⚙Technical requirements

An up-to-date one. More precisely:

• Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari — the current or the previous version in each case.
• No Internet Explorer. Microsoft itself no longer supports it, and it cannot display the interface.
• No “Edge in IE mode”. Some organisations still run it for old specialist applications; for Aurora Hive Sales it must be switched off.

Which of the four is a matter of taste and makes no difference. What does make a difference is age: a browser that has not seen an update for two years does not understand parts of the interface, and this does not show up as a clear message but as a white area or a button that does nothing.

If you work in an organisation where IT prescribes the browser: the question is not “which one” but “how old”.

In order, from the most likely to the rarer:

1. Hard reload — Ctrl + Shift + R (Mac: Cmd + Shift + R). Clears an outdated file from the cache.
2. Private window. If it works there, the cache or an extension had been the problem.
3. Switch off extensions. Ad blockers and “security” extensions sometimes interfere with pages they do not know.
4. Another browser. Finally narrows down whether it is the device.
5. Another network — for example your phone as a hotspot. Separates company network problems from everything else.

If it persists in all five cases: report it, using the Report a problem button on the page concerned. The page is sent along with the report.

For everyday work: from 1280 pixels wide everything is comfortable; from 1024 it works. Below that, the sidebar is collapsed and tables scroll sideways.

Where more really helps:

• Campaigns and recipient lists — many columns side by side.
• The template editor — editing and preview side by side instead of one above the other.
• The website workspace — page list, block and preview at the same time.

A second screen is not a must, but it is the cheapest time-saver there is: inbox on the left, contact file on the right.

If the text is too small for you, change it in the settings — that is better than lowering the screen resolution, because then only the text grows rather than everything.

For normal work, any connection that can carry a video conference is enough — and usually far less. The interface loads once and after that only exchanges data; that is kilobytes, not megabytes.

Where it becomes noticeable:

• On the first load after an update. A few megabytes, once.
• When uploading PDFs, images or candidate documents — this is limited by your upload speed, which on many connections is considerably lower than the download speed.
• With large lists. Displaying five thousand contacts at once takes time anywhere.

More important than speed is stability. A connection that drops briefly every few minutes is more irritating than one that is permanently slow: input you have started can be lost.

As a rule, nothing special: all three programs run over HTTPS on port 443, i.e. the same route as any other website.

What your IT should check nonetheless:

• The address of your instance must be reachable — including all the subaddresses that belong to it.
• No intercepting proxy without an exception. Some company proxies open encrypted connections, look inside and repackage them. That works, but can disrupt connections that stay open in the background.
• No content filters on JavaScript. Filters that block individual scripts turn a working interface into a half-working one, and that is harder to recognise than a clear error.

If your IT maintains an allow list: ask for the complete list of addresses for your instance. It depends on how your instance is set up and cannot be given in general terms.

In our experience, these five things, and all of them exist without anyone having to write anything new:

1. Where the data is stored and who processes it. Stated in the instance’s privacy notice and in the data processing agreement (AVV).
2. The data processing agreement itself. Generated from your organisation’s master data.
3. Which services are involved (sub-processors) — which mail sending, which AI, which search.
4. How backups are made and how long they are kept.
5. How access is logged — for accountability.

What your IT will not get, because it does not exist: installation instructions for your own servers, as long as you use the hosted version. If operating it in-house becomes a condition, that is a separate question — and one that should be settled before the contract, not afterwards.

Yes, in the browser — there is no separate app and none is planned. An app would have to be maintained twice and delivered twice to show the same thing.

What works well on a phone: looking things up, ticking off follow-ups, adding a note, reading a test mail, checking the system status.

What is better done on a computer: activating campaigns, writing templates, importing data, building a website. Not because it would not work, but because decisions with consequences should not be made on the hop.

On a tablet in landscape format it works almost like on a computer; in portrait format the sidebar is collapsed.

You can create an icon on your home screen yourself — the browser offers this, and afterwards it looks like an app.

Yes. Computer at the office, computer at home, phone — all at the same time, with the same account.

Two things to note:

• What you change, you do not automatically see everywhere. The interface does not constantly check back; reload if you need the current state on the second device.
• An account belongs to one person. Two people sharing one account make every attribution in the Access log worthless, and in a dispute that is exactly the information that counts.

If you share an account with someone because licences cost money: work out once what an action that cannot be traced costs.

A sign-in does not last indefinitely. That is intentional: a computer that stays signed in overnight is an open system for anyone who walks past.

If you are signed out more often than expected, it is usually due to one of these:

• The browser deletes cookies when closing. Some privacy settings do that. Then every session is new.
• A private window. There it is always like that.
• Switching devices between networks with different settings.

If you are signed out in the middle of your work — not after a break, but between two clicks — that is not normal expiry. It should be reported.

Then the pop-up blocker has struck. It intervenes exactly where a page opens a second window, and three things here do that:

• the preview of a PDF or a mail,
• signing in with Microsoft or Google when connecting a mailbox,
• the one-pager or a preview of your own website.

Browsers usually show this as a small icon on the right of the address bar. Click it, choose “always allow” for this site, done.

This is particularly annoying when signing in with the mail provider, because nothing further happens after the block — it looks as if the button had not worked.

With whatever you already have — the PDFs are ordinary files with nothing special about them. Every browser displays them, every PDF program opens them.

What occasionally causes confusion:

• Preview in the browser instead of downloading. Most browsers display PDFs directly; to save, use the icon in the preview bar.
• The PDF is not ready yet. For generated documents — optimised profiles, reports, contracts — generation runs in the background. Until then there is no file.
• The pop-up blocker. See above.

For documents you pass on: look at them once yourself before sending them. With generated documents this is not mistrust but care — you are signing your name underneath.

Yes, with Ctrl + P as everywhere. How usable the result is varies:

• Generated documents — reports, contracts, optimised profiles — are PDFs and print cleanly. That is the route when something is needed on paper.
• Lists and overviews print what is on the screen. Wide tables get cut off; landscape format helps.
• These help pages print in full, including the collapsed answers — that is why they are still in the text when collapsed.

If you print something regularly, check whether it exists as a report. A screen printout is rarely what someone wants to hold in their hand later.

Keyboard: yes. The most important actions have shortcuts, the question-mark key shows them all, and you can move through the interface with Tab.

Screen reader: partly, and to be honest not equally well everywhere. Forms, lists and the navigation are marked up so that they can be read aloud. For the more complex views — the website workspace, the template editor — this has not been checked throughout.

If you depend on it, say so. Not as a complaint, but as a requirement: whatever is reported can be fixed; what nobody mentions, nobody notices.

For the public sector and bodies subject to the accessibility regulations: before procurement, ask about the concrete current state, not for a general assurance.

More than most organisations have, and the limit is almost never where you would expect it.

As values from experience:

• Tens of thousands of contacts are no problem. What gets slow is not the database, but trying to display everything at once: filter instead of scrolling.
• A few hundred pages per website are not an issue.
• Storage is more likely to be the limit — because of attachments, images and candidate documents, not because of records. One PDF weighs as much as ten thousand contacts.

If something becomes noticeably slow, experience shows it is due to one of two things: a list without a filter or a report over a very long period. Both can be narrowed down without anyone having to upgrade anything.

No, you do not have to install anything. Updates are applied on the server; the next time you load, you have the new version.

What you may notice:

• Brief unavailability — seconds to a few minutes. During this time, a message about a service that cannot be reached may appear.
• One hard reload afterwards. If something looks odd after an update, there is almost always an old file in your browser’s cache. Ctrl + Shift + R.
• A notice about what is new in the program — the patch notes.

Larger work runs in maintenance mode: you then see a notice page instead of the interface. A hard reload is worthwhile afterwards too.

You do not need one for getting to know the system: there is plenty you can do safely, and the places where things get serious are clearly marked.

Safe: creating contacts and deleting them again, writing templates, creating campaigns (created does not mean sent), test mails to yourself, viewing reports in the preview.

Not safe: activating a campaign, sending a contract, putting a website online, revoking a licence. None of these four can be taken back.

If you want to practise with many people at once or are planning a training session, a separate instance makes sense — that is a question for the operator, not a setting.

The practical tip for getting started: create yourself as a contact. Then you can run every send through once in full to yourself, with everything the recipient sees.