How to work with Card Issuing

Card Issuing is part of the ALIVE Platform designed for printing and selling cards at individual points of sale, which are properly equipped for direct card printing and selling. Card Issuing is an Internet-based card issuing and database management application available from your web browser that enables you to issue ISIC, ITIC, IYTC, Scholar and Staff cards.

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To use Card Issuing, first you have to possess free serial numbers. If you don’t have free numbers, you have to ask IGO for them and add them into NCDB. In NCDB, go to Licence Management -> Serial Ranges and press the “New Range“ button. As Range type, select “Card Issuing“ from the drop-down menu. Be careful about the “Preprinted Serial Numbers“ drop-down menu. If you plan to issue virtual cards only, choose “No” option. If you plan to issue plastic cards or plastic & virtual cards, you can choose both options (it depends on whether your plastic cards you got from IGO already have serial numbers). In the right window, select your desired Card Design. To use this serial range, the “Active” check box must be checked.

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Before you go to the next lesson, in your test environment (test.aliveplatform.com), try to create new serial range of proper type and assign it to your chosen design to ensure that everything is clear to you.

In previous step, we prepared everything in our NCDB, so let’s go to Card Issuing module! New Distributor To use Card issuing for printing cards, you need to set up some card distributors and their users. Before you set up new distributor for a company, it is advisable to know a bit more about how the company is structured and how the issuing will work in real world. Based on these information, you should be able to decide, whether you need Head Agents and Branches, or whether one selling point (-> it means one branch) would be enough. Head Agent is a supervisor above its branches, it can check sales etc. As was already told, Head Agent users are incapable of issuing cards. After this decision, you can go to Card Issuing->Distributors and press “Add Head Agent” and/or “Add Branch”.

New Head Agent After clicking “Add Head Agent” button, you’ll be redirected to New Head Agent form. Fill the address and Contact Person. Be careful to check the “Active” checkbox to bring your Head Agent to life. Check “Card export to XLSX” to have the opportunity to make excel exports (for statistical purposes for example). Check “Manages Its Own Branches” for better control over your Branches. As Printing Type, always select “HTML 5”. As the last step, select your desired Price List and types of cards that should be issued.

New Branch First part of “Creation of new branch” form is the same as for Head Agents, so let’s have a look only at the second part (see the picture below).

Issued Cards Form – define, whether the issued cards will be plastic, virtual or both.

Applicant’s Photo – define, whether the photo is mandatory or optional. You can even hide the field using “Optional, hidden field” option.

Printer – this drop down menu is of high importance. It defines type of the printer the branch will be using. See the documentation of your printer to find which option you should choose. The main difference is whether the branch will be using label printer or card printer.

Price List – choose the correct Price List (for more information about Price Lists in Card Issuing see the following parts of this tutorial).

Head Agent – you can assign the Branch to its Head Agent.

As the last step, you have to create Users of the Head Agent/Branch.

Export to XLSX inheritance Every Branch and Head Agent can export the issued cards into .xlsx file. However, it must be allowed in Head Agent’s/Branche’s profile and it is always inherited. It means that a Branch can’t make exports into .xlsx, unless its Head Agent has this possibility allowed.

Price Lists are defined in Settings->”Price Lists”. You can add new Price List and define the prices as you like. Price Lists in Card Issuing module are separate and they are not tied to any price list in NCDB. Into Price List, you can add some products, which you define in Settings->”Products section”. The Branches can sell these products with cards. For example, when your Branch is located at the train station, it can sell ISIC information brochures and train timetables as additional products. In the picture below, look at how to define new product. One Product can be added to more Price Lists and it will have the same price in all of them.

In Card Issuing, Card Print Settings works a bit differently than in NCDB. In CI, you define position of all placeholders “from the scratch”. On the left side, in “Print” column, check whether the item should be/shouldn’t be printed onto the card. Next, set up position of all the items (the position is defined using Top and Left Offsets). The values are in millimetres. If you are going to issue plastic cards with photo printed on card printer, be sure that the photo is also allowed and its position is well defined! If you don’t do that, your user won’t be able to upload his/her photo. To set up position of all placeholders correctly takes its time, but with some effort, you will manage it! As an ER User, you define Print Settings for all your Distributors. However, on Branch level, each Branch can customize the Print settings for itself when the default (it means ER User defined) settings is not sufficient (for example, the printer has some special needs).

Settings in the picture above is for cards with non preprinted Serial numbers. That’s why the Serial number checkbox is checked.

When a card is issued, Branch staff can print a Welcome letter for the new Card Holder and give it to him/her immediately. For Card Holder, it is good to have a kind of printed document as an evidence (especially when the card is virtual only). These Welcome letters can be defined in Settings->Welcome Letter Template. Only ER Users define them, so for all Head Agents and Branches, the text of the Welcome Letter will be the same. How to define a Welcome letter? Click the “Edit welcome letter template” button and you will be redirected to the edit mode. To be personalized, Welcome Letter Templates use TWIG system. It works with variables (see the List of Variables on the right side of the screen). When the Letter is generated into .pdf, the variables are replaced by the corresponding values from the order. To find more about how to edit templates using TWIG, visit our “How to edit email templates”

After finishing this lesson, try to connect your card printer/label printer and define Print settings. Try to define Welcome letter as well!

Below, the whole process of issuing cards using “Card Issuing” is described in steps (from different user’s point of view): Workflow from ER user’s point of view Signed in as ER user, you should follow these steps:

In NCDB, define new Serial Range type Card Issuing, set up all mandatory settings and add a Card Design to it.

In CI, assign this Serial Range to Head Agent or Branch (use the send icon – see the picture below). You can split/join the Serial Range into pieces (use the scissors/glue icon) and assign the pieces to various Branches.

This is done automatically and this action is almost real time. So, when you issue card in Card Issuing, after a while, you can find this card in your NCDB among other cards.