Calling Customers in Advance

In certain situations you might need to notify your customers of upcoming work. If your local government requires that many of your customers be notified by phone before certain jobs can be done then you'll be scheduling a "CALL AHEAD" job for each of these customers.

On the other hand if you only have a few customers here or there that ask to be notified then it will be easier to put these reminders into your Events manger.

SCHEDULING CUSTOMERS FOR THE CALL AHEAD JOB

NOTE: It is assumed that you are already familiar with how to schedule jobs for your customers.

When you first installed Office Express, the default job list contained a job named "CALL AHEAD (place job name here)".

Step 1. click the Job List icon at the top of the Office Express window.
Step 2. Move to the CALL AHEAD job. NOTE: If you had previously deleted it or renamed it then press the Insert key and insert a new job.
Step 3. Edit the "CALL AHEAD (place job name here)" and rename it to the job you will be notifying customers about. ex. CALL AHEAD FERTILIZER. Save the job.
Step 4. Go to your Customer List and schedule this job for each customer that needs to be called in advance.

NOTE: You can use this method for as many jobs as needed that require customers to be notified in advance.

When you need to begin calling these customers you will use the Reports->Query-> Query Scheduled Job feature to generate a list of the customers. To locate the customers:

Step 1. from Office Express' Main menu select the Report option.
Step 2. select the Query the Database option. The Office Express Query page will be displayed.
Step 3. select the Query Scheduled Jobs list item. The Scheduled Jobs Query Form will be displayed.
Step 4. place a checkmark next to the Last Name field, place checkmarks next the the phone number fields you will need and place checkmarks for any other pieces of information you want about the customer.
Step 5. place an equals sign (=) in the Description field.
Step 6. at the end of the Description field is a button with three dots (...). Click this button and select the "CALL AHEAD" job you have previously entered into your job file. The description field should now look something like this:

    ="CALL AHEAD FERTILIZER"

Step 7. click the Execute Query button. This will get the list of customers you had scheduled for a call ahead.
Step 8. There will be a Print button you can click to print the list.

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