July 2013 - Posts

• How To Save Time When You Customize Method CRM

  Over the years I’ve seen my fair share of Method customizations and have really enjoyed getting my hands dirty with some projects. I won’t bore you with all the details except to say it’s easy to lose yourself in this Method Wonderland. To help avoid this, I use every possible trick I know to keep me on the right path and in the clear.  And now I’m passing some of that wisdom on to you! Meet my new BFF Call Another Action Set. It’s a Method action that basically refers to another group of actions living in another area of Method just waiting to be re-used. I’ll always take a little extra time with action sets if I think I can reuse the work in another area! The best part, it’s not that difficult. Consider a simple screen that performs BMI (Body Mass Index) calculations by clicking buttons like Calculate, Calculate & Save, and Calculate & Email. When designing the screen, most of us would initially add actions to the Calculate button and manually add the same actions to each of the other buttons. Sure, that works, but the clever designers would realize they could ‘copy’ these calculations from one button to the other buttons.  That sounds better…right? Consider what happens when you need to make a tiny, relatively insignificant adjustment to the calculations. That adjustment then needs to be made in a LOT of other buttons, and doesn’t look so tiny and insignificant now that you’re wasting time! A true Method Geek would realize some of that functionality (the calculations) could be called upon from one single location when needed and ultimately save a lot of time and overhead. If you find a function that you can call and repurpose, you reduce the amount of actions used and the time it takes to initially design and test your work.  Reducing the number of custom actions also reduces the time needed to upgrade or make changes to your workflow when the time comes to do that. Let’s not forget this also keeps things clean and easy to understand in design.  I mean, nobody wants to jump behind another designer’s mess where they’ve created 3 monster routines that do the same thing 3 times over. We now have one central button with actions to perform our BMI calculations allowing us to keep things simple. To learn more about this and other tips or to ask questions, feel free to post on our community forums. We’re more than happy to help. Cheers. Val Posted Jul 31 2013, 10:07 AM by Method_Valbon with 2 comment(s)

• Activities: Documentation and Video by Alex and Errol

  Errol and Alex out in nature... not a common sight. Alex: Greetings and salutations, friends and correspondents! Errol: I normally start off with “Hello and Welcome to the Method Integration Blog Post!” Alex: But we’re doing it together. Errol: Then why do you get to start? I’m the starterer of these things! Alex: That’s not a word. Errol: You and your proper spelling... Alex: Anyway, we’re pleased to announce the official launch of the joint documentation for Activities as of this week. The technical portion is now live on our Help Center under CRM>Activities. Errol: And although you may be thinking I’m reiterating things I talked about last week, I have just created an eight minute video on HOW to use Activities within Method CRM, and because Danny helped me a LOT with this video, I am quite pleased with it! The Activity Playlist I released last week focused on the individual parts. With the latest video, I give an overview on the start of your day and how Activities should play into it as a whole! I hope you find it helpful! This went through three iterations before the final product, so it's bound to be good! Alex: If you have questions or comments about the videos or the documentation, we’d like to hear from you! Errol and I can both be reached at documentation@methodintegration.com or leave us a comment below. Errol: So sorry for jumping the queue on the blog post, I know we were supposed to share it with other Method Employees, but I was really excited about this video! Alex: Yes, we can tell from listening to you... Errol: I hope you guys have a great weekend! Alex: Get outside, enjoy the sunshine or...whatever it is non-writers do when the weather is nice. I’ll be inside on my computer in the dark. Like a mushroom. Errol: Bye bye! ^_^ Posted Jul 26 2013, 02:01 PM by Method_Errol with no comments

• More CRM Video Tutorials from Errol

  Hello, and welcome to another Method Integration Blog post written by your friendly neighborhood Errol! There are a lot of things I want to talk about, mostly geared towards the videos I’m making, but first I shall show you a picture of me with Phuong and Jason because you may be thinking all I ever do is take pictures of myself with Alex. Even though Alex isn't in the pic, I made him take it. We had to do it a number of times. He's not a photographer. :D We like taking pictures here at Method Headquarters and we have started up a Pinterest account to store all of our pictures! We plan to take weekly pictures of our adventures here at Method, so by all means keep tabs on our pins or if you want, make photo requests on our Twitter! I am all for crowdsourcing crazy photos. Remember in my last blog post I talked about Activities videos? Well here they are! And I’m not just talking about one video: I have enough of them to start my own web series. There are eleven videos in all ranging from how to schedule a follow-up to setting up recurring activities! And we have compiled them in a handy dandy playlist for you, so that you can jump between the videos and find exactly what you are looking for. If you click the above image, you will be transported to a wonderful world of Activity Videos. One thing I have included in past videos are captions so you can read along with what I am saying. Some of you may have been so crazy keen on watching these videos that you clicked the link without delay -- and noticed the captions are gone! Well, rest assured, they are still there, but you have to hit the CC button to see them! Now, if Alex sees a spelling mistake, I can fix it quickly without needing to upload another video. And maybe, if someone is actually interested in a transcript of my videos, I can make it available! I don’t know who that would be, honestly, but at least the option is there. And I’m not done yet when it comes to videos. There are a few more series coming down the pipeline: Customers, Opportunities and Cases. We have a lot of things in store for you, so be rest assured, I am not just at my desk taking photos of myself with random Method employees. Remember, I count on your feedback to help make these videos better. Please leave a comment below, or you can reach me at: documentation@methodintegration.com I am also quite active on my Twitter account, so you can get a hold of me there: @Method_Errol. Or, if it’s daunting to talk to me, you can tweet @MethodCRM. I do it all the time! Take care, and I hope you have a great day! Bye bye! Posted Jul 18 2013, 04:45 PM by Method_Errol with no comments

• Introducing Method CRM’s Technical Documentation! (more exciting than it sounds)

  Good day, Method community!  It’s been a good three months since I started my tenure here at Method CRM, so Errol (my partner in crime and the voice of our User Tutorial videos) indicated to me it’d be high time for me to introduce myself to our clients and the community at large.  My name is Alex, and I have the distinction of being the first-ever dedicated technical documentation specialist to work with the team here at Method.   “Technical documentation specialist”, by the way, is an overly important-sounding way of saying “he’s the guy who writes stuff”.   My job is to build out helpful documentation detailing the ins and outs of Method CRM, but even more than that, my job is to make that documentation accessible to everyone.  Most of you are small business owners who often don’t have the time to sit down and “read the manual” every time you want to tweak a setting or find out what a particular drop down menu does.  My mission, as I’ve chosen to interpret it, is to provide you with answers to your questions in easy-to-read, easy-to-understand bite-sized pieces in our Help Center, to save you time and let you get back to doing whatever it is your business does best. In fact, that’s partly why Errol and I work so closely together: any of you who have seen our tutorial videos know that Errol is a pretty...boisterous guy, and it’s my intention to bring a little of the fun and levity he embodies to our documentation.  Because let’s face it - who among us actually wants to read a thousand-page manual written by a software developer? (No offense to our exceptional dev team, who could probably program my computer to pull a HAL 9000 or something.)   The best place to start, of course, is at the beginning.  Chapter One of our documentation is live in the Help Center (you can find the first article here) and there you’ll find a “glossary” of some of the most basic elements of Method CRM and how to get around in the system.  We’re going to be rolling out a whole new section detailing the functionality of the Activities tab very soon, and I’d love to hear what you have to say about what kind of job I’m doing.  If you find something that doesn’t work, or something that doesn’t make sense, I want to know!  Of course, I won’t say no to the odd “you’re doing a great job” or “you’re awfully good-looking” message, either, because at the end of the day I’m a writer and we’re all shameless egotists.  But seriously - your feedback helps me do my job more effectively, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.   Please leave a comment below or you can reach me at: documentation@methodintegration.com Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to serving up more great articles for your discerning tastes! Posted Jul 10 2013, 03:13 PM by Method_Alex with 8 comment(s)

• How Contractors Can Save Time

  This is a guest blog post by Matt Raiser from Tech in the Field. Matt is a QuickBooks Pro Advisor and Certified Method Solution Provider who's developed a number of apps using Method. My family purchased an asphalt maintenance business in 1997 amid the explosion of computer use and their promise of increased productivity as a result of the “paperless office.” Being the tech-savvy person of the family, I set out to find a suitable software solution for our business. We tried a few different software packages each with their own pros and cons. The software of the day did reduce many headaches but always had a glaring problem for those of us in the field service industry. The products were all installed on the computer in the office while we as crew leaders and sales reps were almost always out in the field. When I heard about Method CRM in 2008 I knew I had found a solution that could help our business as well as other contractors in the field service industry. The more I used Method, the more I found I could customize it to meet our exact needs and save time by automating our business processes. After 5 years of fine tuning the customizations to our own Method account, I realized I had created something that wasn’t currently available: a complete software solution designed specifically for the Asphalt Industry. By creating SaaSphalt on the Method platform I am able to focus my time on the needs of the asphalt industry while leveraging the strengths that Method offers. In addition to QuickBooks integration, Gmail integration, customizable screens/reports and CRM, SaaSphalt allows asphalt contractors to: Store property data: such as pavement area, linear feet of cracks, patching area and parking stall and stencil counts. Create production based estimates: If you know your crew can seal 2,000 square feet of pavement per man hour and one gallon of sealer covers 50 square feet, set this type of job up once and use it to create all your proposals. This gets the information out of the managers’ head and into the sales people’s hands for fast and accurate bidding. Track actual production: Track time and material usage to fine tune your proposals and create payroll at the same time. Schedule smarter: with customer zones. Assign zip codes to geographic zones so you can schedule your crews to be in the same work area, reducing costly travel time. Sign up for SaaSphalt is done exclusively on our website and we offer a free 30 day trial. After the trial period, the subscription price is $50 per user per month. For additional information please see our website at www.SaaSphalt.com or contact us by phone at 855-877-SaaS. Matt Raiser Tech In The Field Bio: Matt has been in the asphalt business for over 15 years. He has been a Method user and Solution Provider since Method’s inception and is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. In addition to SaaSphalt, Matt also developed You Rang, the caller id / screen pop app for Method. Posted Jul 03 2013, 12:34 PM by Method_GuestBlogger with no comments