Setting Up DirectSuggest Account
DirectSuggest depends on user suggestions being directed to the correct decision maker based on Category and Location / Region.
These decision makers, called Gatekeepers, act as the evaluators of the suggestions made by your company’s employees.
The Gatekeepers should be close enough to the employee making the suggestion to understand its value yet central enough to the corporate entity to make sure those suggestions arrive on the proper desk for action.
For this process to flow correctly, the Administrator for your company must consider how to set up DirectSuggest to work best for your organization.
Categories must be defined as the first level of sorting suggestions. These Categories can be your organization’s actual departments.
They can also be functional areas or related to work processes.
The decision is up to the Administrator and should reflect groupings that are important to your company. The Categories will be part of the suggestion making process for staff and will appear as a menu selection list on the Make Suggestion pages.
There is an optional, second level, of sorting by Locations / Regions.
If your employees are already saved in your company database with a location or other geographical designation, that could be the best option for this additional sort level.
By default, DirectSuggest creates a Location / Region called ‘Company’ that will be used as a default for any employees not assigned a Location / Region
There are two sample CSV (.csv) template files that can be used to import all your employees (and optionally their Locations / Regions) as well as the Categories
and Security Levels. Administrators are level 10, Gatekeepers are level 5, and Staff are level 1 when using the upload template.
The Administrator may need the help of your IT Department to export data from your company database into the proper format.
These two template files are under the Support menu item.
The data that is populated using these files may also be maintained manually through Administrator web pages, if that is preferred.
If your organization has unique email addresses for all employees, then email addresses may be used as the employee id.
Added employees will be placed on a list that is available by clicking the Send Announcements button
on the Administrator / Employee menu option. Invitation announcements with the company id, user id, and password
to each added employee can be emailed from here. When the announcement is sent, the employee is removed from this
list.
The Administrator who set up your DirectSuggest account, is the default Gatekeeper.
Gatekeepers are assigned to each Categories and Locations / Regions combination.
For example, if you have set up five categories and six regions a Gatekeeper will need to be assigned to each of the 30 combinations of those criteria.
Gatekeepers should be familiar enough with the Categories and Locations / Regions that they will be able to understand and evaluate the value of the suggestions.
If a different employee should be set up as the default Gatekeeper that change can be made under the Administrator Company Information and Settings menu item.
At first, the Gatekeeper assignment table will be built with the default Gatekeeper assigned to ALL of the possible Categories and Locations / Regions combinations.
Gatekeepers will now need to be assigned to each Categories and Locations / Regions combination if they differ from the default Gatekeeper.
For an employee to be available as a Gatekeeper he must be assigned a security level of either Gatekeeper or Administrator.
This value can be set in the employee import .csv file or individually in the Administrator Employees menu item.
When your company is ready to go live with DirectSuggest, you will need to send the employee
invitation announcement. The list of all active employees who need to receive these announcements
are listed under the Administrator Employees menu item. Click on the Send Announcements button.
The proper order of steps to correctly and efficiently set up DirectSuggest after an account has been created in the Subscribe process are:
- Import or add Categories.
- Import or add Employees. If Locations / Regions are included in the Employee import .csv file then that table will also be populated.
- If Locations / Regions were not defined in the Employee import file in step two, and are desired, they should be optionally added now via the Administrator/Employee menu item. This is not recommended. The preferred method is to include Locations / Regions in the Employee import file.
- Change the default Gatekeeper if the Administrator who created the DirectSuggest account should not be used.
- Verify and update the Gatekeepers for the Categories and Locations / Regions combinations.
- DirectSuggest is ready to use and suggestions can be submitted.
- When ready, send announcements to the users with their login information.
