Cannot update the External Ref No

[samwoo]

Hello,

Last night i updated the Service Manager. Everything seems to be fine except for one thing..

One of our users has just raised an issue with me that they cannot update the External Ref No on a call. It appears in the Timeline stating that the Call Details have been updated, but it doesn't change the field.

• I've tried changing the External Ref to the one she wanted - "Implementation", it doesn't work... as you can see in the Timeline below
• I then tried it again, adding a full stop to the end of the Summary and changing the External Ref to "Implementation"... the full stop shows but not the new External Ref number.

This has worked prior to the upgrade I did last night, can someone action on this? She urgently needs this field to be updated. She uses the External Ref column for the stages in the CAB Change requests so she can view in on the Request List (she doesn't use boards). This has worked for her since we started using Hornbill last year.

Thanks,

Samuel.

[David Hall]

Hi Samuel,

Thanks for the post, I have just replicated this issue internally and have raised a high priority request for development to investigate the problem.  For your reference the problem raised is reference PM00141632.

Regards,

Dave.

[samwoo]

Hi David,

Thank you for this.

Slightly off-topic but related to the External Ref No - could we have an Automated Task that allows the External Ref No to be updated within the BPM?

Cheers,

Samuel

[Guest Ehsan]

Hi Samuel,

Thank you for getting in touch with us!

I just wanted to inform you that we have fixed this problem and this will be available soon.

Regarding your question on updating External Ref No through BPM - yes, it is possible. I will raise a request for this and we will inform you as soon as it is available!

Thanks,

Ehsan

[samwoo]

Good morning,

My colleague is asking for a status update regarding this issue, how is the fix going?

Another question... that could avoid the need for her to use the External Ref... could we have to so it can show the current stage as a column in the Request List... i think i may have asked this in another post... she does not wish to use the boards.

Alternatively is there a way we could get custom fields from within to call to be able to be shown in the columns?

Thanks,

Samuel

[samwoo]

Hello,

Sorry I do apologise but this is now coming up as urgent, my colleague is unable to properly work on the Change Requests and they have been building up. Do we have an eta on the fix?

thanks,

Samuel.

[Guest Chaz]

Hi Sam,

we've addressed the issue and it will be available in our next release. I don't have an exact ETA but it will be available to you in about a week.

[Gerry]

Hi Samuel,

I thought it might be worth pointing out that your subscription includes a Premier Success plan which is a paid for level of support, we have customers who have paid for support and some that have the free level of support. 

Before I talk about this specific case I wanted to take the opportunity to provide some context.   Myself and everyone else at Hornbill are passionate about providing outstanding support. We are proud to stand along side our customers and community members and I hope that our community forums will become the best place to get answers about Hornbill Collaboration, Our Platform and our Applications.  That being said, its a community support channel so one thing that is missing is formal Service Level Agreements. 

Just to be clear, every customer, regardless of their support plan gets access to our team 24x7x365 for serious outages, service availability, security and data integrity issues, thats build into the service subscriptions - we call this Essential Success.  The other Success Plans (the Support part of Support & Maintenance in old money) on the other hand are optional and are for those customers who need a higher level of responsiveness to issues and defects.  One of the great features of the paid for success plans IMHO is they include some call-off time/credits for you to get help with stuff that might ordinarily fall outside of normal support - things like report writing, integration, customisations, fast-track training/knowledge transfer and such like.  You can find out more about the Success Plans we offer here: https://wiki.hornbill.com/index.php/FAQ:Hornbill_Success_Plans

In your case I noted that you posted the question on the forum which is fantastic, the knowledge created will surely help others now and in the future so I would encourage you to ask questions or raise problems via the forums where it is practical to do so. However, you should be aware that support requests logged under our Paid For Success Plans not only have formal SLA's applied but are also prioritised above non-SLA's requests, in effect for your subscription to the success plan you get to jump the priority queue - think of it like FastPass at Disney world.  Of course, if anyone reports a serious problem that affects our service and multiple customers/users (Emergency P1 in old money) then regardless of the customers Success Plan subscription, were on it and we sort it fast..

Now given you have raised this on the forum then identified it as urgent for you I think you might have done better to log a support request with support as you do have a paid for support plan, you could have expressed the urgency for you, and would have had things moving along for you as we would have your problem on an escalation list that would have been managed and monitored by our support team.

When you post on the forum you also have a lot of people at Hornbill paying attention - but its not formal so things could take many days or even weeks if we are busy - with a more formal request, we do the chasing so you don't have to. 

Hope that makes sense, I just thought it would be good to highlight this given its a recent and working example. 

Gerry

[samwoo]

Hello Gerry,

Thanks for clarifying this. I would never doubt the support that Hornbill provides as everything we have received via yourself so far has been amazing, I do apologise if I came across as demanding to any extent. This is definitely not in my nature at all.

Its been a positive challenge for me, as I have been given the task of supporting my colleagues with Hornbill almost quite suddenly earlier this year, yet there is still things I do not know, such as what you have mentioned with regards to the Premier Success Plan. This should have been relayed to me by relevant colleagues.

I will take all the information you have provided and will do better to raise questions / raise calls in a more practical manner and where appropriate. I will also try and find out as much information as I can from anyone involved with Hornbill so I can refer to it in the future.

Apologise and thanks,

Samuel.

[Gerry]

Hi Samuel,

Please don't apologise you had not done anything wrong at all, as I said, if your priorities allow, please use the forum as much as possible as it helps others in the longer run.  The purpose of my post was to highlight other options that are open to you and any other customer for that matter.  I am delighted to hear such positive feedback from you, I will be sure to share that with my team here who I am sure will be equally proud and delighted. 

So feel free to ask whatever you want on the forum, we will be happy to answer, but if you do have something urgent then use your support plan to get things moving. 

Gerry

[samwoo]

Hello,

Just to update this post - the External Reference issue is now fixed! We can now update it within the call for it to appear in the Request List and in the Call details.

A couple of requests:

To either automate the External Reference and/or to help nudge my colleague away from using the External Reference as the field she uses to store the details of the current stage I would like to request the following:

• To be able to update the External Reference from within the BPM using an Automated Task
• To be able to update the Custom Fields via the BPM Process using an Automated Task and to be able to show them as a column on the Request List
• To show the current stage of the call as a Column in the Request List combined with the Custom Fields for custom text (My colleague prefers the Request List over Boards)

thanks for your good work and progress,

Samuel

[samwoo]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone might have had any thoughts about my previous post? One of my colleagues was just curious to see if its possible to automate some more

Many thanks,

Samuel

[Steven Boardman]

Hi @samwoo I am sure you would have seen this already, but just to confirm the ability to update the External Ref Number from a business process was added in the latest Service Manager build

Steve