Important instructions

This article has important information about your server. Make sure you read and understand this article well!

Congratulations and welcome!

Welcome to the very own Architects Office Management Server! We are sure you and your entire office will become a lot more efficient now. Before you start; it is important that you read this article entirely.

Legals Please read our simple Terms of Service and Privacy Policy carefully. It is assumed that by starting the use of your server; even for trial, you are agreeing to all the clauses mentioned there. If you do not agree; please let us know by email at [email protected] and we will delete your server.

Referral incentive Sometimes we offer an incentive for you to tell your friends about this system and you can then even run this server practically free of cost! The first email that we sent you would have a special link which you can send to your friends. Read more here on how the incentive system work. You have zero work to do other than sending your friends that special referral link. Trial Period usage Your server can be used free during the trial period; which is currently set to 14 days. Once the trial period is over, the only major cost you need to pay is a small, one time setup cost for fully setting up your server. Sometimes we run a promotion where we do not charge any setup cost. Many features of the fully setup server are free, and some are charged for as per usage.

Components of your server Your server has two main components: One is the Kanban section (which is a special installation of the excellent, open source Kanboard software ) and other is a special custom-domain mailer system specifically for your domain.

Go ahead, start adding users in your office by creating members in the Kanban section. Every user added there will also automatically get an email address created from the same user's username. Receiving professional emails to all your users on your server are always free. Even after trial. Sending emails to each other within the office is also always free. Even after trial.

However; during this trial period, this server does not allow sending of emails to people outside your office. And once the server is fully setup (i.e. after the trial period) then sending emails incur a small charge, as per your usage. How does the trial period end? Once the allotted time period for trial is over; your server will be paused. It will politely wait for you to credit your account with the setup amount. Sometimes we run a promotion where we forgo the setup cost -- in which case your server would be fully setup automatically once the trial period is over.

If you are NOT planning to use the server please use the link in the login page of your server to end the usage. That link can be invoked either during the trial period or even later.

You can also end the trial period earlier by simply crediting your account with the correct amount of Koyns to recharge the server as per your needs. Koyns are the name we give to our "internal currency" or "tokens"-- explained later in this documentation. You purchase these tokens, and credit them into your account -- so that the server can deduct money from your account as you keep using it.

Setup costs You would need to credit your account with the setup charges to continue usage in full usage mode. Any setup charges paid by you cannot be refunded if you later decide to stop using this solution. As explained earlier, sometimes we run promotions where we do not charge any setup cost.

There are no charges for using the Kanban section of the server.

Email costs We use the term AEU (Active Email user) for that user who is able to send emails outside the office. Emailing to each other in your own office or receiving emails are always free.

Before a user can send emails to outside from your server, that person must considered as an active email user (AEU) by our system at the current time when an email is being sent by that person. Our pricing page indicates how much you have to pay for users to become such AEUs.

We have an appendix in this documentation that explains how our system checks these AEUs. It is quite transparent. Basically, you need to just keep crediting some money into your account as and when the system informs you. Don't worry, the costs are quite small -- something similar to how SMS (text messges) are charged by some cellphone providers. There they charge sometimes in the quantum of SMS sent. But we charge as per various quantums of time periods. See our pricing page.

Special pricing Sometimes we run special pricing schemes. For examples; usually each AEU is charged for each 30 day duration. But once a while; we may allow AEUs extended usage for a special price. You can choose AEUs for sets of 1, 5, 10, etc persons.

If you are sure your office will have 5 users sending out emails over 30 days; then it would be cheaper to buy a 5 person AEU set instead of crediting a 1 person AEU for each person individually. Keep a watch on our aforesaid pricing page.

Our Koyns internal currency system You should credit money into your account by purchasing our internal credits currency (or tokens) which we call 'Koyns'. The experience is similar to what you see in some restaurants in Bangalore, India: You go to the cash counter and exchange your money for plastic tokens. Then you can use the tokens inside the restaurant to pick up whatever dish that you happen to desire. We have a separate article in this documentation on how Koyns can be purchased and credited into your account: How do we charge? Koyns!

Important email differences We took a lot of effort, user studies and surveys to craft the email system we offer. From the receivers point of view the emails sent from your server works exactly the same as the emails they get from other email providers (Google, Zoho, etc)

However from your (sender) perspective there are important differences. We worked out our system to suit small and medium size businesses really well.

For one; emails sent as 'BCC' will never be received by people in your office. But if you so wish, you can order a user to be given the capability to receive 'BCC' emails at an additional cost per user.

We also do NOT permit any attachments inside emails you send out. Nowadays it is quite easy to upload files to an external file-upload service and then you can give their link in your email.

A very important feature we have implemented is that all the emails sent and received also become "cards" in the Kanban section of your server. This is a powerful mechanism that ensures that all emails in your office are properly attended to. This is the reason why we call this a "management" server. We believe (and so does many) that emails have to result in action.

Learn more about that feature and other important special features later in this documentation.

Paused server If your server is paused, you will not be able to use your server. As explained earlier; the server will politely show an instruction page requesting you to credit the setup charges into your account or attend to whatever that has caused the pausing of the server.

Usually, a server would be paused because the trial period was over and it is now waiting to deduct the setup cost from your account. But it could also be paused due to some (hopefully temporary) violation of our Terms of service. We reserve the right to delete the domain and the server space of such paused server at our own discretion. Usually, we do try to keep such a paused server waiting for you, for a month or two. Once the setup amount is paid for, the server is never paused (unless you violate our Terms of Service). If our system was unable to find sufficient credit balance in your account to send out emails for a user; it will simply not allow that user to send an email. That's all. The rest of the server will continue to work. So it is usually a good idea to credit something extra in your account so that users of your server who want to send emails, can indeed do so without interruption. Moreover the interruption is only for a few minutes: All you have to do is get the correct number of Koyns and credit those into your account. And you are back on track.

This is similar to what happens when you are playing a video game and the token you had inserted got consumed: Just insert one more token into the coin-slot there if you want to extend the time.

Allowed resources Your server is on a large, professionally managed dedicated, powerful hardware with a large amount of RAM. Your server is coexisting along with a few others too. We hope you will use your resources responsibly. We allow around 1 Gigabyte of hard-disk space, and reasonable bandwidth usage on your server. If we find that your server is consuming a lot more resources than others, we reserve the right to move your server to your own dedicated or VPS hardware. You can look at your 'analytics' page to understand how your account is being used. Of course, we will initimate you before the shift and we both need to agree on the additional charges this can incur. Our extensive testing has told us that unless the office sends out tens of thousands of emails in a month and/or keeps attaching lots of large files into the Kanban system; what we have provided is usually more than sufficient for offices upto 30 users. If you are a very large office, you may want to try the trial server first and then email us for an attractive price for hosting this service on a hardware dedicated only to your office.

Allowed usage Our Terms of service has all the details and what is allowed and what is not allowed. Make sure that everyone who uses your server is fully informed about these instructions and the terms of service.

We also earnestly request you and your users NOT to use the email address that you get here to sign-up for other services on the Internet. Not that we ban it; but it would just simply clutter up your emails you receive here. This is a management server; where you are focused on getting work done in your office.

If you do want to register at other websites/apps/applications using an email address; our company has invented another excellent, free service: https://known.email Use that and it will save you a ton of headaches!

Limitations of promotional servers with free setup The main use of such a server is the way it interacts using emails in the project management of your office. We often give special promotions where no setup is charged after the free trial to help users get to use such a server with the least amount of friction.

If we find that a promotional server (i.e.one where no setup was charged by us) has not activated at least 5 AEU users (each activated for 30 day duration) over a 3 month period after the server finished the trial, we reserve the right to stop the server. Of course after giving you at least 2 weeks advanced notice.

The reason is simple: If a server has not got used much within three months, then we would rather give the resources consumed by that server to some other office.

Next steps Go ahead and add any number of users into your server. As mentioned earlier; all users are added into the Kanboard and the usage of that system is always free. Internally, each such user also gets an email address based on that person's username in the Kanboard.

This NOT a regular email system. No configuration is needed for you or your users for the emails to work. You server has its own email reading and sending software included that works inside the tab of a browser on your computer.

Such emails CANNOT be handled using conventional email software such as Thunderbird, Microsoft mail, etc. Our email system cannot be integrated with other systems either. (Later on in the documentation, you will learn why)

You should also add all the projects of your office into this server, for managing them efficiently. If you are unfamiliar with the Kanban system, we have plenty of documentation to help you. There are good reasons why we designed such a system. Read our documentation to fully understand your server and how your emails are handled. If you have additional questions, post them at our support site. Note that only paid users would get full support. Others can discuss at the teamTAD community at Discord.

End note

This is an offer of love from Limen Leap Labs. We promote a free architecture design software called TAD. It is not mandatory to use TAD in order to profit from your server here. But if you do; then TAD integrates extremely well with your server; and help you manage your architectural design projects even more efficiently. Do download TAD from here https://teamtad.com

You are always welcome to our TAD community at Discord for additional community support. How to join TAD Community at Discord ? Simple: Use this link! Once you join the TAD Community, your registration there can be used to authenticate your copy of TAD.