Email Templates

[lpopejoy]

Re: Email Templates

Dina,

Is this just the first word of the contact name? How does this work if you use LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME (as we do)?

[Support Team]

Re: Email Templates

It works just like itognet described. It takes the first word from the Contact name and that's it. BTW, storing by Last, First names is a bit different than how RangerMSP was designed to work, it's easier to use First, Last as the Last Name automatically being extracted to the Last Name field.

HTH
Dina

[AN-Tech]

Re: Email Templates

Since you already are pulling the last name into a separate field and in 5.5 you started being able to use the first name by considering it the first word, perhaps you can re-evaluate how difficult my original request would be. All it would take now to have an available option for the File As field to use lastname, firstname would be to would be to use LASTNAME, FIRSTWORD.

Thanks

[lpopejoy]

Re: Email Templates

...and when you've been using LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME since you started your company, you hate to change just because a software vendor thinks you should do it differently...
It seems like your best bet may be to just add two fields for the contact, firstname & lastname. and then you could have another field that would automatically add those two together either as FIRSTNAME LASTNAME or LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME (and you could specify that in your options.

I'm sure the challenge would be in making that change making it compatible with all your reports, etc... But I think it would be a good change. It would fix this whole problem.

[Support Team]

Re: Email Templates

Thanks guys. We will reevaluate this and may come with an option to extract the first name even it is listed second. Thanks.

[lpopejoy]

Re: Email Templates

Just ran into another issue, again caused by the fact that CommitCRM doesn't have separate fields for Firstname & Lastname. External programs that integrate with Labtech have a hard time figuring out accurately what is the firstname and what is the lastname due to the fact that there aren't separate fields.

For instance, in Labtech, in my contact's "firstname" field, it has the contacts LASTNAME and a comma, due to the fact that we input everything in CommitCRM as LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME.

It seems like most CRM applications separate this out, and it makes it much easier for everyone. Would it really be that big of a deal to make this happen? It seems like it would create a better experience for everyone - users and developers. It's a win win situation.

No with that said, will it be in the 5.6 release?

[Support Team]

Re: Email Templates

Thanks Luke.

RangerMSP is designed to store contacts as first name, last name. Storing contacts as last name, first name is possible, yet not recommended at this stage. This is not something that will be changed in 5.6 and I'm not sure when/if it will be changed. Our APIs and syncing modules with different systems are build on this storing model as well as the RangerMSP client itself. I'm not say that it'll never be modify, however, it's way more complex than it seems. LabTech uses the RangerMSP's API that was built for First > Last and this is probably why it's harder for them to handle situations where data is stored in RangerMSP as Last > First.

In regards to this forum thread - when using First name Last Name you have access to all these fields with the Email Templates features, all as explained above.

We hear you and appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,
Dina

[AN-Tech]

Re: Email Templates

Since you already have a field for the last name, wouldn't it be easy enough just to have a first name field that is based off of the FIRST WORD?

Once you have two separate fields it seems like it would be much more flexible for additional options based on desired naming format.

[Support Team]

Re: Email Templates

Well, it is much more complex than it seems, otherwise we would have already offer all options. However, as it is integrated in many modules, syncing options, APIs, existing systems that integrates and are based on the structure, including RangerMSP client.

I'm not saying it is not required, and I do think this is a good idea that may help (and is required as it is requested by our users, right here on the forum), it is just more complex than it seems and we need to carefully review such a change.

Thanks,
Dina

[lpopejoy]

Re: Email Templates

I know it would probably make it more complex, but it seems like the best route would be not to do the "automatically figure out the firstname/lastname" route, but instead just to replace the "contact name" field with two fields, and let people fill it out however they want to. Then you could join that name in a "automated" field, that could be change via a preference of how you wanted to store (firstname lastname, or lastname,firstname)

[Support Team]

Re: Email Templates

Got that. Thank you.