By providing a branch standard, PL Solution makes sure you can profit from the newest functionalities needed in the logistics industry. When one of your colleagues in the industry wants a new feature to be added to the software, you and all other members of the peloton can use it directly after the next update. That also includes new functionalities as a result of developments from PL Solution-side. As a customer, you recently got access to the new customer portal to send in any error messages. For the more observant among us, this portal may have looked familiar. Correct! The new customer portal is based on the module Quality Management. From the standard. And, while developing this new portal, new functionalities are realized in this Quality Management module. Functionalities that you can use when applying this module in your processes. In this blog, I gladly walk you through four new functionalities in the Module Quality Management that you can benefit from.
Functionalities are available in Dutch from 3PL Dynamics version 19.1. The functionalities are available in English from version 18.6.
-
Make up text in a new editor
First, the Quality Management module is improved for entering and viewing large pieces of text. For this, we have developed the possibility to show a complete HTML editor, instead of the simple field for plain text. You can set up your preferences in WMS Quality Setup. The standard setting is ‘Plain Text’. This is the old situation. You can activate the HTML editor by selecting ‘HTML’.
The benefits of the HTML editor
By changing the setting to ‘HTML’, all descriptions in the module Quality Management can now be edited in an HTML editor. In this editor, you can make up text, insert images, and a lot more. Yet, the most important improvement may be that you can simply show more on the screen. As you can see in the example below.
-
Communicate about messages
To make the new customer portal a success, structuring conversations is of great importance. That goes for the module Quality Management as well. In the past, it was already possible to register all emails sent from a message. That was done under ‘Interactions’ on the request card. Now, we have added the possibility to add messages or notes from phone calls.
Link contacts and resources to a user
To register these communications, a relation must be made to a contact, resource, or supplier/seller. In that way, it is clear who communicated what. And in what condition. This relation is captured on a field in the user setups. The relation with a resource goes via an employee.
Normally, a user to which an employee/resource or supplier/seller is linked is an internal user. This is a user that can both create messages, and be assigned messages. A user that is linked to a contact is normally an external user. These can only create messages. The difference in messages is clearly shown in the interactions. Messages of external uses are colored black, while messages of internal users are colored blue. In that way, the conversation is clearly structured.
-
Unlocking incident registration for customers via 3rd Party Users
Communicating with your customers via these requests is only possible when your customers have access to your Business Central environment. Giving them access has been possible for a long time already. However, this was difficult to realize, as you do not want your customers to find your general ledger. So, you must check and configure your authorizations settings carefully. Now, PL Solution has developed a general solution: 3rd Party Users. With this functionality, you can simply give your customers the right access to the Quality Management module. Learn how to do it yourself in the video below.
Note: this functionality requires the use of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication for your Business Central environment.
With the button ‘Invite Guest User’, you are directed to the Azure Portal. There, you need to create the guest user in the Azure AD based on the email address of the contact. The guest user uses his own Microsoft account to login into your business central environment.
-
Create requests in the wizard
When your customer gained access to your Business Central environment, he can use the wizard to create requests (messages). This is the same wizard as the one you use to contact our support team. This wizard is also configurable. For example, you can use specific (sub)categories for customers, or only show messages for internal users. Furthermore, you can ask your customer standard questions when entering a request.
-
Benefit from the standard
With these new functionalities, you can benefit from our standard solution for incident registration. Multiple optimizations are realized because we, PL Solution, now use the module ourselves. Like profiting from the effort of the peloton, you now also benefit from the developments as a result of our new customer portal. Win-win.
Do you see other chances for the explained functionalities? For example, providing access via 3rd Party Users for other functionalities as well. Let us know! We gladly get on board.
This article was written by Wildrik Oosterhof from our partner Boltrics
