What's New August 2019
In this article:
CommTrak Support Centre New (Official release)
Projects Module (available on request) Major Updates
- Project Types
- Active Project Screen Updates
- Project Screen Updates (new items)
- Project Budgets Information Tips
Document Upload (Ticket, Jobs, Leads) Major Update
Calendar Updates Updates
- Improved Recurring Options
- Link Appointment to Lead
- Calendar Synchronisation
Ticket From Email Aliases Major Update
Miscellaneous Updates
- Staff Activity Report - Leads deleted
- Usernames - increased field length
- Data Sheets - ID added to search engine
- To-Do - (formerly Task / Outstanding Task)
- Telesales - Management of Follow-up dates
CommTrak Support Centre
The User Guide has now officially been replaced with the far more user-friendly, informative and searchable CommTrak Support Centre.
You can visit the CommTrak Support Centre home page at https://support.commtrak.com.au, or by click the Support Centre item at the bottom of the CommTrak main menu.
The CommTrak Support Centre will now be your main reference point for information about CommTrak features and updates; we'll provide links to relevant articles in our communications with you.
Projects Module
The Projects module will be activated in your CommTrak after your CommTrak Champion has received training (free of charge).
Project Types
Active Projects Screen Updates
- Filter and sort on 12 different columns
- Display and hide any of these columns (see Column Sorting and Customisation article)
- Filter Projects based on:
- Date range
- Project type
- Project status
- Project Manager
To zoom the above image, right-click and open in new tab (or long press on a mobile device)
The Progress bars show the number of Tasks created, the number of Tasks completed, and the percentage of the project that has been completed:
When a Task becomes overdue, the text of the “Time Left:” field associated to the Task will change colour.
Project Screen
The following features have been added to the Project's Main Info screen:
- Add Data Sheets
- Add Notes to Milestones
- Add notes to Tasks
- Create a To-Do and assign it to a staff member (previously known as Tasks and Outstanding Tasks)
- You can reorder (with drag-and-drop):
- Milestones
- Tasks within Milestones
New Items Explained
- Milestone title
- Task title
- Add a Milestone Note
- Add a Task Note
- Add a Task Component
- Tick to mark the Task as completed
- Edit the Task
- Delete the Task
- Budgeted time for the Task
- Task Start Date
- Task End Date
- Time left to complete the Task
- Once the time has exceed the budgeted time, Time Left will become negative and will be displayed in red text
- Task Components (i.e. WF, RK JB, To-Do)
Budget
In a Project's Budget tab, mousing-over items 1 to 8 (shown below) will show how the calculations are derived.
Please contact CommTrak Support to book a training session.
Workflow Notifications
You now have greater control over Workflow Task Due notifications.
The default setting (emailing staff when a task is due) remains as-is. Additionally, the following options are now available:
Company Wide Workflow Task Notifications
- Enable emailing of workflow task reminders
- Yes (default) - email reminders will be sent to all staff when a workflow task that is assigned to them becomes due
- No - no workflow task email reminders will be sent to any staff
These options are configured in Settings > Workflow Settings > Miscellaneous:
Per-User Workflow Task Notifications
The company-wide email notification configuration can be overridden per-user as required:
- Receive Workflow Emails
- Company-wide default
- Yes - user will always receive workflow notifications, regardless of company-wide configuration
- No - user will never receive workflow notifications, regardless of company-wide configuration
The per user options are configured in Settings > User Settings > Users > [username]:
Workflow Spare Fields
You can now add up to three single-line text fields to a Workflow's main screen:
The above image shows a Workflow with two spare fields enabled, one of which has been relabelled.
The content of the Workflow Spare Fields can be searched for using the existing search feature, located on the Active Workflow Cases Screen:
Clicking one of the results in the drop-down list, will display the Workflow Case for the selected item.
The Workflow Spare Fields can be displayed on the Active Workflow Cases page, if required, using the standard Column Sorting and Customisation feature.
Workflow Spare Field Settings
The Workflow Spare Fields settings can be found in Settings > Workflow Settings > Miscellaneous:
Renaming Workflow Spare Fields
As with all CommTrak fields, the Workflow Spare Field labels can be renamed in Settings > General Settings > Labels and Strings
When viewing the Labels and Strings settings, the field names to search for begin with, Workflow Spare Field.
Document Uploading
Documents can now be uploaded directly from within the Tickets and Jobs modules, by clicking the cloud icon:
Uploaded documents can be uploaded to a specified folder, and will automatically be associated with the current Ticket or Job.
The new document upload icon will be used throughout the whole CommTrak platform, and will soon replace the Attach Files button, as currently found on the Leads screen.
Calendar Updates
There are some improvements to the Calendar module, to allow for additional recurring event combinations:
Attaching Leads to Calendar Events
You can now attach an existing appointment to a Lead.
For example, if an appointment was made for you, and was not linked to a Lead at the time of creation (for example, it was created in Outlook, and synchronised to your CommTrak calendar), you can retrospectively link the appointment to a Lead.
To link an appointment to a Lead:
- View the calendar appointment by clicking on it
- In the Related to Lead field, search for the Lead to which the appointment should be attached, and selected it
- Save the updated appointment
Calendar Synchronisation Interval
You can now manage calendar synchronisation interval from CommTrak settings:
Settings > General Settings > Miscellaneous > Calendar synchronisation interval, in minutes:
It's important to be aware the synchronisation interval has an impact on your number of monthly hits per month. For example, 14 users synchronising every 5 minutes constitutes almost 250,000 hits per month.
Reducing the refresh rate to 10 minutes, will reduce the number of hits by 50%.
With a reduced synchronisation interval, users can still ensure that their calendars are up-to-date at any time by either synchronising Outlook (Calendar > Send / Receive > Update Folder), or in CommTrak (Calendar > Refresh).
Ticket From Email Aliases
A significant update has been implemented to enable CommTrak's Ticket-From-Email feature to utilise a single mailbox for multiple Ticket-From-Email addresses, rather than the current method of requiring a single mailbox per Ticket-From-Email address.
If you currently use Microsoft 365, or another email service provider, which charges a fee per mailbox account, you may wish to update your settings to use a single email account to manage your CommTrak Ticket-From-Emails. This does require that your email service provider offers emails address aliases for a single mailbox account.
Microsoft 365 currently allows the configuration of up to 400 email aliases per email account.
See Support Centre article, Tickets-From-Email (Settings), for configuration of aliases within CommTrak. Please contact your email service provider for details relating to the configuration of aliased email mailboxes, as configuration will vary per provider.
Miscellaneous
Several areas within CommTrak have received minor updates and improvements:
Staff Activities
A Leads deleted option in now available in the Specified activity criterion.
Username
Usernames can now be up to 50 characters long (previously, the maximum was 16 characters).
This update facilitates the use of email addresses as the username.
Settings > User Settings > Users
Data Sheet Searching
Data Sheet IDs can now be searched for in the Search Dashboard.
In the By Other search field, select Datasheet ID:
To-Do
Standalone CommTrak Tasks have been renamed To-Do.
You can create a To-Do request for yourself, or for another staff member from the CommTrak home screen, or from a component in a Project.
When creating a To-Do for another staff member, you can optionally send an email notification. The other staff member must have shared their Calendar with you ( My Details > Calendar / To-Do Sharing).
Telesales Follow-Up Bulk Delete
Follow-up calls in the Telesales module can now be bulk deleted.