Contact Management¶

Contact Management Reminder

When a user logs in, there is now a facility to bring up the contact management records for that user / all.
There is a flag in the User form called ‘Display Current Order Contact Info on Login’ and/or ‘Display Current Quote Contact Info on Login’ .
If this is set to true, then all contact records relating to that user for the current date display immediately after the user logs in.

Contact management records can be held against quotations, sales orders, and purchase orders.

Quotations

Contact records for quotations are used for tracking the progress of a quotation and are used primarily for recording actions and next contact dates.
If you click on the ‘Contact Management’ button, you will see all the contact records for the quotation you are pointing at.

Quotations > Projects

There is now a ‘Contact Management’ button in the Projects form.

You can add, amend or delete contact records here.
You will be asked to enter the next contact date and who has ownership of it.
When a quotation is first entered, it is possible to bring up the contact record add automatically by setting the following parameter in Administration > Parameters.

Quotation Contact Reports

When you click on ‘Contact Management Reports’, the following form appears.
You can then select from three different reports:

Quotation Contact Management
Next Quotation Contact
Last Quotation Contact Report

Orders

There are three relevant buttons on the ‘Order Amend Enquiry’ form.

The 'Email to Owner' button
There is a new parameter called ‘Email Contact Record Details to New Owner’ in Administration > Parameters that defaults to false.
If this new parameter is set to true, there is an option to email the new owner of the contact record, in both quotation and order contact records, and for purchase order contact records as well.
It also applies to customer and supplier contact records.
If the owner of a new contact record is changed, an email is sent to that owner stating that they now have ownership of the record.
The message says ‘You now have ownership of contact record No. in quotations/orders/customer name/supplier name’.

Assign to Service (Blindata v4.5.0) and Maintenance Invoicing

There is now functionality for maintenance invoicing.
For example, if you offer a service where maintenance is carried out on an item after it has been sold (eg an awning) after a certain period of time, >then the timing of the work can be stored and an invoice generated.
This is done by entering a contact management record against the order.
This could be entered against an order that has any status from ‘Order Entered’ to ‘Invoice Posted’.
A new action type called ‘Maintenance’ (1) (2) could be created so all maintenance records can be identified.
We will also need to store a monetary value. This could be held in the current ‘Credit Value’ field (3).
There is a new report which will show all records between two action dates that are for maintenance.
This is held in Reports > System Reports and is called ‘Maintenance Records’.
The report shows ‘Action Date’, ‘Customer’, ‘Further Dates’.
An appointment can then be created for the maintenance record by using ‘Assign to Service’ .
This can be done with the existing functionality.
There is a new button on the Contact Management form called ‘Create Invoice’ so an invoice can be created from the contact record.
This will create an order that has a status of ‘Invoice Created’ and will have an invoice number.
There will be a detail line that will be a miscellaneous item – we need to have a stock item called ‘MAINT’ that could be used as the fabric code.
The ‘Further Details’ from the contact record will then be copied into the ‘Invoice Comment’ field in the order detail line.

Contact records for orders are used to record all contact with customers relating to specific orders.
There are a number of system tables that need to be filled in before order contact records can be used effectively.
These tables can be accessed in the Administration > System Tables.

The 'Action Type' = 'Contact Action' system table, 'Type' = 'Contact Record Type' system table, 'Status' = 'Contact Status' system table.

If ‘Ex-Employee’ is true in the Employee record, then the employee is not visible in ‘Ownership’ in the contact management – for quotations and orders.

We now hold email text for contact management emails in Administration > Company Details.
We have removed all fields except blind type, further details and action required from the email body.

There is a new field for ‘Disclaimer Text’ in Administration > Company Details > Email Text.
This appears as a default and then can be changed in the contact management record, if ‘Send Email’ is selected.
This text appears at the end of the email.

The existing email ‘Subject’ field is now displayed regardless of whether ‘Email’ is ticked or not.
There is now a context menu in the contact management form with choices for ‘Columns’, ‘Save Configuration’, and ‘Default Configuration’.
All these fields are now column choices.

This allows you to view contact records for the specific order you are pointing at.
Here you can also add, amend and delete contact records.

Contact Management Reports

It is now possible to see a report of all contact records between dates, by the customer, by blind type and by type.
Also the value.
This report choice is in Reports > System Reports.
We need to enter the start and end order date, select customer (default to ‘All’), select blind type (default to ‘All’), and select Type (default to ‘All’).
There is also a choice to sort and group by any combination of these fields, then print them along with the net value.
Previously the start date and end dates for all these reports were only order dates.
There is now also an option of start and end contact dates.
There is a flag that can be selected called ‘Contact Date’.

Quote Contact Management

This allows you to see all the contact records for the associated quotation.

All Contact Records

This allows you to view all contact records and make amendments.
It is also possible to select reports from here by clicking on the ‘Reports’ button.

Archive Filtered CMR Records

There is now an option to set permission for archiving filtered contact management records.

Order Processing > Global Search

There is a new button on the Global Search form called 'Filtered Contact Management' .
When this button is selected, it displays all of the contact records for the filtered records instead of just the record that is being pointed at.

There is also a button visibility flag for this button.

There is a new button in the order entry form for contact management.
This will do exactly the same as the contact management button on the order amend enquiry screen.

Order Processing > Archive Enquiry > Extract/Move To Archive

There is a new user button called ‘Extract From Archive’.
If this is switched on, then in ‘Archive Enquiry’ a new button will appear called either ‘Move To Archive’ or ‘Extract From Archive’.
If an order has been fully archived using Administration > Archiving, then the button will say ‘Extract From Archive’.
If a user wants to add or edit a contact management record for a fully archived record, then it must be extracted.
If the order has a status of ‘Invoice Posted’ but is not fully archived, the button will say ‘Move To Archive’ and it can be used to fully archive the record.

There is a new parameter called ‘Contact Record For Remake’ which defaults to false.
If it is set to true, when a remake order is created in Remake / Repair / Redespatch, a new contact management record is mandatory.

Purchase Orders

Suppliers > Contact Management

It is now possible to add/amend contact management records to suppliers and purchase orders in the same way as we do for sales orders and customers.
These records are in the same tables as they are held in the existing contact management, but we now distinguish between customer and supplier codes.
This is required because we want to see contacts by the employee – and these could be contact records that apply to customers/sales orders or suppliers/purchase orders.
There is now a ‘Contact Management’ button in the ‘Suppliers Enquiry’ form and also one on the ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’ form.
At the moment only customer contact records will appear in reports – this will be done for suppliers at a later stage.

If the purchase order is bought in then the blind type is available for selection in the contact management.