June 2011 - Posts

• Keep your friend’s close and your contacts closer!

  As some of you may have already noticed the way contacts are initially added in Method has changed. Previously, when a customer was added through Method or QuickBooks, Method would create two entries in the Contacts tables for that customer.  One for ‘Contact' and the other for ‘Alt Contact' from QuickBooks.  This meant that for every customer entered there would be two contacts automatically added. Now, if there is no ‘Alt Contact' Method just adds one contact in the Contacts table for the customer thus eliminating the ‘Alt Contact'. This makes the contacts list look a lot cleaner . You will also notice an additional field in the Contacts table for ‘Alt Phone'. In many cases the ‘Alt Phone' is actually related to the main contact for example, a cell number or a home number. Each contact will now have a ‘Phone' and an ‘Alt Phone', the ‘Alt Phone' for the main contact will be the ‘Alt Phone' entered when the customer was created.   -Michael  Posted Jun 15 2011, 10:00 AM by Method_Michael with no comments

• Intuit Anywhere announced, Method to sync with QB Online

  It was nice to wake up this morning to see Method’s name splashed on ZDNet, and Intuit’s press releases.  Today Intuit announced a new way of integrating with QuickBooks, called Intuit Anywhere.  For QuickBooks users it’s a great way to connect your favorite web apps all in one place. It’s also got a cool little blue-dot widget that has a menu listing all your Intuit Anywhere apps.  Just click the blue-dot, choose your app, and you are automatically signed into that app.   Alex Barnett from Intuit demoed Method CRM to the press, which was fun to watch on YouTube (we’re at about the 3:50 through to the 5:30 mark of the video). I was also quoted in the Intuit press release, which was nice.  Rather than giving a self-serving quote glowing about all the great things Method does, I instead gave a quote about what I think Intuit Anywhere will do for QuickBooks users - hey.....call me the geek and not the PR pro....but I really think this will be a big hit for QuickBooks users - and in our case, Method Solution Providers. We began working with Intuit on this stealth project in early April, as a way for Method to work with QuickBooks Online.  I personally have been very involved on this project, and I am glad that the cat is out the bag so that we can now talk more freely about it.   While I have been managing the syncing portion, Danny has been working on a new version of Method CRM, which we highlighted to a packed room of Method Solution Providers at Scaling New Heights a couple weeks ago.  The response was outstanding - with lots of “wows”, “oohhhhs”, “that is so clean!”, clapping and THREE standing ovations!  Okay.....the standing-o’s may not have happened - but that’s because people were out too late the night before and were 'tired'. The new CRM version is being finished off this month and will be available for both QuickBooks Desktop, and for QuickBooks Online in early July.  I’ll post more news when I have it! Paul   Posted Jun 07 2011, 11:08 AM by Method_Paul with 6 comment(s)

• New Feature: SMS Reminders

  We previewed a great new feature at the Scaling New Heights conference last week called "Reminders", and I'm happy to announce this is now live in all Method accounts.  If you turn Reminders on in your account, Method will send you an email 15 minutes before your activity is due, along with a link that takes you straight into that activity in Method. What's better, you can also have reminders sent to your mobile phone as an SMS text message, which logs you in directly to the new mobile activity screen in Method Mobile. How to turn reminders on By default, as of today, new Method accounts have Reminders turned on - but all existing Method accounts have Reminders turned off.  To turn Reminders on or off, do the following: Go to Customize > Tables / Fields. Find the Activity table, and click the Edit Table link. Place a check in the Email me reminders for records in this table before they are due checkbox. Click Save & Close.   How to turn reminders on and off per user Note: you must turn this feature on for the account first, otherwise these settings will be ignored (see "How to turn reminders on" above) Go to Customize > Users. Click Edit beside the user you want to change Reminder settings for. Advance to step 3 of 10 (yes there are more exciting steps in Customize > Users now....that's another blog post!). Place a check in the Send email reminders before they are due checkbox.  This will deliver them a regular email reminder. Place a check in the Send SMS alerts before they are due checkbox. This will send a text message to their mobile phone. Type their mobile phone number in (all 10 digits in North America). Choose your wireless provider from the list. Click Finish.   How to customize the format of what gets sent There are a bunch of options you can set to customize how your Reminders are sent. Go To Customize > Tables / Fields. Find the Activity table, and click the Edit Table link. Notice here that you can edit the regular email template, the SMS template, as well as which Tab Links you want the links to send you to. Click Save & Close. Okay, so what's the logic going on behind the scenes? In order to qualify for a reminder, a CRM activity must be assigned to an Activity Status that causes reminders AND ALSO be assigned to an Activity Type that causes reminders. You can edit these by clicking the "..." button next to the Activity Type and Activity Status dropdown lists, and selecting which types and statuses have "Causes Reminder" selected.  For example, you wouldn't want to be emailed a reminder for an activity that already had a completed status!  Also, you may just want to be reminded for Meeting and not Phone Calls. 15 minutes before an activity is due, an email gets sent to your mobile phone.  In fact, in reality what really happens is that 20 minutes before an activity is due it gets put into an email queue, with delivery set 5 minutes later - I mention this because you might find that an activity that you completed 18 minutes before it was due still sends you a reminder.  This is part of our new email queuing system that ensures that high priority emails get sent before lower priority emails. Enjoy! This is actually just the beginning of a larger project I am working on, which will eventually involve daily digests and "follower notifications".  Yes, I just threw you a teaser of what's to come . Paul Posted Jun 01 2011, 05:29 PM by Method_Paul with 2 comment(s)