Question 1

How to integrate with Mews using Workflow integrations

Accepted Answer

At Malcolm! HQ we continue to roll-out our built-in Workflow integrations, our most recent being the Mews Property Managamenet System.

Use a Malcolm! Workflow to capture information or record choices from your guest then have that data added to the guest notes in Mews. All you need from your guest is their Surname and Confirmation Number or a Reservation ID.

Connect to Mews

Get started in MyMalcolm by connecting to your Mews account via Settings > Workflows > Integrations using your Mews Client token and Access token.

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Build the Workflow

Start a new Malcolm! Workflow and capture the guest Surname and Confirmation Number.

If you prefer a hidden Reservation ID could be passed in via the URL, for example using a link in a direct email to the guest. URL values can also be tokenised to hide their true value. Read more on Setting Workflow values in a URL and Securing Workflow values.

Finish by adding the fields you'd like to capture in guest profile notes.

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Configure the integration

From the builder head to Configure > Integrations and choose the Mews integration.

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Choose the "Add notes to a guest profile" action and your Mews booking service.

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Connect up your Malcolm! Workflow fields.

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Finish by enabling the integration and saving.

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We hope you enjoy using this new integration. If you have any feedback or questions please get in touch below or via support@malcolm.app.

Question 2

How can I password-protect my hub with Memberstack?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm supports using Memberstack to password-protect your content.

This guide will help you set up Memberstack.

First go to MyMalcolm > Settings > Instance > Visibility and toggle the option to use a third party service for Hosted Hub password protection. This automatically enables the built-in password protection.

Activating third party Single Sign On (SSO)

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/M5riHygBgk/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.10.03-05_58_09.png (Choose Memberstack from the dropdown)

Next, from the Memberstack Dashboard, go to Dev Tools > Add Integration.

Add a new custom SSO Integration

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Copy the Redirect URI from MyMalcolm and paste it into Memberstack.

Redirect URI in MyMalcolm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/IHbM8Ppu1v/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2022.10.03-05_58_32.png (Cut and paste this into Memberstack)

Then, in Memberstack, press Add Integration.

Once created, in Memberstack click the Edit button next to the Integration and copy the Client ID and Secret Key.

Your Custom SSO Integration

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/I1TfM7CL3a/Screenshot%202022-10-03%20at%2007.01.12.png (Obtaining the Client ID and Secret Key from Memberstack)

Paste these values into the boxes in MyMalcolm.

Client Credentials in MyMalcolm

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Save the settings on both sides and you should see your Memberstack login page appear in your Hub.

Login to Hosted Hub

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/DkMgxR3Mti/Screenshot%202022-10-03%20at%2007.01.36.png (Hosted Hub login using Memberstack SSO)

Attributes from your Memberstack users can be pre-populated in Malcolm! Workflows. To enable this feature choose a suitable field on a Workflow, edit the field settings and enable "Allow a value to be set in the URL query". Enter one of the two attributes name or email to pre-populate those values directly into your Workflow.

Question 3

When a Workflow is completed will I be sent an email?

Accepted Answer

When a user completes a Workflow, by default all the Team members of the instance (who are added and manged via the Team section of MyMalcolm) will receive an email.

You can also configure other people to receive an email on a Workflow by Workflow basis.

To do this:

In MyMalcolm go to the Workflow section
Click Library and then click on the Workflow you wish to configure email alerts for
Then click "Configure" on the black horizontal navigation then "Email Answers" on the left hand vertical navigation
Click "add a new email address" to add a new recipient. This can be a fixed email address you enter or, if you collect an email address on your Workflow, you can choose for the email to be sent to the supplied email
Note that you can also make a recipient conditional - this is very useful if you only want an email to be sent to a particular address when certain criteria on a Workflow are met

Question 4

How do I create a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)?

Accepted Answer

Within MyMalcolm go the FAQ Section and click "Create a FAQ" towards to the top right of the screen.

This will bring up the "compose your question and answer" dialogue. Here you can input the question, an optional brief summary answer (used in search and browse results) and your full answer. For tips on how to write a good FAQ click here.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/FrnZFuskaf/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.07.29-21_44_58.png (Compose FAQ in MyMalcolm)

When composing your FAQ you can use the formating controls in the "full answer" box or directly enter Markdown. Markdown is a great way of quickly adding formatting to textual content. If you've not used it before it can take a minute or two to get used to it but it's very fast to work with once you have got the hang of it. You can click the "Need help with Markdown?" button bottom left anytime for a quick reference Markdown guide.

You can see what your FAQ will look like to your users by pressing the "Preview" button top right. When you have written your content press "Next: Configure" to move onto the configuration options for your FAQ.

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In this area you can control various things about your FAQ such as whether an author is shown, what the URL is, your choice of tags, whether the feedback form is enabled and the category or categories the FAQ lives in. You also have various options around whether the FAQ can be seen by search engines, is password protected or not and can be found or not via the Malcolm! search/browse capability. You can even set the FAQ (or versions of it) to publish and un-publish automatically at certain dates and time in the future.

Watch a video guide to creating an FAQ below.

Question 5

Can I pass secure values into Malcolm! Workflows via the URL?

Accepted Answer

Passing data into a Workflow via the URL is a feature we've had for a while - read more - but what if the data you want to pass is confidential?

Understandably, you wouldn't want to pass that straight in. Luckily Malcolm! understands how important protecting your data is so we've come up with a solution that allows values to travel safe and secure with minimal effort!

A beginners guide to encryption

Suppose you have a value, such as an account number, that you don't want anyone else to read. Encryption provides a way to scramble this value so only you and the people you share the password or secret key with can read it.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/FR8yDloV2d/encryption-diagram.png (encryption-diagram.png)

The sender uses the secret key to scramble the original value and the encrypted value is sent to the receiver. On receipt of the encrypted value the receiver uses the same secret key to unscramble the value back to the original.

And that's encryption in a nutshell!

Step 1: Generate a secret key

The secret key can be any string you like, but Malcolm! recommends using a random string of at least 36 characters. A simple ruby command can quickly generate one for you.

Keep your secret key safe - you'll need it later!

Step 2: Share your secret key with Malcolm!

We do this via the Workflow Builder. Any question field that supports URL query values can now be secured with your secret key - e.g. text fields, hidden fields, number fields, email address fields, etc.

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Here's a simple example which starts with a text field renamed to "Account number".

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To enable URL values open up the edit window, scroll to the bottom and turn on "Allow a value to be set in URL query". Malcolm! will automatically generate a query name for you but you can change it to something different if you prefer.

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Next turn on the "Secure the query value" and paste in your secret key.

Hit save and that completes the configuration!

Step 3: Encrypting values

Malcolm! uses OpenSSL and the "aes-128-gcm" cipher to decrypt values.

Passed values need to be encoded and made up of three parts -

The Initialisation Vector used during the encryption
The Authentication Tag resulting from AEAD ciphers
The encrypted string

Initialisation Vectors are generated using the OpenSSL rand function. For our chosen cipher these need to be exactly 12 bytes long. If using PHP you can use the openssl_random_pseudo_bytes function.

Why 12 bytes? This just happens to be the required length for our chosen cipher. In PHP you can verify this by using the openssl_cipher_iv_length function.

This will output -

Next use the OpenSSL enc function to create the encrypted string. Here's an example using the PHP openssl_encrypt function.

This will assign an Authentication Tag to the $tag variable (passed by reference) and an encrypted string to the $ciphertext variable.

Note - in PHP we pass OPENSSL_RAW_DATA to generate binary data.

Complete the process by concatenating $iv, $tag and $cipertext into a single string - Malcolm! needs all three for the decryption process!

As we're passing this value via the URL we need to first encode it. Use a Base 64 encoder followed by a URL encoder to ensure all the characters are sent correctly. In PHP this is the base64_encode function and urlencode functions respectively.

This is the final encoded string!

For simplicity all the steps from above can be put in a single function.

And that's all there is to it ;)

Question 6

Can you send me a (VAT) invoice?

Accepted Answer

You can download an invoice / receipt for each payment you've made to us in the Billing Section of MyMalcolm. Select "Invoices/receipts" in the left hand vertical navigation and then click the icon on the right of each row to download the invoice/receipt associated with each payment.

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If you have paid VAT as part of the payment we've taken from your card your invoice/receipt will show a breakdown of this.

For more information about Malcolm! and VAT see this question.

Question 7

How do I reset my password?

Accepted Answer

If you need to reset your Malcolm! user account password please visit this link.

Question 8

Could I use Malcolm! as a publishing platform?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm! has primarily been designed around service interactions with users (eg answering their questions and taking them through a process) but we do have users who use Malcolm! in a more "marketing" or "content" based way eg to host content and/or take their users through forms to download content or register for something.

If you want to use Malcolm! in this way it's worth remembering that you have full branding control (more info here) and can even rename things like FAQ's and Workflows (more info here). You can also change your base URL. See more information in this article.

By default we do mark up FAQs content using https://schema.org/FAQPage so if your content doesn't follow a question and answer format and you allow that content to be indexed by search engines you may wish to change the schema to https://schema.org/WebPage. You can see how to do this here.

The Examples section on our website may give you some further ideas on how you could use Malcolm!

If you want to go even further you might want to consider contacting us and having a chat. We do offer enterprise packages and bespoke development on top of the Malcolm! Platform.

Question 9

What are Integrations?

Accepted Answer

Integrations are a way of passing data you collect in a Malcolm! Workflow into other third party software or systems.

We currently offer integrations with:

Plus over 1,500 over apps via Zapier (more info here) and Make (formerly Integromat) (more info here).

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/v5lAa3NjkY/zapier-fb%402x.png (Malcolm! Integrations)

Configuring Integrations

Once you have created your Workflow, go to the Configure section and select Integrations. There you can link your third party accounts at our integration partners to your Malcolm! Instance by providing your credentials. Once your accounts are linked you can configure integrations with that partner and choose the data from your Workflow that is passed across. You can configure whether data is passed on every Workflow completion or only when certain conditions are met. It is possible to have multiple integrations so, for example, you could create a form which collected details from a new customer including a copy of their ID. You could then subscribe that new customer to a Mailchimp mailing list and store their uploaded ID documents in your Dropbox account by creating two integrations.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/HwJyEPPI3q/resources/5KmZGb3Q9Q/screenshot-my.malcolm.app-2019.08.06-19_50_53.png (Integrations in MyMalcolm)

Customer Consent

A reminder that it is good practice - and in certain territories a legal requirement - to ensure that your customers actively consent to their data being passed to third party companies who, like Malcolm!, act as data processors on your behalf. You act as the data controller. Most companies handle this consent via provisions in their Privacy Policy which their customers agree to. It is good practice therefore to include a check box in your Workflows that reminds customers of your Privacy Policy and their continuing agreement of it.

Integration Failures

Sometimes integrations may fail. This could be for a variety of reasons, for example the integration partner's API's may be down and/or there may be a problem with your account at the third party provider (for example your Dropbox account may be over quota).

Firstly don't worry re losing customer data - Malcolm! will always store any user submitted data so if there is a problem with an integration

When a problem occurs we'll create a notification to let you know and periodically retry the integration. You can review the Integration logs and retry a failed integration event manually via MyMalcolm (navigate to the Workflow via Library then select Integration logs).

More Integrations coming soon!

We will be adding more and more integrations to Malcolm! in the coming months. If there is a particular integration you'd like us to add please let us know.

Question 10

How can I password-protect my hub with Auth0?

Accepted Answer

Malcolm supports using Auth0 to password-protect your content.

This guide will help you set up Auth0.

First go to MyMalcolm > Settings > Instance > Visibility and enable Hosted Hub password protection. This automatically enables the built-in password protection.

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Next, inside your Auth0 tennant, create a new Auth0 Application. Give it a name and choose Regular Web Applications from the four options.

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Click on the Settings tab and scroll down to the Basic Information section.

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In MyMalcolm click through to Manage password protection and toward the bottom enable Auth0 for password protection. Copy/paste the Domain, Client ID and Client Secret from Auth0 into MyMalcolm.

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Next copy/paste the Application Login URI, Allowed Callback URL and Allowed Logout URL from Malcolm! into your Auth0 Application URIs settings.

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Save the settings on both sides and you should see your Auth0 login page in your Hub.

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But that's not all!

Attributes from your Auth0 users can be pre-populated in Malcolm! Workflows. To enable this feature choose a suitable field on a Workflow, edit the field settings and enable Allow a value to be set in the URL query. Enter one of the four attribute names email, name, nickname or picture to pre-populate those values directly into your Workflow.

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You can read more about passing values in the URL query here.