Question 1

What is a Workflow?

Accepted Answer

A Workflow is a web based form that your customers complete. You can build these forms quickly in MyMalcolm and use them to create a digital version of a business process.

For example

A contact form
A survey
A customer enquiry
A new customer details form

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/tRY2VFJhij/06-workflowtransparent.png (Malcolm! Workflows)

You can build everything from simple single screen journeys through to more complex multi-step journeys with conditional routing (ie offering certain choices based on previous answers).

Malcolm! automatically stores all data - including abandoned forms. You can export this data at any time. You can also pass that collected data through to other systems via Integrations or Webhooks.

Question 2

Can I change meta information and optimise Malcolm! for SEO?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! offers lots of options to configure your hosted hub for SEO purposes. Below is an overview.

Hosted Hub Homepage

You can set the page title, meta description and keywords for your hosted hub homepage via Settings --> Instance --> Meta Content.

Hosted Hub homepage meta options in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/1YN7mN8DHC/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.09-13_02_55.png (Hosted Hub homepage meta options in MyMalcolm)

Hosted Hub homepage meta options in MyMalcolm

You can configure whether you want search engines to see this page via the visibility tab.

FAQs and Workflows only homepage

If you use the FAQs only and Workflows only homepages, you can set the page title, meta description and keywords for them via Settings --> FAQs --> Meta Content and Settings --> Workflows --> Meta Content respectively.

You can configure whether you want search engines to see these pages via the visibility tab.

Visibility settings in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/SYnelFDeLl/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.09-13_08_05.png (Visibility settings in MyMalcolm)

Visibility settings in MyMalcolm

Authors, Categories & Tags

By default the results pages for Authors, Categories & Tags are not shown to search engines, but you can change this and configure the meta information via the respective Author, Category and Tag in the FAQ section.

Tag configuration in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/9qAnoZ47Lg/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.09-13_04_47.png (Tag configuration in MyMalcolm)

Tag configuration in MyMalcolm

Advanced Settings

You can set much of the above, and some additional title and meta info via the language file which can be found at Settings --> Instance --> Advanced. Click "Show dictionary" to see what can be edited.

Advanced SEO options in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/SmUzmyq955/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.08.09-13_03_41.png (Advanced SEO options in MyMalcolm)

Advanced SEO options in MyMalcolm

Individual Content

You can edit the meta content and visibility (ie whether a search engine can see it) of an individual FAQ or Workflow via the configure tab of the FAQ or Workflow in question.

Social Images

A social image is the image that will be used when you link to content via services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

A default social image is defined in your theme (Brand --> Theme --> edit icon on theme --> General)
That can be overriden by defining a social image in Settings --> Instance --> Meta
For your hosted hub home, the FAQs and Workflows only homepages and the Authors, Categories & Tags results pages the above can be overriden via the respective setting screens mentioned above.
An individual piece of content (ie an FAQ or Workflow) can set their own social image and override the above via the configure tab of the content in question.

Site Map

All published and "visible" pages/content will appear in the sitemap.xml file which can be found at yourhostedhub.com/sitemap.xml where yourhostedhub.com is your actual Malcolm! hosted hub URL.

Schema

We mark up content created in the FAQs section using Schema. This means your content may appear in Google as Rich Results. You can choose between marking content up as FAQPage (perfect for questions and answers) or as a WebPage. See here for more info. In addition if you insert a How-to / Step by Step into your content this is also marked up using Schema. See here for more info.

Question 3

What are tags for in the Media Section?

Accepted Answer

Tags are a way (along with folders) of helping your organise and label your media.

They can be useful when your media library becomes large. For example, if you use rights managed images in your FAQs you could use tags to help you remember the expiry dates of those rights.

Question 4

Can you give me an overview of the FAQ section of MyMalcolm?

Accepted Answer

The FAQ section is of MyMalcolm is where you create and manage your FAQ content.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/GgNemEaBr8/02-faqtransparent.png (FAQs on Malcolm!)

Within the FAQ section there are several different areas:

Overview: here you can see statistics on the number of views, searches and feedbacks on your collection of FAQs. You can also see your highest rated FAQs and the top searches. You can vary the time period these statistics refer to by adjusting the drop down towards the top left of the graphs.
Library: this is where you can access and manage all the individual FAQ's that you have created or are in the process of creating. There are a variety of display, search, sort and filter options on this screen. You can also mark FAQs as favourites, apply labels and select multiple FAQs to do bulk editing.
Feedback: on this screen you can sell all the feedback that has been submitted by your customers on your FAQs
Activity: here you can see an audit trail of all FAQ activity by you and other members of your Team
Authors: create and manage the public authors of your FAQs here - these are shown as part of the FAQ details (or "meta") that your customers can see.
Categories: Create and manage categories here. Your FAQ's can live in one or more Category. Categories enable you to organise your FAQs into logical groups around topics that make sense to your business, for example you could group FAQs around products or services or locations. Customers can browse FAQ's by category.
Labels: Labels are free form text descriptions that you can attach to particular FAQs in your Library. They can help you organise your FAQs. Labels are seen by you and your instance team members only - they aren't seen by your customers.
Tags: Tags are a way of describing your content and allow an alternate way for your customers to browse FAQ's aside from search and categories.

Question 5

I'd like to open the Overlay embed directly, how do I do this?

Accepted Answer

When you create an Overlay embed we give you two bits of code to add to your page. The first is the master code which you should place just before the closing tag. The second is the inline code which generates the button users click to open the overlay - this goes inside the tags where you want the button to appear. When the user clicks the button the Overlay embed will appear in a modal (pop-up) over your page.

The inline code we give you will look like this -

Sometimes you might want to call the overlay but not use our button. You might want to call it from text or use your own button/graphic or you might want to call it in the background when a user does something else on your page.

You can do this by calling mapi in JavaScript.

The mapi has four methods - open, close, trigger and toggle. Open, close and toggle all return promises (i.e., a function that resolves when the animation is complete or a rejects if something went wrong, e.g., no embed found for the param passed). Trigger is more "fire and forget" - it will call the open function if everything goes well, otherwise it silently fails.

Here is an example using an href link that uses the trigger method to open the Overlay -

Note that you must have our master embed code on your page for the above to work and you need to replace EMBED_ID with your embed ID.

The above may also be useful for customers who are using third party site building systems - sometimes putting inline code into a page on those systems can be restricted so you can't add our inline code to render your button. If you can create inline links you could try using the above example with the trigger method to open the Overlay (again remember you also need the master code on the page).

Question 6

Can I organise or filter my Workflow completions?

Accepted Answer

You can filter your Workflow completions, assign a status and also add notes.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/jPMzrSqIJg/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.08.27-17_20_31%20b.png (Browse Workflow completions in MyMalcolm)

This can be really useful if you want to use the Completion screens like a mini CRM - you can categorise or mark your completions to organise them in a certain way. For example you may want to apply the status "Done" or "Processed" to certain Workflows and "Follow Up" to others.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/9ZHHjnH6sB/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.08.27-17_21_37.png (Set a status for Workflows in MyMalcolm)

You can also add notes to a Workflow completion that your Team can see. A handy notes icon will appear in the Completions list to show notes exist.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/f1zeN8GXfK/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.08.27-17_21_03.png (Add notes to Workflow completions in MyMalcolm)

You can have filter controls at the top right of the completions screen.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/CXIgS6IXpJ/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2021.08.27-17_22_03.png (Filter completions controls in MyMalcolm)

See a video walkthrough of these features below

Question 7

How do I turn off my hosted hub?

Accepted Answer

Every instance of Malcolm! comes complete with a hosted hub. But you might not want to use it and may prefer to turn it off. No problem!

To turn off your hosted hub go the settings section of MyMalcolm, then select "visibility" in the vertical left hand navigation. You can then select "Disable the instance Hosted Hub"

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/kzMmGw4DCl/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.12-16_35_15.png (Disable the instance Hosted Hub in MyMalcolm)

Once disabled, any traffic hitting your Hosted Hub URL will see a 403 error. If you'd prefer to redirect that traffic somewhere else you can do this by selecting "Advanced" in the vertical left hand navigation then entering your redirect URL.

Question 8

How can I change my Hosted Hub URL?

Accepted Answer

You can change the URL of your Hosted Hub via the Settings Section of MyMalcolm. Go to Custom Domains and you choose a new URL on malcolm.support or malcolm.app here. The URL must be available ie not being used by another customer.

You can also configure your own external domain or sub domain in this area as well.

If you want to change the part of the URL after your domain please see this article.

Question 9

How do I create routing via rules / logic flows in a Workflow?

Accepted Answer

When creating a Workflow (you might prefer to call it a form or a user journey) you may want to vary what is presented to the user based on their earlier inputs. For example if you sell different types of product and want to build a returns form the information you ask for might vary from product to product. So you'd ideally ask the user to choose the type of product they want to return, then show them further relevant questions that related to that type of product only.

Rules and routing in Malcolm! Workflows let you do just this - you can create complex and adaptive multi-step user journeys / forms easily via this feature.

Below is a simple example of how rules and routing work. In this example we create a simple form that asks a user for some basic details (their name, email address and "further details"). If they select "yes" to the question "Do you have documents or files to upload?" we'll include a screen for them to upload those files before they complete the form. If the user selects "no" we won't show them this screen and they will go direct to the Thank You screen.

Here is the setup in the Workflow builder in MyMalcolm:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/LFuUvRSKYT/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.18-12_06_04.png (Building a Workflow with conditional routing in MyMalcolm)

Conceptually it is important to understand that rules and routing works at a page level (not at a question level). So where you have questions that will only be shown to the user in certain scenarios you should put those questions on their own page. You then use rules to show or hide those pages.

In our example we have set the "Include page by default" setting on page 2 to be off. By doing this page 2 is "hidden" and can only be seen by routing to it via a rule.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/sAdJrWv6tR/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.18-12_10_51.png (Include page by default setting in Workflow builder in MyMalcolm)

You configure rules at a question/element level.

So in our example we now need to set up a rule on the "Do you have files or documents to upload?" question/element. To do this click on that question/element.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/xQvhNmZZk4/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.18-12_09_39.png (Question elements in Malcolm! Workflow Builder)

In the overlay that appears select "rules". Then add the rule that if the value is equal to yes to include page 2.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/iVFe0tmYNZ/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.18-12_09_10.png (Configuring rules in the Workflow Builder of MyMalcolm!)

The available options in values will vary according to the type of question/element you are editing. In "Then...." you have the option of including a page, hiding a page or moving to it. If you move to a page the Workflow will then continue from that page and jump over any pages before.

You can see the full range of options for this element type below.

Question 10

Can I set Workflow values in a URL?

Accepted Answer

A very powerful feature of Malcolm! is the ability to populate one or more values within a Workflow via the URL to the Workflow itself.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/4pDguyLGuN/Set%20Workflow%20Values%20via%20URL.png (Set Workflow Values via URL)

This is extremely powerful if - for example - you want to pass into a Workflow information that lets you identify who has completed it - such as a customer ID or perhaps some other form of unique reference that lets you know what the information relates to (eg an order or transaction id)

For example, let's say a customer has created an order with order ID 12345 and you need some further information to fulfil the order. Rather than send them a Workflow which asks them for their order ID as one of the questions (or relies on you manually linking the submitted Workflow with a completed order your side) you could send them a link in the format https://url.com/workflows/order-info-needed?orderid=12345

You can put values for multiple fields in the URL too eg https://url.com/workflows/order-info-needed?orderid=12345&anotherfield=abcde

You can choose whether the user filling in the Workflow will see the Order ID repeated on their Workflow or not. If they can see it you can choose whether they can edit it or not. You can also choose what the descriptors in the URL (in the example above the "orderid" part) actually are. All these configurations are made by clicking on the individual element in the Workflow builder in MyMalcolm and scrolling to the "Settings" area.

When the Workflow is submitted you will receive the Order ID (and any other fields you have completed via the URL) as part of the submitted information.

When you combine the ability to populate fields by variables in the URL with the integration functionality of Malcolm! it becomes even more powerful as you could programmatically send out Workflows for completion (with some identifying information inserted via an auto generated URL) and then combine them with your other systems on submission via an integration or a webhook using the identifying information to link things together.

This becomes a great way to send out surveys, create follow ups to marketing campaigns, extend the functionality you offer to "logged in" users etc etc - the possibilities are endless!