these events so the people in charge of planning them know who will be coming or not. The fields should be self-explaining, so I only explain some of them here:
Field | Description |
Deactivate signup from this date | If this field is set to a YYYY-MM-DD value, the employees will no be able to sign themselves in after that date. However, admins can still sign up for other employees. |
Options | These are the options the employees can choose from. E.g. if you plan a christmas party and you have two different places the employees should “vote” for, you would enter them here (each option on a single line). |
Departments who administer this event, Employees who administer this event | Here you can choose which departments / employees will be admins for the event. Admins can sign up for other employees and remind those who have not made a decision yet via an automatic email. |
Sender address for automatically sent emails | This email address will be set as the sender address of reminder mails. If you enter an admin's address employees can simply ask questions by replying to the automatic emails. |
Employees are allowed to sign up for the event | If deactivated, the employees will not be able to sign themselves up for the event. Only admins will be able to do so. |
Show statistics | If enabled, a small statistics table will be displayed under the list that makes it easier to find out how many employees have signed up or not. |
