Category Archives: Salesforce

End-of-year update 2014

As the year 2014 is closing we have released a substantial update for portatour® on our servers and updated releases of our integrations.

More information is available in these three news items:

We wish all portatour®-users a merry Christmas and a successful new year 2015.

Note: Between 23rd December 2014 and 6th January 2015 the majority of our team is on vacation and on stand-by-duty. Please bear with us that within this period it may take longer to answer emails.  

Convert call suggestions to appointments

The latest update offers a valuable feature addition for those who arrange their appointments in advance by calling the customer on the phone: converting a call suggestion into an appointment with a click. Should the suggested call be suitable for the customer, just convert it into an appointment with the click of a button. Updating the schedule is not necessary anymore. The appointment shows up in the schedule immediately. Converting a suggested call into an appointment works in three places in portatour®:

  • In the schedule (by clicking on the box in the call entry to the right)
  • On the customer detail page (in section “Next Call” by clicking the button)
  • In the calendar (by clicking on the suggested call)

Upon converting the suggestion you decide whether the appointment should be exactly at the suggested time or “a flexible appointment on the day“. We recommend using flexible appointments to give portatour® more room for optimization and to be able to react to unforeseen changes.

P.S. Converting suggested calls into appointments als works directly in Salesforce. As a prerequisite, install the latest release (download for Salesforce).

Improvements to portatour Report

By popular demand portatour® Report has been improved in four ways with the latest release:

  • Weekly delivery as alternative to daily: For those who find daily delivery via e-mail too frequently, switching to weekly delivery is now possible. To configure the e-mail addresses of recipients, there are now two text-fields in the reporting configuration: one for daily delivery, one for weekly delivery. The weekly report is generated and distributed on Sundays and includes – as usual – a review of the last week.
  • Request delivery via webpage instead of email: When manually requesting a report, you can now chose: either delivery via email or viewing the report immediately on a webpage. In the latter case you don’t have to wait anymore until the report is delivered into your mailbox.
  • Request reports from within user management: Should you have equipped multiple employees of your company with portatour®, you can – as Administrator or Supervisor – request reports directly from the user management options with a single click.
  • Automatic download of reports via API: This is good news for companies who are using the portatour® API: Starting now, portatour® Reports can be requested using the API in an automated fashion and can be archived directly in your file-system as HTML files.

P.S.: Should you be using portatour® in combination with Salesforce or Dynamics CRM, update to the newest release (download for Salesforce, download for Dynamics CRM) before you can setup weekly delivery. Then, set the delivery configuration directly in the portatour® settings in Salesforce, Dynamics CRM, or Connector.

New Authorization Level: Supervisor

Should your company have two or more user licenses, then so far there were two authorization levels: User and Administrator.

Since the latest update there is another level available: the Supervisor.

Like the Administrator, the Supervisor can Log in as other users with a click.Beyond this, other administrative features are not available to the Supervisor.

The Supervisor authorization level is thus especially suited for back-office and inside-sales staff who support the field reps when route-planning or for managers of field reps.

P.S.: Should you be using portatour® in combination with Salesforce or Dynamics CRM, update to the newest release (download for Salesforce, download for Dynamics CRM). Then, set the authorization level of a user of portatour® Anywhere directly in the portatour® settings in your CRM.

New “Multi Selection” custom field

Back in November 2013 we introduced the data type “Selection” (drop-down-list) to the custom fields (see our blog post). When creating a field of this kind, you or your administrator define a list of possible values. One of the values can be selected.

After hearing repeated requests from the portatour® community we added an extended form of selection: the Multi Selection. This new data type allows selecting multiple values from a list:

Multiselection

Tip: On Windows, hold the ctrl-key when clicking to select multiple elements.

P.S. Users of Salesforce must upgrade to the newest version of portatour® for Salesforce to use the Salesforce “Multi-Select Picklist field” as custom field for portatour® Anywhere. Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not support multi-select fields. 

File- and photo-upload directly within portatour® Anywhere

Do you want to add current photos to your call reports? Or do you want to upload Excel-Files or PDF documents to your customers? This is now possible directly within portatour® Anywhere.

Go to Options and create a custom field with type External file or External files. File uploads can be configured for customers, call reports, and appointments. If you don’t see the option for custom fields, it may be necessary to contact your administrator to set it up. Once configured, the file upload is visible at the respective input form, for example at the call report:

Report with File Upload

The uploaded files are not stored on our portatour® servers but on a server provided by you. The file server must support the WebDAV protocol and must be reachable via the internet. portatour® connects using an encrypted SSL-connection and will authenticate itself via a username and password. This is configured when setting up the custom field:

 

Userdefined Field External Files

Tip: There is a multitude of companies providing cloud-storage with WebDAV support on the internet. If you don’t want to host your own server, cloud-storage providers are a great option for both individuals and large enterprises and typically allow you to set up an account within minutes. Search for “cloud storage WebDAV” or “online storage WebDAV” to find a provider. Verify that WebDAV is supported before making your choice.

Technical details for uploading files:

  • The maximum size is 10MB per file.
  • The files are automatically organized within sub-folders. Per user and day, a new folder is created. File-names are automatically created and contain both the customer name and a unique ID.
  • If you export call reports as Excel or CSV files and uploads have been added to these call reports, the folder and name of the file will be contained in the exported call report. The same applies when exporting customers or appointments.
  • Custom fields with type “External file” support uploading exactly one file whereas “External files” supports multiple files. 
  • On iPhone and iPad, only photo-upload is supported, no other file types can be uploaded. This is a restriction set by Apple.
  • Handle files on the WebDAV-server with care. If files are moved, deleted or renamed on the server, portatour® will not find them anymore.

Special considerations for users of Salesforce and Dynamics CRM:

  • Uploaded files are stored on a WebDAV-server and not within Salesforce or Dynamics CRM. The location of uploaded files will be written into a text-field configured within Salesforce or Dynamics CRM.
  • Install the latest release of portatour® for Salesforce or Dynamics CRM.
  • To setup file upload, first a (hidden) text-field has to be added to the entity (account, event, …). The text-field must be at least 255 characters long. To upload multiple files, it must be a multi-line field. Then this text-field must be configured as custom field for portatour® Anywhere, setting the field-type to either “External file” or “External files”.

portatour® meets geomarketing: map with individual symbols and colors

True to the proverb: “a picture is worth a thousand words”, we have extended portatour® by two features for improved visualization of customers on the map.

Individual customer symbols

To better identify customers on the map, you assign meaningful symbols to your clients. This way you see at a glance, for example, the revenue potential of the customer or the industry.

Landkarte mit Kundensymbolen

To set the symbol, open the customer, click on the pencil above the address, and then click the new menu item “Symbol”. A text box will appear allowing you to enter any 1-2 characters. Click “Show symbol table…” for a choice of different symbols.

Edit Customer Symbol

Tip: Enable the “Selection Mode” to select multiple customers. This option can be found below the customer list. Then click “Edit Selected” to set the same symbol for multiple customers.

Consequently, the client symbol appears not only on the map, but at all places in portatour® where the customer name is shown, for example in the schedule, in the customer list or in the portatour® report.

Technical background information: portatour® uses the Unicode character standard to display and store symbols. Unicode is also used for the “smileys” appearring at many places in the internet. The appearance of the symbols varies depending on the device, operating system, installed fonts and browsers.

Note for Outlook and Salesforce-users: Setting the symbol is also possible in Outlook and Salesforce. Go to the customer call settings of a customer, you find the symbol at the bottom.

Color of a customer on the map

So far there was only one criterion for the coloring of the customers on the map: the current call urgency shown in the traffic-light colors red/yellow/green.

Now it becomes colorful: in the map view, click on option-symbol (“cogwheel”) and you can set the coloring yourself. Choose from both the built-in portatour® fields – call interval, call duration, etc. – as well as from custom fields that you can create yourself. For example, revenue or industry can be used.

portatour® automatically takes care of grouping and coloring on basis of the defined criterion. On the bottom-right of the map you will find the map legend icon. Click it to see the color mapping.

Map with Turnover

The call urgency of a customer is still visible: the lower part of the customer-marker on the map shows – as always – the urgency via a red / yellow / green color indicator.

 

We wish you a productive time using these new features and are looking forward to
your feedback, which you can send us to feedback@portatour.com .

P.S.: Users of portatour® for Outlook, Salesforce, Dynamics CRM or Connector must first install the latest version of portatour® to access the new functionality. Click the download-link or contact your administrator.

New Maps “Summer 2014”

We have just updated the map data for Australia and Europe.

Changes in the road network may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change, when updating the schedule for the next time.

Two new settings for fine-tuning

We added two new parameters to portatour® that help you fine-tune the generated routes to your specific needs even better:

Adherence to business hours for the entire duration of the call

So far portatour® cared that the start of the customer call is within the business hours of the customer – i.e. you start the call just in time before they close. portatour® has been assuming your call can last beyond business hours.

This can be problematic if your visits have a long duration. Then, there is a high risk that your visit stretches far beyond the business hours.

With the new setting “Adherence to business hours” in Options > Call Parameters > Scheduling Parameters you can define how portatour® should treat the business hours. Choose from the previous behavior (only the “Start of call” has to be within business hours) or the new behavior: the “Entire call” has to be within the business hours.

Note that choosing “Entire call” will leave less time for customer calls and therefore fewer calls will be scheduled. Especially lunch breaks of customers reduce the available time for calls significantly.

Preferred adherence to the call interval for important customers

As a user of portatour® you know that you can control how often a customer should be scheduled for a call by changing the call interval. For example, a customer with an interval of 30 days will be scheduled to be visited regularly once a month.

This works well if your territory is “properly sized” – i.e. it is realistic to visit all your customers within the desired call interval under consideration of your working time and travel time.

In case your area is oversized – that is, you have too many customers or too short call intervals – then it will be not possible to comply with the configured call intervals of the customers. The calls will take place late. However, portatour® adheres to the relations, i.e. a 30-day customer will still be visited twice as often as a 60-day customer, just not every 30 days, but later.

With the new setting “Interval adherence” in the Scheduling parameters of a customer you can switch important customers from “Normal” to “Preferred“. portatour® automatically takes care that for customers with a preferred interval adherence, exceeding the call interval is avoided – even if your territory is oversized. This is managed by portatour® by adding “internal reservations” for these customers once the call interval has been reached or exceeded.

Two important notes on this:

  • Use sparingly! Set the “preferred interval adherence” only for your most important customers where you can not tolerate delaying the call. As a rule of thumb, we recommend 20% of your periodically visited customers at maximum. If you prefer too many customers, the desired effect is lost because too many reservations can’t be included in the schedule. Additionally, the driving distance optimization suffers.
  • Make sure that your territory is properly sized. Request a portatour® report and evaluate it. In section “Structure of customers” under heading “Classification of my customers per call interval” you find the “Necessary calls per day to satisfy call interval”. If this value does not correspond to reality, adjust the number of customers or the call intervals.

p.s.: Users of portatour® for Outlook, Salesforce, Dynamics CRM or Connector must first install the latest version of portatour® to get the two new settings (click the links for the download area). If necessary, contact your administrator. 

New Maps 2014

We updated the map data for North America (USA, Canada, Mexico) on 26th May 2014 (today).

Changes in the road network may affect driving times between customers, so we recalculated them for you in portatour®. Some users might notice the change, when updating the schedule for the next time.