How to Use Templates to Save Time & Effort
The Paperchase platform is quite extensive, with multiple modules in which users can have a variety of permissions. For large restaurant chains, each location had its information listed separately, the users having access to one or more such locations — sometimes even hundreds!
This complicated things when it came to designing a client-facing user management system.
Prior to the big revamp, user management was handled on the clients’ behalf, by the Paperchase team. However, this was not scalable and they wanted to be able to offer their clients the ability to manage their own teams on the platform, being able to add, remove, or modify users and their access permissions without having to get in touch with the Paperchase team every time there was a turnover of staff.
The Problem:
Simply giving their clients access to the existing user management module that Paperchase had been using internally was certainly out of the question; setting up a single user could take hours! Adding just one new user worked as follows:
First, you have the simple part, where you add in their details and contact information. Then you proceed to the next screen where you select which of the company’s locations they should have access to. This part is also not too complicated. However, the next step is where everything spiralled out of control. For each of the locations, one at a time, the user would have to have their permissions set up, module by module. Each module could be turned on or off, and if the user has access to the module, then the permissions within that module would have to be individually defined. For instance, you’d have to set up not only whether the user has access to the Invoice Processing module, but whether they have P1 or P2 access. I1 or I2. Do they have a limit on the amount of money they can approve? If so, what is that limit?
This would have to be done for each module, and then the whole process would be repeated for each of the locations that user has access to. In scenarios where the user has access to two or three locations, doing this process three times over would have been annoying, but manageable. However, many senior officials in large restaurant chains required access to tens, and sometimes hundreds of locations! Setting up those kinds of permissions would be an absolute nightmare going one at a time in that manner.
The Solution:
Luckily, the solution to this was straightforward — it was templates to the rescue!
Using modifiable role-based templates such as “Chef”, “General Manager”, “Cashier”, and more, we allowed users to prefill the permissions in just a single click. These prefilled settings could still be modified before saving, and copied to other locations in just a few clicks.
This brought down the setup time for a single user from anywhere between 30 minutes to several hours, down to 5–10 minutes per user, depending on the complexity of the requirements.
If a template was applied and then modified before the changes were saved, the system would automatically generate a prompt asking whether these new permissions should be saved as a new template, making it even easier to set up users in the future.
We also added a template management feature where each template can be modified, and new templates can be created from scratch. This allows Paperchase’s clients to have full control over their settings and permissions, without having to spend ages on setting everything up, or having to remember things such as what specific set of permissions a cashier typically needs.
Conclusion:
The revamp of Paperchase’s user management into a sleek, template-driven system transformed a cumbersome process into a breeze, marking a huge win for efficiency and client independence. With customizable templates, clients can now swiftly manage permissions across multiple locations, saving hours of their time — not to mention the huge reduction in cognitive load, ensuring that restauranteers can focus more on delighting diners and less on paperwork.
