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Carpool Group Administrator's Guide
Creating a New Carpool Group
Editing Your Group Details
Designing your Group's page
Entering a List of Locations and Events
Reviewing the List of Travelers Registered in your Group
Exporting your Data
Match-Lists
Inviting your users to the carpool group
Measuring your organization's carbon footprint
Reporting, Extracting, Analysing your Group's Footprint
If you haven't already done so, please contact us, we will create your group, please allow 24 hours.
Your group information controls the information displayed in the banner for your users that are part of your carpool
group , and it also controls some settings for your users. The following items are particularly important:
- Email: This is the email address that will be used when users click on the mail link in the banner (typically your email address for local support).
- URL of your Organization's Website: This is the URL that will be used when the user clicks on the image or link in the banner (typically used for the user to return to your web site or intranet from our web site).
- Address, City/St/Zip/Country: This will be the default work address when new users log in through your login page.
- Phone: Will appear in the banner with the contact information.
- Email domain(s) to restrict your users: Depending on your needs, you may wish to restrict users in your group to have valid email addresses that were assigned by your organization. This ensures that everyone in your group is actually a member of your organization.
- Show group link to all: Carpoolworld.com may or may not include a list of registered groups on its public welcome page. If we include your name, it looks good for us that we have satisfied customers, and it looks good for you because it acknowledges your commitment to provide an important service to your employees and to your community. But it's your choice, and you can change your mind at any time!
Banner
Our banner format contains the following pieces of information that you can control:
- Your organization name ('Group'), which also acts as the link back to your web site.
- Your email link ('Contact') for your users to send emails to you.
- Your telephone number ('Phone').
- You have additional tools available to display your own logo and colors and advanced formatting to embed HTML code to display your own color and style as required.
- You have a file upload tool to upload your logo (.gif, .jpg, .png) to carpoolworld.
Changing Your Page background color
You may specify any color background for your page and you can also reference a background image.
Displaying a Map of you Organization's Locations
You may show a map of all of your Organization's locations on your carpoolworld group page.
Changing Your Page Introduction Text
You may specify any text in your page introduction text. We provide a template that you can fine-tune to your own organization's specifications.
Collecting Pageview Statistics
You may track the site usage (pages visited by your group users, and the number of times your group users have logged in) by using your favorite third party web analysis product. For example you can use the Google Analytics product for free when signing up at www.google.com/analytics/ once you create a profile, Google will provide you with a special code (Javascript) that you will then "cut and paste" into the carpoolworld system in the form field supplied for the "Page footer". Please note that other products are also available and the code for these analysis product may be supplied in the footer field. Once the footer information on the form is submitted, the usage statistics will be collected as users access your carpoolworld group pages.
You can define all of your locations and events by using the group's location tool. When default locations/events are created by the administrator, they are automatically shown to the group's travelers in a drop down list displayed on the trip registration page. When the traveler selects one of the destinations the application pre-fills the destination address, city, state/province and zip and schedule and event/location name. The travelers can filter on the location/event name on their match-lists, it is an efficient way to streamline your sign-up process for your users and eliminate typing errors. There are many ways to use the locations/events panel, you can configure your events to define:
- Your organization's office locations, campuses, sites.
- Your organization's work shifts.
- You can also define one-time events (company off-site meetings, concerts, school events, etc.) that will expire automatically after the event's date.
When you log in with an administrator's user ID and password, you are automatically taken to the administrator's maintenance page. As long as you are logged in, you will have an 'Admin' tab in the header that will bring you back to the administrator's maintenance page.
Working With a List of Users
As an administrator, you have full access to all the information entered by all users who registered through your carpoolworld.com login screen. The administrator's maintenance page will display 20 entries at a time, sorted in sequence from most recently created entry down to oldest entry. You have the following capabilities for selecting subsets of your user database to work with:
- You can use the page control to move to any page.
- You can enter a search value to find any name or email address. Enter your value and press Enter. Upper- or lower-case does not matter. The resulting list will include all entries that contain the search value anywhere in the traveler's login name (not their real name, which we do not store specifically) or in their email address.
- You can select All Trips or Active Trips (users can change the status of their trips to 'passive', which allows them to run searches and keep their trip information on file, but does not display their trip to other users when other users search for matches).
- You can select All Trips or Confirmed Trips. Confirmed Trips are ones where the user has replied to confirm that he has provided a valid email address. Unconfirmed trips may or may not have been entered with valid email addresses.
- You can select between Trips that are or ar not fully geocoded. This allows you to review and correct addresses for trips that are not fully geocoded automatically. Sometimes the reason for this is because the user only entered one side of his address (either home or work) or did not provide sufficient or correct street address information. The carpoolworld.com staff currently reviews and corrects these addresses but the local administrator may as well.
Note that trips marked as 'deleted' (there is a 30-day delay before a deleted trip is actually purged from the database) never appear in the list.
Working With Individual Users
- You can click on the Trip link to view or modify the user's data. Inside the user's record, you can make changes if needed (such as erasing inappropriate information that the user may have entered in their description text), and you can also delete the user's record if needed (remember that there is a 30-day delay before the record is actually purged).
- You can click on Traveler to see additional reference information.
- You can click on Match to see the user's match-list.
- You can click on match-list to send the match-list to the user via email.
- You can click on the user's email address to send him an email.
Other Details
Most of the other information displayed on the screen is self-explanatory. But the following items are noteworthy:
- For users who have not yet confirmed their email addresses, the 3-digit 'Registration Confirmation Code' is the confirmation number we sent them to confirm their email address. They have many ways to re-request the code from us but if they ask you, you can see it here. If they say they did not get their confirmation email, you may want to double-check that they entered their email address correctly in the trip information form. Whenever a user changes their email we send a new confirmation email.
- In the Traveler information we provide an indication of how the user's latitude and longitude coordinates were obtained (please note that our geocoding process evolves over time). The meaning of the 'Type' codes are as follows:
- T = Successful geocode using street address as entered.
- Z = Geocode using zip/postal code only.
- C = Geocode using city only.
- G = Geocode by other means.
Export to Excel
This function will extract all information for all of your users into Excel format, which you can then store on your local computer system for subsequent reporting, analysis and inquiry.
Export to Google Earth
This function will extract your users database into a "Google Earth" friendly Format (KML). Please make sure you download Google Earth to visually discover clusters of commuters, this might help you plan vanpools or identify areas where better public transportation options should be evaluated!
By default the match-lists are automatically generated based on the traveler's prefered frequency, but the administrator may choose to disable the automatic match-list generation and may decide to send match-lists manually. To do so, the administrator will access the match-list panel, the match-lists will be sent to every user that currently appears in the admin list (based on the filtering criteria currently in effect). You can also generate a match-list for any individual by clicking on the function next to his entry in the list.
The match-list performs the same matching function that the user could perform for himself/herself when they log in. But depending on how you manage your ride matching service, you may want to generate the match-lists pro-actively, periodically or on request.
The match-list will be sent to the user in an email.
You will be asked to confirm the match-list before it is sent. This is important because if you have a large community of users, this feature allows you to send an email to everyone all at once with the press of a single button (each user of course would receive their own match-list).
Along with the match-list you can send your own message. The system will record your message text and you can re-use the text on subsequent emails or change it.
You have the capability to create and send invitations to a list of email addresses or you can print and distribute the invitations by regular (snail) mail or hand them out to your users in internal mail, at a kick-off meeting, as part of your new employee package, etc.
Each invitation has a unique, system-generated personal invitation code. This code increases the level of privacy for your group users but does not replace common sense when contacting people from your group, as discussed in our terms of use . You can set up your group to show and validate this personal invitation code when the traveler registers their trip information.
Activating the invitation module
Access the group configuration settings and change the invitation module configuration to "show" and "validate" the personal invitation code. If you select to show the personal invitation code, then the user will be shown an additional entry field on the trip registration form. If you wish to validate the personal invitation code, then the code will be validated to ensure that it has not been previously used and that it is a valid code that has not expired yet.
Generating the invitations
We created an invitation template for your group to get you started but please see the information below on how to proceed. Please note that you can create, generate, and test different text/format of invitations before sending them by email or printing them out.
- Choose the number of invitations to be printed (if applicable).
- If you wish to send invitations by email, then list all of the email addresses in the box provided. Each email address must be separated by a comma (,).
- Specify the number of days before the invitation expires.
- Specify the length of the system (random) generated personal invitation code (from 3 to 11 characters).
- Specify your colors for the headings and text.
- Upload your invitation image background (8 1/2in. x 11in.).
- Update the text to be printed on the invitations in each section (there is a default text provided, you can change the text and amend it, if you blank it out then it will be refreshed to the default text).
- Specify a watermark if applicable.
- Specify your email address if you would like to receive a pdf file of the invitations to be printed.
- Click "Generate temporary test invitations" and review the invitation content and formatting before generating the actual invitations to be printed and sent by email.
Monitoring your invitations
Wonder how many invitations you have sent out and how many travelers registered? You can measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by seeing for each invitation package sent out, the number of people that actually registered. For example, you can target the invitations to a specific group of users (age group, class type, department, shift) you then send out an invitation package and you can measure the performance by the number of people that have registered following you handing out those invitations (please make sure that the module is activated before using this function).
You have the capability to measure the effectiveness of your organization's carpooling program for Miles Saved, Carbon footprint, CO2 Saved, average trip distance and other measures such as time and money saved by using the commuting mode analysis module.
Activating the Commute Savings Module
Access the group configuration settings and change the Commute Savings Module Configuration to have the "Commute Savings Entry" for your users "optional", "hidden" or "mandatory". You should also specify defaults for your group for sending savings reminders and the frequency of those email reminders if applicable. When you choose to have the commute savings entry as:
- "optional", your users will be asked if they wish to track their commuting habits and if they wish to receive email reminders and the frequency of the reminders. The defaults specified for the group will be displayed and the user can change those defaults to his/her choosing. If the user chooses to track their commuting habits, then they will be presented with the commuting habits and savings entry before viewing their match-list. If they do not wish to track their savings then they will be presented with their match-list to contact the other travelers to arrange carpools.
- If you use the setting "hidden", then the module is not active, the traveler will immediately see their match-list and no analysis data will be derived from your commuters for analysis.
- If you use the setting "mandatory", then the users will be presented with the commuting habits and savings entry before seeing their match-list, and they will receive email reminders if applicable, based on the group default setting.
For details on the commuting habits and savings entry for your group users, please see our help.
The group's Commute Mode Analysis displays by week the commuting methods and efficiency of your group for each of the modes reported by your users. The following information is displayed: Click to view a live sample.
- Commuting Mode
- Frequency% of each mode (based on the number of times each traveler chose this mode of transportation)
- Total commuting distance
- Efficiency benefit
- Miles Saved
- Effective Distance
- Carbon Footprint
- CO2 Saved
The extractions
All of the data from the commuting habits can be downloaded at any time thru the "savings extract" application in the following formats:
The following information is extracted and measured:
- CO2
- Duration
- Distance
- Costs
The data can be grouped by:
- Year
- Month
- Week
- State
- City
- Traveler
You can also select a range of dates and a range of origin and destination latitude and longitudes.
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