Customer Scenarios

A scenario is a description of a way a persona uses a product to achieve a goal in a certain context. The full understanding of possible scenarios is necessary to consequently design the information architecturea and a set of wireframes.

Purposes

The main purpose of the platform is to help users to reach their goals quickly, easily, and with pleasure. Scenarios describe the ways of achieving these goals.

Generally a scenario contains:

• Title - brief description of the scenario that specifies the personas, goal, and context.
• Personas - scenario actors.
• Goal - the goal a persona achieves if follows this scenario. Besides the goal pursued by a persona, for example, “register a domain”, the scenario can contain a business goal as well, for example, “sell more domains”.
• Context - UI environment, for example, customer control panel version 2 and a predefined set of options that a persona can select.
• Story - description of steps to achieve intermediate tasks and finally the ultimate goal.
• System and application changes - resources added, or removed, or updated.

Scenarios for Personas

Usually, you need to define personas and scenarios for each of them. A grid similar to the following must present all scenarios in a compact way.

Resource	Provider’s admin	Customer’s admin (Samantha)	End-user (Emily)
Subscription	* Provision services for a customer	-	-
Offer (predefined mail account configuration)	* Create an offer for customers * Reconfigure an offer * Delete an offer	-	-
Mail account	-	* Create mail accounts for end-users * Reconfigure a mail account * Enable, disable, or remove mail accounts	* Activate the mail account * Configure the mail account

Typical Customer Scenario - Samantha

Onboarding

For service provider, one of tools used for onboarding customers is the the platform online store.

For Samantha as a new customer onboarding to the platform through the online store, the typical scenario looks as follows.

In the list of various products exposed on the store, Samantha seeks for mail services. She selects a product with mail services that includes a limit on creating 1 mail account. In the add-on list, Samantha increases the limit up to 5 mail accounts.

Mail service requires at least one domain for setting mail addresses. Samantha notices a list of top level domains (TLD) for domain registration and requires registering a domain name in one of the TLDs.

Once Samantha selected the services, the store brings her to the customer sign-up screen. Samantha enters required parameters of her company and of herself as a user. The store registers the new customer account and the new user, and then requests Samantha to confirm the order printed out on the screen. It prompts her to select a payment method. Samantha enters her credit card parameters and thus completes the process. The system creates a subscription for Samantha for the subscribed period, for example, for 3 months. In addition, she gets a 1 year subscription for the registered domain.

Following the above general description, the formal scenario will look as follows.

Title	In the online store, Samantha orders mail service along with a domain and registers a new account in the system
Persona’s goal	Get mail service for the company
Business goal	Onboard a customer and sell mail service along with a domain registration
Persona’s context	Online store
System context	Top level domains (TLD) for registering custom domains Types of payment methods

Story task	Step
Select a product	Select a product category, for example, Mail Services Select the required product Select a subscription period
Select add-on resources	Review the list of add-on resources Request additional resources above the amount included into the product
Request domain registration	Select a TLD Enter a desired domain name Verify if the entered domain name is not registered Repeat the above two operations until you find an unregistered domain Require registration of a the selected domain name
Sign up in the system	Enter registration data for creating the customer account Enter registration data for creating the user
Confirm the order and payment method	Review the list of ordered resources Select a payment method, for example, a credit cart Enter payment method parameters Place the order

Changes	Resources
System changes	New customer account New customer administrator - Samantha New subscription for mail service New subscription for domain registration New registered domain New hosted domain with respective DNS records
Application changes	New subscription service in the customer context

Manage Services and Users in UX1

Samantha uses its subscription to manage the application services.

She logs in UX1 as the customer administrator and can start managing the acquired service. Samantha creates a service user for each her employees, creates mail accounts, and assigns them to the service users.

This is an example of an application UI that allows a customer to manage virtual private servers (VPS).

The above description actually compiles several scenarios. One of formal scenarios looks as follows.

Title	In the customer control panel, Samantha creates users and assigns application resources to them
Persona’s goal	Create mail accounts along with users who will use the mail service
Persona’s context	Customer control panel Subscription with limited resources

Story task	Step
Log in as the customer administrator	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter login name and password to access the panel
Get introduced to the application services	Once logged in the first time after acquiring the new service, you meet with the invitation for the introduction tour proposed by the control panel Walk through the application custom introduction tour
Create new service users and assign application resources to them	Navigate to the system built-in user manager Start creating users Add new users with respective properties Assign the mail service using the same template to all new users
View user list	In the user manager dashboard, find the new users and check if the mail service is assigned to each of them
View application resource list	In the application service management list, find the new services and their users

Changes	Resources
System changes	New service users, and Emily among them New mail accounts Resource usage in the subscription - increased
Application changes	New mail accounts and respective users

Leverage Application Services

Samantha has completed the mail service basic management process. Now all her employees enjoy the assigned mail accounts. Recently, she hired three more employees, but her subscription allows her to create only one more mail account.

Samantha also reads the provider’s ads inviting her to get better services. This concerns adding additional messaging and collaboration services, such as calendar, contacts, and instance messaging. Her employees also need to protect their mail boxes from spam and viruses.

Samantha goes to UX1 and follows upsell and cross-sell processes.

Once the system gets a request to increase resource limits or provision other services, it generates a respective order. Samantha confirms the order and the payment method. Once the order is processed, she proceeds with creating resources for her employees.

A formal scenario may look as follows.

Title	In the customer control panel, Samantha follows the upsell process that allows her to increase resource usage
Persona’s goal	Create mail accounts above the current limit in the subscription
Persona’s context	Customer control panel Subscription with limited resources At least one payment method stored in the system

Story task	Step
Log in as the customer administrator	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter login name and password to access the panel
Create new service users and assign application resources to them	Navigate to the system built-in user manager Start creating users Add new users with respective properties Assign the mail service using the same template to all new users Read notification reporting about resource overuse and follow its recommendation to buy more resource amount
Buy add-on resource amount	In the custom application view, set new limits on required resources Review new order Select a payment method Place the order
Proceed with creation of new service users	In the built-in user creation wizard, add new users with respective parameters Assign the mail service using the same template to all new users
View user list	In the user manager dashboard, find the new users and check if the mail service is assigned to each of them

Changes	Resources
System changes	New service users New mail accounts Resource limits in the subscription - increased Resource usage in the subscription - increased
Application changes	New mail accounts and respective users

Typical Service User Scenario - Emily

Samantha has created a user account and a mail account for Emily.

This allows Emily to log in MyCP as a service user and find the application UI screen that requires activating the mail account assigned to her. Once the resource activation is completed, Emily is able to use the assigned service. She can use MyCP to manage her mail account, for example, configure mail forwarding and auto-response. The control panel provides her a link to her mail account on the cloud mail system. This helps Emily start consuming the available services.

This is an example of an application UI that allows another user to manage virtual private servers (VPS) assigned to him.

A formal scenario may look as follows.

Title	In the service user control panel (MyCP), Emily configures the service assigned to her
Persona’s goal	Configure the mail account assigned to her
Persona’s context	Service user control panel Application service assigned to Emily

Story task	Step
Log in as a service user	In the browser, address to the customer control panel Enter login name and password to access the panel
Get introduced to the application services	Once logged in the first time after getting the new service, you meet with the invitation for the introduction tour proposed by the control panel Walk through the application custom introduction tour
Activate the assigned service	Navigate to the navigation item presenting the application Enter user credentials - login name and password Confirm the service activation
Configure the service	Open the assigned service Activate mail forwarding and enter the address to forward all new messages Activate the auto-response and set the auto-response message Save the new configuration

Changes	Resources
System changes	Resource status - changed for active
Application changes	Mail account - activated

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