ServiceDesk 4.7.114 Update 08/10/15

In March I sent an email to y'all announcing a really fantastic new feature. 

Creation of this feature stemmed from a conundrum all servicers face.  You work like the dickens to make your customers happy, and succeed grandly 99 times out of a hundred.  However, happy customers seldom post online reviews.  On the other hand, unhappy customers (those 1 out of 100, or fewer) very often post online reviews.  The result is, on the basis of any new prospect checking online reviews as basis to judge your company, you end up looking much less awesome than you really are. 

Our new Kudos system was created as a means to solve this. 

It's an outgrowth of the fact our CyberOffice survey system was already auto-generating a very large quantity of supremely superlative comments from your customers (well, at least it's been doing so if you are using this survey system; if you are not, you should be).  These praising comments have been great for the ego of our users, but had not formerly been harnessed for their enormous value otherwise. 

Now they can be. 

Specifically, you can add elements into your website that automatically display real praising comments from your actual customers.  These comments are dynamic, forever and automatically updated, showing with live and recent dates.  As such, they make a "sale" to any browsing prospect (assuring you are the company they should select for service) like you'd not believe. 

Our metrics indicate companies that have implemented such displays are approximately doubling their online-generated business!

So, finally, you can turn-around the online, review-presented picture that prospects get of you.  Finally, you can make real and direct use of all those praises that were formerly going unused.  It's awesome. 

Regardless, there had formerly been a little impediment for some.  To embed this new presentation into your website required use of a technology called PHP.  Some web development environments do not make it easy to work directly with PHP.  So, the main thing that's new in regard to this post is the fact that, as of now, you can use a different (and much easier-to-embed) technology called JavaScript. 

For full instructions on how to embed this great feature in your website, click here. 

Like other CyberOffice functions, this one too has a moderate fee schedule attached, details here. 

Better Speed

Some Rossware users have DispatchMaps that are big, covering huge expanses of territory.  They also have scores of technicians, meaning there are hundreds of appointments within any given day's schedule.  Given the traditional method as used by the underlying machinery for creating any new view position (as you "pan" your view Up, Left, Down or Right), these large elements have sometimes resulted in slower than instant "re-painting" with each such panning change.  It was potentially even worse for those using a centralized server (such as involved with Rossware's "RSS" cloud-server hosting), because in that situation all the imagery processing is done by a single machine, whose resources are shared among multiple users.  These delays are not something most users have experienced, but, for those few who have, it's not fun when you want to move from the bottom of your Map to the top (or vice versa), and must wait a second or so between each movement.   

This issue is now solved!

We've created an entirely new behind-the-scenes methodology that, for those who've experienced such delays, should entirely eliminate them.  Indeed, whatever was the speed of "panning" that you prior experienced, it's guaranteed to now be faster.  It's possible (if your prior speed created zero perception of delay, which was indeed the typical scenario) you will not notice the difference, but the fact is acceleration will be there. 

Mouse-Drag Panning

In conjunction with the above-described speed-improvement, we have taken occasion (coterminous with the same work) to upgrade a few other DispatchMap elements. 

Most notably, you may now do something within the DispatchMap you have likely found yourself intuitively wanting to do -- and feeling like you should be able to do.  Specifically, you may click down with your mouse and drag your viewing position in any direction wanted.  Try it.  You'll like it. 

Improved Screen-Size Adaptation

Additionally, we have refined the DispatchMap's ability to intelligently adapt to larger screen sizes.

As background, several years ago we often had trouble persuading new users to upgrade their screens to the minimum screen-size that ServiceDesk demands (which is 1024 X 768 pixels, aka "XGA").   Gradually, typical screen sizes began growing larger.  When we realized that a significant quantity of users finally had screen sizes larger than than the XGA minimum, we further realized it would be beneficial if the DispatchMap expanded to take advantage of such larger-available screen space. 

That's been a feature for a long time now (i.e., ServiceDesk expands, to potentially fill your screen, when moving into the DispatchMap).  However, the expansion was not in every instance seamless.  A complicating factor is that we design your Map with panning positions that assume an XGA-size display.  When your actual view window is bigger, one or more such panning positions may no longer make sense.  Earlier we'd programmed a somewhat clumsy adaptation for this.  The present adaptation is much improved. 

When doing this improvement, BTW, it occurred to us we might do still more.  The present expansion scheme allows an expansion up to, potentially, the full size of the particular screen (where you have multiple screens) in which ServiceDesk is running.  It occurred to us some users (particularly those with very large maps, who also use multiple screens) might enjoy an expansion that takes advantage of multiple screens (i.e., will expand, if needed, across more than one).  We have not at this point done such coding as would be needed to make this happen, but are curious as to whether it's something some of y'all out there might like?  If so, please let us know. 

Over the years, ServiceDesk has grown to be pretty darn strong in regard to providing you with a large basket of superb analytics (aka "metrics").  You may, for example, examine a plethora of attributes regarding technician performance, or analyze a variety of measures concerning company performance and profitability.  There are even methods for assessing burdens as compared to profitability between and among your various High-Volume-Clients. 

Many years ago, ServiceDesk did not have so much strength in the analytics area.  This strength has grown gradually, as users have demanded better insight into particular areas of visibility, and we have built in response. 

Regardless, one area of analytics has remained sorely limited -- notwithstanding that at least one client has repeatedly asked for this particular hole to be filled.  I feel terrible that I kept failing to find my way toward creating the new report he so much wanted, and first asked for (I believe) well more than two years ago.  Anyhow, I committed to myself that I'd no longer permit other matters get in the way of this . . . and, Eureka, I've now done it. 

The prior neglected area involves assessment of productivity between and among office personnel.

To be clear, there were some prior measurement methods available.    The Result-on-Dispatches Report, for example (F11-->T-->D), shows (among many other things) the quantity of jobs originated by each office person, along with the quantities and percentages that led to first-time-completions, completions otherwise, parts-ordered, no-shows, etc.  The ScheduleJobsReport (Alt/F3-->J) creates an export from which you can direct-mine for a plethora of details regarding jobs as created by each office person. 

Regardless, these prior sources did not directly measure the quantity of a great many other actions that office persons are typically involved in.  Our new report does. 

This new report finds its home in the Reports form, which is QuickKey-accessed by striking F11:

It runs much like other reports in this venue, and when complete will display something akin to this (depending of course on your own data and instruction parameters):

As you can see is suggested by the sub-title, this report uses JobHistory notes to compile a tally of events as managed by each office person. 

To get an idea of how a report like this might be gleaned for information, just take a look.  At a glance in the first column, you can see that "JG" was most productive in creating new jobs, while "ML" was considerably more productive in creating appointments outside of initial job creation (just look for the largest numbers as seen in the first two columns, above).  "ML" was also big on managing appointment changes.  Going on the down line, you can compare productivity in several other areas.  "JJ," for example, was the largest actor in managing PartsProcess (special-order parts) activities, and "LB" was just barely behind.  In the farthest right "Totals" column, you can readily see that "LB" participated in the greatest quantity of actions overall (at least in terms of what we are managing to measure here). 

You may notice there are two groups of listed office persons, with a gap in-between.  Basically, those in the first group are pulled from your current-at-the-moment "office-persons-roster" as maintained in your ServiceDesk Settings form.  Those in the second group involve note entries with other office-person abbreviations (i.e., ones that are no longer found in your current roster). 

Like most of the reports in the F11 venue, this one too has been built with a "Checking-Data Export."  Basically, once the report displays, there is a new button within the lower-right of the form:

Click on that button, and the system will create an export that explicitly shows the data it relied upon in compiling the analysis for you.  This can be very useful if you are seeking to verify integrity in the numbers, or just better understand what stands behind them.  It also can enable you to do your own different kinds of analysis, directly on top of what is contained within the export.  Here's a section of export as created from the above report:

As you can see, it lists each note that it pulled from JobRecords as applicable to the report period (it's the note itself that must fit within the date range, not the JobRecord), and indicates what kind of action it judged the note to involve, and which person was involved (a blank in those columns indicates the system did not deduce any tally-able action on basis of the note). 

Try the new report.  We think you'll like it! 

Upgraded LG-DispatchLink to optionally upload narrative history.  Also, restored code regarding availability uploads to do math trick with LG-reckoned burdens (undoing change as made 5/25). 

Made it so change of a UIS as attached and navigated to from JobRecord re-flags any pending appointment as needed new upload. 

Made it so you can right-click on a Callsheet's Criteria button to invoke a SourceOfBusiness survey. 

Added function for auto-add to PartsHotList when s/o item is marked MvdToStk.

Made it so spec-tagging a part and checking in a s/o part re-flag an appointment for upload.

Fixed fact that when click in archived JobRecord history and it occludes AfterNotes, then release, the controls on the AfterNotes did not reappear. 

Changed calls from DispatchMap to Bing and Google to use "https" instead of just "http".   

Added filter in ResultOnDispatches report that causes it to exclude ShopJobs.