Tag Archives: email second round

Lesson #14

Calendar – Job Printout function

Use Job Printout to view your job calendar as a report. It is a static report that lists all of the jobs scheduled for a specified date range and includes details about each job — such as the time, status, and location. Optionally it can include task details as well as scheduling, job confirmation, and assignment notification notes.

With this report, you can:

• Easily see your daily job calendar.
• Set it for a different date range (for example if you want a copy of your future calendar).
• Export it in a variety of formats and/or print a back-up of the job calendar for any date range.
• See who has been assigned to each job’s tasks.
• Search for a word or phrase in the onscreen job calendar. RB will highlight all instances of your searched word/phrase in the report and list them in a scroll box along with the page number where they occur.
• Use the printout to assign resources to tasks by writing them on the printout then refer to it to assign resources in RB9 fast using the Quick Assignments function (RB9 only).

Use the search criteria to narrow the results shown on the report:

• Job date range
• One or more Job Statuses
• One or more Job Types
• A single firm
• A single case
• One or more Business Units

You can also include or exclude some job information on the report:

• Tasks
• Scheduling Notes
• Confirmation Notes
• Resource Notification Notes

If you choose to show any of the optional notes, they will display with the same styling they have in the fields where they originated. For example if a job has scheduling notes that were formatted with specific fonts, text treatments, sizes, and/or colors, the text will appear on the Job Printout with those stylings.

The report’s footer will display which search criteria you used to generate the particular report with the exception of blank search fields or ALL list selections. If you select two or more items in a list, the report will display that as “(multiple values selected).”

Information about each job on the Job Printout is arranged to be easy to read:

• Essential job information such as date, time, job type, and ordering client are in the header of each job — which also makes it easier to distinguish between jobs on the page.
• You can choose to have tasks associated with each job listed within the job — along with any resources already assigned and their contact information.
• Information you need for assigning the right resources to job tasks — such as specialties required or services requested — appear on the report.
• If a job entry doesn’t fit at the end of a page the entire job entry is moved to the next page so there are no entries split between pages.

TL;DR: Job Printout is a report with several uses — including as your future calendar and as a worksheet for assigning resources.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately.

Confirmation Notes: Remarks about a job that will appear in job confirmation emails to the client.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Job Status: Stage a job is in, e.g., New or Cancelled. You can designate your own job statuses in RB.

Job Type: Categories of jobs requested by clients — such as Deposition or Real-Time.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters.

Resource Notification Notes: Any remarks about a job or instructions for the resource(s) assigned to the job.

Scheduling Notes: Remarks about a scheduled job that are for internal use only.

Task: Service requested with a job — such as reporting, interpreting, or video — that require a separate resource to accomplish. More >

Lesson #13

Calendar – Send Future Calendar function

If a client asks you for a calendar of all of the jobs they have scheduled with you through the end of the year on a particular case, you can quickly provide that information as a report with the Send Future Calendar function.

You can send the calendar to a designated contact at the firm that includes all jobs scheduled by the firm on that case — or send individual contacts calendars of only their jobs related to the case.

Send clients their calendar for any time period

Use the default settings to send calendars to all of your clients that list their jobs scheduled for the upcoming month. Or limit which calendars you send and what they include by using a combination of the function’s search criteria:

• Job date range
• One or more job statuses
• Single firm
• Single contact
• Single case
• One or more business units

The list of clients that matches your search criteria displays each firm’s name, address, and number of jobs scheduled in the date range searched. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order — but when you exit the function RB9 will revert back to the default order. Export the list as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

You can preview the future calendar reports before emailing them — and look up details on the clients without leaving the function. For example the function will show you if any client is missing an email address so you can update that client’s information before attempting to send the report.

Future calendars are sent as attachments to an email. RB9 includes a default email and you can customize what that email says — even edit it on the fly when sending an email to a client. RB9 records the email sent in the Email Log function in Tools, so you can refer back to it later.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Easily send clients their calendars of upcoming jobs they have scheduled with your agency.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately — such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with — such as attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, legal assistants, claim adjusters, and court clerks.

Firm: Business you provide services to — usually law firms but can also be other court reporting firms, vendors, insurance companies, corporate clients, and courts.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Job Status: Stage a job is in, e.g., New or Cancelled. You can designate your own job statuses in RB.

Lesson #12

Calendar – Daily Calendar Audit function

Quickly see how many jobs been scheduled or canceled today, or for any date range. You can also use RB’s Daily Calendar Audit to review new entries for typos and other mistakes. View canceled jobs to look for trends and see if you can reduce cancellations.

View today’s scheduling activity or look up other results

The default view is all jobs scheduled today. You can also quickly check which jobs were canceled today instead.

For either scheduled or canceled jobs, you can search by different dates/date ranges and refine your calendar audit list to one or more:

• Job types
• Referrals for the jobs
• Business Units

In your search results you can view the details of any of the jobs listed and update them if needed.

Customize how you view your scheduling activity

The grid in which you view your daily calendar is customizable to your individual preference:

• Re-arrange the columns so the most important information is most prominent
• Stick up to 10 columns to the left side of the grid so they do not scroll when you have a results grid wider than your screen.
• Stretch/shrink columns to fit the results.
• Hide columns you don’t need to see.
• Choose which column(s) to sort results by.
• If you select more than one column, choose in what column order to sort the list.
• Choose whether to sort info by ascending or descending order in each selected column.
• Save your custom grid as your default.

You can save your custom grid as your default. Your customizations do not affect other users, and you can restore the original RB grid layout anytime.

From the results grid you can view and update any listed job’s details and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use in other applications.

TL;DR:  See how many jobs were set or canceled today, and review your calendar for typos, errors, and trends.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately — such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Job Type: Categories of jobs requested by clients — such as Deposition or Real-Time.

Lesson #9

Calendar – Quick Assignments function

If there are too many jobs or too many changes in a day to assign tasks one at a time within each job, save time by printing out your upcoming calendar, writing your resources on your calendar, then using Quick Assignments to:

• Apply your assignments to your job calendar in RB9.
• Send resources notifications of their assignments.

Even if you don’t have so many assignments but just prefer to assign all of a day’s resources at one time, use Quick Assignments after confirming tomorrow’s jobs to drag and drop resources to related tasks — or select someone from a list of resources that have previously worked on jobs for the same case.

You can also use Quick Assignments to easily enter assignments made on past jobs that you didn’t get a chance to enter into RB9 before the job occurred.

Assign then notify in one function

Quick Assignments defaults to tomorrow’s tasks when you open the function so you can immediately start assigning resources and checking who has already been assigned. You can change the date to view, narrow the list to one or more tasks and/or business unit (BU), and assign resources to a different date.

In addition to dragging and dropping resources, there are 2 shortcut methods: Previous resources and preferred resources.

As the name implies, previous resources are any resources that were assigned to tasks in jobs on the same case. You can assign a resource from a list of previous resources with a click instead of searching for a resource to drag and drop.

If you maintain preferred/blocked resources lists for firms and contacts you can view those lists in Quick Assignments, so you can:

• Avoid assigning a blocked resource.
• Assign an ordering firm’s or ordering contact’s preferred resource to a task with a click.

Whether you select a previous resource/preferred resource from a list or drag and drop a resource to a task RB9 records it in the related job’s Notes Log and asks if you want to notify the resource. (If you try to assign a blocked resource to a task, RB will alert you and not allow the assignment.) You can send the notification by either email or text message or both without leaving the function — or you can wait to send all of the day’s notifications in a batch using the Send Assignment Notifications/Cancellations function.

Notifications can be sent via text or email or both. Notification emails automatically include the reporter worksheet for the task. You can customize both the message and whether the worksheet is included in the body of the email, as an attachment, or both. You can include other attachments as you are sending the email. You can also send an iCalendar file that the resource can import into their own calendar.

Tasks listed in Quick Assignments include information such as:

• Job number
• Job type
• Job status
• Job date
• Job time
• Job location
• Task times (if different from job times)
• Assigned resource
• Client
• Witness
• BU
• Any notes you’ve made about the task

If you use the Notation field in jobs for your own custom codes to describe jobs (such as “RT” for Real Time), these codes appear here too to help you choose appropriate resources.

Tasks are color coded by job status so if any job hasn’t been confirmed yet it’s easy to see and follow up with the client. And the list makes it easy to see all unassigned tasks at a glance so you won’t overlook any when applying resources to assignments.

Customize how you view assignment lists

The grid in which you view assignment lists is customizable to your individual preference:

• Re-arrange the columns so the most important information is most prominent
• Stick up to 10 columns to the left side of the grid so they do not scroll when you have a results grid wider than your screen.
• Stretch/shrink columns to fit the results.
• Hide columns you don’t need to see.
• Choose which column(s) to sort results by.
• If you select more than one column choose in what column order to sort the list.
• Choose whether to sort info by ascending or descending order in each selected column.
• Save your custom grid as your default.

You can save your custom grid as your default. Your customizations do not affect other users and you can restore the original RB grid layout anytime.

In addition to assigning tasks you can view and update any listed job’s details, remove assigned resources, and export the grid as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV(comma-separated values) file to save, share, print, or use in other applications.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: In Quick Assignments you can quickly assign resources to tomorrow’s jobs and see if any of those jobs are not confirmed yet so you can follow up with the client.

RB concepts in this lesson

Business Unit (BU): One of your company’s revenue centers or any entity in your business that you want to track separately — such as branch offices, other companies you own, affiliates, and profit-sharing operations.

Blocked Resource: Resource that a particular firm or contact does not want assigned to tasks on jobs they schedule or order from you.

Job: Usually the reporting of a deposition but can also be any kind of service you provide with your reporters or other resources. More >

Job Status: Stage a job is in, e.g., New or Cancelled.

Notation: Short codes (up to 24 characters) you create yourself to give key information about a job (such as “V” for video, “RT” for realtime, “1 of 2,” or “Daily”) in a results grid so you don’t have to click into a job’s detail window.

Notes Logs: Un-editable internal-use only notes entered either by a user or automatically by RB9 appear in chronological logs in the database record where they occurred — such as a case, job, invoice, or entity. More >

Preferred Resource: Resource that a particular firm or contact wants you to assign to tasks on jobs they schedule or order from you.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Task: Service requested with a job — such as reporting, interpreting, or video — that require a separate resource (person, company, thing) to accomplish. More >

Lesson #8

Calendar – Resource Availability function

When a resource wants to take a vacation or a personal day — or if they want to pick up extra hours of work outside their normal schedule — use Resource Availability to view their schedule, then quickly add or remove time for specific days.

The default view in Resource Availability is all resources’ work schedules for today. (Resources’ regular work schedules are set up in their individual listings.) Work schedules are color coded so you can track resources’ schedules in a glance by assigned periods, available/unavailable times, and time off.

Search for a resource

Use any of the search criteria to narrow your search to find a particular resource/resources:

• Date range
• A resource’s name
• One or more Priority Levels
• One or more Resource Types
• One or more Specialties
• Text in time-off notes/comments

You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order but when you exit the function RB will revert back to the default order.

Include notes about time off

When granting time off you can include reasons for it and any notes or comments about it for your records. Resource Availability will display this information in the search results.

Quickly change a resource’s schedule

Use the Change Availability option to add time to resources’ schedules when they are willing to work extra hours for a month — or quickly block out time off for a resource if you do not need to keep track of the reason.

During a resource’s scheduled time off — whether it’s their regularly scheduled time off or time off added here — the resource’s name will not appear in the list of available resources when assigning tasks. If you try to assign a resource in Quick Assignments who is not available, it will alert you so you can pick a different resource or override the resource’s time off.

TL;DR: Set up resources’ regular work schedules in their individual records in RB, then use Resource Availability for one-off changes — such as vacations or availability outside of their normal working hours.

RB concepts in this lesson

Priority Level: Order of selection preference for resources. For example resources on staff vs. affiliates.

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service — such as reporters, videographers, interpreters, scopists, account executives, other agencies that cover jobs for you, or a conference room.

Resource Type: Professions and other categories of resources.

Specialty: Skill or specific expertise required for some jobs. — such as medical reporting, Spanish, or realtime.

Task: Service requested with a job — such as reporting, interpreting, or video, that requires a separate resource (person, company, thing) to accomplish. More >