At the moment we have the advanced search section. This allows us to search for pretty much anything and create custom searches which can be exported to a csv file. This is a fantatsic feature.

There are some improvements we could make, that no-one else is doing. In fact I often forget just what a powerful reporting tool that is and I need to make more of it to our customers.

Anyway, in the advanced searches found on every global screen i.e orders, enquiries, accounts, field resources etc. below the ‘export data to csv’ option we should have a ‘export data to map’. We need to open up the geographical options so we can select multiple postcodes, maybe choose a town or city or ideally when we put in the new geo-location mapping in we can put in a postcode or tag and say + 5 miles in diameter around it.

And then those addresses should all appear on google maps.Ideally a rollover on those points would give some information like name or company name, address and order number or account number etc to distinguish one from another.

Why is this a great feature? Well, imagine you want to run a query on your customers in a certain area because you are booked in to service a water filtration system in say Dublin. And you want to see what other customers you have in the area so you can service them while you are there. If you run the query and export it to the map, you can easily see where they are located. Now eventually the idea would be to pick the one’s you want to go to on the map, hit a ‘route’ button so it works out the fastest route and then hit a ‘schedule’ button so it books them all into the schedule – that would be really clever.

Written By

Adrian Portsmouth