Creating the Application

First of all, you must create the application. Sign in to CRM.COM using your user credentials and navigate to Settings > Platform > Contact-Facing Essentials > Applications. Select Create Application.

• Name - Provide the app name, which will appear on the welcome screen (a.k.a Landing Page).

• Application Type - Select one of the two application types below:

  • Contact App - A consumer-facing app that allows a business's contacts to register, access personal and financial information, review past transactions, place orders, and engage with other community members.

  • Contact Portal - A web-based portal offering the same features and user experience as the Contact App.

• Click Save.

Now that the app has been created, you must configure the settings in the next step.

Configure the Minimum Requirements

We recommend configuring the following settings before the app is submitted to the stores. However, a system user can change these settings at any time without resubmitting the app for approval.

Application Settings

These settings affect the app's appearance and features.

Appearance > Colours

When an app is created, default colour settings are applied, but you can customise them with your own business branding colours and images.

• Background Colour / Background Image - Set either of these. If both are provided, the background image will be used.

  • Image format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

  • Aspect Ratio: 1:2

  • Size: 5MB or less

• Primary / Secondary Colours - Used throughout the app, mainly as text links and option button colours.

Appearance > Homepage Skins

Select the look/feel of the app’s Home screen.

Appearance > App Mode

This is the background colour of your app after a contact has signed-in and is applied to all screens.

• Light Mode - White background with black font colour.

• Dark Mode - Black background with white font colour.

Appearance > Creatives

• App logo - Upload your business logo to be used throughout the app.

  • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

  • Aspect Ratio: 1:1

  • Dimensions: 500 x 500 pixels

  • Size: 5MB or less

  • Background opacity, preferably transparent (0%)

• Carousel - This is particularly beneficial for highlighting multiple products or services in a visually appealing manner. Optionally upload one of more images to appear on the Home screen of the app.

  • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

  • Aspect Ratio: 21:9

  • Size: 5MB or less

Features > About

Please ensure that you fill out the contact and legal information that will be visible to users of the app. You can download a free template for the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy if your business doesn’t have its own, but be sure to review the entire content and replace the placeholder with your business name. If these are activated, users will need to accept both when registering through the app.

Features > Marketing

Create links to external sites (e.g. website, social media profiles or other). These will appear on the Home screen of the app. You can also provide translated link names if you want a multilingual app.

• Image size …..

Rearrange the order of the links using the hamburger icon.

Features > Modules

You should spend a sufficient amount of time considering the options and features of your app. Some options can't be disabled.

Hover over the tips on this screen to get an explanation of each setting. Here below, we are mentioning just some of those that require additional setup, however, most settings are optional. See Other Content to Consider for a full list of options.

• Contacts

  • Countries of agreement - The default countries of agreement are those configured in Settings > Platform > Countries. Find out more about Countries of agreement here.

• Finance

  • Payment Gateways - Choose from the payment gateways configured in Platform > Integrations > Payment Gateways. You may need to configure some of your own if your business won’t be using the CRM.COM Wallet Gateway. Find out more about payment gateways here.

• Orders

  • Order Queues - This is for businesses that want to enable ordering from the app. A default order queue is provided, but you can configure additional queues to handle the different supply methods by navigating to Settings > Commerce > Orders > Queues. Find out more about order queues here.

• Customer Events

  • Reward Tiering - This is for businesses that want to offer awards to their contacts through reward offers. Each business has a set of predefined reward tiers, but you can change these by navigating to Settings > Rewards > Tiering. Find out more about reward offers and tiers here.

Features > Shortcuts

Once again, the shortcut options are preconfigured for the release app, but the system user can change their name. Bear in mind that if a feature is not enabled in Features > Modules, its shortcut will be automatically hidden in the app, e.g. if ordering is not enabled, then the Buy option will not appear on the app.

Platform Details

• App ID - This is a unique ID used to identify your Android and iOS app. We use a naming protocol for these, so please leave them both blank and our customer success team will configure them.

Additional Settings

Apart from the actual application settings listed above, some additional configuration will be required for your app to function correctly. Again, these are the recommended settings and may vary depending on your business needs.

Contact Authentication

Navigate to Settings > Contacts & CRM > Contacts > Contact Authentication & Identities. You can choose how your contacts will register and sign in to the app. You can also set the country calling codes, which are necessary if you choose a registration option involving phone numbers, and these codes can also be used for linking the CRM.COM Wallet using a contact’s phone number.

Products

If your business will allow contacts to order its products/services via the app, you will need to configure your products for selling by following the steps below:

• Configure your products or services, completing as much information as possible to enhance the user experience.

  • Provide descriptions and prices for your products.

  • Upload images for your products. If no images are provided, then the product category image will be used. If the product does not have a product category assigned, then the business logo will be displayed to represent the product on the app.

    • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

    • Aspect Ratio: 1:1

    • Size: 5MB or less

  • Refer to the Product Catalogue manual to find out more.

Order Catalogue

Configure an Order Catalogue to display products using your chosen categories. If an Order Catalogue is not set up, assign Product Categories to display products categorically.

Business Network

Set up your Business Network locations (i.e. Merchants/Service Providers, Venues/Service Points) who will fulfil the orders. Define Merchants and Venues with a latitude/longitude for each so that they can be pinpointed on a map and used for delivery orders.

Fulfilment Policy

Set up your Fulfilment Policies to manage ordering for your selected supply methods. Make sure that you state the acceptable payment methods for ordering.

Countries of Agreement

Configure your Countries of Agreement, i.e. the countries your contacts can order from.

Order Queues

Set up your Order Queues to effectively manage the different stages of the ordering process.

Integrations

Enhance your app by configuring the following integrations.

• Google Places - To allow exact address locations to be specified.

• Payment Gateways - Either enable the CRM.COM Wallet Gateway for payments, or setup your own.

• Communications - This is so that the business can send internal and external communications.

  • Email and/or SMS

  • Push Notifications (mobile app only)

Other Content to Consider

The app can be improved by enabling additional features. It's worthwhile to take the time to read and understand what each feature offers, then determine if it aligns with your business operations and if you'd like to incorporate it into your app. Below is a full list of features that can be configured to enhance your app.

• Business Network

• Rewards

  • Schemes

  • Offers

    • Reward Offer image requirements:

      • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

      • Aspect Ratio: 16:9

      • Size: 5MB or less

    • Filtering options

      • Tags

      • Industries

      • Industry Sectors

• Commerce Pools

• Promotions

  • Promotions image requirements:

    • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

    • Aspect Ratio: 16:9

    • Size: 5MB or less

• Donations

  • Donations image requirements:

    • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

    • Aspect Ratio: 16:9

    • Size: 5MB or less

• Products

  • Product image requirements:

    • Format: jpg, jpeg, svg, or png

    • Aspect Ratio: 1:1

    • Size: 5MB or less

  • Order Catalogue

  • Categories

• Countries of Agreement

• Fulfilment Policy

• Order Queues

• Communities

  • Relations

• Pass Plans

  • Passes

• Service Requests

  • Applications Settings for Service Requests

• Namedays

• uploaded images

  • provide image sizes

    • business logo

    • products

    • reward offers

    • promotions

    • carousel

    • embedded browser links

  • diagram showing where each item will be displayed on the app screen.

• Integrations

  • Google Places

  • Payment

  • Communication

• Automations

  • Ordering

    • If you intend to fulfil orders that your contacts make through the app, you'll need to set up an automation with the trigger event New Order and the action CRM.COM Order Provisioning. This automation will make sure that orders are assigned to the nearest merchant/venue, or merchants/venues based on postal code.

    • If you have configured reward offers to award your contact for purchasing, then you need to create an automation to create purchase event when a new invoice is issued so that they contact may be awarded. The trigger event is New Invoice and the action is CRM.COM Customer Events Provisioning / New purchase customer event.

    • You may also want to configure a communication to be sent to the contact who has placed the order using one of your enabled communication integrations.

  • Communications to welcome a contact to the business.