Introduction to the VMSX

Welcome to the VMSX platform!

The VMSX is Visual Domain’s new video project management eXperience. 

VMSX project management is an integrated part of the existing VMS — it has redesigned the project workflow to be:

• easier to use,

• more efficient for everybody

• provide better reporting, 

• better integrated with the HubSpot sales process; and 

• to more closely mirror the client’s Client Hub experience

For those of you who are familiar with the older VMS, you should have no trouble adapting to this redesigned approach.

At this early stage of the VMSX journey, you will find the VMSX upgrade covers your video project management from project creation, through invoice management, to video delivery and approval. Every other aspect of the older VMS system remains — for example: contact management and the Communications Hub. You will likely get used to navigating between the new VMSX project pages and the old VMS for some time. 

This VSMX training will stay focused on what you need to know for project delivery.

What happened to the “orders”?

With the release of VMSX project management, we will no longer have to deal with Orders as a subset of Projects. Everyone will now be delivering projects. 

These projects will be populated with the same deliverable jobs as before. For example:

• edits, 

• animations, 

• shoots, and 

• Storyboards. 

These project jobs are now clearly distinguished as separate parts of the production cycle and now match what the clients experience for themselves in the Client Hub. They will be managed within three independent project management tabs:

• Pre-Production

• Filming Details 

• Deliveries (videos)

We have provided three separate guideline pages that deep-dive on each of these stages in the production cycle. You can click on each of the links above to learn more.

Finding your projects

You can find your day-to-day VMS overviews and projects in the same way as previously, with one or two additional options from the VMSX project management pages. 

VMS homepage

The homepage provides a suite of quick links that you should find useful, alongside a summary of your near-future scheduled deliveries in the VMS production calendar.

To find the VMS homepage:

• From the old VMS — click on the Home menu, top-left of page

• From the VMSX — click on home icon, top-left of page

From here, you can:

• Create a new project in VMSX

• Create a new credit pack in VMS

• Copy the New Brief Form link — a shareable URL to where the client can submit a new project brief within the Client Hub.

• Access the Team Website — leads to the VisDom Team intranet site.

Active Projects

This list of active projects is the go-to pile of information representing all of the projects that Visual Domain currently has in production. 

You can sort this list by clicking on the column headers, or filter the list for any specific text.

To find the list of Active Projects:

• From the old VMS: choose “Projects” from the Projects* dropdown menu at the top of the page.

• From the VMSX: click on the grey “Projects” link, next to the Home icon  

VMS Communication Hub

We have published a separate deep-dive guideline page for the Communication Hub, which also provides one or two handy ways to access your projects. You can follow this link to learn more.

To find the Communication Hub:

• From the old VMS: click on the big orange button at the top of the page

• From the VMSX: a little more subtle — you’re looking for the hollow blue button in the top-right corner.

Starting projects

New VMSX projects can come from three different directions:

• you can create new project in VMSX from scratch;

• you can pick up a draft project from the Sales Team via a closed deal in HubSpot; or

• you can pick up a project request from one of your clients via the Client Hub.

We delve into the differences between the three in the following sections.

Put basically, each of these paths lead to a new project with a “draft” status. A draft project requires some set-up before it can be confirmed with the client and activated.

This is a key new feature of the VMSX: you cannot deliver your project’s pre-production or video jobs, if you have not confirmed the project (and the budget) with the client. 

The next section walks you all the way through to getting your project confirmed and activated.

Creating a new project

To kick off a new project from scratch, click on the “+ New Project” button in the old VMS. This button is found on both the VMS Home page and the Active Projects list.

This will present you with the “New Project” page. Your first task is to tell the VMSX who this new project is for. 

Pick a contact, any contact

Start typing anything, and the search bar will present its best results from among all of our registered clients. Returning:

• Contact name

• Office name

• Company name

Select a contact. This person will become your new project’s primary contact. If you need additional contacts, you can add them later. 

Show us your details

The next page asks you for four more primary points of data before the VMSX can create a new draft project for you.

• Project name — Give your project a good, unique name that will allow you and your client to clearly identify it among a list of other projects.

• Product Type — Choose the product type that best captures the project you wish to produce. This choice is important, as this is a major data point for the VMSX for reporting reasons.
  However, the product type does not change the journey through a VMSX project. All product types have the same options throughout the project delivery.

• Relationship Manager — You should probably already have a pretty good idea who the RM is for this project.

• Project Manager — In all likelihood, the Project Manager is you! It doesn’t have to be. You may be launching this project for someone else.  (In the old VMS, the Project Manager was referred to as the Producer.)

After you have completed these four fields, a blue “Save project” button will reveal itself. Hit that save button to initiate your new project.

Product types

Here is the extensive list of every product type available when initiating a new project.

• Real Estate — Use for property/development profiles and auction profiles only.

• Social Media — Short, snappy content made for social.

• Series — Web series and other episodic content.

• Personalised — Personalised content

• Brand Stories — Engaging “home page” content that tells a brand’s story. Use only if the content doesn’t fit into any other category.

• Animation — Motion graphics, 2D and 3D animation.

• Product — Showcase a product.

• Events — Content designed to advertise or showcase an event.

• TVC — Television commercials (don’t forget about CAD!)

• Case Studies & Testimonials — Content that showcases happy customers and stories of success.

• Live Streaming — Onsite, in studio and virtual live streamed webinars and events.

• Training & HR — All internal communication and recruitment content.

• Interactive — All interactive content, including projects delivered in partnership with Vudoo.

In many cases you might have a project that fits into more than one category (for example, a personalised animation). Please choose the most relevant one and give the project a name that makes it clear what sort of video it is, so that we can find it later (eg: “Membership Renewal Personalised Animation”).

Completing the Project Summary

Congratulations! Your project now exists in the VMSX database. In addition to the data that you have already provided, your new project now has a project number and its status is set to “Draft”. 

It is worth understanding that now that the project is a draft, it is already visible to your client on the Client Hub, but it has not yet been confirmed. You can start chatting with your client using the built-in project chat. The only people who have access to this chat are your project Contacts, the Relationship Manager, and the Project Manager. 

You now have the opportunity to define a lot more information for your project, your team, and your client. 

The core project data

The core data fields on the left-hand side are compulsory. You already provided these when creating the project. However, most of these are not set in stone. You can edit them by floating your cursor to the right of the field and clicking on the edit pencil.

Project Contacts

Underneath the left-hand core data fields is the list of client contacts for this project. You can add any number of registered contacts to this list, provided they belong to the same Office that is associated with the project.

These contacts can also be removed — unless there is only one. There must always be at least one project contact.

The project contacts on this list can see, access, and interact with all of the project details on Client Hub. They can:

• participate in the project chat, 

• order shoots, 

• review pre-production information, 

• upload files and assets,

• review and approve the videos

The optional data

The 12 additional fields of information that you can now provide for your Project Summary are all optional, but they are very useful data points for communicating project specs and targets — to both the production team and the client. These fields can all be filled in by your client at any time — it is strongly encouraged to have your client provide the information to help with briefing the project

To start editing them, click on any of the pencil edit icons.

• Production Coordinator & Director — choose from the curated lists. Only specific VisDom production staff are available to be selected for these roles. If assigned to one of these roles, the staff member will be added to the project chat and begin to receive email communications. 

• Budget — This one is mostly for the clients. It is intended for them to give us broad idea of what their budget will be. They can choose from the few lower-budget options, or select “unsure”.

• Primary platform — Your project may be looking to provide cuts for multiple platforms, but you are asked here to nominate one primary platform where the client intends to publish the finished video. This ensures that the client has considered this question from the project outset.

• Allocated hours — nominate how many hours you are allocating for the delivery of the entire project

• Topic & Target Audience — Open text fields. Provide whatever apt information you like here.

• Project Start Date & Project Deadline — Calendar date fields. Use these dates to communicate your scheduling intentions to your team and the client. When it comes to delivering, each of the specific production jobs that require scheduling (editing, shoots, pre-production, etc.) will be handled by the jobs that you will add to the other project tabs shortly.

• Video example — Add text and/or HTML links to online videos that can serve as inspirations for your project.

• Goals & Additional Notes — Larger and expandable text fields that allow you to share bulk commentary and notes with your team.

All of the optional data provided here will be visible to the client within the project on Client Hub. These fields will remain editable throughout delivery.

Receiving a draft project from a HubSpot deal

The second way to create new projects in VMSX is to receive draft projects from sales processed by our Relationship Managers. 

In all likelihood, you are probably going to start many more projects via this method, then you will be creating new projects from scratch.

How does the project get from HubSpot to VMSX?

Our Sales/RM team uses a marketing platform called HubSpot to manage their sales and marketing communications. When a successful sale is ready to be formalised, HubSpot calls this “closing the deal”. 

When a Relationship Manager (or sales person) closes their deal on HubSpot, they will provide a handful of project data that will correspond to the VMSX Project Summary information that we have looked at above. 

The closed deal will also assign a Project Manager and Relationship Manager to carry this project forward with the client.

Both of these production contacts will receive an emailed “NEW ORDER” notification. This email will include two primary buttons:

• View HubSpot Deal — Takes the Project Manager back to HubSpot to assess all of the information provided by the salesperson. This is includes additional information like previous email conversations, file attachments, and in-depth company details.

• Create Project — Takes the Project Manager straight into the VMSX to start completing the draft project set-up. The draft project will automatically include most of the information provided by the closed HubSpot deal. 

Creating the draft project from a HubSpot deal  

When you first create these projects from a closed deal, you will be taken straight to the Project Summary page and asked to confirm the left-hand column core data fields. All of these will have been pre-populated from the deal, including the Product Type. It is important that you confirm the Product Type is correct before you continue building out your project.

The rest of the project set-up will behave in the same manner as if you had set up the project from scratch — with the following important exception:

The total project price of a closed deal

You will find the total project price (as sold to the client) already populating the project’s Invoices tab. This will be one single price value, with possibly one additional disbursements value. 

You can revise, change, and add to these pricing details as much as you like, but be careful to ensure that you don’t change the total project price, without first ensuring this is what the client is expecting.

Receiving a project request from Client Hub

This third method of receiving new orders — via clients submitting a request for new video projects on the Client Hub — is currently less used, but will grow in frequency.

Similar to the notification process from the HubSpot deals, when a client utilises this service, an email notification will be sent to:

• The client’s assigned Relationship Manager

• The client’s assigned Producer (if they have one).

This notification email clearly flags that your client has “created a new Project on the Client Hub” and provides direct links to “view the Draft Order” or “Start Chatting”.  In both cases, this should open up the new draft Project within the VMSX, with all of the client’s provided details already populating the Project Summary data fields.

The process from this point will be the same as picking up a closed deal from HubSpot — except that there will be no pre-agreed production or disbursement costs in the Invoices tab.

Completing the project set-up

Moving on from the Project Summary, you are now free to add job details to the Pre-Production, Filming Details, and Deliveries tabs. 

You can also start uploading and managing project assets using the Uploaded Files tab.

Each of these production tabs are covered in great detail within their respective deep-dive pages, linked here:

• Pre-Production — can be set-up later, but might be helpful when confirming project scope and price. If you intend to provide a storyboard and script in pre-production, it would be pertinent to set these up at first, as these will be represented in the Project Confirmation email. 

• Filming Details — can be set-up later, but might be helpful when considering project scope and price.

• Deliveries — The client sees the number of video deliveries in the Project Confirmation email and in the draft presentation of the project on Client Hub. It is recommended that you attempt to establish the basic details for all of your video deliveries prior to project confirmation.

• Uploaded Files — You and the client can upload and share files and assets for the project here. You can also access any stored VMSX Brand Hub assets specific to this client. 

Project confirmation and activation

After creating your project and setting up some details, you will need to send and activate before you can start delivering any pre-production or videos. This ensures that we have formally confirmed the client’s budget and scope before commencing work on the project.

The first time you access this Invoices tab for a project, at the top you will see the yellow alert bar with the “Send & Activate” button. This will remain visible until you have activated the project. 

Activating your project is as simple as clicking this button and sending the confirmation email. However, you first need to check all of the Invoice details — ensuring they match what you and the client are both expecting.

There is a lot of project information that is included in the confirmation email. Producers are advised to spend some time setting up their projects as best as they can before confirming. Time spent on setting up a quality project saves time down the line, and ensures that nothing is missed — leading to an improved experience for both the client and our team.

When you are ready to confirm and activate your project, simply click on the button and send the confirmation email. 

You have now activated your project — go make some videos!

Who receives the confirmation email?

The confirmation email will automatically choose all of the project Contacts to receive the confirmation email. You can deselect any of these, though you must keep at least one of them. You will also be able to add any additional emails to the Cc and/or Bcc fields.

Additionally, the project’s producer and relationship manager will be automatically included, alongside an administrative email address that exists to catch and keep a record of all confirmation emails sent.

What else can I change in the confirmation email?

You can edit the email Title, should the need arise. 

You can also edit (and style) the small personal message that will be included in the body of the email. 

Both the title and personal message come with default content, so editing these is completely optional and down to your personal professional choices.

What information does the confirmation email share?

The confirmation email presents a significant compilation of details that have been prepared across the project.

• The project’s Relationship Manager

• The Project Manager

• The total number of videos deliveries (if there are any) 

  • plus the allowance of change requests

• The total number of shoots (if there are any)

• The totals of some of the pre-production deliverables (if included)

  • Script

  • Storyboard

• A summary of the total project price, including:

  • How much of their production credit has been used

  • GST

  • The total amount that will be invoiced

• Invoice conditions:

  • When the invoice will be sent

  • The length of the payment terms

  • Who will receive the invoice 

• A link to the project on Client Hub — takes them directly to their project on the Client Hub

• A link to pay the invoice immediately — takes them directly to the invoice tab within the project on Client Hub. This will only work if the user is an Admin or Accounts contact for the client. 

How to handle credit packs in the VMSX

Don’t!

All pre-paid production credit packs are sold and managed in HubSpot. Once sold, they are sent to the assigned Producer for confirmation within the old VMS and the credit pack made available to your projects via the Invoices tab, when appropriate.

You should not be able to open a credit pack project in VMSX.

Project status

All projects now have a status that indicates their progress through the production cycle. Given the wide variety of video projects that we handle, these exist only for “broad brushstroke” indications. Nonetheless, they should be very useful for producers and production managers to understand at a glance the progress of all projects.

Currently, you will only see your project status displayed next to the project’s name after you open the project. The status will eventually be added to VMS Projects lists, as well as being useful for production reports.

The following list introduces you to all of the project statuses you will encounter. Note that some of these statuses have not yet been released.