Entering call reports offline

13. November 2014

As announced in our previous news item “using portatour® offline“, our developers extended portatour® further and you can now enter call reports offline.

If you haven’t done so already, enable offline-mode in the portatour® Anywhere Options: go to Program Settings and set the Internet Connection to “Refresh Offline Data“.

In the new version, you will find the buttons “Called Now” and “Missed” on the customer detail page even when you are offline:

Customer-LastCall

Click these buttons as usual to document your calls, including writing your call reports. Your changes are locally buffered on your device, indicated by a red line to the left:

Customer-LastReportOffline

When your internet connection comes back and you change to online-mode, the data will be automatically sent to the portatour® server. You will get a notification during and after the upload.

Good to know:

For appointments, the buttons “Took place” and “Missed” are now also available in offline-mode.
The changes buffered on your device will remain stored even if you restart your device or quit your browser. Nevertheless we recommend to upload changes timely.
In offline-mode, one call report can be recorded per customer. By clicking on the pen-icon, it can be edited anytime before uploading it.
Should there be an error during upload, the respective call report will be shown to you together with the error message. Fix erroneous data and save the report.
Attaching files to call reports is not possible in offline-mode. Add missing files to call reports when you are online again.

Using portatour® offline

9. October 2014

Being in the field, you know the situation: there are places without mobile internet access. Still we want you to be able to access portatour® everywhere. This is why we are happy to announce that the newest version of portatour® Anywhere features an offline-mode. It is available on our servers starting today.

How to enable the offline-mode

The offline-functionality is disabled by default. To enable it, go to Options > Program Settings, set Internet Connection to Refresh offline data. Press Save.

From then on, your current schedule together with contained appointments and customers will be downloaded on your device automatically in the background.

Switching to the offline-mode

Should your device lose the mobile data connection, portatour® will show the following message:

Press Reload if the connection did come back and you want portatour® to retry loading the data. Chose Offline-Mode when there is no mobile internet access.

Using the offline-mode

When you are in the offline-mode, you will see the last schedule downloaded from portatour® and stored as offline copy on your device.

You also have access to all appointments and customer details listed in the schedule. As usually, just scroll down and click on the line for which you want to see the data. The yellow header shows when the data has been retrieved. Schedule, customers, and appointments are in read-only mode when offline. To edit data, you currently still have to be online. Downloading this data is done automatically in the background every time portatour® detects that the schedule has been updated. For example, after calculating a new schedule. You don’t have to care about synchronization.

Switching back to online-mode

Once your device has established a data connection again, click on the top-right button “Offline” to leave the offline-mode. portatour® will try to reconnect to the server and if the connection can be established, you will be taken back to the online version of the schedule. Should the connection fail, the message “No internet connection” as described above will appear.

Feedback and next steps

We welcome feedback! Especially now, since this is the first version of the offline-mode. Should you notice problems, please report them. Write to feedback@portatour.com. Our programmers are working hard to develop and extend the offline functionality. Next on our list is entering call reports offline. Which offline feature would you like to see next? Write to us at feedback@portatour.com.

Technical details about the offline-mode

And now to the fine-print… 🙂

The automatic data download increases your data transfer volume. To keep this additional load down to a minimum, customer and appointment data are kept for a minimum of 12 hours on your device. They are “cached” and will not be downloaded every time. This may cause that you do not see the latest state of an appointment or customer when being offline. The schedule is not affected by this restriction, it will be downloaded every time you recalculate it.
Should you use the portatour® Android App and enable the offline mode, first ensure that the newest version 0.9.8 (Beta) or later is installed on your device.
Only for administrators: Should you “log in as another user”, no offline data will be cached on your device, even when offline-mode is enabled for that user

Showing call reports in your calendar

23. September 2014

With today’s software update the calendar view of portatour® Anywhere received an additional feature: showing past call reports.

The call reports are distinguished by their grey color. In above example, call reports are shown on Monday and Tuesday. Click on the call report to edit the call report or to open the respective customer.

To configure what data should be shown in the calendar and for what time period, click on the cogwheel to the top-right of the calendar. There you also find the new Daily View.

By setting the view to “Plan”, only the planned schedule and appointments are shown. Setting it to “Reports” only shows call reports. The option “Both” shows the planned schedule with appointments and the call reports. In the latter mode, only call reports will be shown for past days, even if there are past appointments or scheduled visits. This is to tidy up the calendar.

New “Multi Selection” custom field

11. September 2014

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:

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

29. August 2014

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:

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:

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

30. July 2014

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.

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.

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.

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.

Data analysis in Excel 2013: new OData-API opens up new reporting possibilities

16. July 2014

Most computer users are familiar with Microsoft Excel. Very few know about “PowerPivot” – an AddOn to Excel 2013 offering various possibilities to analyse and visualize large amounts of data.

Do you want to know, how often which customer was visited during a certain period? How the effective visit count correlates with the revenue of a customer? How the amount of total visits compares to the amount of visits with a sale? And how these figures evolve over the course of time? These are just four out of many possible questions on which you now can get an answer based on PowerPivot in combination with portatour®.

Your organization has two or more portatour® users? You are portatour® administrator? You have Excel 2013 installed on your computer? Then you are all set to enjoy the new OData Excel interface. With the press of a button all your data (customers, appointments, and reports) of all your users can be downloaded into Excel to be analyzed in PowerPivot. Excel Version 2013 is required – older versions are not supported. Setup instructions for administrators can be found in portatour® Anywhere menu at Options > Excel Data Analysis.

Note: Using pivot tables and charts in Excel requires experience in data analysis. If this is new to you, ask your IT department or your IT support. For self-studying, blog posts, video tutorials, and books can be found. Start by searching in Google, YouTube or Amazon for “Excel Power Pivot”. Please understand that we can not provide support for Microsoft Excel.

We wish you great success and new insights into your data. We are looking forward to your feedback which you can send to feedback@portatour.com

Extended data-import & export

16. July 2014

Almost 6 months ago, we added an interface that allows automated data import & export (see our news post). Since then, we received a lot of positive feedback from users – at the same time we received feature requests. We have taken these up and released a first major expansion of the portatour® import & export interface.

Importing data including deletion

When importing customers – both through the user interface or via the API – the new import mode “update including deletion” deletes all those customers from the portatour® database that no longer exist in the import file. Thus, it has become easier to synchronize the state in portatour® with the state of your CRM/ERP system. As usual, before each import process, a restore point is automatically created to avoid data loss. Customers added manually by the user to “my places” are never automatically deleted.

Mass updating of individual customer fields simplified

Until now, if you wanted to mass-update one field of all your customers (for instance, the annual revenue), it was necessary to provide all required fields in the import-file. Especially the address fields were needed to eventually create new customers.

Now only one key field is required and the field with the new data values. For example: the customer number (key field) and the field to update (annual revenue) are enough to import data. If the key is not found in the portatour® database of the user, the row is ignored.

Exporting data of all users in one file via API

Exporting data (customers, appointments, reports) via API was only supported on a per-user basis. This restriction has fallen. Omit the parameter “userEmail” to get the data of all users as a single file. The file contains additional columns to identify the corresponding user. Note that the amount of data grows with the number of users and the download may take several minutes to complete.

New Maps “Summer 2014”

25. June 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

16. June 2014

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.