The duplication of Accounts was a huge Legacy Inteliguide problem, specifically User & Business Accounts. For every User who had system access and every Business that maintained Work Orders across multiple Franchises, duplication of those Accounts occurred.
The more Franchises in operation, the bigger the problem.
Enter V2!
The solution to that problem is to take an already existing Account and simply create an Authorization for it in subsequent Franchises. That preserves the original Account record on the creating Franchise side, and then other Franchises are Authorized to access it. Authorizations are written uniquely for any additional Franchises utilizing the Account. While that solved one problem, it created another. How should shared Accounts be accessed and modified? There are a number of rules that define how to work with Accounts across multiple Franchises, they govern the following:
- Access
- Editing
While these two concepts are fairly transparent to Admins, they do impact how each Account record is modified.
Users
Adding
Login emails are UNIQUE across every Franchise. They are the key to looking for existing User Accounts elsewhere.
If the email already represents a User in the system, you'll get a warning and then a link asking if you want to Authorize the User.
Before Clicking 'Authorize User?'
Authorization Attributes
This is what you see after you click on 'Authorize User?.' These attributes are stored for the local Franchise, the one adding the Authorization to use the existing afilbert@lyconic.com User Account. The User Account in the example was originally created for the Omaha Market and is being Authorized for the Scottsdale Market.
Editing
When multiple Franchises are making use of one User Account, that one User Account cannot be fully edited by any Admin level Users; even from within the Franchise that created the Account. All User Account attributes can be read, and the Authorization attributes themselves can be edited:
- Role
- Priority Rank
- Employment Type
- Pay Rate
- Expiry Info
But even the Franchise the User account was first created for cannot edit the following restricted attributes:
- Login (email)
- Name
- Password
- Phones
- SMS Phone
- Profile Pic
If a User is shared by more than one Franchise, ONLY the User themselves and Master Admins can edit those restricted attributes.
Businesses
Adding
Creating Authorizations for Businesses isn't as simple and straightforward as Users. There's no unique key in the system that will determine if there's a duplicate Business available. Here are two wildly different examples of why that's true.
Example 1
Dairy Queen. The Business is something that may have a corporate headquarters. That one Business might be used for many many locations spread across many Franchises. In essence, one Business, Authorized for many Franchises and one to many Locations per Franchise.
Example 2
Dairy Delight. Every town in American seems to have some variant of the local ice cream shoppe all named just about the same. They're not unified under one national Business or headquarters, and are, indeed, all separate Businesses unique to separate Markets. In essence, one Business per Market with typically one Location per market.
We decided it was best to display Names of existing Businesses in the system, coupled with their local Main Contact information (for context) in an auto suggest flyout that would appear as Users typed in a Name while Adding a new Business. That way, it will be left to the discretion of the User creating the Account whether they think it's pertinent to Authorize an existing Business, or create an entirely new one.
Editing
No part of a Business Account that is shared by multiple Franchises is Editable. Only Master Admins can change attributes of that Business. This is by design. Corporate users will hold Master Admin accounts and will have the better visibility necessary to make changes that could affect multiple Franchises across diverse markets.
Note: Because of extended Payroll and Billing operations, we needed Authorizations to be Archived just like full accounts. That's one Authorization modification where Admins don't require the intervention of Master Admins.
Protected Accounts
You may notice when viewing either Businesses or Users that you run across inactive List options.
You may also notice that a yellow "protected" banner appears above certain Business and User Detail Pages.
This simply indicates that there are some editing restrictions on those records (as mentioned above) due to them being Authorized for more than one Franchise Context.
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