Agent Management
Contents
Agents and Agent Management
The Agents module (Agent Management module) provides for a way for Agents (or other parties) to place orders for products and services on behalf of a Service Provider, without giving them a login to the Service Provider's account in Emersion. This module is tightly integrated with the Commissions module, although it is not mandatory to subscribe to Commissions.
Service Providers with Agent Management will set up each Agency with their own instance of Cumulus, under which individuals who work for that Agency can be given their own staff account. From here, the Agent can place orders on behalf of the Service Provider and manage that client. An Agent, depending on preferences, can be granted access to entire customer base of the Service Provider, limited access to some customers, or be restricted to only customers that they create. These access privileges are controlled by the powerful and flexible Account Groups feature in Emersion allowing for granular control over which Agents can see and edit customers and customer information.
The Service provider retains the ownership of that client and can see, process and manage customers and orders created by the Agent. If Commissions is enabled, the Service Provider can view and process commissions made for orders placed by it's Agents.
Agents Overview
Agents, or staff of agencies, that undertake sales activities on behalf of a service provider are implemented through a specific set of accounts, org units and roles organised & configured in a way that allows information to be shared appropriately across Emersion’s multi-tier hierarchy.
The structure of the set up is represented in the following diagram.
Once the Agents module is enabled for your Service Provider account, you will be required to configure the module for your use and create an Agent account for your existing Agents. Please download the user manual below to assist you set up and configure Agents.
File:Systems Administration - Agent Management v1.0.pdf
Managing Agents (Optional)
Managing Agents also have an Account Group added to the configuration. When properly configured, this account group will:
- govern which end user customers the Agent can access
- add new customers created by the Agent to the account group automatically.
If a service provider is happy for an Agent to be able to view all end users, no account group needs to exist.
If a service provider wants to use Account groups to limit access to Agents:
For each Agent:
- Create a new account group. For each agent, you will need an account group.
- Set the account group as a security group, then set Allow Some as the group access code.
- Add any customers the Agent should be able to access to the new account group.
- Add the Organisation Unit of the Agent to the account group.
More information on account groups can be found at this article
