Control Settings

Service Management Control (11.24) and Call Management Control (11.1.24) affect call creation, call tracking, escalations, and call queue management. This section discusses some settings in these functions that are especially important.

See Control Programs for complete descriptions of control program settings.

Service Management Control determines whether you can take calls only for items in the installed base, for any item defined in the item master, or for any item at all.

• Set Items In Installed Base to Yes to restrict the calls you take to items in the installed base. Setting this field to No enables you to take calls for any item.

• Items Must Exist determines whether you can take calls only for items that exist in your item master. This setting is generally used to restrict service to items you manufacture and sell.

See Restricting Support to the Installed Base.

If you are using warranties or contracts, most items referenced on calls already have terms and conditions of coverage. If you are not using these sources of coverage or if not all items you service are covered, specify a service type to determine basic coverage conditions required by the call.

Specify the default service type in Call Management Control (11.1.24). It sets the response time, priority, and coverage hours for items that have no coverage.

The service type in the control program must be a contract type defined with Contract Type Maintenance. Normally, this contract type is used when you bill for time and materials and provides no coverage. If any coverage is provided on this service type, create it with an associated charge code of Covered.

See Charge and Revenue Management for more information on charge codes.

Every call must reference a valid end user, and every end user must be attached to a valid customer. Some service organizations regularly receive calls from end users who are not already registered in the installed base. This is typical for products sold through retail outlets when the customer does not contact you unless something goes wrong.

Since Call Maintenance is often used in an interactive mode, you can take calls for unknown end users without having to set up a valid customer record. You first create a dummy customer in Customer Create and Customer Data Maintenance. Then you specify this customer number in the Temporary Customer field in Call Management Control.

Now, when you take a call, leave End User blank. A pop-up window enables you to create a new end user. By default, this end user is associated with the temporary customer. In this way, the call is taken smoothly and a record established.

Note: In order to create an end user as part of Call Maintenance, you must have security permission to the End User Create (27.20.3.1) activity.

Whether you can record activity against this call or close it depends on the Call Activity with Temp field in Call Management Control. If you do not want activity recorded against the temporary customer, set this field to No.

In this case, create a customer for the end user in Customer Create and then add the caller as an end user of this customer, using End User Create. Finally, modify the call to reference the valid end user.

Two approaches can be used to assign engineers in Call Maintenance, represented by two fields in Call Management Control.

• Schedule New Calls. If Yes, the Schedule field defaults to Yes in Call Maintenance, initiating the engineer scheduling sequence. This sequence follows a set of rules in ranking potential engineers and enables you to select one or more to be assigned to the call.

• Assign Primary Engineer. Rather than scheduling engineers, you can designate an engineer who typically works on an end user’s items. If Assign Primary Engineer is Yes, the system assigns, by default, the end user’s primary engineer to new calls. Assign a primary engineer to the end user in End User Data Maintenance.

If both these fields are Yes in Call Maintenance, the system assigns the primary engineer and you can assign additional engineers. Note, however, that if you select the primary engineer again, the system creates two engineer transaction records for the primary engineer, each with an estimated number of hours the system considers part of the engineer load for scheduling purposes.

If you use engineer scheduling, you probably also want to set Call Time Window to Yes in Call Management Control. When this field is Yes, the Travel and Estimated Time window appears in Call Maintenance, enabling you to enter an estimated time for the engineer. If this window does not display, the system uses the default estimated times for the appropriate work code in Call Management Control.

The estimated call length is important, because it is used to calculate engineer availability during call scheduling if Display by Calls is No in Engineer Schedule Control.