Contact functionality within eAutomate allows you to store the information of the people that your company interacts with on a regular basis. This post goes over some basics on setting up contacts, where they are used in eAutomate and some tips for best practice.
Creating New Contacts Where do you use Contacts? Tips
Creating New Contacts
You can create contact records by going to the contacts list and choosing New (People -- Contacts) or you can create the contact record from within any record where you can add a contact.
1. Under People Menu:
Go to People and choose Contacts
Click on New to create a new contact
2. From within eAutomate transaction:
Anywhere that you can link a contact, you can also create a new contact record. From the drop-down where you add the contact, click on the down arrow (1) and then select New from the menu (2):
Either way will open a new window to create a new contact:
**If you create a new record from within an equipment or customer record, the customer information for address and the phone will be filled in by default.
Required fields to complete on the Profile tab of the contact record:
- Number: The system will create a default number, or you can enter a specific record number. The default numbering system is first name first letter, last name first letter, incremental number.
- Preferred full name: This line will automatically fill in when you enter the first and last names.
- Preferred contact method: Set the preferred method of contacting the contact. Depending on the option that you select, eAutomate will verify that the needed information is on the contact record. For example, if you selected Email as the preferred method of contact, eAutomate verifies you have entered an appropriate email address. Phone and fax are verified by eAutomate as well.
Note: This method of contact is used by eAutomate as your method for automated meter reading requests.
Other fields to complete:
- Phone 1: Contact phone number (XXX-XXX-XXX) - don't forget the area code
- Email: Contact email
- Web password: This field contains the password for access to eInfo. Once entered, it will show as **
- Include meter instructions in auto meter requests: Check this box if you would like to include the instructions on how to find the meter; these are set on the model record, in the emails that go out for automated meter requests.
- Include equipment locations remarks in all communications: Check this box to have the equipment location remarks added to invoices or meter reading requests. For example, when entering supply orders, the remarks associated with the equipment are included on the packing list, sales invoice, and sales order when associated with this contact and this box is checked.
Customers Tab
On the Customers tab, link the customers that this contact is associated with.
***It's very important that you are associating the contact with the parent customer on this tab!! Based on how the various filters work in the areas of eAutomate that you can add contacts in, if you have the contact record associated to a child location, the contact may not be visible in the drop-down list. This can lead to duplicate contacts being created.***
Where do you use contacts?
You can create contacts for:
- Equipment contact
- Decision making contact
- Meter reading contact
- Shipping contact
- Service contract contact
- Accounts Receivable contact
The equipment contact, decision making contact, meter reading contact and shipping contact can all be set on the equipment record, on the Billing/Contact tab:
(1) Contacts set as the equipment contact will default as the contact on new service calls created.
(2) Decision making contact for service equipment.
(3) Contacts set as the meter reading contact will be used as the contact to send automated meter reading emails.
(4) Contacts set as the shipping contact will pull through to the sales order as the shipping contact.
(5) The contract contact can be set on the service contract, on the Billing/Contact tab:
(6) The Accounts Receivable contact is set on the customer record, on the Contacts tab:
You can also set the equipment contact, decision-maker contact, meter reading contact and equipment shipping contacts on the customer record. After any of these contacts are set here, new equipment created for the customer will have these contact defaults.
Tips
The same contact record can be used for multiple roles; each area that you can set a contact pulls from the same list of contact records.
Filters:
Each area within eAutomate where you can add contacts has a filter to show only a certain set of contacts, or you can change this filter to No and show the entire contact list.
On the equipment record, this filter is set to only show contacts related to the customer, so the drop-down list of contacts will only be those that are associated with the customer number used on the equipment record.
The ordered by drop-down on sales orders can be filtered either just to customer contacts or to customer contacts or unassociated contacts.
The caller contact drop-down on service calls is filtered by default to customer and location customers.
Due to the different filters in place throughout the software, it's important that you are correctly linking the contacts to the main customer number so that the contacts are visible throughout the software.
Alerts:
ID479 - Deactivate Contact Records: This alert will mark contact records as inactive that meet the criteria of the alert. More details on this alert here.
ID735 - Duplicate Contact Records: This alert checks for contact records that may be duplicated. More details on this alert here.
ID433 - De-Dupe App: This app helps merge duplicate contacts together. More on this process here.
ID444 - List of contacts created today: This alert sends a list of contact records created today, so that you can review internally and verify that contacts are set correctly. More details on this alert here.
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