ServiceDesk 4.5.23 Update 05/26/11

Since release of Ver. 4.3.76 some three years back, ServiceDesk has had the ability to integrate with Microsoft's MapPoint to optimize the sequence of jobs within a route, and to simply load/open that route within MapPoint.  Those are great features, though with one significant negative: most folks don't already own MapPoint, and it's somewhat pricey to obtain.  It wasn't so bad three years ago, when typically you could buy the program once (typically about $300) and install on as many computers as you wanted, but since then Microsoft tightened the internal mechanisms as designed to force you into buying added licenses. 

In the meantime, Microsoft's main competitor and threat, Google, has continued to improve its online (and free) mapping system, called GoogleMaps, and we decided it was time to integrate with it.  In fact, we already added such integration into SD-Mobile (so, with a single button click from their mobile apps, your techs can open their entire routes into GoogleMaps), with result that a webpage such as the following shows, and within but a second or so:

This release brings the capability into ServiceDesk itself.  

A longstanding feature in the DispatchMap is the ability to export the tech's route (essentially the list of addresses he is expected to visit) to a file.  This file may be plugged into any mapping program or even into a GPS system that's setup for such import. 

Another longstanding feature (associated with the above-described MapPoint integration) is the ability to add beginning and ending waypoints to a route, consisting (at the user's option) of either, in each instance, the office location or the tech's home.  This makes it so such routing features may accommodate the full route, starting at whichever location he actually begins at, and terminating at whichever he actually ends at. 

With this release, your specification of these add-on beginning and ending waypoints (sometimes I simply call them "end nodes") is no longer limited to MapPoint integration.  The specification interface is separated from those specific actions, made independent, and now what you specify there will apply not merely to the MapPoint integration, but also to what's loaded into GoogleMaps (if/when you use that option) and to what's exported to the above-described file. 

Another improvement, in regard to what's stuck into an exported file or loaded into MapPoint or GoogleMaps, is if the underlying job is specified as a ShopJob, it will be the office address that's used, and not the consumer's. 

It was impossible for us to add all of the above-described improvements without altering some of the corresponding access methods, as involved in the DispatchMap.  Here are changes as made in the DispatchMap's CheatSheet (accessed by right-clicking in any otherwise inoperative DispatchMap space):

The Dispatch-Options menu (as arises when you click on a tech's name at the top of his roster of jobs) is also changed

Instead of explicitly describing here which commands have changed, we urge you please to just examine the above illustrations.