Case: tracking history & associating a Contact

[jhk]

Hi all,

Our techies just installed Version 4.5.1g (Build 1003) and I am a newbie to SugarCRM. We are planning on using it for Sales, but also want to use it for case support - by which I mean support for customers who call in cases relating to our service. I thought Cases would be good but I cannot do the following:

1. associate a specific Contact from an Account to a new or existing Case.
2. Have an on-going 'history' of the Case.

An working example of what I want to do:

Contact1 from AccountA calls with a problem. I get the call - I am EmployeePOP.
I create a new Case under AccountA (and associate it with Person1 - which alas I cannot do)
I write the Subject, and Description. if I can resolve it I write the Resolution and set Status=Closed. close it out. Now anyone (Support, Sales, Marketing) who looks sees what transpired.
If I cannot reolve it, I assign it to EmployeeQQQ, and mark Status=Assigned.
It shows up in EmployeeQQQ's list of open Cases, so he opens it up, and calls Contact1. He gets more info, and enteres more data into Description. (but where is my History -he can erase what I already wrote??)
Bounce Case between relevant people, and repreat process until issue is resolved.

How do I accomplish this?

thanks in advance!

[REByers]

Hi There, I am looking for the same answer!!

The lack of a contact records on teh creation of a case is a massive oversight, as it's contacts who ring in and not Accounts.

I am trialling Beta 5 for my company at the moment and am trying to use module builder to add this field to the case entry form. So far I've had not luck, as the field does not appear in the list of avialble fields to add to this tab.

The workaround for this is to create the case from the contact record screen. So do your lookup on the contact and add the case from there. The problem comes when a new constact from an existing company rings in. That I haven't got a work arounf for yet.

Hope this helps.

Rick

[jnassi]

Hi all,

Our techies just installed Version 4.5.1g (Build 1003) and I am a newbie to SugarCRM. We are planning on using it for Sales, but also want to use it for case support - by which I mean support for customers who call in cases relating to our service. I thought Cases would be good but I cannot do the following:

1. associate a specific Contact from an Account to a new or existing Case.
2. Have an on-going 'history' of the Case.

An working example of what I want to do:

Contact1 from AccountA calls with a problem. I get the call - I am EmployeePOP.
I create a new Case under AccountA (and associate it with Person1 - which alas I cannot do)

There's two ways to accomplish this:
1) Instead of creating the case from the Account, you can instead create the case from the Contact. When the call comes in from Person1, you look up Person1 as a Contact. Open the Contact DetailView for Person1, and scroll down to the Cases subpanel. There's a Create button on the Cases subpanel, and that will generate a Case with the Contact auto-associated, as well as the Account (if the Contact is associated with an Account).

2) Or, you can create the Case first, independent from the Contact, then go to the Case DetailView, scroll down to the Contacts subpanel, and associate Person1 to the Case.

I write the Subject, and Description. if I can resolve it I write the Resolution and set Status=Closed. close it out. Now anyone (Support, Sales, Marketing) who looks sees what transpired.
If I cannot reolve it, I assign it to EmployeeQQQ, and mark Status=Assigned.
It shows up in EmployeeQQQ's list of open Cases, so he opens it up, and calls Contact1. He gets more info, and enteres more data into Description. (but where is my History -he can erase what I already wrote??)

A better option here would be to create Note records that are attached to the Case, rather than updating the Description field every time. Each Note would be like an entry to a worklog, and someone can click on the View Summary button to see the trail of Notes.

On a Case DetailView, scroll down to the History subpanel, and click on the Create Note button.

Bounce Case between relevant people, and repreat process until issue is resolved.

How do I accomplish this?

thanks in advance!

[REByers]

Jason

I know this is a slight thread swerve, but could you respond (to point me to where I can get a better response) to my query regarding adding custom fields to th global search in the Beta of 5.0?

Thanks, Rick

[jhk]

JNassi - thanks!!! I ended doing pretty much what you described. I prefer to use the Accounts tab to originate the "Customer Support" case, rather than a person. This way, the sales folks can look up by Account and see a "big picture" of all cases that have been raised. Also, any support person can easily continue on with an existing support case by simply asking for the copmany name (i.e. the "Account" in SugarCRM-speak) and find the relevant case being referred to. I like the History's View SUmmary button in a case. It displays everything that transpired at-a-glance. Using this method we have unique cases by finding the pair (AccountName, Case #), and cases can now transcend a single person, as it often does.

I also added a cutom field to Case - I call it Case Type - so we can diffentiate between the types of case-related issues we are trakcing. So far I have added [Tech Support, Sale Support, Marketing Suport] in the list-field to test it out. I imagine the real names of fields we would want will be determined by real live use.

I imagine I can figure out how to add a Contact field to the Case-data-entry screen from the Acocunts page thatwill limit the Contacts listed to ONLY those in the current Account.I find it odd, in context of my useage patterns, to be bale to add any random COntact to a Case for an existing Company. I get the logic of how, in the original design, I can share cases among f=different accounts and thus deal with them all at once. It just so happens to not fit our usage and work patterns.

REByer: I used the Wizard (didn't even need the docs - I figured itout by clicking around) to make a custom dropdown, as follows:
1. on the toolbar at the top click on Admin
2. find Studio - click on it
3. find the "wizard"
4. Find "Edit Dropdowns"
5. find "create a dropdown"
---> follow instructions to create a custom drop down. I like naming conventions - Custom_Dropdown_FieldAssociation_FieldPurpose - so I called it Custom_Dropdown_Case_CaseType. Using conventions allow me to find and differntiate my customizations from the original product.

then repeat steps 1-3 and ...
4. "edit a module"
5. click your way through to the modul you want.
6. make the changes.
7.l save and publish, once you are done and like it, to put it onto the live page

I found it reasonably inuitive, without even looing at any documentation.

[jnassi]

Jason

I know this is a slight thread swerve, but could you respond (to point me to where I can get a better response) to my query regarding adding custom fields to th global search in the Beta of 5.0?

Thanks, Rick

Rick,

You'll probably want to ask about it in the 5.0 Beta 2 forum: http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=136

[tron90]

how to add a Contact field to the Case-data-entry screen from the Acocunts page thatwill limit the Contacts listed to ONLY those in the current Account.

I'm also trying to achieve this, can you please tell me how to do it??


Thx

[rovina123]

The lack of a contact records on teh creation of a case is a massive oversight, as it's contacts who ring in and not Accounts


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