New report types for “By phone” and “By phone instead of in person”

Previously, the three options “By phone instead of in person”, “By phone” and “Other report” resulted in the same report type “Other report”. From now on, there is a separate report type for each of these three cases. This allows you to configure the custom fields differently.

The new report types can also be found in the import, export and extended search. If necessary, adjust any automated exports and processing.

Note: This function is not yet available if portatour® is connected to Dynamics CRM as the data source system.

Scheduling status and urgency of the called customers in the report

portatour® adds further details on the status of your completed calls to the report. In the section “call reports“, you can see in the table in the additional columns “Scheduling status and urgency” whether a customer was in the schedule at the time the report was created and what the urgency was at that time.

The new columns are also available via the report export.

There is also a new section “Planning status and urgency of customers visited in the last 90 days“. There you can see statistics based on these values.

Please note that the underlying data is determined and saved when the report is created. Subsequent changes to the call reports have no influence. Call reports entered late can distort the statistics.

The section “Currently overdue customers” now also shows if a customer call is planned for this customer in the schedule.

Note: This feature is not yet available if portatour® is connected to Dynamics CRM as the data source system.

Entering reports externally

Does your company record call reports also in another system? portatour® can now seamlessly connect to it. When you click on “Called now” or “Missed now” for a customer, portatour® opens the external URL you have configured. This allows you to open the appropriate data record or the desired entry form directly in the external system. The external URLs are opened in addition to the actions from ‘Report creation’.

How to enable this feature organization-wide as an administrator:

1. In the “Workspace Organization“, open “Options“.
2. Click on “Reporting“.
3. Set “Enter reports externally” to “Enter externally“.
   
4. At “For customers” click on “Configure“.
5. Enter the external URL to be opened at “Called now“.
   
6. Optionally use placeholders that portatour® fills with the corresponding values when the URL is opened.

If required, you can overwrite the settings for each user. The new authorization “Edit external report entry settings” controls which authorization level is required for the override.

Note: This function is not yet available if portatour® is connected to Dynamics CRM as the data source system.

This news affects administrators and supervisors of company accounts with activated territory optimization.

Sometimes only certain field reps can take care of certain customers. Reasons for this may include, for example, requirements regarding language skills, specialized knowledge, or experience.

To better take this into account in automatic territory optimization, portatour now offers the “Qualifications for territory assignment” feature. This ensures that each customer is assigned to a user who meets all the necessary qualifications.

And this is how you proceed:

1. Activate and define qualifications organization-wide
2. Enter fulfilled qualifications for users
3. Enter necessary qualifications with customers
4. Perform territory optimization with qualifications

Activate and define qualifications organization-wide

1. Open the “options” in the “Workspace Organization“.
2. Click on “Qualifications for territory assignment“.
3. Select “Qualifications enabled“.
4. Enter up to 20 possible qualifications for your company line by line. If you want to assign the key for each qualification yourself, then proceed as described at Definition of user-defined selection and multiple selection fields
5. Click on “Save“.
   

Enter fulfilled qualifications for users

3. Open the details page of a user.
4. Click on the pencil in the section “Fulfilled qualifications“.
5. Select the fulfilled qualifications
6. Click on “Save“.
   

Alternatively, you have the option to set the fulfilled qualifications for multiple users via Mass editing or the Import. With mass editing, you not only have the option of replacing all qualifications, but you can also add or remove individual qualifications.

In the workspace organization in “Options > Permissions“, use the authorization “Change fulfilled qualifications for territory assignment” to specify whether these changes may only be made by administrators or also by supervisors.

In the extended user search you will find the new filter “Fulfilled qualifications“.

Enter necessary qualifications for customers

As with users, you enter the necessary qualifications for the customers via details page, mass editing or import.

In the workspace organization in “Options > Permissions“, use the authorization “Change required qualifications for territory assignment” to specify whether these changes may only be made by administrators, supervisors or users.

Perform territory optimization with qualifications

Analysis of the initial situation

The new column “Customers with unfulfilled qualifications” shows the amount of customers whose qualifications are not fulfilled by the current user. If all qualifications of all customers are met, the column is initially hidden.

The new coloring option “Color: Required qualifications” is available on the map, which colors the customers according to their necessary qualifications. This allows you to see at a glance in which regions requirements are concentrated.

The new filter “With unfulfilled qualifications“, only shows those customers whose qualifications are not met by the current user.

Start optimization

portatour® only assigns customers to users who meet all the necessary qualifications during the optimization.

In the results overview, you can see the reduction of customers with unfulfilled qualifications, if there were any.

For further analysis, the same functions are available in the table and map as in the initial situation.

Note: If you deliberately want to carry out the optimization without taking qualifications into account, set “Optimization settings > General > Qualifications for territory assignment” to “Ignore“.

Simulate scenarios using manual adjustments

If you want to try out different scenarios without having to change the master data, you can use manual adjustments. This allows you to make specific changes to qualifications required by customers and qualifications fulfilled by users.

Note: Qualifications for territory assignment are not yet available if portatour® is connected to Dynamics CRM as the data source system.

Have you ever had the case that appointments “flexible on the day” were not scheduled in the schedule because not all appointments could be accommodatedwithin working hours?

With the update released today, that is now a thing of the past.

From now on, working hours will also be dynamically extended for appointments “flexible on the day” if this is absolutely necessary. The business hours of customers will continue to be taken into account if any are entered for the respective day.