Many months back (see notes accompanying Rel. 1.4.86) we introduced Next-Visit Robo-Calling.  The simple concept: as you clock-out of one job, SD-Mobile asks if you'd like an automated call placed to your next customer, to announce you are on your way (to enable this, your office must turn-on the feature within the SD-CyberOffice program).  When the call-invitation is triggered, you see an interface like this:

It's been a great feature, and folks have loved it (in fact, it's been even better because it's been free; we had a fault in our billing systems and for most of a year have not been charging for the service).  Anyway, it was recently pointed out our trigger strategy (clocking-out from a job triggers an invitation to call the next) provided no mechanism to trigger a call to your first appointment of the day.  And there were other circumstances where the trigger did not help, such as at the end of a lunch period, for example (where, on concluding the prior-preceding job, you likely would have declined the auto-call request).  For such reason, we've now added a mechanism whereby you can trigger the automated call without clocking out from the prior job:

As the image suggests, you just need to have the particular job (on which you wish to send the call) loaded into SD-Mobile's JobDetails page, then click on the button.

With this one, we killed two birds (well, maybe a bird and a half) with one stone.

The first bird of concern (and this one we killed wholly) is putting a backup provision in place so the tech will have at least minimal information if something goes awry, preventing him from receiving his dispatch data through normal/real-time SD-Mobile channels (e.g., he loses his laptop or it fails, SD-MobileLink is not running that morning from the office; or the Rossware server is down).  We'd heard from some users that, to provide an advance backup protecting against such eventualities, they were making it a practice to email each tech his next-day's route information, the day before.  This seemed like an excellent idea, but it also struck us as not a good thing that a bit of manual labor was needed, every day, and day after day, to accomplish this.

The second bird of concern is the longstanding request, from many users, for a facility whereby techs can preview work for at least the next day, if not stretching even further into the future.  This is the bird we half-kill.

Our solution is via this new control in the SD-MobileLink interface:

As the labeling on that control suggests, if you simply check it, SD-MobileLink will automatically email each tech, each evening, with a summary of his appointments roster for the next day.  The summary that's sent closely resembles the same email as can be sent from ServiceDesk via this option (this is the options list that comes up when you click on a tech's name at the top of his list from within the DispatchMap):

When SD-MobileLink's new option is checked, these emails will be auto-sent to each applicable tech (all that are designated within the ServiceDesk Settings form as using SD-Mobile) with the first MobileLink update following 8:00 pm, and as applicable to the next day.  If for any reason it does not happen before midnight (perhaps you did not have MobileLink running) the window of potential sending continues until 8:00 am on the next day (only difference is the emails as sent will now apply to the current day).  If you forget this detail of applicable time-frame for auto-sending, and desire a reminder, you can float your mouse over the new control and a ToolTip will appear explaining these details.

Gradually, we continue to increase customizability of the final output as presented to the customer on a Mobile invoice (aka "ticket").  Our latest responds to reports from servicers who found themselves in hot water with a customer.  Basically, the customer saw part numbers on the invoice, and went online to compare prices there.  Naturally, online prices showed less, and the customer felt cheated.  Based on this , several servicers requested an option that would formulate the ticket in a manner that refrains from showing part numbers at all.  So, that is what we've added.  Appropriately, there's a new checkbox to indicate the purpose:

We've also made the result look rather good.  Instead of just leaving what is otherwise a partnumber space blank (where an empty/designated space would stick out like sore thumb), we instead remove that space entirely, which leaves the ticket looking quite innocent:

In other words, what would otherwise be the partnumber column is simply taken away.  We suspect most people are going to want to use this option.

Suppose, as a manager, you decide this new "Omit-PartNUmbers" option is a really good thing, and you want your techs to be sure to "check" that option whenever they create tickets.  But, well, techs are techs.  You know they're not going to consistently do that.  So (and whether you like it or not) some of your customers are going to continue getting invoices with included part numbers.

Yes, we knew that would be a problem, for a parallel already had been observed with some prior-existing ticket-formatting options (in particular, omitting pricing on parts).  So, we've done some added engineering to make it so, as the manager, you may control which of these checkboxes are automatically checked for the tech when he opens his SD-Mobile Print page (e.g., what will be the default):

You'll notice one of the default setting checkboxes (as shown above) is not new (the one indicating an intent to hide "All $ but total").  Though labeled more simply now, that's essentially the same checkbox as was added with Ver. 1.4.92 (see notes with that release), though it was then labeled "default to 'Hide Constituent Amounts'."   As we've added more (and finer) "hide" options, that old/original terminology became too long and vague, so it's been replaced as per present design.