Overview

This article summarizes how to use the web portal to manage your customers' accounts. We are in the process of writing a reseller's guide (of which the information in this article is a small part) and welcome input on what should be contained in the guide.

System Overview

In our system we define the following terminology:

• Customer: One billable entity. A customer can be associated with one or more parent accounts.
• Service Plan: Determines the available features and billing rate.
  • Select: Any number of versions can be stored.
  • Basic: Only one version per file is stored. Cannot backup Exchange or SQL Server.
  • ShadowProtect BDR: Each Axcient BDR is assigned a unique account with this service plan.
  • ShadowProtect Standalone: Use to backup ShadowProtect data for customers that do not have a BDR, or if you are building your own BDR.
  • Multitenant Network Server: In private cloud and site-to-site backup or replication scenarios where multiple customers are backing up to the same network backup server, a separate account needs to be provisioned for each network backup server using this service plan. Normally these accounts do not store data in Axcient's storage cloud; if there is data stored off-site in Axcients storage cloud under an account with this service plan it will be billed at the same rate as for the Select service plan.
  • Trial: Time-limited free trial for your prospective customers (Select features).
  • Trial (Basic): Trial accounts that have the Basic features.
  • Trial (ShadowProtect): Trial accounts that will eventually become ShadowProtect BDR or ShadowProtect Standalone accounts.
  • Trial (Multitenant Network Server): Trial accounts that will eventually become Multitenant Network Server accounts.
• Account: An account is used to backup exactly one computer. An account is identified by both a system-assigned account number and a username chosen by the user.
  
  • Parent Account: A parent account is associated with a service plan.
  • Sub-Account: Belongs to a parent account. The disk usage of the sub-account is aggregated with the disk usage of its parent account for billing purposes. Note that the ShadowProtect and Multitenant service plans do not allow sub-accounts.

For each of your customers, you will want to create one parent account and several sub-accounts. The parent account is for their first computer that will be backed up, and then you can create sub-accounts to backup additional computers associated with that customer. There is no limit as to the number of sub-accounts that can be created. For service plans that do not allow sub-accounts, if a customer needs multiple accounts (e.g., they have multiple BDRs) then a new parent account should be created each time (note that multiple parent accounts can be associated with a single customer).

Web Portal Overview

The web portal has a different purpose depending on who you are:

• For your customers: Your customers can use your branded web portal to view reports, create and manage their sub-accounts, manage their contact information, manage their notifications, and access their files online.
• For you: In addition to the functionality describe above, the web portal is how you setup, manage, and monitor your customers and accounts.

The Accounts menu in the web portal is where you can access commands to create a new account or manage existing accounts.

The Dash Panel in the Reports menu will allow you to quickly check on the status of all of the backups for all of your accounts. This is an important tool that you should use to make sure that all of your customer's backups are occurring and are error free.

When the time comes for you to bill your customers, you can export account information from the account list. Use the Reports -> Accounts -> Billable Accounts menu item for a predefined account list that includes only billable accounts (it excludes trial accounts and sub-accounts).

If you need assistance with any part of the web portal please open a ticket.