Richard Coburger breaks down ServiceTitan's June 2019 updates, including membership add-ons, billing workflow changes, and technician availability improvements. This follow-up clarifies confusing release notes for users trying to understand what actually changed in the software.
What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. Hey, so you know how Service Titan's release notes for June were super confusing? Well, they still are, but I have managed to clarify a few things. So the first one I want to mention is the improved workflow for applying add ons to memberships. Now, in my previous video I said I couldn't find this in the Sandbox account. And now that the release notes have been finalized, I see that this is talking about the Office side, whereas before I'm pretty sure they were talking about the mobile side. Maybe I just assumed that. Let me consult my Handy Dandy screenshot. Okay, so this is what it said before when I made the video. Improved workflow. Before applying an add on to a membership, a new button attaches membership add on tasks to estimates and invoices more efficiently. The functionality of this button reduces the number of taps it previously took to do this in Service Titan Mobile Point Blue collar nerd. Okay, so this is not a mobile change or feature. This is office size. It no longer says taps, it says clicks, and it no longer says mobile. And the screenshot they put in the Knowledge Base article is of the office side. So that's what's happening there. Apparently we are calling these add ons off the side even though it says subitem mobile side. So weird choice, but okay, okay. The redesigned membership billing experience. Now, I'm almost positive at this point that this is what I referenced in the previous video. It's that new workflow that has the automated billing rules and things like that. And I did link in that video in the description below to that Knowledge Base article about that new workflow. If you haven't seen that video, I'm gonna link to it up. Up here, maybe up here, one of those corners. So if you want to see the link to that article, go to that video, go to the description. You'll find it there. Now, the thing is, there's still no changes live, and I still don't have any changes to this in my Sandbox account either. Now, according to Tina Milligan in the Service Titan Mastermind Facebook group, she said she had a chat with one of the support agents and they said that they decided to hold off on this feature to work out some kinks or something, which is. But hey, Service Titan, quick tip, take it out of the release notes. Then it's just confusing. Why is it there if you're not okay, finally, and this one kind of blew my mind a little bit. Technician availability Visual improvements on the dispatch board. What I failed to realize is that technician availability, they're not just saying that phrase. That's the name of a feature. That's the name of a feature that's currently gated and still under development. So what technician availability does is it gives you the ability to have different shift types which they're referencing in these notes. Shift types. So you can have an on call shift and you can have time off and you can have regular like working hour shifts. And what they're saying in these notes is that they change the visual design of how those different shift types appear on the dispatch board to make them more distinct and clear. But here's the thing about that. You're referencing something in the release notes, the current release notes, that isn't out to the general public yet. So the general user base doesn't know about this feature. It's gated and it's under development. So when you reference it, like I'm supposed to know what it is. I mean, look, I follow this stuff closer than most people and this one flew under my radar. So, I mean, I'm sure some people out there knew about it. There's a lot of stuff like this, but nobody can be expected to know everything. That's what the release notes are for. It should have made that more clear. Overall, I mean, I stand by my original opinion that these release notes were pretty confusing. I think what's going on here is growth. Service tech has just got a lot more employees now and there's a lot of departments working on a lot of different things. So no one person in the company really has a full encompassing scope of what's happening with the product at a single point in time. But that's what the release notes are. They're supposed to be telling us everything that's just happened, everything that just came out in a clear and concise way that encompasses the entire product. So I get it. I mean, that's hard to do with a big company that has a lot of different departments and a lot of moving parts and gears that all have to work together. So I get it. At the same time, this has to get better. I mean, these notes just did not cut it this way. Month. Anyways, that's all I got for today. I promised you guys a follow up to that video. So here it is. Don't forget to like the video and please subscribe to the channel if you haven't done that already. That really helps me out. Appreciate it. Sam.
