First Impressions (Fresh Look)

Hello Gang,

I wanted to add a few perspectives to this application CommitCRM with fresh eyes, as I have just become a new customer. While I have only been using this product for about 1 week I realize I might be a bit naive to the way things are done. I also believe in the #OYOS concept (own your own shit), and with that is the reason I purchased CommitCRM. However I wanted to get some second options as to what people are doing with these areas.

1. Email Connector. I have a love hate relationship to this feature, Every software PSA and Web Hosted application I have used all have an email connector for gathering support emails and responding. However with CommitCRM its kind of lack luster in that we still have to use outlook to send emails? I have been informed by support that I can log into the web-interface and send replies that way but not from the application itself. HMMM...
a. When you reply in the app-it should trigger a template and respond via the email connector.
b. When you complete a ticket, it should reply the same as above.
c. When writing an email, it should be keeping track of the time it took to write the email automatically as this can be billable time as well.

2. Web Portal users. Why must I duplicate the user data if we already have this data in the client account listed as employees? Simply enable a check box "Enable Web Portal" Set a password, and select permissions.

3. Contracts, Where is the recurring? I dont want to have to remember to copy a contract every month to create a new contract to be billed that month.. I should be able to define the contract amount, and hours it includes, and the duration of the contract for billing. The system should automatically roll-over the contract every month.

4. Buttons on the side (Live Data Items) cannot be clicked? (Reminds me of the monologue in Devils advocate where Al Patchino, talks about Gods sick seance of humor, "You can look but you cannot touch, you can touch but you cannot eat"

5. No Sync with Google, Icloud or other online contact/calendar/task services?

6. Where is the Web Portal ability for Office Managers to add employees?

Now although these are some of the things I am noticing, I do appreciate the API back-end you have. What are people doing about building web-hooks?

Overall the app is nice, especially for the price but seems some things need to be polished. Im a little amazed that for a 12 year old application some of these items are feeling a little half-thought-out and does not seem like a very hard thing to polish.

Thanks guys for your understanding and points of view. I am open to doing things differently, what are others doing about these items?

Thank you for posting this and for your feedback. A few notes:

Contracts - with only a few clicks you can renew literally hundreds of recurring contracts using the batch contract renewal. Contract renewals automatically add billable Charges that can the be send to QuickBooks (if used) using the Batch invoice creation wizard. So, we believe spending a short time to review the list before hitting the renew button is the safest way.

Clickable buttons on the side - Will be introduced in our next release (FYI, the live data pane feature was introduced two months ago with the release of version 10).

Email Client - Yes, RangerMSP does integrate with Outlook when running the client on your PC and also supports customized Email Templates. The logic here is why would we develop a built in email client when most use (or can use) a feature rich and powerful email client such as Outlook.

Thanks!

OK with regards to emails, I agree I dont want you to re-invent the wheel with email clients. But I think you might be missing the point. You want to keep people in your system as much as possible. The moment they leave its out of your hands. Why is this important? Few things:

1. Time is lost. (we are billing time here)
A. Timers can keep ticking on when your writing a response to a ticket (automatically as soon as you start typing in a ticket (perhaps future release ;-) ))
2. Lost control of Audit path.

Second, Why do I need to click complete on a ticket then click another button to send an email to the customer? Sounds counter-intuitive and not productive at all. You have an amazing email connector USE IT.

Examples:
Customer emails a ticket > Goes to Connector > Connector responds confirming receipt.
Technician Sees ticket > Starts working on ticket > Writes Resolution History notes > Hits save > Email Connector AUTOMATICALLY sends email to customer with updated ticket info.
Customer Responds > Ticket is again updated > Technician notified. > Technician misses alert or gets side tracked > SLA sends another email saying ticket has not been responded to > Tech then updates ticket solves it and completes the ticket > Email Connector AUTOMATICALLY again sends a ticket synopsis to the customer and states now closed.

Never needing outlook... Who does this anymore?
Freshdesk doesnt,
Connectwise Doesnt,
Autotask doesnt,
Zendesk doesnt.. The list goes on.

Hopfully this clarifies the situation here.

Sync to iCloud I have a solution to that will post in another topic.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and additional feedback with us.

Re iCloud - sure, you're welcome to share your solution either here or by email with our support to get some initial feedback.

Thanks.

I couldn't agree more with sourceminer about the fact that emailing is OUTSIDE of CommitCRM when every other ticketing system keeps everything streamlined inside their walled gardens (and yes this is a beautiful thing). And to make matters worse, ever since switching to Exchange we have had nothing but annoyances and little itty bitty issues that we've had to work around/accept/ignore/fight/sigh.

I've been looking at desk.com, freshdesk, etc, and man oh man are their ticketing systems s-s-slick.

sourceminer, hit me up anytime, I've been a CommitCRM user since 2009 and have a love-hate relationship with it too - even after all these years!

You can find a server-side iCloud Sync solution on my webpage, http://itognet.dk

I am no longer a CommitCRM customer (but have used it since 2006ish to 2014), but I can tell you a couple of things:

* Exchange integration works perfectly if you configure it right
* Moving to freshdesk/zendesk is something you will regret later on
* Emailing from inside of Outlook through the connector is actually quite a good thing, and something that the bigger PSA's support as well

If you have any quesitons on how to do something, let me know.

Hi Hayden,

So which PSA you had move on to..

Stanley