Cyclos 3 feature list

Main access
The main access of Cyclos is via the normal web (online banking) page. All users (operator, member, broker, administrator) can access via this page.
The module can be accessed at:
http://www.domain.org/cyclos

Mobile access (WAP / SMS)
Using the mobile module members and brokers can access Cyclos for basic actions like payments, retrieve account information, and transaction information using their mobile devices.

POS (Point of Sale) Web module
The POS web module is simple access page that can be used by users to login and perform quick payments. Shops and business can use the POSweb to receive consumer payments in a convenient way. The module can also be used as ‘cash point’ for systems that want to administer the emission and intake of paper currency (scrip). The module can be accessed at:
http://www.domain.org/cyclos/posweb

External web payments
This module allows e-commerce sites to use Cyclos as a payment provider.

Integration with websites
The Cyclos web access (login) page can be integrated (visually) within an existing website.

Webservices
Cyclos has set of Web services (API) that can be used for communication and integration with other software products.
More information about this can be found at the wiki.

Register & Login
Members can login with their user id and password at the login page. The same page has a registration option where persons can register themselves (if enabled). A virtual keyboard can be activated by the administration in order to prevent key logging software from capturing the password.
In order to prevent ‘bogus’ or automated logins e-mail validation can be required and captcha image can be enabled.

Status overview
At the entry (home) page a window with direct links to actions related to changed status, e.g. received payments, loans, references, personal alerts.

Quick access
At the entry (home) page a window with clickable icons will give direct access to most used functions

Message board
The home page will show a message board that can be updated by the organization from the administration panel.

Payments
Cyclos support direct (normal) payments, scheduled payments (installments), authorized payments and invoices.

Account summary & history
Members can view account information as available balance, credit limit and search for transactions is in the transaction history list.

Receipt printer support
It is not possible to print from the Web interfaces (main Web and POSWeb) to local receipt printers.

Member profile
A member can update his or her profile and insert one or more pictures. A Member can choose to hide certain fields for other members such as the address and phone fields. The administration can define which profile fields can be modified and hidden by the member and also define if a field is mandatory.

Member directory
Members can look for other Members (or businesses) with a full indexed (google type) search.

Messaging system
Members can send messages to each other. The message function supports rich text editing. Administrators can defined specific message categories for member-to-system messages (e.g. ‘support’, ‘loan request’ etc.)

Mailings
Administrators and brokers can send mailings to groups of members with the messaging system.

Market place
Members can publish advertisements (products and services), upload pictures and search for advertisements.

Advertisement interests
Members can register one or more ‘interests’ or advertisement criteria. For example a member can register a new interest for ‘Offers’ in a specific category like ‘vehicles’, price range, keyword etc. When a new advertisement is placed in the system that matches the criteria the user will receive an instant notification (via e-mail or mobile phone depending on the preferences).

References
References (referrals) Members can set referrals to other members. The administration can pre-define the possible references values and activate the alerts system when thresholds are passed (e.g. x amount of negative references received)

Notifications
In the notification page a member can define what kind of notifications to receive, like account alerts, information on received: loans, payments, references, invoices. Member and administration messages and ‘ad interest’ matches.

The member can also define if he/she wants to receive the notifications as (internal) Cyclos message or/and as e-mail and in the future by SMS.

Contacts
Members can add other members to a personal contact list in order to quickly perform any actions related to the other member (make payment, send e-mail etc). In the contact list it is also possible to add a personal note to a contact. This note is not visible for other members, nor for administrators.

Reports & activities
A member can get an overview of the activities of another member. The reports page will show general information like how long the member has been in the system, the number of advertisements, references. The report function can also show account information like balance and credit limit but this is an optional feature and disabled by default.

Transaction qualifications
These qualifications are similar to references but related to specific transactions. Both payer and receiver can qualify the transactions and the administration can put a final comment in case of conflict.

Loans
The loans function is mostly used by micro finance and ‘currency backed’ networks (and probably less for mutual credit networks like LETS).
A member can receive personal loans or as loan group (micro credit type). The loan page in the member section gives an overview of all the loans with their status and repayment dates.

Operators
Operators can be seen as ‘sub’ members managed by members (businesses) where more persons need to access a ‘company’ account. A member (business) can create operators and set permissions. The member can search and retrieve report on payments performed by specific operators.

Broker / Loan agent
A member of a ‘Broker’ group can register new members and have some level of access and control over these Members (depending of the configuration). The name ‘broker’ is not very appropriated because this function can be used in many ways. A common function is that a broker can receive commission when registering members. The commission can be configured on the amount of trade done by the new members.

A broker may be allowed to do part of the personal administration for members who are not able to do this themselves. This can be useful for communities where persons do the administration for members who do not have the ability to do this themselves.

The broker function can also be used by loan agents in micro finance systems. The loan agent can also register new members and retrieve information about the loan status of the members.

Help function
Cyclos includes a manual that describes all the functions. In addition to the manuals every functionality window has its own help (pop-up) file with an explanation of that function.

Status
The entry of the administration section gives a quick overview with the system status and other information like the release number, system uptime, alerts, connected users, open system invoices, received messages. All the items have direct links to the related function window.

Member management
Most actions related to members are done from the actions window below the member profile page. Using the ‘Jump to profile’ function at the entry page an admin can get quickly to this page.

Configuration
Cyclos has configuration at individual, group and system wide levels (where lower configuration will always overwrite configuration on higher levels, e.g individual configuration will overwrite group configuration)

Account structure
The account structure is entirely dynamic. Accounts, currencies and transaction types can be created and configured.

Group based structure
User groups can be created and permissions and rules set. An administrator can modify the default ‘build-in’ groups and create new groups and assign permissions to them. Administration groups can be created to organize and delegate different administration tasks like member account administration, loans administration and system administration. Cyclos also comes with build-in administration groups.

For more complex systems that have different communities with multiple currencies and different levels of internal trade the ‘group set’ or ‘group filter’ function can be used. With this function it is possible to join various member groups in a logical entity or ‘community’ group. Such a community group could be a isolated group with its own rules, pages and layout but the administration can also allow payments between communities.
More about this function can be found at the wiki.

Contributions & Fees
Cyclos has various types of fees and contributions like transaction fees, interest and demurrage. There are many ways the fees can be configured and charged.

Charge (roll) back of payments
An administrator (with permissions) can “undo” a payment. This means that a payment in the opposite direction will be generated. In case the payment generated other transactions (e.g. fees and loans) all transactions will be rolled back.

Loans & credit
There are many ways which Cyclos can handle the granting of loans and credits. It is possible to set ‘personal’ credit limits to members or groups. This is common for mutual credit networks like LETS and Timebanks where users start with a zero balance and can go go either into debit or credit.
Monetary systems that work with backing like micro finance and commodity backed systems can implement a ‘Debit’ or ‘Float’ account for creation of units and the handling of loans. Different types of loans can be created like single loans and loans with periodic loan repayments. Additional loan settings and fees can be configured per loan type.
Next to the ‘individual’ loans Cyclos supports loans to ‘group loans’ which is common for micro finance projects.

Alerts & logging
Alerts can be defined for system alerts, member related alerts and thresholds. The alerts system is part of the messaging system.
All actions in the system are logged with a time stamp, username and possible form values. Both the alerts and log system have a searchable history.

Personal alerts
And admin configure specific alerts to be send automatically to his/here e-mail address. These can be for example system and member alerts but also alerts on specific types of payments that are made.

Custom fields
Most fields in Cyclos are not fixed or ‘hard-coded’. It is possible to define new ‘custom’ fields for profiles, advertisements, loans and payment types. An admin can define the type of field (e.g. text area, select box or radio button) and behaviour for these fields (e.g input mask and validation). It is possible to have different profile fields for member groups.

Content management
Administrators can create and modify pages (e.g login page, news / message board, contact, top banner etc) and set the visibility for specific groups.
It is possible to upload and insert images into the pages. With the same function the Cyclos layout (colours, fonts, borders) can be modified. To facilitate easy changes to the layout Cyclos comes with the ‘Themes’. It is possible to create new teams and export and import them.

Translation management
The Cyclos translation can be modified online and changes will appear directly (no restart needed)
It is possible to import and export translation files.

Record types
Member records types can be used to store additional information to members in a structured way. A member record type can be build using ‘custom fields’ and can be configured in many ways. Typical record types are a call centre function or credit analyses storage. An extra menu entry can be showed per record type that will give direct access to a search page within the records.

SMS mailings
It is possible for administrators and brokers to send SMS via Cyclos to individual users as well to groups of users.

Documents
The administration or broker/loan agent can attached files (e.g. documents) to individual members or groups of members. The visibility can be administration only or/and member. A broker / loan agent can also be given permissions to manage the documents.

It is also possible to specify ‘dynamic’ documents. This means that a member can print a document that will include automatically some of its profile fields. If needed the member can be showed a form first that needs to be filled in. The form data can also be included in the result document (together with the profile fields). Dynamic document are made (by the administration) in html format and can be in rich format and contain images. Typically dynamic documents are used when the organisation needs a signed document by the member and be sure it contains certain member fields and optionally extra member input.

Messaging
As explained in the member section Members can send messages between them. Members can also send messages to the Administration. Message between Members and the Administration always have a message category (e.g. question, problem, loan request). The categories can be defined by the Administration. It is possible to define what administration group can handle messages with specific categories.

Connected users
This function will show the connected Admins, Brokers and Members with the login date and remote IP address. An administrator (with the permissions) can disconnect the user directly from this page.

Bulk actions
To facilitate the user management the bulk action function allow an administrator to perform actions on entire groupings of users.

Migration tools
These tools make it easier to migrate from other software to Cyclos. It is possible to import member lists, advertisements, advertisements categories, account information and set the initial balance on members accounts.

Reports & Statistics
With the statistics function it is possible to retrieve more elaborated statistical information with in depth analyses based on a date, periods or recurrent time frames. Various kinds of developments and activities can be selected and generated in tables and graphs.
Reports and Statistics can be displayed directly in Cyclos and most of them have a ‘Print’ and ‘download as CSV file’ option.

Bookkeeping
The bookkeeping module is commonly used for systems that work with external backing of the internal currency. With the module it is possible to mirror an ‘external accounts’ (e.g. a Bank account) in Cyclos and run a ‘batch’ process on the imported transactions. A batch process can for example generate a system to member payment (buying of units) for every external (incoming) transactions of the type ‘deposit’. Before running the batch process an administrator can run a ‘simulation’ batch to check if the results are correct.

The function also facilitates the control of the balance between the external ‘backing’ account and the system ‘loan’ account in Cyclos.

Channels
Cyclos can be handle requests via different media or “channels”. These can be internal (Cyclos) channels like Web, POSweb, mobile phone. With the channel structure it is possible to add new external (payment) channels to enable access from third party software like e-commerce sites, ATM machines and POS devices.

Registration agreements
A registration agreement is a text that can shown up at the registration page and users who want to register MUST select a checkbox stating that they agree with this agreement in order to be able to submit. An agreement is a kind of a contract. When a member is moved to group a with a different registration agreement he/she will have to accept the agreement that is active for the new group.

System tasks
Various system tasks can be performed, such as setting the system online and re-indexing the user and advertisement data.

Security
Because Cyclos can be used for various types of networks it is possible to implement different security levels. The security of Cyclos is on server (hosting) level is not in the scope of this document. Cyclos has some basic security solutions that are always enabled and transparent for the users. For example, passwords are always send encrypted of the Internet (even is https is not used) and security measures are implemented to prevent cross site scripting and SQL injects.

Cyclos has various system wide security settings like the enabling of https, expirations times of the user sessions, white and black access lists that check on IP and/or domain and optional virtual keyboard for login page and transaction password. You can set thresholds for alerts and set maximum amounts per day (per payment type). Payment types can also require authorizations. There can be various levels of authorizations where each level can have its own rules and conditions.

Some security configurations are group based. You can enable transaction password per group and there are many extra password and access policies that can be defined per group.

Help function
Cyclos includes a manual that describes all the functions. In addition to the manuals every functionality window has its own help (pop-up) file with an explanation of that function.

Maintenance and upgrades
All data in Cyclos, even customizations and images, are stored in the database. There is only one simple configuration file outside Cyclos what makes maintenance tasks like backups and upgrades of Cyclos considerable easy.The initialization process of Cyclos will always check the versions of Cyclos software and the database. When a new version is installed the initialization process will upgrade the database automatically. With every new version a changelog is provided with an explanation of all changes and possible new/changed translation files.