There hasn't been a whole lot to get excited about in recent releases - colour themes on your customer portal, that sort of thing - so I've been letting it build up until there's enough to justify your time, and now that there is, let's get stuck in.
Task Templates on Job Cards
Tasks are an often under-utilised feature of simPRO, which is a bit of a shame, really. A task is a to-do that you can assign to someone (including yourself) and which can be associated with a quote, job or customer. Tasks can be created or completed on desktop or mobile, and they can trigger email notifications as well.
Tasks are better than email, verbal communication or SMS, as they don't disappear, and they don't rely on the recipient to turn in to a to-do. They stay open until closed. Once they are closed, stakeholders are automatically notified.
Depending on how deep you want to go, they can have categories, priorities and due dates, all of which can be linked to notifications and reports.
Here are a few of the most common use cases for tasks:
Ad Hoc Requests. e.g. The customer wants a quote on a variation. Somebody needs to follow up on that contractor's insurances. The excess materials need to be returned for a credit.
Project Milestones. e.g. The permit application is submitted. The foundation is laid. The roof is watertight. First fix is complete. These can be plotted on the Gantt chart to track progress.
Standard Procedure(s). e.g. The deposit must always be paid before the materials can be ordered. The materials must always be ordered before the job can be scheduled. The customer must sign off before the techs leave site.
For the last use case, standard procedures, it is best to create a task template. These can then be added to jobs as required. You'll find them in Setup > Tasks > Task Templates.
Now - previously when adding task templates to jobs you could not make them visible on job cards, enable/disable email notifications, or make them billable by default. You had to update each task after adding the template to the job. Not any more:
For those who use task templates this is a big deal. For those that don't, I recommend giving them a try.
Custom Fields for Hyperlinks
This opens up a whole other kettle of fish / can of worms / bag of cats. I still haven't thought of all the things you could do with this, but just the other day I was working with a solar business that prepared some of their quote information using the solar quoting tool, Pylon. Rather than download the Pylon document and send it as an attachment, they simply added a custom field to the quote called Pylon Link and pasted the quote url there. This custom field was then embedded in their outgoing quote email using a dynamic field so their email template said something like, "To view your proposal, click here [Pylon Link]."
Other uses could include:
Catalogue Items: links to supporting info such as brochures / documentation.
Customers / Suppliers / Employees: links to websites, documents in third-party software.
Jobs: link to jobs in other customer portals.
Quotes and Jobs: Links to other supporting material such as videos, contracts, Dropbox / One Drive folders etc.
Don't forget, all these custom fields are available in BI Reporting, Form Builder, and scripts.
Other UPdates
Galvins catalogue is now (finally) integrated. Good news for plumbers!
Email / print job cards in bulk. Great for workshop / factory setting.
2FA mandatory for Xero users - heads up, you guys. Better set it up now in Setup > Two-Factor Auth.
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