PSA Software – Business Automation for Successful ITsTrusted Since 2004

In the latest version of our PSA software (version 8) we have added a bunch of features including some which existed in the desktop app and some which are entirely new to both desktop and web.

Timers have been added and are clearly a useful addition for technicians on the road who need to accurately log time for the work they are doing. Just like with the timer in the desktop app you can convert the logged time into a Charge. The Timer can be activated from various places such as under Accounts, Tickets or Contracts and can be started and stopped whenever needed.

A very popular new feature in version 8 is To-do lists which of course help you get things done more efficiently and capture and charge for more time which may have been missed before. To-do lists are great for handling repetitive tasks since you can save them as a template and apply the same list again and again on other records such as Assets, Tickets, Accounts or Contracts. A to-do list also helps ensure you don’t forget any critical steps in the process when working on some new issue or asset. Now there’s no excuse for leaving money on the table – just create to-do lists and charge for all those tasks.

Adding charges is, needless to say, an important task for an IT service business but it can also be a bit tedious to fill in all the boxes (unless using the new Web Timer of course!) which is why you’ll no doubt be pleased to learn that there is now a quicker way to add time based charges. You can simply select the relevant time span from a list, for example “Last 3 hours”, and the system will automatically fill in all the relevant boxes for you, such as start and end times and then you just have to click a button which pastes the total time in the Hours/Units box and you’re done.

Sometimes you want (or your customers demand) the ability for customers to update the priority of a Ticket. If an issue is particularly important then allowing them to mark it as high priority can ensure your team takes notice and gets to work on it as soon as possible. Customers will feel more confident that their issue is being taken care of appropriately and with the urgency it demands. However customers can only do this if granted suitable privileges so you remain in full control at all times and you do not have to give them this power.

Another new ability you can choose to grant your customers is file uploads which they can now do through directly through the Web Interface, saving you and the customer valuable time and effort.

Finally, yet another efficiency improvement which in this case allows you to quickly add or append the Charge descriptions to the resolution when completing a Ticket through the Web Interface.

We hope you find these new version 8 Web Interface additions and enhancements useful in your IT services business and of course we’re constantly working on more automation and efficiency improvements.

Until next time,
Success Team

When you need to get things done, you can’t go wrong with a good old trusty to-do list which helps you organize what needs to be done and by showing what has been done so far, also helps keep you motivated. To-do lists can take many forms but fundamentally are pretty much the same, whether they be written on paper or on a computer, however when they integrate with other systems or functions they can become even more useful. So without further ado we present to you the all new To-do Lists feature in version 8 of our CRM and PSA software for managed services providers!

What do you do when you add a new Account to your CRM database? Probably there’s a whole list of steps you would normally do such as creating web logins, sending them to the customer, adding secondary contacts, etc etc. You can now create a simple To-do list with all those steps in and check them off one by one when done so you will know for sure exactly what was done and what wasn’t – no more trying to remember some obscure step in the process or missing something important!

What about Tickets? Probably you get many support requests which entail a common sequence of actions to resolve. Now you can whip up a To-do list for each of the common situations and run through the relevant list when a Ticket is created, saving time and effort and resulting in happier customers.

You’re probably thinking “Great! But how am I going to remember to create all those to-do list steps every time?!” Well we have you covered there as well since you can save any list as a Template and then simply select the appropriate Template from a drop-down list to add to the To-do list tab in the Tickets window. In fact you can add multiple lists if the need arises!

To-do lists are not just available in Accounts and Tickets, you can also create them in Assets, Contracts, Opportunities and Employees. In each section you can easily create and apply To-do List Templates and list steps can be dragged and dropped to change the order and in fact entire lists can be dragged and dropped if there are several on the tab. You will also see a section on the preview tab which tells you how many open To-dos you have for that Ticket or Asset or other.

Another useful feature of the To-do list is logging of who did what and when. In other words the system notes which employee marked a To-do step as done and displays that persons name next to the step in the list of completed steps – so now if someone messes up you’ll know who to blame and if it was you… well the cat’s out of the bag! 😉

Automatically applying To-do Lists can be done by adding them to Activity Templates so there’s no excuse not to use them! You can also generate Reports which include To-do lists using “Expanded Ticket Details2” and “Asset Details Including Configuration Note, Pending, To-do and History”.

As you know, our software is a PSA which means it’s all about professional services automation to improve workflows, enhance efficiency, capture more billable time and ultimately charge for that time. To-do lists are another big part of that effort and since they involve actual work being done, you can rest assured that you can easily charge for that work.

When a to-do task is marked complete you can immediately add a Charge for that specific step, directly from the To-do tab. You can also do this at any time, not just immediately afterwards and you can also charge for ALL completed steps at once. Now the multitude of little jobs you frequently do while working for a customer but perhaps don’t always charge for, can be easily billed – no more money slipping through the cracks!

We hope you find the new To-do List feature useful and it helps you get things done and bill for more time.

Until next time,
Success Team

Hi!

We are very excited to announce the release of the new version of our Professional
Services Automation software.

The all new version 8 of our PSA software is ready and available for you to download right now!
There are many big new features in this release which we believe you will find very
useful in automating your business and improving efficiency. Of course as usual we
are building these features based on your always valuable feedback which we
certainly appreciate.

Click Here for the full list of what’s new in 8 as well as upgrade instructions.
We’ll also soon be publishing a series of articles here on the blog which go into
more detail on some of the key features in this release.

As always you can find us on Twitter as well as of course on our own Forums.

We hope you enjoy the new version!

— The Team

Business Automation For Successful ITs!

When Tickets are arriving for all manner of issues, from multiple customers and you need to assign them to various technicians at differing times throughout the day or week, you need a way to manage all this efficiently and effectively. This is where the Dispatcher comes in to its own. With a simple drag & drop, a new Ticket can be sent to the Dispatcher or if that is a click too many for your liking you can choose to have all new Tickets appear in the Dispatcher by default.

In CRM the Dispatcher is where new appointments are scheduled after a Ticket is created, or in other words you use it to arrange appointments for your employees based on work requirements associated with new Tickets.

Once a Ticket is in the Dispatcher it is ready for you to assign to a technician and schedule an appointment, if required (or you can remove it from the Dispatcher if not), by dragging and dropping the Ticket onto the graphical Dispatcher display under an Employee. When the appointment has been scheduled through the Dispatcher, it appears immediately on the Pending tab under the Ticket itself and also on the Ticket Preview tab.

On the Daily or Weekly Dispatcher tabs you can click on any Ticket in the “Tickets Marked for Dispatching” list and see a preview in the box on the right side of the Ticket list (you can disable this preview or move it to the bottom if you prefer). Below the list there are number of functions where you can create a new Ticket which will appear directly in the Dispatcher, show the Ticket details (open in the full Tickets window), print or email it or run an Online Service.

At the top right of the Daily Dispatcher there is a calendar date selector where you can jump straight to viewing the Dispatcher and existing appointments (if any) for any day in any month in the future or past and on the left side is the Employees selection panel where you can quickly choose which Employees to include or exclude in the Dispatcher view.

When viewing the Dispatcher tabs all you need to do to arrange an appointment is simply drag the Ticket to a suitable time block under an employee and that’s it – appointment is scheduled and Ticket removed from the Dispatcher. If you need the appointment to span more than one half-hour block you can just drag the edge of the appointment block up or down accordingly. You can even drag the whole block and drop it under another employee if required.

Of course when an appointment is scheduled, the Alerts Server will notify the relevant staff so nothing is ever missed no matter where they are. You can also view the daily or weekly Calendar for a quick overview of all pending appointments or tasks as well as see them listed under their respective tabs.

From any appointment you can do a quick right-click and have access to all sorts of extra data and functionality specific to that appointment such as viewing the linked Account or Contact, adding a History Note, creating a new Ticket, sending a message, adding a Charge and more. So you will always know at a glance where everything stands in your business, where every employee is working or scheduled, what issues they are working on and more.

Also in the Dispatcher window are tabs for Appointments and Tasks where you can view the appointments/tasks in list format instead of on a calender. You can select a date range to view and again these can be filtered by Employee. Of course you can also add and update and much more in these tabs via the right-click menu just as on the Dispatcher tabs.

Such functionality, enabling you to manage all these aspects right from the Dispatcher window within just a click or two, is a key component of Professional Services Automation and you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed without it!

As you may already know if you have been following this blog, we recently announced a contest for Sysadmin Day which was on July 25th this year. We had a load of entries for the contest which were great fun to read, not to mention educational! However there can be only one winner this time and so after much deliberation we have chosen this epic story of sysadmin woe by “kaltag“…

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Sorry for the novel. This tale starts last Tuesday. I got a call to go set up 2 new workstations and migrate their data from the systems to the new. I arrive onsite and discover the systems are bottom of the barrel Acers with 7 Home. They have a 2008 domain so that’s not gonna work. They order 2 copies of 7 Pro and I get called back Thursday when they arrive. I install 7 Pro and join the systems to the domain. At this point I look at the old systems to see what programs will have to be re-installed. Note: This is a printing company and they are cheap as hell with everything they possibly can be and their software reflects that. They have an addressing/routing program that runs in DOS (no go on 7), 2 other programs designed for win 3.1 which I could not get to work under 7, and a mail database app that was designed for NT4 which would also not run in any compatibility mode. At this point I decided they are going to have to use XP mode under 7 and do a physical to virtual migration of their old systems to get this software working. They agree and I start the disk2vhd process. The old systems are going to take several hours to finish so I set to downloading/install Windows XP mode. I discover they have a 256kb DSL service so I left and let everything finish over night.

Friday morning I go back and install XP mode (virtual PC) and get to work setting up the VMs with their VHDs. When I get to actually creating the machine and point it their existing VHDs it fails with an error. After some digging I find out disk2vhd creates a VHD the size of the entire drive which was 150GB instead of just the volume which was 80GB. Virtual PC won’t attach a VHD larger than 127GB. So I downloaded vhdresizer but it won’t let me shrink below the disk size either. So I attach the VHD in disk management and resize it which then allows vhdresizer to do it’s thing. Again, resizing both drives will take 4-6 hours so I get some information I will need and leave it to run. I have remote access so I can finish it from home over the weekend.

Friday night I login and the resizes have finished. I created the virtual machines and boot ’em up. Both hang at hte XP boot menu. WTF?! I ran chkdsk and fixboot/fixmbr with no success. I eventually gave in and decided to run an XP repair install. I created an ISO of my XP Pro CD and started copying over their 256kb DSL line. I left it to copy over night ;).

Saturday morning the copy is complete. I ran the XP repair which got them booting and after logging in I get the activation error that it won’t login until it’s activated. I tell it to activate but the activation window never comes up. Some more digging and I find that internet explorer needs to be re-installed after a repair install sometimes. So I shutdown the VM, mounted the VHD, copied over the IE7 installer, detached the VHD and booted the VM back up with safemode with command prompt. I installed IE7, rebooted, and the activation window works now. Yay! Now I’m logged in and start checking that their applications still work. They all work with the exception of one program that uses the Access 2003 runtime. The office 2003 installer keeps trying repair itself and bombs out. Installing just the 2003 runtime fails so I make another image of my office 2003 CD and start copying it to their systems. This takes most of the day.

Sunday morning. The copy has finished. I repair the office installs and verify things are working, printers etc. Yay!

Monday morning (today) I go back on site to swap out the old and new machines. At this point I discover they have a time clock that uses a serial port connection and 3 HP laserjet parallel printers with only parallel connections. These new systems only have USB ports…perfect. So I run down to the local PC shop and pick up some USB to parallel/serial adapters. Installing the printers works fine. I check the timeclock program and verify it is talking to the time clock. They run a test download of the punches and halfway through the network link drops for an unknown reason. The timeclock program crashes magnificently. Restart the program and it now says there are no punches for the last week. FML. With everything else working they decide to call the timeclock people and let me move on.

I finish up and as I’m about to walk out the door they ask if I can do “one last thing.” They want one of the old systems moved to another employees office to replace an even older system. Cool, no big deal. I set up the old machine in it’s new location and plug it in. POOF and a big puff of magic smoke comes out the back…great. I tell the owner and he is understandably upset. He eventually calms down and asks that I just swap the keyboard on the old one as the even older one is nasty. I swap the keyboard and fire it up. Nothing. No power! How can I get 2 bad Power supplies!? I figure out the power cord has been bent at a right angle so long there is a short in it. Fiddling with it you can here it spark and the system gets power. So I grab a spare power cord from the car and go back in. I unplug the old cord from the wall and when I go to plug the new one in the socket broke THROUGH the drywall and fell into the wall cavity. Turns out someone had just cut a hole in the drywall and screwed the socket directly to the drywall with no box. It took barely any pressure to break through the 1/8″ drywall. Cue upset owner again. I ran an extension cord to another cubicle and get it up and running again but now there’s no network link?! At this point I’m about to kick a puppy. More troubleshooting and find out the network cable suffered the same fate as the power cord. A new cable fixed it right up. I high-tailed it out of there as quickly as possible after that.

TL;DR: Someone’s got a case of the Mondays….

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The winner receives the Professional Services Automation software, as described on the contest page here, which we hope will be put to good use. Congratulations!

Until next time,
Success Team

Business is ultimately about making money and every business owner would like to make more money than they currently do and preferably for less work.

But how can an IT services business charge more for the work they do and services they offer? Read on for 10 ways to charge more…

1. Increase Prices – this is an obvious one, easy to say but perhaps less easy to do, or at least it may seem like something you can’t easily do without risk as some customers may walk if you raise prices for your IT services. However in many cases higher prices can lead to a higher perceived value which can in turn contribute to sales. Even a modest increase can have a significant impact and most or perhaps even all customers would be willing to pay, as long as the service is good.

2. Remove non-profitable low cost services from your offerings – concentrate on those which generate more profit for your time. That is unless the low cost item is a deliberate loss leader which brings in new customers that you can later convert to your high priced items. Weigh up the benefits of such low cost items carefully and ditch any that don’t make the grade.

3. Log more time – this doesn’t mean go out and do more hours of work, it means make sure you actually log every minute that you actually do work… no more free lunches! Your time is valuable and those 5 minute phone calls or any other small task soon add up. Using tools which help you log your time more efficiently will obviously increase your logged time overall so log it or lose it!

4. Add value to your service offerings – clients will be more prepared to pay more if they see more value added. Everybody likes to get more for their money. That value can even just be in the form of better guarantees for service provided. You can use an SLA to ensure you meet the service levels you are promising and measure it against past SLA data to show how it is improving and to clarify to customers exactly what service they are guaranteed to get.

5. Collect and publish good references and testimonials – when a potential client is not sure if you are worth the price you are asking, a good word from existing customers can help with convincing and closing the deal. Your customers often have a better idea of what matters to them than you do and their opinion is typically considered more valid by their peers.

6. Increase the perceived value you offer – promote new benefits to existing services, add tiers for higher levels of service, re-position your business in a way that seems like it offers higher value. For example compare books to self-study courses – the same info may be included in both but a course seems like it has higher value, even if it is still self-study like a book, and so it often costs more.

7. Educate your customers – make sure they know the true value of the service you are offering. You’re an expert in the field, an IT professional who will resolve their problems so their business can grow, make sure they know exactly how much they benefit from your service. Quantify precisely what you provide them with.

8. Check out what the competition charges for similar services – if everyone else charges more than you, then you can charge more also. If their customers are willing to pay them that much for IT services then they should be just as willing to pay you that much. Compete on quality, not price.

9. Build up your brand – a recognized brand is typically seen as offering more value and worth paying more for, even if unknown competitors offer something better. Spruce up your website, get a fancy new logo, make your brand highly visible on everything you produce, dominate the relevant social network channels, be seen everywhere your customers gather, online and offline. Become the recognized leader in your area and your customers will be more willing to pay a premium for that.

10. Don’t be afraid to lose customers – specifically those who are not profitable enough for you or you may even lose money on. Better to have higher paying customers which you can take better care of, than bazillions of unprofitable customers who use up all your time and end up getting a worse service from you, which ultimately hurts your reputation.

A few small tweaks to your offerings, careful re-positioning and appropriate price increases can all add up to a healthy boost in your income without annoying any of the customers you actually want to keep and enabling you to offer a better service overall – everyone wins!

Until next time,
Success Team

In the endless quest for improved efficiency, every little bit counts, every second and every step which can be shortened or removed from the process entirely, helps streamline your workflow and improve productivity. One such efficiency feature is the ability to drag & drop Tickets to perform various important actions.

Drag & Drop Status

Changing the Status of a Ticket is of course a very common task as the Ticket progresses through your support system and so for example any time you need to change the status from New to Scheduled, Cancelled, Pending, Completed or some other status, you can can easily do that from the Tickets list – just select the Ticket and drag it to the left sidebar and drop on the Status you want to change it to. As soon as you drop the Ticket on another Status in the sidebar, the Status will update in the Tickets list – simple and efficient!

 Drag & Drop Inbox

You can also drag Tickets from the Inbox and drop them onto any Status and they will not only have their Status changed but they will also be removed from the Inbox allowing you to quickly and effortlessly work through your inbox and deal with all the incoming or updated Tickets appropriately.

Drag & Drop to Dispatcher

Tickets can be quickly added to the Dispatcher by dragging and dropping onto For Dispatching at the top of the left column. This is functionally the same as going to the Details tab for the Ticket and checking the box Show in Dispatcher.

Drag & Drop Dispatching

In the Dispatcher window you can see your Tickets in the list awaiting dispatch and needless to say you can drag & drop again, this time straight into the column for a specific employee at a certain time to rapidly schedule an appointment.

Drag & Drop Labels

Version 7 of CRM introduced the popular Labels feature and naturally the ability to quickly label a Ticket through drag & drop is a key part of that. With Labels you can even drag & drop the Ticket multiple times onto different Labels in the left sidebar which results in the Ticket having multiple Labels assigned to it. Each individual Label can easily be removed from the Ticket by simply clicking the ‘x’ next to each Label on the Ticket Preview screen or from the Labels drop-down menu so they are very easy to manage.

We hope you find all these time saving efficiency features useful and of course we’re always working on adding more ways to simplify, improve efficiency and automate your professional services.

Until next time,

Success Team