ServicTitan May 2019 Release Notes- Big Implications For The Future!

What's going on everybody? It's Richard Coburger here, the blue collar nerd. In this video, I'm going to be going over the latest release notes from Service Titan for May 2019. Now, as of the time of shooting this video, these notes are not live in the Live accounts, but they are in the Next accounts. Get to that by going to next.servicetitan.com those are your kind of sandbox accounts. So if you're watching this video and you still don't see these changes in your Live account, you can still play with them over there@next.servicetitan.com now this release has something I've been waiting for for a long time and and it also has something very interesting that has big implications for the future of the product. Now, just to be clear, I'm not going to be going over the entirety of the release notes in this video. I'm just going to go over the stuff that stood out to me and that I found useful or interesting. But I do encourage you to read all of the notes and I'm going to put a link in the description below where you can go and find those. Let's jump into it. So the first thing I saw was the web appointment scheduler. You can now tie a campaign to calls that are booked through the web appointment scheduler. So you don't have to rely on your CSRs to manually put that campaign in. It's through the scheduler. It's going to automatically tie to a campaign if you configure it to do so. Another thing that I liked is this change here. Technicians can see which pieces of equipment are covered by memberships. That's super helpful for clients who have a lot of systems and don't choose to put all of them on the membership. It's very useful to have that information technician side of which ones are under the membership and which ones aren't. Technicians can also view equipment service history now so they can break down exactly what was done on each piece of equipment versus just looking at the entirety of the history for the entire location. I also see more consistent price option settings for estimates. Now I think what this means is that when your technicians are building an estimate, they have that little option where they can say show line item pricing or don't show line item pricing. I believe in the past that was only during the presentation, it was only on the tablet itself, but the emailed or printed invoice would still show the default. Now it seems like that setting that they choose is going to persist throughout the emailed invoice or estimate or whatever. There's also an easier to use edit Mode for smart PDFs where you can make a small edit without losing the smart capabilities on the rest of the form. There's also a new featured mobile side called Place Jobs on Hold and a technician can use that to place a job on hold and they have to provide a reason when they do do that. I also like this. Technicians can present PDF assets to customers. I believe this is only on equipment if I'm understanding this properly. At least that's the way it looks in my next account right now. But this is nice. You can tie like a brochure to a certain piece of equipment and the technician can present that PDF brochure while they're at the table. This seems to be part of Service Titan's ongoing campaign to make equipment like a real thing, like a real thing that you can use and people actually use. And this is part of the product and not like some form gotten residue from the days of old, which is what it's been for a while. It's just been this thing that it just felt like somebody put it in there a long time ago and forgot about it. It was never complete. So they have been working on it. It still kind of needs some more work. I know a lot of people still use materials and at this point you kind of still have to use materials. I know for me, I have a double entry system right now, so everything that I put in as equipment, I also have to put in as materials because that's the only way that my consultants can see pricing on his side. And that's it's important for him to see our costs and just a few things that still materials can only do that equipment can't. Please get on that service item. Another nice little thing that they added is a search bar for the two way chat feature so that you can search and find the conversation that you're looking for. Kind of weird that it didn't just ship with that, but you know, better late than never. They've also redesigned the little uploader for images and the price book, but it doesn't really matter. It doesn't add any functionality. You still can't rearrange the images, which is super annoying. Service end please. Okay, now time for the big boys. Oh, the big exciting changes. This one, this one I've been waiting on for so long. This used to make me so mad because it was a feature that was 90% of the way there and then they just stopped before they made it actually useful. And that is late tagging on the dispatch board when a technician is running late for a job, that's really important information that really can't get overlooked. And what they used to do was just at the very bottom of the screen, you know, that very bottom part that you have to scroll down to see where nobody ever looks. They used to just put this tiny little late tag on the, on the job down there. Cool. Great. Now there's finally a better, more configurable late alert. So dispatchers now see more indicators and details on the dispatch board when technicians are late to a job. Late alerts are also more customizable to suit your business's needs. Now I was playing around with this in the next account and it looks like when a technician is running late for a job, it now puts kind of like a red box around it. And if you hover over it, you'll also see technicians running late for this job. This is way better. But honestly, it's still a little bit subtle for my taste. I mean, when somebody's running late for a job, I want alarm bells going off. I want a super soaker in my office that squirts my CSRs in the face. I want their mouse to turn into a small cactus. I really want them to know somebody's running late and we need to let the customer know about that. So, you know, if we could just spice this up a little bit more, I want the whole thing to turn red. I want strobe light effects. Okay, now this change, this one's a sleeper. Alright, this one is really easy to overlook. It doesn't really do anything right now, but it has major implications for the future of Surface Titan as a product and that is map enhancements. Service Titan has switched to a more customizable mapping solution that will enable future enhancements to the dispatch board map. So if you go to your current dispatch board map, assuming you're still watching this before the update dropped, you'll see that it is provided by Google if you go into your next account or if the updates already dropped, if you just go to your dispatch board, you'll see the map is no longer provided by Google. It is provided by a company called esri. Now I looked into this company and this is not a map. It's not just a map, it is a geographic information system is what they're calling it. Basically it is an entire information processing system that has to do with maps. So this has a whole lot more data and it has big implications for things like smart dispatching in the future. True smart dispatching, where the dispatch board can take all of your calls and take all sorts of information into account. What time certain traffic hits, certain roads, weather. You can say, like maybe this job can't be done in the rain and it's going to give you maybe a warning that says, hey, just so you know, it's looking like it's going to be raining in this area during this time. It's going to be take all of your jobs and use a whole bunch of information about weather and traffic and information you've provided about what technicians can do certain jobs and what jobs can be done in certain conditions. And it could take all of that information and process it and offer you suggestions to make your schedule more efficient than a human could ever consistently create. Now, these are all just ideas off the top of my head. I don't actually know what exactly is planned, but I do know that this wasn't just for funsies. I do know that they didn't just pick this because for no reason, it wasn't a mistake. This has big implications for what dispatching looks like in the future. That little view technician route feature that they gave us recently, you know, that's. That's cool, that's nice. But that is far from the end of what they have planned, I think. Anyways, those are the things that stood out to me. There's much more in this update, so check out the release notes. Let me know in the comments below. What stands out to you? Did I miss anything? That's really important? Let me know. I want to hear from you. Thanks, Sa.