ServiceDesk 4.7.14 Update 12/24/12

Have a look:

The concept is obvious.  Your customers will feel more comfortable (and even more impressed with how advanced and caring your operation is) when you provide a picture of the tech you'll be sending their way. 

We have added a section in the CyberOffice Handbook which details how to add these pictures (in fact, we have done a massive updating and improvement in that handbook overall).  The section which details how to add pictures for your confirmation emails begins at Page 19. 

We must here provide one caveat to the instructions you'll find in the handbook.  It instructs you to use your my.rosssware.net login to post the desired pics.  Turns out that particular element in the my.rosssware.net interface is not yet ready.  However, there's an immediate way you can upload your tech's pics.  Just email each (with name format as specified in the Handbook) to techimages@rossware.net (please make sure it's only one pic per email; if you place in more than one per email it will not work; also, please assure for your filenames you follow the case-convention as specified in the main instructions).

Several users asked for a system to automatically make RoboCalls to customers after the job is complete.  There are a few different ideas as to what kind of verbiage these RoboCalls might encompass, but the major notion seems to involve something along the following lines:

"This is a message from XYZ Appliance Service, and we want to thank you for granting us the privilege to service your machine.  We hope everything went superbly, and, if not, that you will please let us know so we can amend.  Please also know that in the next two or three weeks you will be contacted by Whirlpool to fulfill a survey on their behalf.  We hope you can view us favorably at that time."

We've made the system so you can create your own scripts for this purpose, and in fact employ different scripts depending on whether it's a COD job, or any particular third-party payer.  You can also control the timing for when the calls go out. 

Much as with our new tech-pics option for confirmation emails, there is also a just-added instruction set, for this feature, in our newly-revised CyberOffice Handbook.  Those instructions begin at Page 16. 

As another parallel, this one too has a caveat regard where the instructions tell you to use the my.rosssware.net interface.  For the time-being, you must contact our Josh and ask him to add script blanks for you to there edit (soon the script blanks will be provided automatically). 

Recently, as we've been working to upgrade redundancies, performance and reliability in our system of co-located servers (they provide data services for SD-CyberOffice and SD-Mobile, and are also the foundation for our hosted websites and hosted servers), we've encountered some outages.  In part, these have been transitional hiccups (working toward greater reliability, the transitional state and essential learning curve have made for temporary decreased reliability). 

Aside from being frantic to fix ASAP when these events have occurred, we've noted one of the main elements for stress (at least among many users) has been uncertainty as to whether the problem is on their end or ours.  So (and regardless of the fact we strongly hope to avoid any further outages), we've added a mechanism to make it easy for you to tell. 

Essentially, we are employing a second co-located server, that is independent, outside and separate from our main bank that's housed at a facility just a few miles from us (it's located prox 100 miles away in Portland).  It continuously monitors our main bank, and will independently report on whether there is an issue.  We've actually had this going for some time, so as to inform us if there's a problem (it will wake us in the middle of the night if so).  Now we've made it so you can also access its information. 

 In the ServiceDesk "About" form (first option under "File Functions" in the Main Menu), there's a new hyperlink:

When you click on the new checking link, you'll get an immediate report, such as the following:

As you can see, it not only tells you the simple status; it also asks if you'd like to view a detailed performance report.  It's an online analysis of our server performance (there's no cheating there, really), and you will likely find it interesting. 

In addition to allowing you to volitionally check, we are now also employing this external-checking ability to modify the reports that are given to you when connection problems occur.  Instead of the system simply telling you it's failing to talk to Rossware's server (and maybe it's a problem there or maybe it's on your end), it will first make a behind-the-scenes determination via that external monitor. If this shows it's on the Rossware server end, it will tell you so unambiguously.  It will even distinguish for you if it's a scheduled-maintenance down (these do happen from time to time), or otherwise.  If otherwise, it will further assure we are on the matter, just as soon as we are (which generally will be within a very few minutes of the occurrence, given systems that actively alert us).    

These "Enhanced Notice" improvements are in this release of ServiceDesk, and will be in the next releases of SD-MobileLink and SD-CyberOffice. 

In the last release (see just below) we increased the max potential quantity of specialized stocking plans from 6 to 60.  Almost immediately, a related augmentation was requested. 

There has long been a mechanism where you can populate quantities for any particular specialized Plan by cloning from quantities as setup under the standard Truck plan.  The general idea is, you can rapidly/easily populate a foundation of plan quantities via the clone method, then refine where different quantities are particularly wanted as different for your new plan:

However, more flexibility was requested.  Maybe, instead of cloning from the standard Truck plan, for example, you want to clone from a particular other specialized plan.  Or perhaps, instead cloning from another Plan, you want to set your plan values according to actual inventory quantities as presently exist at a particular location. 

This revision adds such flexibilities.  Nothing is changed in terms of how the cloning process invokes; it's merely an enhanced dialog.  Thus, when you click on the asterisk next to a Plan reference in the MasterPartsPlan's Supplemental-Info form, you'll now get this:

If you pick the first option, you'll be presented a list of all other Stocking Plans, and allowed to choose from any.  If you pick the second, you'll be presented with a list of all Inventory Locations, and allowed to pick from any.  It's pretty much that simple.