Report Designer Advanced Customer Relations

113 Figure 10.5: Analyzing the performance of your HelpDesk support team The system shows you statistics per user and it is possible to filter on each section and use other criteria for searching. For example, you can type in a date range, click Filter, and see the graph change to reflect the new data. By default, the system provides a list containing the following information for each month, user and section, and an indication of the state of each set of information: • number of cases, • average delay for closing the request, • estimated revenue for a business opportunity, • estimated cost, • estimate of revenue multiplied by the probability of success, to give you an estimated weighted revenue figure. Tip: Navigating through the statistics You can obtain more information about a user or a case section from these reports, drilling down into the data displayed. In the web client you click the appropriate text string on one of the lines such as Demo User or Helpdesk and Support to open a form for it, and then click one of the buttons in the Action toolbar to the right of the User or Section form that is displayed. In the GTK client you would right-click over the text instead – this brings up a context menu with the same options as the web client would give you. You can specify that the graph view, say, appears by default so that you can consistently present the information more visually.

10.5 Automating actions using rules

Analyzing figures gives you a better basis for managing all of your services and customer and supplier relation- ships. But you can do more than just display the figures graphically from time to time. If the performance of a section, a user or a category of a case is beginning to cause concern then you can use OpenERP’s rules system to monitor the situation more closely. Rules enable you to automatically trigger actions depending on criteria you define for each case. They provide a good way of implementing a proper continuous improvement policy for your customer relations and quality of service. Using these rules you could: • automatically send emails to the client during different phases of a support request, to keep the client up to date with progress, • assign the case to another person if the the case manager is on holiday, 114 • send a reminder to the supplier if their response is delayed too long, • always mark a case as urgent if it is from a major client, • transfer the case to technical services if the request is about a technical fault. To define new rules use the menu Sales → Configuration → Automated Actions → Automated Actions and click the New button. Figure 10.6: Form to enter the Automated Action The criteria for activating this rule are defined on the main part of the screen. These criteria are: • a condition about the initial state for example during the creation of a case – initial state: None , eventual state: Draft , • a condition about the destination state for example at the closure of a case to send a confirmation or thank you e-mail, • the case section to which the rule applies, • the category for the case, • a condition about the manager of the case for example to send copies of case progress to a manager if the client request is handled by a trainee, • a condition about the priority level for example to provide different types of reaction depending on the urgency of the request, • a partner or a category to be applied to the rule, • a date for the trigger – reporting by the date of creation – reporting by date of the last action – reporting by the length of time that it is been active. If you have defined several criteria OpenERP will apply the rule only if all of the criteria are valid. You define the action that will be taken if the rule is met in the second tab of the lower part of the setup window. The following actions are included: • change the state of the case, • move the case to a new section, • assign the case to a system manager, • change the priority of a case, • send a reminder to the case manager or a partner, • attach information or not to a reminder,