By Toby Prescott, Director of Development
(This is the 2nd in a series of blogs about the upcoming update to ManitouNEO, and what new features and improvements will be included.)
ManitouNEO has been the most dramatic upgrade to our flagship product since its inception in 2002. It was released to customers at the beginning of 2017, and since then, I’ve enjoyed talking to our early adopters to get feedback on the features they find the most useful. From that feedback, the Bold development team has been diligently working on version 2.1, and we are excited about the new features that will be offered in the very near future! Last week, we looked at the various Alarm Handling Improvements that are forthcoming. This week, we are highlighting the Information Improvements that have been made:
Information Pop-Ups
A new Supervisor Workstation option can be used to force an operator to acknowledge that they have read temporary comments. The acknowledgment will be written to the activity log. Additionally, the body of the comment can also be written to the log, along with the acknowledgment that the operator read it.
Customer Access Overlap
Because ManitouNEO does not have the same concept of “locking an account for edit” as the previous clients, it is important to know if another user is touching the same account and may possibly make changes. Using an SWS option, a notification can be set to pop-up, alerting users if someone else is working on the same account at the same time.
Disable Devices on a System
Devices can be now be set as disabled on an account. They will show a strike-through for fast visual indication and will not allow the user to connect to them.
Add Comments to Activity as Read-only User
From an account, it is now possible to add comments to either an event or just general activity. This is possible without having to go into edit mode or be in alarm handling. This allows for additional commentary to easily be added after an event.
Predefined Comments
Custom comments can be created in the Supervisor workstation and then used to very quickly dump boilerplate comments anywhere commenting is used. This improves the speed of comments and also provides consistency.
Customer Lookup with PBX Caller ID
Incoming calls can be presented to operators with the customer account information, so they can quickly recognize where the call originated. The caller will receive customizable updates while waiting for the operator to answer. When the operator answers, PBX Assistant will allow control of the call as well as show the account based on caller ID if a match can be found. It will allow quick launching of the account or selection of a different account if the match was not made correctly.
The next set of improvements for ManitouNEO 2.1 we will look at next week are Video Improvements!