Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights, New on September 29th, 2010
Hi there,
I’m pleased to announce that the newest version of Business Central Manager (1.7.2) increases the maximum quota for email storage from 4Gb to 16Gb. That’s more than twice as much as Gmail and more than 3 times as much as Hotmail!
This provides administrators with a method of changing work processes. A small file size limit will encourage employees to post files on the local file server, and a large limit will allow users to store a copy of a file from a remote location, just to name two examples.
This release is out, so if you haven’t installed it, what are you waiting for? Your email inbox will thank you.
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights, New on September 28th, 2010
Hi everyone,
After the release of Business Central Manager 1.7.2, I noticed that the amount of spam I receive suddenly decreased. I looked into it, and found that SUTUS has included a 30-day trial of their new Business Central Email Security suite with this release.
It’s simple to use and administrate, as it runs in the background, and any changes are automatically applied to all users. When there are updates, they are made automatically, thus keeping you safe from new threats. Log in to your BC200 using your Administrator password, and select ‘Email Service.’ Choose the ‘Email Security’ tab, and then ‘Edit Settings’ to set it all up.
The Business Central Email Security suite is sold as a one-year license, and there are discounts available depending on the number of users you have.
Click this link to go to the purchase page.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights, New on September 15th, 2010
Hi everyone,
When you’re not at work, you post a ‘closed’ sign on the door, right? It’s just good manners, and smart business sense as well. So why do so many companies not do the equivalent for their phone or email services?
Expanding on last week’s post about Auto Attendants, let’s take a look at how the workspace availability (also called ‘presence’) can help out the car dealership. I mentioned that they could set up one auto attendant and call flow combination for when they are open and a different one for when they are closed. We can manually or automatically switch between the two call flows, so let’s find out how.
Using your administrator password, log in to your BC200, and click on the ‘Manage Workspaces’ tab on the left. Then highlight the workspace you want to edit, select ‘Edit Properties,’ and then click on the ‘Availability’ tab. Choose a day by clicking on it, and then you can change the availability schedules. Changing the call flow or email services can be selected under the availability schedule.
This is the Parts department of the car dealership from last week. They are available on a varying schedule – Monday to Thursdays 7:00 to 3:00, Friday from 7:00 to 1:00, and a half-day on Saturday. If a call comes in outside of these times, it will follow the ‘Unavailable’ call flow.
That’s not all, though. This feature is available for all workspaces, personal and shared, and they can all follow different schedules. For example, one of their sales team, Dustin, recently went on a holiday, and he wanted his customers to be handled correctly. He manually set his workspace to ‘unavailable,’ and then set his account to do the following:
This is a screenshot of Dustin’s auto-reply setup. Of course, he can change the message to say what he wants it to!
It actually took less time for him to set up his availability schedule than it did for me to write this and grab the screenshots, and I’m sure that you’ll be able to do it just as quickly. He was able to do these changes without getting an administrator, because the BC200 lets people change aspects of their own workspace as well as details of any shared workspaces they are members of.
If you need help, or just want to learn all the details, just search for ‘availability’ in the BC200′s Help section. The BC200 does synchronize itself automatically with internet time servers, so it will always have the correct time.
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Feature Highlights, New on September 9th, 2010
It’s been a while, but I have some good news. SUTUS has recently released their newest software version, and I’m pleased to tell you about part of it – configurable Auto Attendants. (Auto Attendants are sometimes called IVRs – Interactive Voice Response.) I’ve been involved with testing this, and this will definitely make it easier for your customers to reach the departments they want.
There are four differences. Now, we can:
Let’s go under the hood. Log in to your BC200 with your administrator password. From the list on the left, select Call Routing. From there, select the Auto Attendants tab, and you’re in. You can see which auto-attendants are assigned, who is using them, and, by clicking on one of them, you can see what keys are mapped to which actions.
I was involved with setting this up and testing it. It’s a pretty good demonstration of how your BC200 can route customers’ calls more efficiently.
Here’s an example: At our local car dealership, they had a full-time receptionist to answer and connect their phone calls. Customers complained of lengthy hold times, and the receptionist was under stress trying to keep up with the volume of calls! A quick survey showed that only a few calls were for specific people, as most of the calls were people looking to speak with someone in either the sales or the parts departments. They decided to filter these calls out with an auto attendant before the BC200 rings a Reception phone, and let the receptionist deal with the calls for specific people.
Their receptionist recorded an auto attendant greeting describing the options for callers. They then assigned the keys as follows:
’1′ key connects to the Sales Dept. workspace
’2′ key connects to the Parts Dept. workspace
’3′ key connects to the Reception workspace
Now the callers can bypass the receptionist, thus freeing them up to speak to people who need guidance. My Managing Call Flows blog article has some tips that might be helpful when setting this up.
They also created a second auto attendant to use when the dealership was closed, which was set up on the Reception Availability tab. This allowed them to have another message and to add the option 9 to reach off-hours support. Before, all off-hours callers had to leave messages with Reception, and she would transcribe and email those messages to their intended recipients when she arrived in the morning. How tedious! Now, using the same key assignments as above, callers can leave a voicemail with a specific department. They also added ’9′, and they assigned it to call (123) 456-7890, which is their after-hours emergency contact number. Calls that come to the Reception workspace are sent to the appropriate auto attendant depending on the time of day.
Before multiple auto attendants, callers were subject to lengthy hold times even before they spoke to the receptionist, the receptionist was stressed out and unable to keep up with the number of calls, and customers were unhappy. By setting multiple auto attendants, customers can reach the people they want more efficiently, and the receptionist can concentrate on calls for specific people, rather than those for general departments.
This is included in the version 1.7.2 release of the Business Central software. If you’d like more information, just search for ‘Attendant’ in Business Central Manager’s Help.
-Dave.
Posted by sutusdave in Uncategorized on September 1st, 2010
Hi everyone,
It’s been a while, but I’m back to writing on more regular basis. There are many changes and features in the newest software version, and we have a lot to talk about! Lets get started!
-Dave.