Release #62 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the bootcloud nerd. And you will never guess what time it is. You're wrong. It's. Did you say. Did you say release notes this time? Yeah. No, yeah, that's right. It's release notes time. So the first feature on these release notes is one that you heard me promise a while back on the recap video for the Roadmap webinar. It is a y' all item. Oh, let me grab my hat. There we go. This is a really long awaited feature and to announce it, I think I'm just gonna replay you that clip from that Roadmap webinar recap video because I'm afraid if I go back to that place, I may never come back. All right, next we saw.

Could it be? Is this the day that the prophecy foretold? I admit my faith was beginning to waver. It's even more beautiful. I imagined the option to automatically send invoices upon job completion. Why? I'm at a loss for words. I. I don't think there are words. I've lost track of time. How long has it been? Minutes? Hours? I'm sorry, my sweet. I have to break away. I have to finish the video.

Um, I'm sorry, I. I blanked out there for a minute. Um, it still gets me choked up. So to set this feature up, go to Settings and then under Invoicing, you'll see a new section called Automatic Invoicing. That is where you choose what types of jobs, if any, you want to automatically send invoices. So you've got lots of options here. You can set this up by job type. If you want to go a little broader than that, you can do it by business unit, or you can also do it by specific technicians. You'll also notice the section at the bottom for excluded customers. So you don't actually exclude customers here from this screen. You do it with a new automatically generated tag. So you'll have this new do not auto send invoice tag. And. And you can apply that to customers or locations or jobs, same as you can with any tag. But if you do apply it to customers, then those excluded customers will show up here on this list. Now, we do have the little issue of customers with multiple emails on their account. So how it works currently with this initial release is that it's going to send the automatic invoice if it's set up to send to the most recently added email on that customer's profile. So if there's only one email. Obviously we don't have a problem, it's just going to send to that one. But if there's multiple, it's going to go to whichever email was added last. Eventually we'll be able to add more granularity as far as which email the invoice goes to. But in the meantime, the workaround would just be if it's going to the wrong email, the one that you don't want it to go to, then remove that correct email and add it back in so it becomes the last one added. But overall, I'm just so happy that this feature is finally here. We've been asking for it for forever and it's consistently been one of the top voted ideas in community. Tons of companies have asked for it, including but nowhere near limited to Thermo Direct Inc. Pro Lift Garage Doors of Brentwood, Santa Air LLC Help and Plumbing Incorporated, Michael and Son Griffin Home Services. I'm gonna stop there because this could easily be the rest of the video. Howdy y'.

All.

Okay, next, under memberships we have updates to the membership setup pages. So various user experience improvements have been made across the membership type and recurring services pages. Things have been reorganized, pages have been redesigned. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about every single little thing that was changed because it's kind of a lot. It really only affects you if you're building out a new membership or editing an existing one. And because I think the changes that were made are all pretty intuitive, it's just you'll have an easier workflow, but you won't really need any extra explaining from me. So I'm not going to waste your time because I am not in the business of wasting anyone's time. This is good. Next, under Job Booking and Contact Experience, we have another y' all item. So there's now an option for a call linking confirmation. So let me explain. When a CSR or anybody is on the phone through ServiceTitan and that call is linked to a job, if that CSR or whoever the person is on the phone gets to multitasking and starts messing with a different account, somebody who they're not on the phone with, there are certain actions they can take that will cause the call to relink. For example, somebody calls in CSR, picks up the phone, we're talking to Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones has a problem. We get her call booked, but then she starts chatting us up about her sick chihuahua. And we don't want to be rude, but we're busy people with things to do so, we go to leave a note on a different customer, say, Mr. Howard. If we save that note on Mr. Howard's account, but we're on the phone still with Mrs. Jones. This phone call with Mrs. Jones is going to end up linked to Mr. Howard's account. And people weren't always aware that this was happening. So it could cause some confusion as to why calls were mislinked. And the problem is further exacerbated with Phones Pro, where there's no call bubbles that you have to click. So now we have this, this little modal, this pop up that shows up and lets the person know, hey, what you're about to do is going to relink the call. And it gives them the option to either carry on and do that relink or to not relink. Now, for right now, this is an optional feature. You have to turn it on if you want it. It's found under Settings, Operations, and Job Booking. Eventually it might become a feature that's on by default, but we're just feeling it out for now. So if you want it, go in there and turn it on. I highly recommend it. Now, this one's a y'. All. Not necessarily because a ton of people were asking specifically for this feature, but there were enough people experiencing the symptom, there were enough support cases of people just confused as to why their calls were mislinked that we, we felt it warranted some action and we felt that we could roll it into y'.

All.

All right, next, under Equipment, we have custom fields for equipment types. So you can now create a custom field that applies only to specific types of equipment. To make one of these custom fields, you go into Settings under Operations and Custom fields. The same place that you add any custom field. You would check off this box for installed equipment. And then you should get this sub checkbox underneath that which says show on specific equipment types. And then you can select the equipment type from that dropdown right there. Okay. Next, under Accounting, we have an updated General Ledger Accounts settings page. So under Settings, Operations, and General Ledger Accounts, we now have this edit mode toggle that gives us inline and bulk editing features very similar to what you see in the price book. And this allows you to quickly make bulk edits. And we also have these new quick filters here along the top of the screen so you can narrow down what you're looking at. There's also a new descriptions field, which is helpful to make it more clear what each General Ledger account is meant for, as well as a new association field, which will make more sense after we talk about this Next note. So we also have new default general ledger accounts. This is a standard set of GL accounts that is necessary to use the basic functions of ServiceTitan. Now this is mainly gonna be helpful for new customers who are onboarding or it could also be helpful if you're trying to enable certain features within service titan accounting related features like maybe payment collections or specifically the automated refunds workflow within payment collections. In order to use that you need to have certain general ledger accounts set up and if you don't already have them, serviceitan has the ability now to pre populate that with the defaults. But if you are already set up then you really don't need to worry about these. There's no action you need to take. There's no reason that you need to switch from your GL accounts to the defaults. They won't have any impact on you. They're just there if you need them. Next under price book this is big. This is a big one. Dynamic pricing is here. So if you have managed to not hear about this by now, then you don't watch all my videos and the disappointment I feel is immeasurable. But basically it allows you to set up pricing formulas that just says hey, this is how I want to calculate my prices for this category, this category, this category, whatever. And then anytime anybody, be it in the field or in the office, goes to look at the price of that item in the price book, the price is calculated instantly on the fly. As they go to look at it, boom. It runs the formula right then and there and they see the price. What that means is that the price is always up to date, it's always running the formula. So if your material costs go up, you don't need to manually go and update all of your service pricing. It's just going to keep following the formula. If you change the billable hours on a certain task, you don't need to go and update that price. It's just going to keep following the formula so the price will always be up to date. You're also able to dynamically modify that price based on certain factors like is this an add on, is this an after hours job or is this job for some reason more difficult than normal? You can add pricing levels so you can add level one, level two, level three, easy, medium, hard, or all the way up to however many levels you want. And that gives your technicians or your consultants or salespeople or whoever some ability to modify the pricing. If a job is going to be particularly hard or exceptionally easy or whatever, you're able to provide them that flexibility without giving them full control to just modify the price to whatever. Next, we have client specific pricing. Now, client specific pricing is very similar to dynamic pricing, but where dynamic pricing is better for if you charge flat rate, client specific pricing is better if you charge time and materials, or if you are like a commercial or possibly new construction company that has certain deals worked out with certain clients where you you charge them differently. Now, both dynamic pricing and client specific pricing are major features. There's a lot to dive into. So I do have separate videos on both of those topics. So check out the description box down below for links to both of those videos. If you have a price book in Servicetitan, I highly, highly, highly recommend looking into at least one of these features. Again, dynamic pricing is better if you charge flat rate. Client specific pricing is better if you are a bigger commercial shop or if you charge time and materials. All right, next, under reporting and dashboards, Yeehaw. We have the new email delivery status report. So the email delivery status report, it gives you a centralized place to see the delivery statuses. So was it delivered, bounced or whatever of all of your outbound service that emails previously you had to rely on an alert to get that information or you would have to check record by record. This one was asked for recently by Jessica Woodruff Smith. I saw that request, I talked to the reporting team and it turned out it was something we were able to get done pretty quickly. So to Jessica and anybody else who benefits from this report, howdy y'.

All.

Okay, next, under the improvement section of these notes and under CRM, keeping the hat on for this one, we have discontinued the internal notes field on customer records. Okay, so let me explain. It used to be that if you clicked on the edit pencil on a customer record to get to that edit screen, there was this field. It was just a text box and it said internal notes. And this field was just a relic from Service Titan's past. So anybody who came across that field would inevitably become confused and wonder, what's this for? Aren't regular customer notes already internal notes?

They are.

Where do the notes go that I enter into this box?

Nowhere.

Yeah, any text that you entered into that box, Nothing happened to it. The only place that you could ever see it is if you hit that edit pencil again and looked in that exact box and you could already leave notes on customer records. And those were in fact already internal notes. So this field was just, it was nothing but confusing. Like I said, it was A relic from the past that just never got taken out. And now's the time we're taking it out now. This one's a y' all not because a bunch of people were like crying to please take this field away. Truly, this one's a y'. All just because of how y' all was conceived. If you've seen the original video where I explain how the y' all program came to be, then you know that it originated from a list that I was keeping of just little nitpicks that either I had or that I had seen just around in the community from people. This is one from that original list. Before I really knew what the list was for, before I knew that we were going to call this program, you asked, we listened. This is just one from me that I noticed, hey, that field doesn't do anything and it's confusing. So we should probably. Now, I'm sure somebody, somebody out there had some super niche use that they were using this field for, and you're probably mad that it's gone now. And for that person, if you're out there, if you're watching this, this was Tom Howard's idea. But for everybody else, howdy, doll. Now, by the way, anything that you did have entered in that internal notes field is just going to be converted into a regular customer note. So it's not gone and it's just a regular customer note now. Still an internal note. All right, next. I'm still keeping the hat on. The action buttons on the Opportunity follow ups page are now easier to get to. So previously, when you were working with an opportunity in the Opportunity follow ups page, the action buttons, the buttons to call the customer or log a follow up or attach an attachment, those were located at the bottom of the audit trail, which, if the audit trail was short, wasn't really a big problem. But if the audit trail was long, it meant you had to do a whole bunch of scrolling to get to the buttons. So now those buttons have been moved on top of the audit trail. This is another one from the original list, but I know I didn't come up with it myself. Somebody, I think, on Facebook masterminds had brought this up and, man, I'd really love to call you out by name, but Facebook search is really, really bad. And I couldn't find the original post that made me add it to the list. But I know it exists. I know you're out there. So to you and to everybody else who benefits from this, howdy, y'.

All.

Okay, next. And I'm still Keeping the hat on. Okay, now this note is a little misleading, so stick with me here for a second. Just let me explain. Okay, so the default selection on the search page is now customer. So maybe you remember back in, I think it was February, I started a poll and I said, hey, right now if you go to the search screen, the default selection is jobs. Do you like that? Is that normally what you're going there for? And the majority of you, the majority of you said, no, I'd prefer it to be customer. So the search page does now technically default to customer. But whatever you select, whatever you change it to in the dropdown, that selection is now sticky. So watch. I'm going to go to the search screen for the first time ever since this update. You see that it is customer. But now let me change it to form. Okay, now if I navigate away and then navigate back to the search screen, still form. If I refresh the page still form, even if I sign out and then sign back in still form. So because your selection is now sticky, effectively it's configurable. It's not so much that the default is customer. If you want it to always be job or always be whatever, you just set it to that and it's sticky. It's going to stay that way until you change it. And I love that. I think that's a win win for everybody. So to everybody who voted on that poll. Howdy y'.

All.

Alright, next, under forms. I'm sorry, did you think I was taking the hat off?

Never.

We have some forms page improvements. So if you now go into settings and then forms, that forms overview page has been completely redesigned. So first of all, you'll notice we have a search box up here which helps us more easily find the form that we're looking for. This alone solves one of my biggest gripes with the old form screen. See, before you could technically do a search because the name column had a filter. But if you use that, if you made a filter and then you clicked into a form and then you said, oh, actually that's not the form I'm looking for, and then backed out, it cleared your filter. That no longer happens. So If I type 10 here, I get two results. I can take a look and see if this is the one that I was thinking of. I get this nice little preview modal. I can say, ah, no, actually that, that isn't the one I was thinking of. And my search is still here even if I click this edit pencil to all the way, dive in and then say back to forms. It still doesn't clear my search, and that alone makes me very happy. But there's more to this. So you'll also notice we have this new status column that lets you know if the form is published or not, if it's available to be used, or if it's in a draft state. We also have a separate column for the triggers, and we can see how many triggers each form has. And we can even edit the triggers very quickly right from here. So you just click on that and it takes you to the triggers page where you can add new triggers or make edits or whatever. You'll also notice here we have a make a copy button. If you're a longtime viewer of blue collar nerd content, you know how I feel about duplicate buttons. Love me a duplicate button. And we also have this export button, and if I click that, it gives me the option if I want to also export the triggers that are associated with this form or the conditional logic rules that are associated with this form. This particular form doesn't have conditional logic, so that's not a choice. But if it did, I would have the option to export that as well. And then if I click export, I now get a file. So previously to make copies of forms or to export forms and share forms, you had to like copy and paste code. That's no longer the case. You can now duplicate forms with the push of a button. And and if you do want to export the form for sharing purposes or whatever, you don't have to copy and paste code anymore. You get a file now. And even the form builder itself has been improved a little bit. So you'll notice that the status is much more visible up here at the top. This was a really easy mistake to make before you could build this form out and then not realize that you never switched it from unpublished to publish. And then you'd have troubleshooting to do. You'd be wondering why your form wasn't showing up. So that's more obvious now with these big tiles and the screen tag. And if you scroll down on a form, you've now got this convenient little scroll to top button that takes you right back to the top of the page. So overall, some great quality of life improvements there. I believe this is also another one from my original list, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who asked for some improvements on this page. So I'll see if I can dig up a post or a community idea and give you guys a shout out there. All right, next, under identity and user management. There is a new Assign user roles permission. So previously only office employees with the View or Update user employee permissions permission had the ability to assign user roles. Yo dog heard you like permissions dated. Very dated joke. Anyways, a new permission Assign User roles was created so anybody with that permission can edit an office employees or technician's role, but they can't update their individual permissions. And any office employees with the View or Edit user employee permissions permission can still edit roles. All right, next, under Job planning and management we have some updates to the project page, so you now have the option to edit project information directly on the project page. Previously you had to navigate to a different page to make any edits. There's also a new collapsible right panel which houses custom fields and other project information, whereas previously that information was located at the top of the page. Next, under Price book there's a new True Time and materials or Honor estimate setting. This is only going to be relevant for you if you're using client specific pricing, which we talked about earlier in the video. The setting is basically what it sounds like. If you charge by time and materials and you provided a customer an estimate, would you like to honor the pricing on that estimate or would you like to go by the true time and materials that you actually spent and used? Next, under support, you can now request an emergency callback. So if you need urgent help after support hours when the normal callback and live chat options are not available, you can now use the emergency callback option to still reach somebody from the customer support team. All right, next, under purchasing an inventory, you can now email a return. So when you make a return, you're now able to email a PDF of that return to the vendor. This basically just helps you have a paper trail to have a record of that communication with the vendor. Any returns that you do send to the vendor will be marked as sent. You can also now add items to inventory templates in bulk versus of course one by one like you had to do previously. And this one's a y'.

All.

It is now easier to select multiple POS from the purchase order screen. So this was a very minor detail but very annoying if you happen to be the person who had to do this on a regular basis. So looking at the list of purchase orders, you have these checkboxes here of course, but previously you had to click very precisely inside of that checkbox because if you were even a little off and you went outside of the checkbox just a tiny, tiny bit, well that would Open up the purchase order and then when you went back, all of your selections would have been cleared, which is of course frustrating. But now that no longer happens. If you miss the checkbox, it doesn't open the purchase order anymore. So you don't have to be hawkeyed to check off multiple purchase orders. Just for fun, I want to show you guys the video that I sent to the product manager who was in charge of this to show them what the problem was. Okay, this is the 10 pos in 10 seconds challenge. We have to check off 10 pos within 10 seconds. And not all the pos can be right next to each other. Here we go. Start.

Two, three.

Crap. Okay, let's try again. Start. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Crap.

I'm really trying by the way. Start. One, two.

Crap.

One, two, three, Four, five, six, seven.

Crap.

Last try. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9. 10. I did it. I'm a delight. I'm a delight to work with. Anyways, this is another one. This is a theme today. This is from my original list and I know that it's from a post. Like I saw a post, somebody had mentioned this and I added it to the list but I can't find the original post because it was a really long time ago. And of course you know Facebook search, but I know you're out there. So to you and everybody else who has to check off multiple purchase orders, Howdy y'.

All.

And finally, under telecom we have some call recording enhancements. So now administrator role employees are able to directly manage their call recording settings rather than needing to contact Service titan. Now of course there are local laws affecting what you can and can't do regarding call recording. So make sure you talk to somebody who understands the laws in your area. But definitely check this new settings page out. There are a ton of cool options here that you might want to utilize. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Again, video links for the dynamic pricing and client specific pricing videos are in the description down below. Be sure to hit like if you like this video and found it valuable, be sure to subscribe to service Titan's YouTube channel. If you haven't done that already, hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you anytime we upload a new video. And leave me a comment down below. Let me know what you think of the updates and what you think I should make a video on next. Please remember that your engagement through likes, comments and subscriber numbers are the ways in which my success is measured. Appreciate it. Peace.