Home Service vTiger Users’ Guide

[accordions]
[accordion title=”Search Module”]

  • When you first log in, you’ll be taken directly to the search module. This customized search gives you the ability to search addresses and contacts from the same interface, and also displays the Appointments, Quotes, and Work Orders linked to each record. These appear as numbers to the right hand side of the search list. Clicking one of these numbers will open a popup showing details about those records.
  • If you can’t find the contact you’re looking for after searching, use the “Create Contact” button which appears after clicking Search to add a new contact and address into the system.
  • The search defaults to using “And” logic (where each additional search term that is entered narrows the search), but can also be set to use “Or” logic (each additional term expands the search) using the radio buttons at the top of the window. Similarly, the “contains/starts with” radio buttons at the bottom of the search can be used to further refine the search algorithm.

[/accordion]
[accordion title=”Address Module”]

  • Boru’s Home Service vTiger distribution is centered around the Address module – this custom module stores information on Addresses where work will be performed. This is a major change from the standard architecture of vTiger, where addresses are stored as static fields in contacts, accounts, etc.

Contacts List

  • The “Add Contact” button opens a popup window which allows you to search for other contacts in vTiger to link to the current address. If you can’t find the contact you’re looking for, a link appears which leads to a create new contact form. The fields which appear in this form can be configured by the system administrator, so that you can quickly add contacts with all of the information that is relevant to the work they need.

 

  • Additionally, this list contains 2 specialized dropdowns, “Relationship” and “Owner.” “Relationship” is meant to track how this individual is related to the current address (i.e. Resident, Management Co., etc.). “Owner” simply tracks whether or not this contact is an owner of the property. In this way, you can link individuals from property management firms, homeowners, and caretakers alongside one another and keep it clear how each is related to the address.

[/accordion]
[accordion title=”Schedule Map”]

  • On the address detail page, under the contacts section, you’ll find a button next to each contact labeled “Show Schedule Map.” Clicking this button loads our specialized schedule map module, which gives you the ability to quickly plan appointments for an address by providing detailed information for other appointments in the same geographic area and time frame.

  • When you first click “Schedule Map,” a page loads with a calendar and a map, showing the address where the appointment needs to be scheduled as a red flag. The controls at the top right hand corner enable you to set a search radius (around the project address) and search for other appointments in the same area. Appointments appear with differently colored pins depending on which day of the week they’re scheduled for, and have a different 2-character label depending on which user they’re assigned to (each user can configure their own pin label for the schedule map in the settings page).
  • Mousing over an appointment pin shows the basic information for that appointment. Clicking on a pin loads the assigned user’s calendar in the calendar section of the screen, giving you the ability to look at their schedule and find an appropriate time for the new appointment. Once you’ve found an appropriate time, simply click and drag over the appropriate area of the calendar to schedule a new appointment. A dialogue box then appears allowing you to enter the rest of the details for this appointment.
  • Clicking “Save” on this page creates an Appointment and a Work Order linked to the project address. You can then use the Schedule map’s tools to update/edit these records, or navigate to them in vTiger and update them normally.

Products and Services Required

  • Often, companies will have large databases of products in their vTiger system. To speed up the process of adding products in to a work order, the Schedule Map tool uses a “Short List” of products and services. To add a product/service to this list so that it appears in schedule map, simply check the “Add to Short list” checkbox on the product/service detail page. Next time you load the schedule map, it will be available.
  • You can also setup products so that when they’re added to a WO using the schedule map tool, they pull in other associated products and services as well. To configure this, go to the product screen in vTiger and edit the record. You can then add in other products/services on the “Associated Products and Services” list. The next time this product is added to a Work Order using the schedule map tool, its associated products and services will be added as well.

Zip Code Dependent Pricing

  • For each product or service in vTiger, you can configure different pricing based on the zip code of the project address. To set this up, navigate to a product’s detail page and click the “Edit” button at the top-right corner. Scroll down to zip code dependent price block, and click “Add Zip Code.” You can now enter a zip code and a price that should be charged for the current product in this area. In this way, you can adjust your pricing based on location to account for local taxes, additional transportation charges, etc.

  • Note: Zip code dependent pricing currently only works for Work Orders created using the schedule map tool. Products added in to Quotes/Invoices/Work Orders manually will load with the standard pricing.

Schedule Map Settings

  • “Time Range” specifies the hours that will appear on the calendar portion of the schedule map. You can use this to restrict the calendar display to just the hours that you typically schedule appointments for.
  • “Number of Days” specifies the number of days that will appear on the calendar portion of the module (between 1 and 7).
  • “Calendar Resolution” sets the number of subdivisions per hour on the calendar. “Large” divides each hour into 10 minute subdivisions. “Medium” divides hours into 15 minute increments, and “Small” divides hours into 30 minute increments.
  • The “Show Saturdays…” and “Show Sundays…” checkboxes allow you to set whether or not Saturdays and Sundays appear on the schedule map calendar. Many businesses don’t schedule work for these days, and choose to omit them to further streamline the system.
  • “Maximum Products on Short List” lets you set the maximum number of products which can be configured to appear on the schedule map “Short List.” To configure a product or service to appear on this list, simply check “Add to Short List?” = Yes on the product record, and set some value for its “Short List Order.”
  • “Zip Code Calendar Defaults” lets you specify the default User to Select for specific Zip codes. To use this function, simply enter a zip code in the text field, and select a username from the dropdown. When the schedule map is used with addresses in this Zip code, this user will be selected by default.
  • Additionally, there are a number of user settings related to the schedule map which are accessible through users’ preferences pages.
  • In order to add a user to Appointments created using the schedule map, “Show On Work Calendar” or “Show on Technician Calendar” (if using the Tech Cal feature of Home Service VTiger) must be set to “Yes” in these users’ preferences.

  • You can also specify the icon that will appear on these users appointments by setting “Icon for Work Calendar” in user preferences. This is a 2 digit character string that will appear on the Pin Icons in Schedule map when a user is assigned to an appointment.

[/accordion]
[accordion title=”Assign Jobs”]

  • The Assign jobs screen gives users the ability to assign work to technicians which has been scheduled but not assigned. If you’re using the “Work Calendar / Tech Calendar” option in the system, you have the ability, when scheduling appointments, to assign them to a Work Calendar without assigning to a Technician. Assign Jobs gives you the ability to go back later, quickly pull out a filtered list of these appointments, show them on a map, and assign to a Tech.
  • To navigate to the Assign Jobs screen, mouse over the “Tools” header on the menu bar, and click “Assign Jobs.” You can access its settings page by navigating to “Settings” > “Module Manager”, clicking the “Custom Modules” tab at the top of the list, and then clicking the hammer icon next to “Boru Assign Jobs.”
  • When you first load “Assign Jobs,” you’ll see a screen with 2 tabs at the top, “Calendar Filters” and “WO Filters” – this allows you to filter the list of appointments you want to see based on either the Appointment data (Start/End Date, Assigned user) or Work Order data (such as amount of the Work Order, status, etc.). Once you’ve set your filter criteria, click “Search” to return a list of appointments.

[/accordion]
[accordion title=”iPaid/ Mobile App”]

  • When you first log into the mobile app, you’ll be taken to the Work Orders list view. Here you can view any pending jobs. The list view filter defaults to just showing today’s appointments for the logged in user, so your technicians can log right in and be ready to work.

  • Clicking the arrow button to the right of the list shows the job’s location on a map and also retrieves directions to it.
  • Tapping on the job name itself will bring up detailed information for the job, including the address, services required, related information about the Address’ residents/owners, as well as other useful information such as Address details and the original quote. You can freely configure which of the fields from the VTiger Work Orders module appears in the Job screen of the mobile app.
  • From the Job screen, users can navigate to the linked quote by tapping “View Quote” – if there is no quote linked to the work order, this button will appear as “add quote”- tapping it will create a quote from the information in the existing work order.
  • For both the work order and the quote, you can access a streamlined “Client View” of the record. This copy contains some limited information from the record, as well as a digital signature field which clients can use to digitally “sign” the record. After a signature is captured, the system will prompt you to select/enter an email address, and email a copy of the Quote/Work order as a PDF attachment.

[/accordion]
[/accordions]

Interested in learning more? Let us send you an email.

Recent Blogs

Popular Blogs