Creating and Managing Users

This article walks users through the process of setting up new User Accounts and managing those accounts in ServiceTrade.

Prerequisites

• An Admin User account is required to create other user accounts or to edit user information.
• New Users must be created by an Admin User account.  There is no way for users to sign up themselves under your account (by design).

To Create New Users

1. Click on the My Account tab in the Navigation Menu.
2. Click on Users to get to the User Management page.
3. Click Create User in the top left of the window.
   
4. Next, fill in at least all required fields marked with a red asterisk.
   • Note: If you are using Service Reviews, the Technician email must match their email in NearbyNow.
5. Select whether or not the user type is a Salesperson, Helper, or Technician.
   • Salesperson - When selected, this user will not count towards your overall subscription license total. A default Role is not assigned to the User. A Salesperson User Type, allows you to assign this user to quotes, contracts, and track the Salesperson.
   • Technician - When selected, this user will count towards your overall subscription license total. The default Role will be "Account Tech + History" unless you have created a custom Tech role.
     Follow this link, if you need to create a User that acts as a Placeholder Technician that does not count towards your overall subscription license total.
   • Helper - When selected, this user will count towards your overall subscription license total. The default Role will be "Account Tech Helper." A Helper can only have the Role "Account Tech Helper."
   • Note: You can combine user types, however you cannot combine a Helper and Technician.
6. If a user is a Technician, you will need to select any relevant service lines, which correspond to his or her ability to complete a Job for a given trade.
7. Click Save.

Assigning Standard Roles to the User

•  Roles control what the user can do. There are a series of default roles that can be selected for a user.
• Select the Role or combination of roles that best fit the user you've created.
• If you need permissions that vary from the standard roles, you may wish to create and assign Custom Roles.

Adding a user profile photo

We highly suggest adding photos of your techs for use on the dispatch board and communications to customers. 

Configuring user notification settings

More details on managing notifications are available in this article.

Technician-Specific Labor Items and Costs

If the user is a tech and you're using labor items in your account, you can set up labor costs per item for each tech.  Open the 'Labor Rates' section and type a cost for each labor item for that tech.

Repeat these steps for each office or tech user in your company.

To see more info on user creation including user management FAQ, see below.

Note: Users are not notified that you have created an account for them.  You will need to do so using whichever method you desire. 

Adding custom fields to Users, such as an internal employee ID # or a Tech certification number:

1. Click on the desired user.
2. Click on the "Edit User" button.
3. Enter the desired information in the "User Details" Section.

Changing User Passwords

For security reasons, no one, not even ServiceTrade Support, may view other's passwords. If you have the admin users role, you are able to change user passwords on their behalf.

To change a User's password:

1. Hover over My Account up top
2. Click "Users"
3. Click on the name of the User you wish to edit
4. Click the blue "Change Password" button on the right of the screen.

You may have them enter the desired password if they are present, enter it on their behalf, or enter a temporary password for them.

Users may reset their own passwords at https://app.servicetrade.com/auth/recover.

FAQs

Which users count towards my subscription license total?

Technician Users that count towards your subscription license total are defined in the Master Subscription Agreement as follows:

“Technician Users” means individuals authorized by You to use the Services, who have been
supplied user identifications and passwords by You (or by Us at Your request), who can be
assigned to deliver Jobs, and who are eligible to use the mobile application to review and report
Job status information. Technician Users may include but are not limited to Your employees,
consultants, contractors and agents, and third parties with which You transact business. 

• In ServiceTrade, any user that is marked as active has used ServiceTrade in the last 30 days, and has the "User is a Technician" field checked meets these criteria and will count towards your subscription license total.
• If a user has the "User is a Technician" field checked, is marked as active, and has not used ServiceTrade in the last 30 days, they will be considered a placeholder Technician.
• To view a list of your Technician users:
  1. 1. Navigate to your Company page
     2. Click on the "Users" accordion
     3. Search the term "Tech".
• To export a list of your Technician users:
  1. 1. Navigate to your User List
     2. Click on the "Export to Spreadsheet" option found in the top right.
     3. In the export, you'll find a column called "is_tech" that indicates which users are Technicians.

What is a Placeholder Technician?

Placeholder Technician users can be used for a variety of purposes such as scheduling equipment to be used on Jobs, tracking office-user assignments to appointments, or tracking additional appointment statuses. It is not a User Type or a Default Role.

• You will need to create a Custom Role that has the "Perform Job as Tech" activity, but without the "Mobile App Access" activity granted.
• Note: If both the "Perform Job as Tech" and "Mobile App Access" activities are granted to a role and that role is assigned to a user. That user will count toward your overall subscription license total.

How do I change a Username? 

• There is currently no way to do this from within your account.  
• Open a support ticket by emailing support@servicetrade.com, letting us know the old username and the desired new username, and we will do our best to accommodate.
• It is NOT recommended to change usernames when replacing personnel.
  • When deactivating a user, you may transfer their assigned Jobs and services to someone else. Contact support to move over assigned quotes.
  • We recommend that user accounts be kept isolated and not shared, even during staff transitions.

How do I change a Tech's office?

• Go to My Account Tab
• Click on Users.
• Click on the Tech you wish to change.
• Click Edit.
• Change their Default Office.
• Save.

ServiceTrade won't let me have the Username that I want.  It says "Username is unavailable" but I don't have anyone in my account with that Username. 

• Usernames must be unique across ServiceTrade, not just your account. 
• Similar to a service like Gmail, if you desire a simple username such as jsmith, it is likely taken, where mycompany.jsmith or jsmith@mycompany.com (email address as a username) is almost certainly available.  
• Try another username.

What is a good practice/schema for Usernames?  

While NightDragonSupremeOfTheEverWinterForest is a sweet username, we recommend using your email as your username. 

One of my Users got locked out from too many failed login attempts. How do I unlock them?

• They may try to reset their password at app.servicetrade.com/auth/recover.
• As an Admin, you may go to their user page within ServiceTrade (My Account > Users) and click "Unlock" next to the lockout notice on their user page.

What password guidelines do you recommend?

Strong passwords and password rotation business rules that you enforce internally are the best front-line defense for most forms of data leakage.

Can I log into ServiceTrade with my Google / Office 365 / some other username/password?

We don't support OAuth or other single-sign-on (SSO) systems at this time.

Can I use my Active Directory credentials to log into ServiceTrade?

We don't natively integrate with any AD systems, and it's unlikely that we will do so in the foreseeable future.  However, you can create, change, and assign/remove roles from users via our user API endpoint, so it is possible for you to create scripts on your AD server (or whatever your user management platform is) that provision and manage ST users in response to changes that you make at the AD level via our user API.

Can I restrict my Users' access times?

Authorized access time-of-day management is also unlikely to be added to ServiceTrade in the foreseeable future.  However, you could probably achieve something similar with an API script on your AD server that will deactivate, and/or "fuzz" the passwords of, users at the beginning of their locked-out time period (6 pm, say), then reactivate (or "un-fuzz") them when you intend for access to be restored.

Where can I see a user's activity?

• User login activity itself isn't auditable by end-users, but most significant actions (changes to records, the creation of new records, etc) are recorded on the History page.
• If you're looking for a more systematic way to review changes to records, our history API endpoint gives access to this.
• You could use this in a batch-oriented way (once a day, month, etc) or in real-time using a webhook listener and a middleware platform such as Zapier, using some business logic that recognizes anomalous behavior and then puts those history records in a Google Sheet/emails them to you/whatever.

What should I do in ServiceTrade if a staff member is leaving permanently, or no longer needs access for some other reason?

1. As an Admin User, view their User page and change their password right away if security is a concern.
2. Search for all Quotes assigned to them and reassign, if applicable.
3. Search for all Jobs where they are the Job owner and reassign, if applicable.
4. If they are a Tech, when deactivating there is an option to reassign both open Jobs as well as replace them / remove them as the preferred tech on recurring services.
5. View their User page, click Edit User, and change their status to "Inactive".