Release Notes for ServiceCEO Version 6.2

Last updated 11/18/08.

New Functionality and Enhancements

Database Documentation
Customer Relationship Management
     Customer Alerts
     Additional Custom Fields
     Customer and Address Merge
          Merge Customers
          Merge Addresses
     Tasks tab in the Customer record
     Emailing Statements
Jobs
     Job Defaults
     Defining Contacts at the Job Level
     Editing Job Note Reasons
     Disabling "Flag Team for Poor Service"
QuickBooks
     Integration with QuickBooks Canada
     Integrating QuickBooks Classes with Company Profiles
Inventory
     Job Purchase Order Report
Crystal Reports
     The Time Code Tracker report
Miscellaneous
     Integration with Google Maps
          Map Default Origin
          Map Coordinates
          Differences Between Mapping Tools
          Google Maps Limitations
          Users of Google Maps in the United Kingdom
     Filters
     Customer Quick Search
     Grid Enhancements
Fixed Bugs
SQL Server 2000

Database Documentation

Due to the many new features in ServiceCEO 6.2, the location of some information in the ServiceCEO database has changed. These changes may mean that some of your reports and applications using the API need to be updated.

All of the changes in the ServiceCEO database from 6.1 to 6.2 are located here: Database Changes from ServiceCEO 6.1 to 6.2.

This document details all of the specific changes made in the ServiceCEO database from 6.1 to 6.2 so you know what table and columns to use when updating your reports or API integrations.

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Customer Relationship Management

Customer Alerts

The Customer Alert feature displays a warning when one of the following conditions are met:

1. Past Due Alert. The customer has had an outstanding balance for longer than a specified number of days.
2. Credit Limit Alert. The customer exceeds a credit limit as defined in the customer record.
3. Manual Alert. User-defined alerts.

These three alerts can be turned on individually in the Billing Options dialog box. Simply select Tools > Options > Billing and select the appropriate check boxes to turn on the alerts.

Once an alert is configured, the Detail tab of the Customer record will display any or all of the alert fields:

To activate an alert for a customer, select the appropriate check box. You can then configure the details about the alert:

• Past Due Alert. Type the amount of days that a customer can have a negative account balance before the alert is generated.
• Credit Limit Alert. Type the amount of money that the customer can have on credit before an alert is generated.
• Manual Alert. Type the alert message in the text field. This alert will automatically appear as long as it is active.

If you don't want any new jobs to be created for a customer with an alert, select the Halt Job Creation until Alerts are cleared check box. Only users with the Allow Override of "Halt Job Creation" security right will be able to create jobs for this customer when an alert is active.

ServiceCEO indicates that a customer has an alert in several different ways:

1. From the customer list. A check box will appear in the appropriate column if the customer has an alert:
   
   
2. From the Dispatch Board. Any jobs scheduled for a customer with an alert will display the alert symbol:
   
   
3. When Opening Records. The Alert Details dialog box will appear when:
   • Opening the customer record
   • Creating a job for the customer
   • Completing a job for the customer

Alert Details

There are two types of Alert Details dialog boxes:

Regular Alert	Job Creation Alert

• Click Cancel to stop whatever action you were performing.
• Click Continue to finish the operation you were performing.
• Click Open Customer to stop what you are doing and open the customer's record.
• Click Override to create a new job for a customer whose Halt Job Creation check box is selected on the Detail tab of their customer record. Note that only users with the "Allow Override of 'Halt Job Creation'" security right will see this button.

Updating a Customer's Credit Limit and Past Due Alert Statuses

ServiceCEO needs to check occasionally to see if any of the regular actions have triggered Credit Limit and Past Due alerts. This is done in two ways:

1. Manually. You can run a manual update by clicking Run Credit Check from most tabs in the Office Duties section.
2. Automatically. When you log out of ServiceCEO, the program will either automatically update the alert statuses or prompt you if you would like to do so.
   The prompt will appear if the Always prompt the user before running alert updates check box is selected in the Billing Options dialog box.

If you want to automatically set an alert for all of your customers, please contact Technical Support. For instance, you may want to configure your customers so that you are alerted whenever any customer's account balance is more then 60 days past due. To set a common alert status for all of your customers, enter a support ticket and Technical Support will contact you with details on how to run a database script that will can configure this setting for you.

Alert Security

Two new security options have been added around the Alert functionality:

• Edit. Provides users the ability to edit the alert details on the Detail tab of the Customer record.
• Allow Override of "Halt Job Creation". Enables users to create jobs for customers whose "Halt Job Creation" check box is selected.

Upgrading

Depending on the status of a customer's Issue Alert or Bad Credit check boxes in ServiceCEO 6.1, a customer may have active manual alerts in 6.2:

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Additional Custom Fields

ServiceCEO 6.2 increases the amount of custom fields available to you! Every area of the application that previously had four custom fields now has 25. In addition, defining custom fields is now consolidated into one centralized location.

To manage your custom fields, select Tools > Lists > Custom Fields. The Configure Custom Fields dialog box appears.

From here you can define many different aspects of your custom fields, including:

• Display Order. The order in which the fields appear on the appropriate Custom Fields tab.
• Display Name. The name of the custom field.
• Show? Indicates if the custom field is active.
• Required? Indicates if the custom field is required in order for the record to be saved.
• Required for Prospects? Select this check box, only available for Customers, if you want this custom field to be required for customers that don't have any scheduled jobs.
• Type. Select the custom field type you want from the drop-down list. There are three types of custom fields:
  1. Text. A single-line of free-form text.
  2. Drop-down list. A drop-down list that contains the values you define in the List Values column.
  3. Multi-line text. A larger text box designed to hold lots of text.
• List Values. If the custom field is a list, the values for that list. Edit the values by double-clicking into the appropriate field.
• Crystal Report Field. Indicates the field name you can use to add this custom field to a customized Crystal Report. For more on customizing reports, see the Editing Crystal Reports topic of the ServiceCEO Help System.

You can create up to 25 custom fields for the following records:

• A Customer
• An Employee
• A Job / Estimate
• A Service Contract
• An Equipment Item
• A Master Service Item
• A Master Product Item

When active, the custom fields will appear in a Custom Fields tab of the appropriate record. For example, the five active custom fields in the screenshot above will appear on the Custom Fields tab of the Customer record.

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Customer and Address Merge

The Customer and Address Merge feature enables you to perform two actions:

1. Combine two customer records together into one customer record. Once the customer records are combined, you will have the option to combine any of the duplicate addressees for the newly-merged customer.
2. Combine two of a customer's addresses together into one.

To merge two customers, or two locations for a customer, open the record for:

• One of the customers that you want to merge together
• The customer that contains the addresses you want to merge together.

From this customer record, select Tools > Merge Customer or Locations. The Merge Customers or Addresses dialog box appears.

You can perform two actions from this dialog box:

• Merge Customers.
• Merge Addresses. This option will only be active if more then one address exists for the active customer.

Select the option you want and click Next. The steps for each process appear in the sections just below.

All information that changes due to a customer or address merge will be stored in customer notes. The highlighted note in particular contains all of the information from the merged customer/address in case you need to reference any of that data in the future.

Merge Customers

To merge two customers together, follow these steps:

1. Select the duplicate customer that you want to merge with the original. Type your search criteria into the field and then select the customer from section two.

The main customer merge dialog box appears:

2. Select the main customer that you want to keep from section 1. This customer will be retained as the master customer record.
3. Select the properties you want to keep for all of the fields for the merged customer from section 2. All of the properties for the master customer will be selected by default, but you can select either value for any field.

Note: The Customer Merge dialog box will only display the fields for which the values are different between the two customers. However, if you would like to see the values for all of the customer fields, select the Show All check box.

4. Click Merge. A confirmation dialog box appears.
5. Click Yes. The two customers will be merged.

A dialog box will appear, asking if you want to merge any of the addresses for the merged customers. If you do, please follow the steps in the Merge Addresses section. If you do not, click Finish to open the master customer record.

Merge Addresses

You can merge together any two addresses in a customer record. The only conditions that the addresses must be assigned the same tax codes and zone.

To merge addresses, follow these steps:

1. Select the two addresses you want to merge from the Address Merge dialog box.

2. Click Next. The next page of the Address Merge dialog box appears.

3. Select the address that you want to keep from section 1. This address will be retained as the master address.
4. Select the properties you want to keep for all of the fields for the merged address from section 2. All of the properties for the master address will be selected by default, but you can select either value for any field.

Note: The Address Merge dialog box only will display the fields for which the values are different between the two addresses. However, if you would like to see the values for all of the address fields, select the Show All check box.

5. Click Next. The Contacts Merge dialog box appears, displaying all of the contacts from the two merged addresses.

6. Select the check boxes for the four contacts you want to keep. The others will be discarded, but their information will be stored in customer notes.
7. Click Merge. A confirmation dialog box appears.
8. Click Yes. The two addresses are merged. The first page of the Address Merge dialog box appears again.
9. To merge additional addresses, repeat the above steps. If you are done, click Finish to open the customer record

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Tasks in the Customer Record

A Tasks tab is now present in the customer record. It contains all tasks that have been linked to the customer so that you can quickly view all tasks that are related to the customer, rather than having to filter and search through the list on the Tasks tab of Office Duties.

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Emailing Statements

You can email the Statement report in ServiceCEO 6.2 in the same manner as you can the invoice report.

For details on emailing invoices, see the Emailing Invoices/Estimates to Customers topic of the ServiceCEO Help System.

A few changes were made to the Statement report to make it conform to the Ready to Send Workflow:

• No unposted invoices will appear on the report.
• When closing the report, you will be prompted if you want to mark the invoices as send. Doing so will change the Sent? status of any "Ready to Send" invoices to "Sent".

You can edit the text that appears on this email by selecting Tools > Options > MS Outlook and clicking Edit Text on Emailed Reports. From this dialog box, you can edit the text for the Invoice, Work Order, Estimate and Statement emails.

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Jobs

Job Defaults

You can now define a default value for several job fields. To do this, select Tools > Options > Requirements and click Job Defaults.

These values defined here will be used when creating all new jobs and schedules. The only exception is if you create a job by clicking and dragging on the Bar or Box views of the calendar.

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Job Contacts

The Job record now contains a Contact Name field so that you can identify the contact that is responsible for the job. The job's contact will also be the name that appears on the reports for that job.

This field is also located on estimate, project and visit records.

As part of this effort, you can now also easily open the customer record from within a job by clicking Open Customer.

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Editing Cancellation Note Reasons

If enabled in the Requirements dialog box (Tools > Options > Requirements > Schedule Options > Making cancellations), ServiceCEO prompts the user to enter a note explaining why the user declined service when canceling any job. In previous versions, the reasons for these notes were not editable; they were hard-coded into the system.

To add, edit or disable this or any note reasons, select Tools > Lists > Note Reasons.

The Job Canceled tab works in the same manner as the rest of the tabs in this dialog box. For details, see the Defining Note Types section of the ServiceCEO Help System.

Note: Note Reasons were called Note Types in previous versions of ServiceCEO.

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Disabling "Flag Team for Poor Service"

When a user changes a team assignment on a job or schedule, the user is prompted if they would like to “flag the team for poor service.” This flag would include the Job and the employees on the removed team in the Employee Loss Report.

In 6.1, you could not disable this prompt. In 6.2, you can disable it by selecting Tools > Options > Requirements and clicking Schedule Options. The Requirements dialog box appears. Clear the Changing Team Assignments check box and click OK.

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QuickBooks

Integration with QuickBooks Canada

ServiceCEO 6.2 is completely integrated with QuickBooks^® Canada 2008 and 2009.

Caution: In order to properly integrate with QuickBooks Canada 2008, support for previous versions of QuickBooks was discontinued. Thus, ServiceCEO 6.2 will not work with QuickBooks Canada 2007 or any version previous to that.

In QuickBooks Canada 2008 or 2009, you may need to make some configurations to your QuickBooks Vendors in order for tax to export properly. For all sales tax vendors, perform the following steps in QuickBooks:

1. From the Vendor Centre, select the vendor and click Edit Vendor.
2. Select the Vendor is a Sales Tax Agency check box.
3. Click the Tax Agency Info tab.
4. Select the Track Tax on Sales To check box.
5. Select the corresponding sales tax payable account from the drop-down list.
6. Click OK.

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Integrating QuickBooks Classes with ServiceCEO Profiles

QuickBooks classes are similar to Company Profiles in ServiceCEO. Both let you track income and expenses by company divisions (i.e., office locations, separate companies, departments, etc.)

The following is an explanation of classes from the QuickBooks Help file:

"In QuickBooks, you can create classes that you assign to transactions. This lets you track income and expenses by department, business office or location, separate properties you own, or any other meaningful breakdown of your business.
For example, if you had a restaurant with three locations, you might create an Uptown, a Midtown, and a Downtown class for tracking income and expenses by location. A farmer might create a class for each enterprise—for example, Corn, Hogs, and Soybeans. At the end of an accounting period, the restaurant could create separate reports for each location. Likewise, the farmer could create separate reports for each enterprise."

If you are integrated with QuickBooks, you can track charges and costs coming from ServiceCEO Profiles by QuickBooks class. By linking Profiles to Classes, all data exported to QuickBooks will contain a QuickBooks Class definition in the QuickBooks General Ledger (GL). This will allow QuickBooks users to run their P&L (Profit and Loss) report in QuickBooks by class.

For more on Profiles in ServiceCEO, see the Creating Company Profiles section of the ServiceCEO Help System.

Default classes can be defined in three locations:

• Company Information. (If you are running ServiceCEO Enterprise, default locations are defined at the Branch level.)
• Profiles
• Removing Inventory from stock (if Inventory Tracking is enabled)

Simply select the class you want to use from the Class drop-down list.

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Inventory

Job Purchase Order Report

The "Job PO" report was added to ServiceCEO. This report contains every inventory product assigned to a job during the report's date range, along with the job number(s) on which it is being used and the Purchase Order (PO) line item(s) or adjustment from which the stock originated.

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Crystal Reports

In order to accommodate the many new and enhanced features in ServiceCEO 6.2, some changes were made to the ServiceCEO database. These changes may affect some of your customized Crystal Reports.

To help you update your custom reports, you can use the Updating Reports for ServiceCEO 6.2 document, which details the steps you will need to perform to update any reports that won't run in 6.2.

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The Time Code Tracker report

This Time Code Tracker report was removed from the default report list. You can add it again by following the steps below:

1. Access the Reporting section of ServiceCEO.
2. Click Edit List. The Reports List dialog box appears.
3. Click Add. A new row appears in the Report List.
4. Type a name for the report (e.g., "Time Code Tracker") in the Report field.
5. Select a section for the new report from the Section drop-down list. The report section is the Report Category under which it appears on ServiceCEO's main Available Reports page. The report used to be in the Financial seciton.
6. Type a description for the report in the Description field.
7. Select the Access the Report Definition from the following file: option button.
8. Click the Browse (or three dots) button. The Select Report File dialog box appears.
9. Browse to the ServiceCEO reports directory (the default locaiton is C+:\Program Files\InsightDirect\ServiceCEO\Reports).
10. Select rptTimeTracker.rpt
11. Click Open.
12. Click OK.

The report has been added and can be run normally. For more on adding reports to ServiceCEO see the Adding New Reports section of the Help System.

Miscellaneous

Integration with Google Maps

ServiceCEO 6.2 enables you to replace Microsoft^® MapPoint^® with Google Maps^® in all instances where maps are used in ServiceCEO:

• Dispatch Board
• Scheduling Assistant
• Right-click mapping feature

You can make this change in Tools > Options > Mapping.

Google Maps is an extra feature that requires you to purchase an additional license. The price will be $250.00 per year for your company, regardless of how many users you have. For the beta period, the Google Maps feature will be free.

You can purchase a Google Maps license in the Online Store, located in the Member Center.

Note: You do not need to use Google Maps; you can continue using Microsoft MapPoint.

When integrated with Google Maps, a few new features will be available to you:

• Default Map Origin.
• Exact Coordinates.

Default Map Origin

You can define where you want your Google maps to open if no address has been provided in the Company Information dialog box.

1. Select Tools > Options > Company Information.
2. Click Set Default Map Origin. The Exact Coordinates dialog box appears.

3. Close the informational window by clicking the X button.
4. Click and drag the marker to the location where you want your maps to start.
5. Click OK.

Map Coordinates

Every customer address can now be mapped using exact coordinates from Google Maps. To do so:

1. Open the customer address that you want to map.
2. Click the Coordinates tab.

This tab contains two tools for you:

• Exact Coordinates. Opens an map where you can select the exact location of the address in the same manner as the Default Map Origin.
• Map Coordinates. Maps the coordinates you have entered.

Note that Google Maps will make it's best effort to accurately map the address you entered on the Address tab. However, if this mapping is incorrect, or you want to adjust it for any reason, the coordinates are entered here will be used for all ServiceCEO maps.

Differences Between Mapping Tools

There are a few differences between the two mapping tools you can use with ServiceCEO, Google Maps and Microsoft MapPoint:

1. The Dispatch Board.
   • Google Maps. Only one information balloon can be displayed at one time. You will need to click the pushpin to display the information.
   • MapPoint. Informational balloons can be displayed for all mapped jobs.
2. The Scheduling Assistant.
   • Google Maps. Distances between jobs are calculated using road mileage, not "as the crow flies".
   • MapPoint. Distances between jobs are calculated directly "as the crow flies", not taking roads into account.
3. Coverage.
   • Google Maps. Covers a large range of countries around the globe. For a complete listing of all countries that are covered by Google Maps, please click here.
   • MapPoint. The coverage area depends on the version of MapPoint that you have purchased. For example, MapPoint North America only covers the United States, Canada and Mexico. Distances between jobs are calculated directly "as the crow flies", not taking roads into account.

Google Maps Limitations

Google Maps has a few limitations that may affect how you use it:

• Maps. Due to licensing restrictions, the mapping provider Google uses for its own web site - http://maps.google.com - is different then the version of Google Maps that ServiceCEO uses. This means that the maps generated through ServiceCEO may vary from those on http://maps.google.com; for example, driving directions may vary slightly between the two versions.
• Coverage. Google Maps does not fully cover all countries. For example, some countries may only have main roads, while in others driving directions may not be available. For more details, opint your brower to http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=16634
• Address Mapping. Some address may not map correctly with Google Maps:
  • UK Addresses. See the Users of Google Maps in the United Kingdom section for more details.
  • Minor Civil Division. If your address is located in a 'minor civil division', Google may not be able to correctly map the address. For example, the town of Billerica, MA is a minor civil division. Currently, Google may not be able to accurately determine where these addresses are.
    You can workaround this Google limitation by Mapping the Exact Coordinates of the address.
• Routing limit. Google Maps can only route up to 25 addresses at one time.

Note: If you included the Home Office in your mapping routing in the Mapping Options dialog box, you may not be able to map the full 25. For instance, if you selected the Start at Home Office, End at Home Office option, then you can only map 23 addresses along with the start and end home office address.

Users of Google Maps in the United Kingdom

Mapping addresses in the United Kingdom may not behave exactly as intended.

If a UK address is not returning any results, there are two possible problems.

1. Address 1 vs. Address 2. Google Maps integration expects the street address to be located in the first Address field. However, many UK companies store the building name or apartment number in the first address field, moving the street address into the second address field.
   For now, Google Maps will only map your address correctly if the street address is located in the first address field of the Address Information dialog box.
2. Postal code. Some UK postal codes are not accurate enough for Google Maps to identify the address. To fix this problem, use one of the following solutions:
   • Locality. Type the address's locality into the City field on the Address tab.
   • Exact Coordinates. Map the coordinates for the address on the Coordinates tab.

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Filters

The filters have been reworked in ServiceCEO 6.2 to clean out some lingering issues. Due to this rework, you will lose your saved filter settings and the filters will be reset to the default values. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Customer Quick Search

As a result of reworking the filters, the Show/Hide Find button was removed from the Customer List. As a result, the QuickSearch fields will always appear.

Grid Enhancements

The following pages in ServiceCEO have been rewritten to enable you to customize the grids within them.

• Job tab of a Customer record
• Billing History tab of a Customer record
• Tasks tab of Office Duties
• Completion tab of Office Duties
• Project Completion tab of Office Duties
• Estimates tab of Office Duties
• Team Check In
• Inventory Management Grid

The new functionality includes:

• Column Ordering. Click and drag the column header to where you want it to be located.
• Saving Settings. The following settings will be saved for every user:
  • Sorting.
  • Column width.
  • Column order.

To revert these grids to the system default, press the ALT key while pressing the Refresh button.

Note: The Customer List will save column width, but column order is still defined via the Field Chooser.

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Fixed Bugs

A listing of all fixed customer-reported bugs is located here: Customer-Reported Bugs Fixed in ServiceCEO 6.2

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SQl Server 2000

With the release of ServiceCEO 6.2, SQL Server 2000 will no longer be supported.

The main reason for this change is that SQL Server 2000 will not be able to handle some of the cool new features that will be coming with ServiceCEO 6.2. This, coupled with the lack of Microsoft support for the product (Microsoft discontinued support in 2006), has prompted us to discontinue support for SQL Server 2000.

What does this mean to you? If you are currently running SQL Server 2000 it means that you will need to upgrade to SQL Server 2005 prior to upgrading ServiceCEO to version 6.2. To see if you are using SQL Sever 2000, open ServiceCEO and select Help > About. If the Database Server Version starts with an eight (8), you are using SQL Server 2000.

If this is the case, you have two options:

1. Install SQL Server 2005 Express. This is ServiceCEO's default database tool, and is available for free in the Database Management Tools installer found in the Member Center.
2. Purchase and install the Workgroup or Standard version of SQL Server 2005. For complete installation Instructions, see the SQL Server 2005 Workgroup or Standard Edition Overview topic of the ServiceCEO Help System.

When deciding which version of SQL Server 2005 to use, please refer to our recommended system requirements: http://www.insightdirect.com/system-requirements/

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Feedback

Please send any feedback about this document to documentation@insightdirect.com. Please note that this email will not go to Technical Support. To receive technical support, please enter a support ticket by logging into the member center at http://www.insightdirect.com/support.html and clicking the Log a New Support Ticket link.