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--- The Online Staff Manual
---
Everything any staff member will need to
know to work with cars4us is on this page. All that
remains is to read this page.
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The User Roles -
There are two staff user roles:
As expected, a manager can do everything
- well, everything on cars4us. An admin also has wide
ranging powers, but an admin cannot create new users,
promote an admin to manager status, delete users
- dealers or staff, temporarily block any user from logging
in or consign fellow managers back to the admin
trenches. About all these specialized manager only tasks are
found on The User Form, apart from changing a dealer's
allocation, which is on the Dealer & Login Data form.
One last difference is that an admin
cannot write news for all the world to see and cannot put
up links on cars4us.
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The Vehicle Details Form -
Here every staff member can do three things:
- Count vehicles by dealer.
- Count all vehicles on the site.
- See which vehicles have been put on the site before a
certain date.
To count vehicles by dealer you need to know
the dealer in question's user name. We'll get to that. You
will also be shown the specific dealer's allocation of vehicles.
To see details of all vehicles on the site just fill in tomorrow's
date - all cars were put up before tomorrow.
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The User Form -
This is the stomping ground of manager types.
The first action is creating a user. This
can only be done by a manager. The user we talk of here is
a staff member. Dealers create themselves. All fields have
to be filled in or chosen (the role select element),
except the user type (staff or dealer). The manager creates
a user password, most likely the user name. As soon as the
user logs in for the first time he/she changes his/her password.
The manager has no way of finding out the new password. The
user (manager or admin) can change his password as often as
he wishes.
The second action is Associate. That
means a manager can associate a user with a new role, most
likely manager if the user is already an admin.
In the same way a user can be disassociated from a
role, even the admin role. If a user is associated with no
roles he cannot log in until he is again associated with a
role. To use these functions only the user name needs to be
filled in and the role in question selected.
Delete kills a user very dead as far
as cars4us is concerned. Only a manager can delete
other users, whether staff or dealers. If a dealer is deleted
all his photos are deleted as well. Every kind of user can
delete himself, should he wish to.
Own Info brings up a user's own details.
He can then change it or delete himself
User Info brings up another user's
details. Both admin and manager role users can
use this function. The info of any user type, staff
or dealer, can be obtained. This info cannot be changed
with this function.
Change Pwd is for a user to change
his own password. He does not need to fill in his user name,
the computer knows who he is (and what he thinks ;-) just
kidding). He needs to fill in two identical passwords.
Block User is for a manager to block
a delinquent user from logging in until he mends his ways.
The manager does this by assigning a new password to the user,
and not telling him the new password until he is in favour
again. Two identical passwords need to be filled in as well
as the user name of the user to be temporarily blocked.
Users by Role displays all users of
a certain role. Just select the role.
Roles by User displays all the roles
associated with a certain user. Enter his name in the appropriate
field.
Users by Type displays the details
of all users of a certain type. Just select the user type
- staff or dealer. This is where you find the user names of
all users for use in other actions.
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Dealer & Login Data -
Joined Before takes a date in the
appropriate fields (numbers only) and shows which dealers
joined before that date. Joined After is self explanatory.
Never logged on shows which users,
staff and dealers, are in the database and never logged on.
Ignore the default user, guest.
No logins since takes a date and shows
which users have not logged in since that date.
Logins by User takes a user name and
shows all this user's logins.
Logins between dates takes two dates
and is really self explanatory.
Logins between dates by user takes
two dates and user name and is also really self explanatory.
Get Dealer Allocation takes a dealer
user name and shows how many vehicles this dealer may have
on cars4us at any one time.
Set new allocation takes a dealer
user name and a number and changes the dealers allocation
to the number, wether it is more or less than before is immaterial
to the computer. Only a manager can do this.
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The Visits Form -
All Visits shows all vitits per page
and site visits for every month for as long as the site has
been up.
By Year limits the above to a certain
year. Fill in the year in question.
By Month limits the above to a certain
month. Fill in the year and month (a number) in question.
By Page gives the total number of
visits for as long as the site has been up for the page in
question. Choose the page from the drop-down list. One of
the "pages" is Site Visits
By Page and Year gives total visits
for the year in question for he page in question. Fill in
the year and choose a page from the drop-down list.
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The Contents Page -
On this page a manager can write to
the news page and put up new links, delete links or change
details about any link.
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The Session Object -
HTTP (the web communication protocol) is
a stateless protocol. This has nothing to do with the word
state as it is usually understood. It just means that
from one page request to the next there is no knowledge of
who requested the pages or anything else - each page request
is as if it the first and only.
Obviously, for a logged in user some knowledge
needs to persist so that he is not asked to log in with every
page request. There are a few ways of doing this. cars4us
uses the Session Object. The Session Object expires as soon
as your browser is closed or after a time if there is no to
and fro communication from your browser to the server. It
is deliberately invalidated when you log out.
The foregoing means that if you log in and
leave your computer unattended and come back, say 20 or 30
minutes later, you may find that you are no longer logged
in and you have to log in again. This is as it should be.
Nothing is wrong.
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