Alpha Tracker - Tips & Tricks - Webinar #1

Robin 

Hi everyone, it's half past 12 so thanks very much for joining us today. It's really good of you to join us. It's our first one of these webinars that we're going to be running on the last Tuesday of every month throughout 2023. 

Robin 

You should be able to see a chat window and a Q&A window and if somebody can pop in there that they can see us and hear us that'll be really helpful just in case we're talking to nobody at all. So I'm just waiting for somebody to message to say you can see and hear us. 

Robin 

Can't see anybody yet.

Kim 

Somebody's raised their hand though.

Robin 

Let's see. Can see and hear, can't use the chat though? Okay we'll work on why you can't use the chat. Thanks very much for good. Yeah great. 

Robin 

So people are saying everything's fine. Apart from the chat seems to be disabled but the Q&A is working. So we'll go with the Q&A. Thanks Ben. Yes I've just realised that we've disabled the chat. I did say it was our first one. 

Robin 

Be kind to us. That'd be really good. By the way we've got a giveaway on this webinar. The best question we get today we'll get one of our t-shirts. So I've got the t-shirt here ready. The best question today we'll get that sent out to them. 

Robin 

So this is the Alpha Tracker Tuesday tips and tricks webinar. Why on earth I came up with that name. I have no idea. I'm Robin if you don't know me. I'm the director here at Start Software. This is Kim who looks after our customers. 

Robin 

You'll have met Kim if you've had any training on Alpha Tracker or if you had any problems or questions. Alpha Tracker if you don't know what it is, is our software for environmental consultancies. Typically asbestos consultancies but can be others too. 

Robin 

And what we're looking at today is the diary and the wallboard. Now these are central features that are part of Alpha Tracker that most Alpha Tracker users will be using on a day-to-day basis. But you might not be getting the most of them and you won't know about some of the new features that we've put in. 

Robin 

So we wanted to share that with you today. You can ask any questions you like at all about what we're covering and Kim will keep an eye on the question panel and give me a dig in the ribs when there's a question that's popped up that we should be answering. 

Robin 

Or if you've got questions about other parts of Alpha Tracker please do feel free to ask them and if we have time we'll get to them. So let's just dive in. So you can all see my screen at the moment. 

Robin 

I'm just going to switch to one of our systems here and go straight in to find where the diary appears. Now I'm going to get to it by typing, I'm going to go straight into my own diary to begin with. 

Robin 

So this is my calendar coming onto the screen here. This is my own personal diary within Alpha Tracker. And actually while I'm here I'll just mention this box at the top. You might not be familiar with the search box. 

Robin 

The search box came into the product a couple of years ago. You can use it for searching for any menu item at all. So you can type in menu items into that box and it will find them just like I did. So I started typing calendar and it found me all of the options with calendar in. 

Robin 

You can also use it by the way to search for project numbers or quote numbers, client names, client IDs, even site contact names. It's like a Google search for Alpha Tracker. So I tend to find menu options that way. 

Robin 

And as another aside, again, in case you've not come across the feature, you might notice at the top of the screen, I've got my favourites bar and these are all of the menu options that I use most regularly. 

Robin 

And I've clicked the little star by them to put them in my favourites list. So any menu option in Alpha Tracker, you've got the star here to the side. If I click the star, it will pop it into my favourites bar and I can take it out of my favourites bar by clicking the star again. 

Robin 

So if you've not got into favourites, if you've not got your favourites bar set up, have a go at doing that because it's a huge time saver. Right, back to my calendar. So this is my personal calendar in Alpha Tracker. 

Robin 

Straighten appointment, you drag and drop. And once you've dragged and dropped, you can either type in a project number or more likely you're going to search for a project number. Not many people know project numbers off by heart, although there are some people around that do. 

Robin 

This is just telling me there's already some appointments for this job. Pick who you want to be on the appointment, such as me in this case. Start and end time will come up automatically. It's also mapping where the appointment is. 

Robin 

That's doing that from the address on the site. And that's all you need to do. That's how you save a basic appointment. So saving appointments in your diary is straightforward. You can also move appointments just with drag and drop. 

Robin 

I can move them to a different day. There are a number of different views of the diary. Most of you, I imagine, are using the working week because that's the most convenient, I think. Day view can be useful if you've got lots of appointments because you get more space to see them. 

Robin 

So I know a lot of people use that. Month view is OK if you're not looking at many people. I think if you're using... If there are lots of people you're looking at the diary for, we'll come to that in a second, then month view can get a bit busy. 

Robin 

I do see people using that sometimes. The two or the three at the end are a bit different. Agenda gives you your diary in text form. Again, can be useful if you've got a very busy diary. Work shift and the last one just give you different sort of views, horizontal views and vertical views of the same sort of data. 

Kim 

I forget you can overlap appointments as well. 

Robin 

That's a good point, yes, you can. So you can actually have overlapping appointments. You don't have to have one appointment finishing before the next one starts. 

Robin 

So that's the basic use of your own diary. Let's go up a bit more complicated and look at several people's calendars. I'm going to use the staff calendar for this. Staff calendar is where you're working to schedule the diary for a group of people. 

Robin 

Now you can either just pick individuals like I'm doing here and bring them up. So there we go, so I've now got five people's diaries. Once you've got them in this view, by the way, you can select or deselect to add or remove people from the list. 

Robin 

If I go back to here, we've also got teams, groups and offices that you can select from and you can mix and match. So I've got a group here that says software and that's going to give me all of the people in this demo company that are to do with software. 

Robin 

You might have one that says asbestos or you might have one that says water hygiene or fire risk. So you can group them. Yeah, sites for versus admin stuff. Offices, if you're a big organization, you've got different offices set up. 

Robin 

So you've got a Southern office and a Northern office or you've got a, like we've got a UK office and an Australia office, then you can also select people on that basis. And teams are ways of grouping people who tend to work together. 

Robin 

So if you've got a senior surveyor and a junior surveyor or assistant surveyor working together as a team on a job for a few months, you can group them together and call them whatever name you want to call them. 

Robin 

Once you're in the staff calendar, as I mentioned, if I just go back into that, you've got all the same views available for you. You can move appointments around in the same way. This can get busy. So this is where I think day view comes in. 

Robin 

If you're looking at lots of people, then day view is really handy because you can see more, much more. Ah, good question already, thank you. Helen, you're already in lead for the t-shirt here. 

Robin 

Are the groups already populated? No, you can set them up yourself. So it's one of the screens in Alpha Tracker where you set up the staff. You can allocate people to groups and define the groups yourself. 

Robin 

So you can call them whatever you want to and put whatever you want in them. 

Kim 

Groups and subgroups as well. 

Robin 

Oh yes, subgroups, good point. So yes, you can have surveyors as a group or asbestos surveyors as a group and you can have subgroups of people with different qualifications. 

Robin 

We'll come back to qualifications actually later. So that's how you put appointments in staff diaries. But how do they get to see, how do the staff get to see their appointments? Because likely as not, site staff in particular won't be logging into a laptop to see their diaries. 

Robin 

Well, fortunately in Alpha Tracker, you can do this a number of different ways. The easiest way I think is to link your work Alpha Tracker diary with either a Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange Calendar. 

Robin 

So what that means is we use Google Calendars ourselves. So if I just hold that up to the screen, you can vaguely see my diary there. Whenever an appointment goes in my diary in Alpha Tracker, it automatically and instantly goes into my Google Calendar. 

Robin 

But we do the same for Microsoft Exchange as well. So if you use Outlook for your diary, your personal diary or your site or your work site diary, Alpha Tracker can sync with those. So that's really useful. 

Robin 

So I wanted to mention that, I wanted to mention something else actually at this point, which is, oh yes, you can also Alpha Tracker, no Alpha Tracker mobile, Alpha Tracker mobile which is our app in the app stores, also has the diary feature in. 

Robin 

So if you cite staff using Alpha Tracker mobile to sign off jobs or to look at asbestos registers or to do water hygiene work or fire risk work. They can also see their appointments in Alpha Tracker mobile. 

Kim 

Jane's got a question for us on bank holidays? 

Robin 

She has. Can we add bank holidays to all diaries? Yes, you can. There's a repeat feature which I'll show you in a moment. So thanks, Jane. It's a job we do at the start of every year as we put bank holidays into all diaries. 

Robin 

And you can have special project codes for things like bank holidays, holidays, sick, training, webinars, that sort of thing. So you can have sort of non-productive, we call them, time. So not chargeable time. 

Kim 

Usually U-project, aren't they? 

Robin 

Yeah, we call them U. Yeah, generally U-project, you found unproductive. Let's just look at a bit more detail actually at an appointment. So if I click to bring up the details of an appointment, let's just do it in a little bit more detail. 

Robin 

So I mentioned the map before. You can do mapping from, actually I won't use that one because that's in Brisbane. And as Dan lives in the UK, that's going to give us a very long journey. What I'll do is I'll go back to my own calendar and I'll pick up this appointment instead. 

Robin 

I wonder if Google Maps can actually do a driving route from Helford to Brisbane. I think it could try as well. So here we go. Here's a job in Shrewsbury and my home postcode is there. So I can automatically look map from the surveyor's home postcode, or the site staff's home postcode, office postcode or previous appointment. 

Robin 

That's a nice feature. So if you're, if you're scheduling for people and you're not great with directions, that tells you whether or not you're giving somebody a crazy day. Let's have a look at some of these tick boxes. 

Robin 

So we've got confirmed what's that for with the green tick. We suggest you use that when you've confirmed with the client or the tenant, if it's a domestic job you're doing, or the house owner, that you're actually attending and that they've said it's okay. 

Robin 

So you get a green tick then on the diary appointment, you can see that there. Tentative is the opposite of confirmed. It's like penciled in. So if you're blocking time out and you're just trying to allocate time, we suggest you pencil it and use tentative. 

Robin 

We use that all the time. Cannot move, which gives you the lock symbol. Just take the tentative off. This is when you've either got a fixed appointment and the client says you have to be there at this time. 

Robin 

Otherwise, you know, I won't be there. I won't ba able to let you in. Or perhaps you've moved that appointment several times before. If you move it this time, you're going to be in trouble with the client. 

Robin 

If you tick that, you can't drag and drop. And if you do try and drag and drop, it will tell you that it's fixed. And then write up appointments. This is where you've got some site work. You're coming back to the office. 

Robin 

You're bringing the stuff back with you. You've got some write up time to produce the report. You can mark an appointment as write up time, which is a nice one. I'll also mention incomplete while I'm on this screen. 

Robin 

Incomplete allows you to mark an appointment as not being complete because, for example, they couldn't gain access. Not sure what reasons we've got on here, actually, on this demo system. Yeah. So we couldn't gain access or the client cancelled or the or the appointment had to be aborted. 

Robin 

If you do that, you get no entry symbol or other symbols that are similar on your diary. You can also the site staff can record that when they're out and about. And the point of that is it appears in reports in the system to tell you that it's an incomplete appointment. 

Robin 

It needs to be rebooked. 

Kim 

We're getting lots of questions in now. 

Robin 

Loads of questions. Right. Let's have a go at some of these. Can we view the value of the job? Yes, we can. We'll have a look at that in a minute, but not on the diary view. 

Robin 

That was a good question. Yes. So someone's saying, can it make a suggestion? It can. There's a make a suggestion button. Also, this work will stop you doing work that somebody is not qualified for. So if I show you that feature, if I book in a job for Dan here while I do that, Kim, can we read in some of the questions? 

Robin 

So if I book in a job, we set up a job earlier that's. Let's have a look. So if I do this one, we'll come back to that question in a sec. And if I try and book down in for this job, which is an asbestos survey and try and save that wrong job, I picked the wrong job. 

Robin 

Sorry. Or I didn't pick Dan one or the other. But if... I didn't pick Dan. in fact, if I pick somebody else that isn't qualified. What this will do is it will tell me that Dan isn't appropriate for this job on this day. 

Robin 

We've got a thing called the skills matrix, where you can record who's able to do what with expiry dates for training. And the system will tell you if you try and book something that's not appropriate, you can override it, by the way, and it's doing it by the by the role that's assigned here and the roles are linked to training. 

Robin 

So skills is something that we've just had a couple of questions about. So that's how that works. Right, let me move on, or answer more questions. We'll come back some of those, let me look at quite advanced questions, we'll come back to them in a minute. 

Robin 

So I'm going to move on for the moment. Where else can you see this information? That's important. So one of the most useful places to see diary information is actually on the project list screen, which is one of the workhorse screens in Alpha Tracker. 

Robin 

This is where you see your jobs that you've booked in. And what you can see here, if I scroll across, is the first and last date that they're in the diary for. So at a glance, you can see whether this job is in the diary, and when it's for and if it is in the diary, you can bring up all the appointments straight away. 

Robin 

So that's just in once on that day. And it's Dan, I think one of these other jobs we put in some more appointments for just one on that one. But you get the idea. So you've got this diary feature here. 

Robin 

And I don't think many people use this, partly because it's sort of scrolled across. You have to have quite a wide screen to access this. But it is useful. Another one that's really useful is projects not in diary. 

Robin 

And we think this is a screen that is useful for schedulers as a to do list, because these jobs aren't in the diary at all. So unless they go in the diary, they're not going to get done. You'll see here, we track contacts. 

Robin 

And what this is about is, typically, this is used by people who are contacting tenants for domestic work. If they can't get hold of them, they have to log how many times they've tried, because they need to report back to the housing association, for example, yeah, we tried to contact this tenant three times we had to give up, they just weren't talking to us. 

Robin 

So it's got that information on as well. We can just use it as a standard sort of to do list of things that need diarising. Another place you can see it, if I go back to the project list and bring up a job, these screens, there's a couple of places on the job screen itself, these screen buttons are slightly new, these are a new feature sort of, they used to be one button, we've split it into two. 

Robin 

So you can see all appointments by clicking the diary button. We can see the appointments split by member of staff using the project staff button. A couple of clients told us the old screen was slow. 

Robin 

So we've rewritten this completely. You should find that much faster to use if that's how you do your scheduling. And then in the financials and planning tab. There's also a feature here where you can see all the diary appointments for this job. 

Robin 

And you can also do something very clever with a screen job, just tell you about now. So if this is a repeating job, so it's something you're going to go back to every month. Because let's suppose it's water hygiene rather than surveying. 

Robin 

And you need two hours each time. I'll show you what you can do with this screen, which is really clever. So if I go back into diary appointments, now I've added that, this shows you at a glance, all the appointments for this job, there's only two at the moment, with a three year view of all of the appointments that are there starting in this month. 

Robin 

So that's February, March, April, May, June, July, and etc, etc. And if I want to book three years worth or two, let's do two years worth, doesn't matter, of appointments for this, let's suppose it's water hygiene work, I can do that or I haven't filled in who I want to go to. 

Robin 

Kim, would you like this work? 

Kim 

Oh, yes. 

Robin 

So that's now created a suggested schedule of monthly appointments for this job, I can actually create the appointments I can mark them as tentative or confirm them in one go. 

Robin 

And in one click, I've just created two years worth of appointments. They've gone in the diary, and I could then edit them in the diary, in the normal way, because they appear in the normal diary, even though I've just scheduled them that way. 

Robin 

So there we go. So here's two years worth of appointments. And you can see, I've got one appointment for each month going forward over the next couple of years, and it runs out in January 2025 or something. 

Robin 

Good new feature, that's a new feature alert. I think if you do regular work, water hygiene work, contaminated soils work, things where you're going back regularly, I think that would be a huge time saver. 

Kim 

Yeah, we've got a question here about whether we can add several appointments under one project number and that's exactly what we've done. Yeah, that's exactly as many as you like underneath each project. 

Robin 

Perfect. Oh, Dan, yeah, Dan, you can join in. Dan's also on the call with us today. He's shy, hasn't got his screen on, so he can answer some calls for us, which is super. More questions for us. Right, that's that one. 

Robin 

Final new feature I want to show you if you've not experimented with this. This one is seriously cool, is what we're calling the map scheduling view. And I know some clients use this because we've had some really good feedback, but not everybody is. 

Robin 

Now, this one's a bit different. So your domestic scheduling probably, and I think I've just managed to turn my camera. Kim, you might have to move over. Dan, have I just moved the camera? It's a clever camera. 

Robin 

I think it's tracking me. Oh, well, technology for you. Can you still see Kim just about? 

Dan 

Yes, yeah, still can see Kim. 

Robin 

We'll have to sit even closer together. So what we've got is the situation where you're doing domestic scheduling and you want to fill diaries with six, seven, eight appointments. 

Robin 

You've booked the work in and I've booked the work in with this job number. If I pick that one, we should see some appointments here. So these are jobs associated with this master job. Okay, this is the master project here. 

Robin 

By booking the work in like this, we can see the work on a map. And you can see we've got, if I can click and drag here, we've got three jobs that are in Bridgnorth. One, two, three. And I've got two jobs that are farther afield and I think they're in Dorset. 

Robin 

Yes, Dorset or somewhere. And what this allows you to do is pick a member of staff or more than one member of staff that you want to schedule for. So if I pick Dan in this case, here's Dan's diary. She's got a few appointments in already for today, but I can move and go day to day just by going here. 

Robin 

So if I go to the next day, it's got a Thursday, it's got nothing in his diary. Now I can, and I'll just go back in to where I was on the map. Now I can double click the appointments straight in his diary, or I can use the plus button, and it will then start filling his diary from the appointments I choose. 

Robin 

The really clever bit is as well that it will show you the best route between the appointments, which is this optimized button. So you can sort of make sure that you're not sending him all around the houses to do the work that he's doing. 

Robin 

This screen also has got text confirmations in. So again, aimed specifically at domestic surveying, you can send text messages to tenants to say you're coming. They have the option to, in the text message, confirm that they're available for the appointment or not really useful feature. 

Robin 

Good, that's a map schedule, a bit of a whistle stop tour, another new feature. All of these new features, by the way, are in the user guide, they're in the release notes. And if you call us, Kim can talk you through how to use any of them. 

Robin 

She can set up a one-to-one Teams call or Zoom call with you and talk you through any of the features that you want to run through. A couple of other places you can see appointments, we've got automated email. So you've got a feature in Alpha Tracker, where your clients can get emails a few days before the day before, even a few hours before the appointment to remind them that you're coming. 

Robin 

That's a built-in feature in Alpha Tracker, just needs configuring on your system. So you've got automated emails to your clients. You've also got internal automated emails, Tracker Dashboards, we call them. 

Robin 

So for example, in our own business, the night before each day, we get an email with everybody's appointments into the following day. So we all know what each other are doing. I think that's the run-through of the diary side we wanted to cover. 

Robin 

Yeah, any more questions that we... Janice, you want to see the route plan of an action? I'll come back to that once I've done the wallboard. If we've got time, we're packing in a lot today. Dan, if you can pick up some of those other questions, that'd be really cool. 

Robin 

While, we just show the wall board. So the last thing I wanted to show you was the wall board feature. Now the wall board is amazingly cool. It's incredibly fast and really useful. And often we find that our clients use the diary on one screen, if they've got two screens on their laptop or their laptop and another screen and the wall board and another. 

Robin 

I'm going to flick back to another system to show the wall board. Let's show you what the wall board can do. So it's just a view of your diary. So you can pick as many people as you want to show the diary, to show the wall board. 

Robin 

I'm going to pick some people I've got linked to software here. And I'll show you the two views that you've got, the two main views. So first of all, see how fast it is. I just came up for February. I can go forward to March and go forward to April. 

Robin 

I can go a month at a time. New feature alert. We can also go a week at a time as well. If you're looking in detail at a week, you can do a week at a time. New feature alert here. You can now do three months at a time in the wall boards. 

Robin 

I'm doing February, March and April. You can also do six months, brand new features. So you've got much better opportunity now to look forward. What is it I'm looking at here? Well, I'm looking at hours and appointments per member of staff with a total at the bottom. 

Robin 

These are like a bar chart running across. So I can see where we're fully occupied and then we're going forward into March, April, May. We've got gaps and we need to start filling people's times and the appointments, the actual blocks in the diary. 

Robin 

So Dan's diary here in April, we colour code, the types of work they're doing and the numbers show you how many appointments they've got each day. So by putting your mouse over each appointment and hovering, you get the full detail. 

Robin 

So it's like a planning tool. And in this view, we're looking at hours, but I can instead, if I go back here, looking at the financial view, if you've got that enabled on your system, you can also look in pounds. 

Robin 

So here, the system will automatically generate future income, so this is pounds per person and pounds at the bottom here each day and totals in pounds or dollars if you're in Australia, New Zealand. 

Robin 

It'll show you the total income being forecast for your business. Phenomenally useful, phenomenally quick and the other new feature that Tom's built into the wallboard, which is so cool, is that you can now view this by staff. 

Robin 

You can also view it by client, by project or by type of work. So that means you'll be able to look at a glance at the income that you're forecasting for your asbestos surveying versus your water hygiene work versus your fire risk work and over any period, either a day, week, month, three months or even six months and that's such a cool feature. 

Robin 

So as a planning and forecasting tool, the wallboard really takes some beating and it's so fast, so, so, so fast. So there's a whistle stop to all the wallboard. The wallboard is built into every Alpha Tracker but you can disable the financial view if you don't want everybody in your company to be able to, or anybody in your scheduling team to see the financial information in the wallboard, you can just show pounds instead. 

Robin 

Wow, so we've covered a lot here. I think we need to have a quick recap. I think that would be useful. So we've covered the basic diary features. We covered booking appointments, moving appointments, changing appointments, confirming appointments, marking them as tentative. 

Robin 

We covered, we talked about skills. So we know that we've got skills as a feature. So you can have skills based appointments if you want, including the system suggesting appointments to you. Oh, equipment, we didn't talk about equipment. 

Robin 

Yes, you can now log equipment against an appointment and you can also find, bring up a calendar appointment, something that we've been asked for lots. So as well as equipment that you can now log against an appointment, which is that button, the tool button, you've got an audit trail, which tells you who changed, created or moved appointments around. 

Robin 

So if you need to know why is an appointment in the diary this day, you can do that. We covered off where you can see calendars. We covered off Google Calendar Sync and Exchange Calendar Sync and reports and things. 

Robin 

We looked at all the new cool ways of scheduling, including mapping, and we've finalised with, finished off with the wall board. So a whistle-stop tour. We've had a phenomenal attendance today. I'm so pleased because it is our first one. 

Robin 

And I'm sure you've got, and we've got loads of questions that we haven't got to. Some we've answered, some that Dan's been answering. Thank you, Dan. All of the questions that we haven't answered, I managed to break my camera during the thing, all of the questions we haven't answered, we'll contact you separately outside the webinar and answer them. 

Robin 

And I think we'll pick the best question now for the t-shirt. I think Zainep probably asked the best ones. Sam wants to know how big the t-shirt is. We've got a full range, Sam. So you're OK. I can't remember how big you are, Sam. 

Robin 

That's a rude question. We do have a full range. All right, Dan's going to answer on your behalf there. Yeah, Zainep's going woo. Yeah, you won. I think Zainep wins the prize today. So this will just pop in. 

Robin 

Tell us what size you want. Zainep, just pop it in the chat. You get our Alpha Tracker t-shirt. And thanks again. Thanks again for coming. Thanks. It's our first one. Sorry if we had a couple of hiccups. 

Robin 

We'll get better at this. Next month, we'll cover. Should we cover next month? We might look at water hygiene next month. Possibly new feature in release 39. We'll see. But we'll let you know via LinkedIn and on the the blog and the newsfeed in Alpha Tracker. 

Robin 

OK, right. Comfy one coming your way. Thank you for that. Hope that was useful. Hope that you managed to watch that over your sandwiches and it didn't disrupt your day too much. Really appreciate you attending. 

Robin 

And we'll see you next time. 

Kim 

Thank you. 

Robin 

Bye. Bye.