ServiceDesk 4.7.17 Update 01/22/13

For many years, we have offered two robust reports to give you an extremely solid basis to measure the rate at which your techs are doing work that results in recalls (F11-->T-->B).  The two use alternate methods, either of which may be optimum for your circumstances, depending on your mode of work (please see pages 23 to 28 of our ReportsHandbookfor details). 

By nature, these reports are designed to flag work that was in some manner deficient, so as to result in a recall later on.  Because of this, the reports by necessity must be looking at work that is at least some distance in the past (i.e., so as to have allowed time for the subsequent, "hey,-it's-still-not-working-right" requests to arise).   If you try to measure this factor without allowing for sufficient such intervening time, you simply do not get a good measure.  It's the nature of the beast, and given that fact it is always impossible to have a good measure of recall-avoiding performance that is very near to real time.  To re-state the point, that measure can only be assessed at a moment where it's receded some distance (at least a couple of weeks) into the past. 

There is, however, another measure of potential interest, and it's one Steve Blaisdell at Action Appliance called about yesterday.  It's to know, simply, how many jobs within a more recent period (say last week) happened to be flagged as recalls.  The key difference in this interest is we are not seeking to measure quality of earlier work (i.e., whether the earlier work led to recalls); rather, we are seeking, simply, to know how much of our current work happens to consist of the recalls themselves.  To state it another way; in the traditional reports we are seeking to measure the blameworthy work, which later led to recalls.  Steve wanted a measure for the later, fix-it work itself. 

Though it would certainly be possible to make a dedicated report for this purpose, sometimes I can deliver a needed result faster, via a lesser means.  In this case I've added a new field to the "Export Customer Data" form's "Scheduled-Jobs Report Type-1" (Alt-F3-->1).  In a nutshell, you can run that export for the period of interest, then sort the result by the new field (it's the last field, and is labeled "KeyWordDsgntdAsRecall?").  This will provide a quick count of the quantity of jobs within the period that fall into such category, as compared to the quantity that do not. 

If there is sufficient demand for it, we can make a dedicated report (to direct-provide these comparisons) at a later date. 

As always (and as you can see by the Version-Number changes) there have been many and miscellaneous other improvements, of a nature that do not really require separate mention here.