Received via email...
Hi,
As well as the standard job statuses, we have added some of our own to cover sales related jobs. These include,
- Quote Requested
- Quote Prepared
- Quote Checked – Ready to send
- Quote Sent
- Quote Followed Up
My question is, when we get to the end of the process, we generally have one of a few outcomes to close the job. At the moment we just select the standard “closed” status, as that effectively closes the job.
But I would like to have some different status to allow us to close the jobs in different ways. For example:
- Closed – Sale Completed
- Closed – Quote declined
- Closed – No response
By closing jobs with custom statuses, it will allow us to run reports showing the break-down of successful Vs unsuccessful sales jobs.
How do I create additional statuses, that will also take the job from an ‘open’ status to a ‘closed’ status?
Thanks for sending through this information. Great to see that HelpMaster is being used for sales related work in addition to helpdesk/support.
Job statuses are key components to job workflow. With them you can create many different saved searches, job queues, and they are used in escalations, email managment and web self-service and more.
...however, you've touched on one area of HelpMaster that could be improved somewhat. Currently in order to close a job, you need to use the job status "Closed". No other job status will close a job. It is not possible to create other codes that will close a job, regardless of what they're called.
What we've been contemplating is to introduce new screen that will be used when closing a job. Similar to the action screen, this "Close Job" screen will feature additional drop-down boxes for "Resolution", "Cause code", etc. Additional codes will give the closure of the job meaning and would be able to be reported on.
At the moment, this is all drawn up on a whiteboard in the developer room in conceptual form, so this post is quite timely. We are seeking input into this new feature and how people would like to see it implemented.
A work-around
One possible work-around for this situation is to create and then use "Keywords" that describe the closure/resolution code and then attach these to the job before it is closed. These keywords can be searched on via the Job Finder and also used to filter reports.
Once a job has "Keywords" added to it, you can use the Job Finder to find them. This can be used to filter reports.
Hope this helps...at least to stimulate some ideas.
Look forward to tossing around a few ideas about how we can make a better "Resolve and Close" screen/process for HelpMaster.
Rod