TOPS Home E-Zine

Issue #1 - November 2001

Inside TOPS Home:

1. TOPS Announcements: Monthly E-Zine
2. TOPS Announcements: Contacting Support
3. Customer Spotlight: Foxfire COA
4. This Month on Special: How to Get a Free Web Site
5. Support: Security Levels
6. Support: User and Password Report
7. Helping to Overcome the Tragedy

Monthly E-Zine

In our quest to provide 100% customer satisfaction we will be sending out this e-zine monthly to keep you up-to-date on the TOPS Community web site service. The e-zine will contain useful information regarding the web site service, as well as provide a way to learn about new things going on at TOPS Software.

This e-zine is one way for TOPS Software to reaffirm your importance to us.  If you do not wish to receive this monthly informational e-zine, or feel you have received this e-mail in error, please email unsubscribe@topssoft.com and your e-mail address will be removed from the list.

Contacting Support

Many of you may know that Andrea Drennen, primary provider of Management and Community web site support will be having a baby this December. To ensure that you receive an uninterrupted level of website support, Andrea has been training some of the regular TOPS Software support personnel to help support the web sites. 

Because most website customers are contacting Andrea via e-mail directly, we make this request: Please begin using the following e-mail address for all of your web site support requests: websupport@topssoft.com. This will ensure that your support request gets handled in a timely manner. Thank You.

Customer Spotlight

Foxfire Consolidated Owners Association is a golfing vacation resort community in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Manager John Stone of CAS (Community Association Services) has worked hard to provide the highest quality of service to the owners and visitors to this community. One of the services that he has extended to the community is the TOPS Community Web Site service. What attracted John initially to TOPS web sites was "...the fact that [they are] integrated into our [TOPS] software. It truly make[s] our lives easier."

Foxfire's web site is chock full of useful public information about the community, as well as plenty of private information for board members and owners to review. This combination both helps them sell timeshare opportunities to website visitors, and helps them keep the community running smoothly and efficiently. Check it out at http://www.foxfiretimeshare.com. 

How to Get a Free Web Site

We have all heard the expression, “You can't get anything for free.” We at TOPS Software would like to disagree with this statement and offer a free web site to our management companies. It’s easy. The first step is to obtain a management company web site through TOPS. Once this is ready, offer your communities the functionality of our interactive web sites and receive $5.00 off the cost of your management company site per community web site. Sign up 20 communities and your web site is free!

More and more companies are finding ways to use the Internet to improve the level of service they provide to their customers while simultaneously reducing their workload. TOPS Web Sites let you offer your communities cutting edge technology and provide a valuable service to community officers and residents. This new service makes communities more dependant on you as a management company while giving you an advantage over your competition. This is a win-win situation for everyone, so don’t miss out on this golden opportunity!

Understanding Security Levels

There are 99 security levels available for you to use in any community website. Only 4 are predefined:

1. Security Level 100: Public Access – anything defined as level 100 may be accessed by any visitor to the site without the need to log in. Security Level 50: Residents – level 50 is dead center. Residents may log in to the site and access all of the primary features of the site. They may not add or edit any features, however.
2. Security Level 25: Board Members – any feature that is assigned this level of security will only be visible by individuals whose user profile designates a security level or 25 or less.
3. Security Level 1: Administrator – only the person with administrative access may see items of this security level. This is the highest access level and has rights to add, edit and delete all dynamic functions on the site.
4. Custom defining security levels – the rule of thumb when defining your own security levels is to work on a sliding scale: users with level 30 access are lower and may do less than users with level 25 access, and so on. Keep a record of the various levels that you set so that you can re-use the same levels. For example, if you want a resident to be able to send out e-bulletins, but not to read board member data, assign level 45 to e-bulletin administrators. That way, when other residents wish the same access, you can simply change their level to 45.

How to get a Report of all User Names and Passwords

1. Login to the community web site using the administrative login info.
2. From the sidebar click Address Book Report under Admin Only.
3. Check the following options:
   1. Name (Resident 1)
   2. Login Name
   3. Password
4. Click Create Report to create a printable report, or click Create Text File to create a file that may be imported into Word, Excel, or Access for further formatting and reporting.

Note: This is the only report that will accurately display login names and passwords because members have the ability to change their own passwords. It is possible, however, to create a simple report in TOPS Form Letter that will display all of the login names and passwords that have been assigned by TOPS.

Helping to Overcome the Tragedy

Since September 11, 2001, the lives of all Americans were changed. Even now, many Americans are still working to help the survivors of the tragedy as well as the families of those that were lost. One such organization that has been around for many years is the American Red Cross.

In honor of the men and women who lost their lives due to this tragedy and in support of those who still work to help the survivors and their families, TOPS Software has decided to donate a portion of every community web site sold to the American Red Cross until December 31, 2001.

This means that you receive all of the benefits and features of our web sites and at the same time help in the aid of those who need it. Through your purchase of a TOPS web site, together we can help support those who need it most. 

Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free
community web site  CD demo?  Follow this link to apply for your free demo today !

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

About the Authors

Matt Meiklejohn is your TOPS Community Web Site Sales Representative
Andrea Drennen is the Director of Publishing and Standards at TOPS Software

 

Previous

Next