Activelock Customer Management 1.0

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Activelock

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Customer Management 1.0

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Activelock Customer Management Page 2

Overview

Activelock Customer Management (ACM) is a customer management tool for developers who use Activelock to secure their products from unauthorized use. ACM was developed in Access 2007 and utilizes Outlook 2007 for email

automation. The tool manages all aspects of product code generation including V and G code generation as well as “short” license key (liberation key) generation (this tool only generates short keys at this time). When email automation is incorporated into the product that is distributed, ACM will automatically verify incoming email registration requests, generate the appropriate license key, send it back to the customer via email and update the database to reflect the product registration status. Customer contact information is maintained in the database as well as all products the customer has purchased. A issue management feature is also incorporated and easily accessed. If web sales automation is not an option, this is a valuable tool for managing your customer’s licenses and issues.

Since monitoring incoming emails is a requirement for email automation – the user can minimize the tool to the system tray after email automation is setup and activated. Manual license generation is also available. All registrations are tied to your invoice number and additional requests for license keys are handled to prevent multiple product registrations. The next section contains screenshots and describes the function of each screen.

Activelock EULA

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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

[o] Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. [o] Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following

disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOTLIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)

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Activelock Customer Management Forms

Main Menu

The main menu is the first form you will see when you start ACM. Besides the four buttons that open the screens described below, The last button will minimize ACM – fully functional – to the system tray. This is especially useful if you are using ACM to monitor incoming emails, which requires ACM to be open all the time. The Email Automation Activated radio button is used to turn email automation on and off. Email automation must be setup in order to turn this function on. Once turned on – the tool remembers your selection even when the tool is closed and reopened.

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Customer Management

The Customer Management screen is the main screen for ACM. In this screen you can add new customers, add new sales to a customer’s account, add problems (issues) the customer is having with their products and add the steps taken to resolve these issues for future reference.

To add a new customer, just click on the Add New Customer button which will take you to a new record. Fill in as much of the customer information as you have (name, address, software registration name, etc.) then click Save. All the fields are self explanatory, except for the Software Registration Name field. Some people will register their software to their company namesake, instead of themselves. This allows for that. The name that goes into this field should be EXACTLY the same as the name used in registering the products. The email field is a hyperlink field. One click and a email is opened to send to the customer. The notes field is for your use to track anything you feel is important about the customer (not required to be filled in).

The Add New Sale button opens a form which is described below. I created this form because certain product sales information is needed in order for email automation to work properly. This form makes sure this happens.

The cancel button erases any changes made to the customer information. Save and close are self explanatory. Below the buttons is a sub form displaying the detailed information on the products the displayed customer has

purchased. Problems are linked to invoice numbers. Every invoice can have multiple issues (problems) assigned to them. Each issue can have multiple steps to document its resolution. In the above screenshot, the fictitious customer has a problem with a product called Tax Manager – 1.2. You can see I have expanded the problems tab by clicking on the “+” sign next to the invoice number. This drills down to the problem list. If you click on the “+” next to a particular problem (as I have in the example above), you will drill down to the actual steps taken to resolve the issue. All drill downs are read/write so problems and the steps to resolution can be entered right on this screen.

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New Software Purchase

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Manual License Generator

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Product Code Generator and Lookup

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Automated Email Setup

The Automated Email Setup form is used to setup a linked table to the Outlook 2007 inbox of your choice. Instructions for setup is included on the form itself. There are some rare circumstances where editing the VBA code behind the form might be required.

I was able to bring out every variable needed to create the linked Outlook table except for one. Besides the three user entered variables there is one variable which represents the “top folder” or container for the Outlook folders. This is usually called “Personal Folders”, which is what I put in for the default. If you have problems creating a linked table look at the top most entry in Outlook 2007 mail folders (shown below). If this IS NOT called “Personal Folders” then you must make a change to the VBA code behind this form as outlined below.

To change folder designation in VBA code:

1. Hold shift down when opening ACM to bypass startup into menu form.

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3. Scroll down in the VB editor until you get to the “Public Function AttachMail()” function. 4. Find where variable “td.connect” is first defined as shown:

5. Change “Personal Folders” to what your folder is named. Do not delete the “|” at the end! 6. Click “Save” in the VB editor and close the project.

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ACM Work Flow

If email automation is used the following steps take place:

If email automation is not used the following steps take place:

While email automation makes the work flow easier – it is not required for ACM to be a useful tool. As shown in the diagram above. The process for using ACM with or without email automation is identical in the beginning. Once a purchase has been made and documented in ACM they branch. When using email automation there is no further interaction needed on the software developers side. The product generates a registration email after the customer fills out the registration information. Once sent ACM will automatically detect the email in the inbox and process it. If any details don’t match ( if you haven’t entered the sales information into ACM yet, if someone is trying to register without paying, etc.), a rejection response email will be sent out. If you haven’t entered the sales information into ACM before a registration request is processed, the customer will get a polite rejection email, and they can go through the request process again – it would be advisable to put instructions in your product stating the period of time for sales processing in order to prevent the customer from having to submit a request for registration several times.

Everything is done manually without email automation. The storage of all customer, sales and registration information (except for the financial side of things) being stored in a single, easy to use database is what would make ACM valuable even if email automation is not used.

When email automation is being used, ACM must be running all the time. It detects if you have Outlook 2007 running at the same time and will use your open instance of Outlook instead of opening up its own (to save system resources). If you aren’t running Outlook or if you close down your instance of Outlook, ACM will detect this and open its own hidden instance of Outlook to use. Likewise, if you open an instance of Outlook while ACM is running in email automation mode, ACM will close its instance of Outlook and use yours. ACM can be minimized to the notification area when not being used by you. In this way, email automation is maintained without ACM taking up space on your desktop or taskbar.

While a problem (or “issue”) tracker has been implemented. It is basically for problem documentation. I have no separate forms or reports that would manage these problems or display them in a manner where they could be analyzed, but the tables are there for you to do want you want to with them.

I hope you find this tool valuable in your use of Activelock. Feel free to modify this project to suit your needs.

Customer Downloads Trial Version – uses and decides to purchase

Purchase is made via some external method. An invoice number is generated.

Purchase and customer information is entered into ACM.

Customer fills out registration form in product – clicks “Register Via Email”. Email is sent.

Email is received and processed by ACM – customer and purchase information is verified.

If customer and purchase information is verified, a license key is generated and emailed to customer.

Customer sends

registration information in some predefined way (telephone, mail, etc.)

Received registration information is verified manually in the ACM database.

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

This project is a donation to Activelock and contains code that is copyrighted by Activelock and is therefore subject, in its entirety, to the Activelock EULA listed at the bottom of the Overview Section of this manual.