Release #81 | ServiceTitan Release Notes Overview

What's going on everybody? It's Richard Kohberger here, the Blue Collar Nerd, and it is time once again for another release notes video. But before we jump into that, let me just, let me just address the elephant in the room here. Yes, the shirt I'm wearing is very Waldo-coded, and that's on purpose. This is what I'll be wearing when I'm walking around at Pantheon, which is coming up pretty soon, October 5th through 7th. I figure this will help you find me, help you spot me out of a crowd. If you come up and take a picture with me, I'll give you one of these pins. I'll have to just show you a picture of the pins, they haven't come in yet, but hopefully they'll be here in time. I'll also be giving away a free Service Titan cheat sheet, and for a A select few of you— hang on one second— a select VIP group of you will be getting this very special exclusive Blue Collar Nerd hat! Ooh!

Ah!

Be sure you're following me on the socials for more information and updates regarding my various Pantheon shenanigans! I'm @thebluecollarnerd on Instagram and Blue Collar Nerd on Facebook! Anyways, with that said, let's jump into some release notes!

Can you find me? Did you see me?

There he is! Oh wait, what happened to his legs? He's over there.

Ooh, I see him in the back. Can you find it? Can you find it? Will you see me? Yeah, baby.

All right, so first up under Core Product and under Job and Project Management, and this note is only going to be relevant to you if you're using project tracking, so mostly construction folks, we have transaction locking on completed and canceled projects now generally available. So previously this lock existed, but you had to specifically ask somebody at ServiceTitan to enable it for your company. And even when you had it, it was one control covering completed and canceled projects together. So if your office uses canceled as any kind of a working status, you couldn't protect your finished work without also freezing your canceled stuff. And on top of that, when a status change got blocked because transactions were still open, ServiceTitan would just tell you transactions are open without telling you which ones specifically, meaning you had to manually go hunting for them. But now every eligible account gets this feature automatically, so you no longer need to ask for it. And it's now split into 2 independent toggles. You'll find them under Settings, then Project Settings, then Project Setup in the Lock Closed Projects section. The 2 toggles are Lock Transactions of Completed Projects and Lock Transactions of Canceled Projects. So you can turn on one, the other, or both. And when a status change is blocked now, ServiceTitan actually names the specific transactions holding it open. So you'll get the specific job number, the invoice, the purchase order, so that you know exactly what you need to clear. Now, once a project is locked, new and editable jobs, invoices, purchase orders, requisitions, returns, bills, timesheets, estimates, and applications for payment are all blocked against it. You will still be able to view everything though, and there's a new permission. That permission is called Edit Non-Financials When Project Is Complete or Canceled, and that just lets somebody fix things like the project manager or the description without unlocking the entire project. And the way back out is a status change, which is controlled by the existing set project to and from locked status permissions. And if you've been using the previous version of this feature, the one that you had to ask to be turned on that didn't have the 2 toggles split out, then don't worry, whatever your account was set to carries over. And if you weren't previously using the feature, then both of the toggles are going to be off for you by default. So basically whatever previous behavior you had, that's just gonna carry over. All right, next under service agreements, we have dedicated service agreement permissions. And residential people, remember that service agreements and memberships are different things inside of ServiceTitan. This is a service agreement feature, and so this is mainly geared towards companies who do commercial work. So we now have 4 dedicated service agreement permissions, whereas previously there were no individual permissions governing service agreements at all. So access was basically all or nothing. Meaning anybody who had permission to so much as open up a service agreement could also create one. They could activate it, cancel it, mess with visits, et cetera. But now under employee permissions, so either role permissions or individual permissions, you will find 4 new service agreement related permissions. So those are create/edit service agreement templates, create/edit service agreements, edit service agreement status, and edit visit status. All right, next up under virtual agent, we have a stack of 4 virtual agent related updates. So first, you can now configure how and when your voice agent escalates each call. So previously, each escalation trigger in your voice agent settings was just a checkbox. Checked meant that the call escalated to a live person, and unchecked meant that the voice agent just took a voice message instead. Also, there was nothing on the screen that actually told you what unchecking it did. You just kind of had to know. But now every trigger has an explicit action that you choose. So escalate call or take a message, and the screen says which one applies. You also get new built-in trigger types that you can turn on, things like gas leak, fire, smoke, or carbon monoxide emergency. And you can now build your own custom triggers for situations that are unique to your business. Like say for example, somebody calls in and complains about a past job or, uh, reports something about one of your drivers. You can make sure that those calls always land with a human. This all lives under Settings, then Phones and Voice Agent Settings. Hit Edit next to Escalation and Rules, and your existing checkbox choices are just gonna carry over as the equivalent action, meaning there's not gonna be any behavior changes unless you go into those settings and make choices. Which I would recommend doing once this update hits, especially with those custom triggers. I think those can be especially useful. Next, under Voice Agent, we have Task Types and Task Creation. So you now get real control over the tasks that your voice agent creates after calls. Previously, the voice agent created tasks from every single call the exact same way. There was no way to turn a category off, no way to describe what a task type covers, and no way to route a task to a specific person. So it all just kind of landed in a pile. But now you get 3 layers of control. So now in voice agent settings under skills and capabilities, you can choose which call outcomes even create a task in the first place. So outcomes like booked, unbooked, excused, and escalated can each be either on or off. Then on the task types screen, you turn on the specific task types that you want within each category and give each one a description so the voice agent knows exactly when to use it. And third, you can assign each task type to a specific team member. So, a refund request lands with your billing person instead of just sitting unassigned. Now, out of the box, only your default task types are turned on, and that's usually just 3. So the voice agent only creates a task when a call matches one of your enabled task types. If a call comes in for something outside of those, say a refund request, no task gets created at all and nothing notifies you that one should have been created. So it is up to you to go in and create all of your task types, and I would recommend creating a general catch-all task type. Just to make sure that nothing ever falls through the cracks with no record. Also, just to be clear, this creates tasks in ServiceTitan task management specifically. It doesn't route to Task Hub or CRM tasks. All right, 3rd voice agent item. We have separate reschedule and cancel permissions per job type. So previously, one single voice agent can book toggle on each job type also controlled whether the agent could reschedule or cancel that same job type. So it was all or nothing. But now under voice agent settings, then job types and dispatch fees, there are 3 independent toggles per job type. Those are can book, can reschedule, and can cancel. So that way you can let the voice agent just continue on booking drain cleanings all day long while requiring an actual human to approve any cancellations. Now, like always, the default settings are just gonna be set up to mirror the behavior that you had before the update. So if you want it to be behaving any different, you need to go in and change those settings. Also, one detail to know about is that the reschedule toggle, Also governs whether the agent can confirm an existing appointment. Also, both the agent's overall capacity and the job type toggle need to be on for any of this to work. All right, last of the core voice agent stuff, we have a custom opening message for inbound SMS. So if you are using the inbound SMS agent, you can now set the exact opening message that it sends. Whereas previously the agent wrote its own opening message from scratch every time. And you had no way to preview or control that wording. So to set this up, go to AI Concierge, then Agent Studio, pick your agent, and go to inbound SMS. And from there, you can type your wording for your opening message into the opening message field. Once that's set up, every new inbound text conversation starts with exactly that, and the agent just takes it from there naturally. Okay, moving on now into Pro products, starting with Dispatch Pro. So we have an update to Dispatch Pro workstreams. That makes them actually mean something now. So previously, a work stream on the new dispatch board behaved just like another filter. A dispatcher picked their work stream, sure, but nothing stopped them from switching it off or filtering over to a business unit or team or zone that belonged to somebody else. The jobs tray still showed jobs from across the whole company, including jobs other dispatchers owned. So yeah, you know, work streams were a little bit weak, but now an administrator can turn on work stream enforcement. That's in settings, then Dispatch Pro, then console settings on the work streams screen. Once that's on, the work stream that a dispatcher picks at the start of their shift is a firm boundary. The dispatch board, the jobs tray, and the activity center all load scoped to only the business units, zones, and teams inside of that specific work stream. And all of the filter dropdowns will only offer values that are inside of that work stream scope. So there's no out-of-bounds options that even show up to click. Also, the work stream prompt now shows up once per shift instead of on every refresh, and the choice stays synced across every browser tab that the dispatcher has open. Also, the separate work stream control that used to live inside Dispatch Pro console is gone, so there's only one place to choose. Now, before you go and flip this on, a few things to know. It does apply to your whole organization at once. It also only enforces on the newer version of the dispatch board, so make sure you have that enabled first. And I would highly recommend going in and reviewing all of your work streams first, because if you have a dispatcher with no work stream assigned, that's gonna be a problem. They're just gonna see nothing. Okay, next under Scheduling Pro, Google Local Service Ads message leads now flow into ServiceTitan. So previously when somebody tapped get quote on your local service ads, that message landed in Google's own inbox and it stayed there until somebody in your office remembered to log in and go check it, which could of course result in slow reply speeds for a lead that you paid for. So now in your Google Ads integration, once your campaign mapping is done, you can open up Lead Sync and switch on local service leads for messages. From there, when somebody taps get quote, ServiceTitan picks that message up and creates the record for you, and an automatic first reply, which you write, goes back out to that person automatically. And if you have Virtual Agent or ServiceTitan Max, Speed to Lead can carry the conversation from there and actually go all the way through to booking the job. All right, now moving into private preview and early access stuff. So this is all stuff that is not fully out yet, although if you want to, you can reach out and have it turned on for your account, even ahead of it coming out. So first in private preview, we have a brand new screen in ServiceTitan simply called Automation. So this adds an automations option right in the main navigation bar. And from there you can browse a catalog of ready-made automation templates. And when you open one up, it'll tell you in plain language what the trigger is, what the conditions are, and what it does. When you install a template, it just copies into your account switched off. So nothing starts running before you're ready and you just fill in the fields that need a value. Anything that points to your actual, uh, business data, like roles or business units, those can be filled automatically versus you having to type them in. And every automation has a run history, so you can see every run with a timestamp, what triggered it, whether it succeeded or failed. And if it failed, you can drill in to see exactly which part broke. Now again, this is not fully out and ready for primetime yet. This is private preview. And if you're going to be attending Pantheon this year, then you're going to hear more about this feature there. But, uh, this is very exciting for me. I mean, if you've been following me for a long time, you know I've been talking for years about automating things in ServiceTitan using stuff like Zapier. And with this now being put natively inside of ServiceTitan, it really paves the road to make more powerful automation much more accessible to the average ServiceTitan user. Okay, so that automations feature is in private preview, meaning it's a little bit more exclusive. ServiceTitan generally, uh, invites people to join it. You can ask through your CSM to be a part of that private preview, but there's no guarantee that you'll be let in. All right, and now we're moving on into the early access section. So early access means that things are a little bit further along. And anybody can just voluntarily opt in to be a part of an early access. Now there's quite a bit of stuff in the early access section of these release notes, and so I'm gonna shorten these down into more of an elevator pitch. So Virtual Agent with this early access feature can now recover unsold estimates automatically. So it follows up over text and holds a real 2-way conversation with the customer. It can answer customer questions from the actual estimate that's on file, and it can send a secure link so that the customer can approve it right there from the text conversation. This does run completely separately from Marketing Pro's OnSold Estimates campaign, so probably don't want to run both of those at the same time. Sticking with Virtual Agent, Appointment Move Up can now work without Dispatch Pro. So you set up a few job tags mapped to rescheduling windows.

I found some web results. I can show them if you ask again from your iPhone.

Nobody, nobody asked you. So you can set up a few job tags mapped to rescheduling windows. So any earlier, same day, or no sooner than so many days out. You can tag a job straight from the board and ServiceTitan texts that customer about the earlier openings and books it if they say yes. So basically this feature helps cancellations get backfilled without your dispatchers manually cold calling down a list. Small heads up about this one, the tag stays on the job afterward. It does not remove itself. Under financing early access, we have prescreen financing. So ServiceTitan can run a background prescreen on homeowners you already serve, just first name, last name, and address. It gets run through GreenSky or Synchrony. And where there's a firm pre-approved offer, a banner shows up in the field mobile app and your customer So that way your techs walk in already knowing that the homeowner qualifies for financing. These prequalification offers expire after 30 days, and if you're gonna use this, I think it would be wise to train your team that a preapproval is a firm offer of credit, but not a completed application. And by the way, that one's also US only. Next, we have a couple early access features for Contract Builder. This is mainly relevant to roofing and exteriors companies, and Contract Builder itself is also in early access. So these are early access features relating to a feature that itself is in early access. So first is contract discounts. So now with one tap within Contract Builder, you can apply price book discounts across some or all of the estimates within a contract. And second, reps can now resend a contract for signature right from the Field mobile app, and it pre-selects only the signers who haven't yet signed. You can also email the signed contract and download the current PDF right from the job. Next, under early access, we have the Atlas mobile app. So Atlas is ServiceTitan's built-in AI assistant, and it is now getting a dedicated mobile app. Now, of course, as an early access, it's still early days for this app. So right now its main use case is business performance metrics. So for example, maybe you notice that revenue is tracking behind this week. Well, instead of waiting until you're back at the desk, you could ask Atlas right from your phone which business unit is driving the gap. And it might come back and say it's your plumbing business unit. It's down against last week. And then it shows you the jobs behind that. Which, don't get me wrong, is cool and useful, but it's the potential for where this could go in the future that really gets me excited. Okay, next, under Contact Center Pro Early Access, Messages puts a texting tab right next to calls so that your CSRs can answer texts on the same screen that they take calls from. That's much more convenient. They'll have access to customer info like recent jobs, balance, membership status already showing, plus the ability to book a job right from there on the screen they're already on. It's also got a shared read state so that 2 people don't end up answering the same text. And the conversation will automatically reopen if the customer texts back. Also under Contact Center Pro Early Access, we have voice intelligence custom scorecards. So instead of every call being graded against ServiceTitan's one built-in standard, you build your own. That way your team can be coached on your specific definition of a good call. Under Marketing Pro Early Access, we have demand orchestration. So ServiceTitan forecasts each business unit's next 2 weeks of booking against its own booking goal. And when one's tracking short, a ready-to-launch Marketing Pro campaign appears in Command Center. And within Command Center, it's going to explain to you the shortfall that it noticed in job hours. It'll tell you the audience that it's suggesting and the channels and a plain language reason for why that was chosen. So that way you can see the slow stretch 2 weeks before it actually hits the board and the fix is already built for you. You just review it and launch the campaign. Adaptive Capacity is a required prerequisite to be set up for this to work. Under early access for Marketing Pro reputation, a new improvements column on your location screen shows publisher suggested changes to your business listing. So things like hours, address, category, you'll see that side by side with the current value, and then you approve or reject each one with a single click. Something good to know with that is that there's currently no notification when a new suggestion arrives. So if you're going to enable this, you probably want to put it on somebody's weekly checklist. Okay, this is a bit of a bigger one, but still keeping it tight. Voice intelligence in ServiceTitan Calls is in early access for Max companies specifically. So this reviews every recorded call about 15 minutes after it ends and then hands you a graded scorecard. Every piece of that is going to be backed up by quotes from the transcript, plus an insight screen for trends across all of your calls. Plus with this feature, your booking numbers no longer depend on what your CSR manually logs. 2 important things to know with this recording and transcript permissions. Are moving into ServiceTitan Core, whereas previously those permissions lived inside of Contact Center Pro because you had to be a Contact Center Pro user for this to work. And on ServiceTitan Max, the voice intelligence booking rate replaces the legacy booking rate in your dashboards. So it may be a good idea to just brace your managers for that because your numbers are probably gonna be more honest and that could make them look drastically better or drastically worse. Under early access for reporting, we have reporting analytics. So this is kind of a whole rethinking of the reporting experience. So this is a page that unifies reporting and dashboards into one place. You don't have to go separate places to see different versions of data, and you build out metric watchlists. So you land on actual metrics instead of just a big menu of reports that you could potentially pull. You'll also have access to Atlas from here where you can just ask plain language questions without having to pull a report. You can also set up alerts from here so that you can be notified when particular metrics move. Exciting stuff. You'll hear more about it at Pantheon, I'm sure. Again, just early access for now. Next, we have early access for the Sales Manager dashboard for roofing and exteriors. So the Sales Manager dashboard puts your whole sales funnel onto one screen. So first appointment through to sold revenue, and clicking any number opens the actual jobs and the estimates behind it. We've also got a whole pile of ServiceTitan CRM updates. These are in private preview. For the purposes of keeping this video a reasonable length, I'm going to skip those here, but I will direct you to the written version of the release notes if you'd like to dive more into that. I'll put a link to the full written notes in the description box down below. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Be sure to hit like if you liked this video and found it valuable. Be sure to subscribe to ServiceTitan'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 about the update and whether or not I'm going to see you at Pantheon. And if not, explain yourself. Appreciate it.

Peace.