In addition to tracking the new rules, regulations, and guidelines being put in place during the Phased re-openings of business, you will want to track any individual preferences that will make it easier for you, and your customer, to do business together. 

Although there are different kinds of preferences in MRSware - email preferences, table column view preferences, data view style preferences, and more - the preferences referred to in "Part 2 of the CRM in the Pandemic Era" series "Tracking Customer Preferences" is all about capturing and tracking your customers' preferences for communicating and doing business with you.

One way to enter the information is in the Contact's Additional tab.

Here's how:

In MRSware -
1. Open a Contact card
2. On the menu bar, click on "Additional -> New"
3. Enter a title in the "Description" field, e.g. "preferred method of contact" or "communication preference"
4. Enter information in the "Value" field, e.g. "no in-person meetings, e-mail, or Zoom only"
5. Click "Ok"

You can set up as many Additional fields as you like.  Additional fields are searchable.

In MRSweb -
The Additional tab feature is in development

On your phone -
1. Tap on Contacts
2. Select a Contact
3. Tap "Edit"
4. Tap "Notes"
​5. Enter the new communication preference in the contact's company
6. Tap "Save"

On your phone, once saved, the information will be Sync'd with MRSware Sync, so you have access to the information wherever you're working. ​

Companies are setting up new regulations, restrictions, and guidelines to follow when re-opening for business.  Every business is different in how they want their employees to interact with the public, including vendors.

Sorting and organizing all the various rules is a like a jumble - confusing if you don't have a system that allows you to track and share them.  In  MRSware you can track and share these guidelines to make it easier to work with all businesses you interact with.

One way to enter the information is in the Contact’s Note field.

Here's how: 

In MRSware -
1. Open a Contact card
2. In the Notes field, enter the new regulations for doing business with the contact's company
3. Click "Save and Close"

On your phone:
1. Tap on Contacts
2. Select a Contact
3. Tap "Edit"
4. Tap "Notes"
​5. Enter the new regulations for doing business with the contact's company
6. Tap "Save"

Once saved, the information will be Sync'd with MRSware Sync, so you have access to the information wherever you're working.
​

When you add your events to your calendar from your mobile devices or Google website, you have the option to select which calendar it goes into.  The 2 calendars from Google that we are sync'ing with MRSware are your personal one (usually just shows your gmail email address as the name) and your "Myname's MRSware Appointments" calendar.

When you add something on your phone/Google, if you put it in your "Myname's MRSware Appointment" calendar, the default is "Business".  If you put it in your private Google calendar, it will default to "Private" in MRSware.  You can adjust these defaults by going to the "Go To" -> "MRSware Sync" -> "Edit Subscription" menu in MRSware.

A Private Appointment can only be see by its creator, and anyone directly invited to it via the Attendees tab.  A Business Appointment can be seen by anyone in the User's Management chain, as defined in the System Administration Roles and Filters.

MRSware Sync provides Users with the ability to synchronize MRSware and Google Calendars so your Appointments appear in both places.  Any changes made in either calendar will be updated in the other. 

The multi-calendar synchronization allows you to keep in-sync both your personal calendar in Google as well as your Shared calendar in MRSware.  Although you may want to show your dentist appointment in your work calendar, you probably don't want the details shared with others in your office.  MRSware Sync will keep your private and shared appointments separate so only you can see your personal appointments, while blocking out the time in your MRSware shared calendar.  

You have the option to sync or not sync each of the calendars in your Google account.  If you choose to sync multiple Google calendars, you'll use your Sync Subscription settings to choose a color for your Google Private/Personal Events and a color for your Google Business Events.  These colors will indicate in which of your Google calendars the appointment fits (Personal or Business).  When you set up an appointment on your mobile device, you'll select the color that indicates a personal or business appointment; the appointment will sync in MRSware as either a personal type (not shared) or business type (shared).  When you set up an appointment in MRSware you'll select the Type - Personal or Business; the appointment will sync in your Google calendar with the color that indicates it's either a personal or business appointment. 

To set up your Sync Subscription you can either go to https://sync.mrsware.net/ to set up your account or contact your office administrator if you are not sure what your login information is.

Tracking sales for Distributors with multiple branch locations, Manufacturers who do drop-shipments, and Wholesalers outside your own agency's territory requires that the sales be tracked to their final destination within your territory.  This allows for proper credit to the sales rep for the final destination as well as accurately tracking sales by geography.

In Invoice Entry, the person entering or importing the sales numbers will mark the Invoices with the final Ship To location or import this Shipping Address from a spreadsheet of sales history.  That final location can be individually entered per Invoice, as an "Alternate Ship To" location; can use the Customer's Shipping Address from their Company card; or can be the Customer's main Business Address.

In Data Analysis, we have a Dimension in the grid named "Ship To".  This field is the reflection of either the "Alternate Ship To" address entered on the Invoice, or the Shipping Address of the Customer.  If there is no shipping address information in the system for customer, then the word **MISSING** will appear to denote that there is no information entered in either the Customer's Company card or the individual Invoice.

​

You may want to find a single invoice among many to be paid.  If the invoice numbers are long it can be confusing.  The easiest way to find the one invoice is to search for it in the Payment entry table.  To do this:
​
1. Right-click on the column header "Invoice Number" and select "Find".
​

​2. In the "Expression Builder" dialog enter the invoice number.  

3. Click "Ok".
​

The selected invoice number will be highlighted.  Check the box to pay the invoice or right-click and select "Adjust/Partial" if necessary.
​

When making a payment in Payment Entry, you can choose to run a Commission Reconciliation report showing the invoices paid.  Click the checkbox "Run Commission Payment Reconciliation Report on Save" (see screenshot below left) and click "Save".  The report opens automatically (see screenshot below right).  

 
If you forget to check the checkbox and save your payment, you can still run the report by going to the Shortcuts panel.  Click on "Report Explorer", then select "Commission Payment Reconciliation" (see below).  

​Once the Report Prompt opens, enter the Title of the Report and the Payment Reference number and click "Ok".
If you've forgotten the payment reference number, go to the Payment Entry table to find the number.
​

I was noticing delays in retrieving emails, even when my email app on my Android phone was set to grab them every 15 minutes.  Turns out there is a feature in newer versions of Android that will "optimize" your battery by restricting programs' ability to use the data connection in the background.  Basically, despite telling your email app to fetch new messages every X minutes, the device is not allowing it to do just that.

There are 2 settings of interest around this, the Battery Saver mode and the Battery Optimization settings.

Battery Saver is something that the user can activate manually to reduce battery consumption when needed, and also automatically activates when the battery is at a critical level, perhaps 10%, 5%, or another preset level.  Battery Saver, among other things, will turn off the background data of most apps.

Battery Optimization is a separate setting that the device automatically turns on for some (most?) apps.  It applies the same background data restrictions as Battery Saver mode, but is active all the time, regardless of how much battery is available!  To review the list of apps that are being "optimize", and to disable this feature for your email app, click on the Battery Optimization selection in the Battery Saver menu.

The Home page of MRSware has a panel labeled "News".  By default it shows our 3 MRSware blogs with the latest information and updates about what is going on in the MRSware world.  However, this panel is actually a full RSS Reader and can be used to keep track of your favorite news feeds from around the web.

Here is how:
​1. Click the word "News" in the panel header and you will get the configuration screen, where you can add new feeds and change existing ones.

A while back we posted an article on integrating MRSware File Share with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and others.  In that article, we talked about setting up the sync app for those various file sharing services to use a folder within the My MRSware Files folder on your computer, and this anything placed in that folder in MRSware would be synchronized with your online service account, and from there with your various devices that are also connected to that service.

Today, I just want to point out another way to sync the entire My MRSware File folder structure and files with Google Drive specifically, and point out one of the great reasons to do this: use Google Docs, Google Sheets, and other Google Apps directly with your company files stored in MRSware.

Move the My MRSware Files folder to Google Drive

In the Preferences section of MRSware, Users can move the My MRSware Files folder to anywhere they like.  The My MRSware Files folder is where MRSware places copies of the File Share files you are working on your computer's hard drive.  Moving the entire folder to your Google Drive folder will put all future contents you are working on directly into Google Drive.
​