MyRicoh has been shut down and is no longer in service as of 3/1/2008.

Ricoh customers can go to www.ricohdirect.com 

MyRicoh was created for RBS customers to quickly and easily order supplies for thier equipment. This service quickly expanded to

• Placing Service Calls
• Submitting Meter Readings
• Requesting Training

Before long even more features were added.

• View Service History
• Access Equipment's onboard web engine to view Toner levels
• Update customer's contact information
• Add child users under the customer's Admin user
  • This led to Setting Permissions
• View contact info for all of the Ricoh support available to the customer.
• Product Manual and Driver Downloads

The MyRicoh system quickly gained in popularity. So much so, I couldn't keep up with setting up the customers myself.

I had to make a MyRicoh Setup page that Sales people could use to set their customers up.

MyRicoh Setup

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The MyRicoh Setup page can be found on the home page of RBS.Net.

The link is called MyRicoh Customer Setup

The Sales person only has to set up the Admin user.

The Admin user takes it from there.

There is a Users Manual for the Users to read but they hardly do. MyRicoh is really easy to figure out.

The Setup page was designed to take the least amount of effort as possible to set up a customer. All the Sales person had to have is:

• One serial number from the customer fleet of machines no matter how old it was.
• The Sales person's name (it sounds strange to need an entry for sales to enter their own name but actually back then Sales Admin used to do this for the Sales people. These-days CSR/Trainers also add new Admin users to the MyRicoh system)
• Supply person's name and email.
  • The Administrator's information like...
    • Company Name
    • Street Address
    • Zip Code
    • Administrator's Name
    • Administrator's Phone & Email

The above info from the Sales person is all it took to get the Admin user up and running.

In the background the system takes the serial number and searches the D1 database for a match. Once a match is found it cross references the company name and address with the rest of the entries in the D1 database. Then it takes all of the entries and groups them together all the way down to what is called the customer's "CODE".

This CODE (a company can have multiple CODEs) can be used to understand how the company gets billed.

Anyway, the CODEs are written to the Admin's Log in script.

When the Admin logs in to MyRicoh the log in script searches all of the D1 data for matches that fit all of the customer's CODEs.

Thats how a single serial number replicates to a customer's entire fleet of machines.

Setting Permissions

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Admin users of the MyRicoh system can set up their own users with a number of permissions. The permissions are set by simply choosing Yes or No for each item.

Admins can choose whether or not to allow their users to:

• Order Supplies
• View the Order Supply Log
• Place Service Calls
• View the Service Call Log
• View the full Service History
• View the full Equipment List
• Send RBS Equipment Update information
• View Invoices
• Submit Meter Readings

An Admin may not want some of their users to be able to Order Supplies. In some cases the company has a central delivery warehouse that all of the company's supplies gets shipped to. The Admin may wish to have the user contact them and the Admin will send out supplies from their warehouse. When the warehouse's supplies get low the Admin could do the actual ordering to replenish the warehouse.

The same can go for the rest of the other items.

The selection that Admin users seem to use the most is the View Full Equipment List.

The Admin says "No" to the ability to view the Full Equipment List.

Then the Admin tells their users to get the Equipment ID number off the machine and enter it in by hand.

It seems like the Admin users understand the benefit of not confusing their users with a giant Full Equipment List.

MyRicoh Data Uploads

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The data that MyRicoh uses is pulled from Dispatch 1 (D1).

The D1 system and MyRicoh cannot be connected directly so on or about the 1st and 15th of each month the D1 data is uploaded to MyRicoh. The MyRicoh server is located in New Jersey.

Sometimes the upload is late because of data errors. MyRicoh can only use correct, clean data. If there is anything wrong with the D1 data someone must first fix the error in D1 and then, on upload day, the correct data is sent to the New Jersey servers.

The most common D1 data errors are dates.

If, for example, D1 has a date of 3-13-2040 for a Service Call MyRicoh knows that this date is incorrect and will prevent the upload. Sometimes it takes a day or two to get the D1 system corrected.

Missing equipment ID numbers are also common. Usually the Contracts department or Service department can help you correct the equipment ID number. Once corrected, MyRicoh will reflect the update after the upload is complete.