ServiceDesk 4.6.33 Update 09/13/12

Instead of having special-order parts shipped to your own office location (where you must unpack, inspect, temporarily store -- and, finally, arrange for transfer to the tech prior to his returning to the home for a scheduled visit -- you instead have them shipped direct to the customer. 

In this mode, there's no need to for you to unpack, inspect, store or transfer to the tech.  You just schedule for the tech to go out, and send him.  He finds the parts waiting for him on his arrival.  Among other advantages, if the part is of the kind where cosmetic blemishes can lead to rejection by the customer (e.g., a refrigerator door panel), you can ask the customer to open and inspect prior to even booking the return appointment.  This can save many wasted trips. 

You may be skeptical of this method (and, sure, there a few drawbacks), but the advantages are legion.  Those intrepid businesses that have switched to the method vehemently swear by it.  They say they'd never go back, in a million years. 

Enter our new feature. 

If you're using the direct-ship method, there's a considerable amount of added info to give your vendor, in connection with each ordered item (or set of items as applicable to a particular job).  Specifically, you must provide the customer's full shipping data.  It's at least three lines of text, and takes considerable time to manually provide in each instance. 

That's why we've added a new method in the F8 form's Assemble-Order interface.   This is where you select the display category titled "Items needing ordered."  You then do a series of Ctrl/Right-Clicks on the items you wish to include in the particular request you are formulating (i.e., "marking" them for inclusion), then hit Enter on your keyboard.  At this point you're presented with a dialog that asks you to pick the particular method, as wanted, for conveying the order to your vendor.  Here's a comparison of that dialog box, from old (prior to this release) to new:

Old dialog, as shown in F8 after you've selected items for inclusion in an order, then hit EnterImage of the new dialog, with newly-added option circled

As you can see, the new option involves emailing your order, with inclusion of "ShipDirectToCustomer Instructions." 

Here is what the long-offered (and standard) Abbreviated-format request looks like:

As compared to the new, ShipDirectToCustomer-oriented request:

Logically, the system looks for appropriate ship-to information in each request-item's attached JobRecord.  Exercising further logic, if it's a JobRecord that lacks a consumer's addresses (particularly as in a POS situation that was not setup for direct-shipping to the customer), or one that's designated as a ShopJob, the system will automatically alter the request to specify shipment to your office, as opposed to the consumer. 

Back in June (see entry accompanying Rel. 4.6.16) we introduced a "HpToRtrn" status category for PartsProcess items.  This was to accommodate the situation where you have a maximum return quota with a particular vendor, and present return of the item in question would exceed that quota.  Thus, you place it into this status to designate you'll want to return if sufficient future vacancies allow, or (even better) you'd love to use it in the meantime on a different job, should the opportunity arise. 

There's one element we did not work out in that scheme.  It is this.  Suppose some other job comes along on which you can use the item in question.  How do you transfer it from the job on which it was originally ordered (and not used) to the one you wish to use it on now.  We simply did not go so far, last June, as to work through this conundrum. 

Of course, our users are ever-practical, and Mitch at Video Tech Center invented an answer.  His solution was to employ a method we created in December 2010 for a somewhat different purpose: the "Resurrect" facility (see entry accompanying Rel. 4.4.89).  The general idea, in a "resurrection," is an archived-PartsProcess item can be restored back into the current context.  As originally conceived, this resurrection option was provided solely for the situation where you allowed a Process item to go to archive before realizing you needed to attach a daughter-band for the purpose of managing a core return.  Resurrection allows you to restore it back to current for that purpose. 

In a nutshell, Mitch realized he could use resurrection for a different purpose.  However, he also discovered the existing structure (as tailored for its original purpose) was not optimum to his invention.  So, we've made a variation that is: 

Old dialog, as shown in Crtrl-F8 when you right-click on a process-itemNew dialog, with newly-added function circled

As you can see, the new dialog adds a new/second resurrection option.  If you pick that option, you'll further get this dialog:

Obviously, if you want to move the item's application to a different job (i.e., different from the one it was formerly ordered-in for), this dialog provides the basis. 

This new method provides appropriate documentation at all points.  The moved-to JobRecord will have an appropriate notation in its narrative history, so on, and etc. 

Other PartsProcess Improvements:

There are too many of these to list individually, but simultaneous with the current new features we fixed an entire series of moderate defects that had been noted, particularly as regards our cradle-to-grave structure. 

RepairClinic.com (https://repairclinic.com) has become a useful website for many businesses.  Some of you are going there with great frequency, especially to lookup parts as applicable to a particular model.  To make this easier, we've added a new QuickLink.  In the F8 form, just do a Ctrl/Right-Click on any model number (specifically, as present within a process-item's Model-Number field).  In response to this simple action, ServiceDesk will open a RepairClinic.com website page for you, with a completed search on the model in question. 

If you forget the command, it's also been added to the contextual CheatSheet (just right-click in the colorful label-area at top of the F8 form), as follows:

We have also, incidentally, added the same function into SD-Mobile.