The nip in the air and the chime in the ear is informing us that the New Year, 2022 is awaiting us at the turn. While getting ready to step into it, it is necessary to glance at our accounts of 2021 and withdraw the learnings from it.
2021, though a year filled with global ups and downs empowered Team Maplytics to release major enhancements in the popular features of Territory Management, Real Time Tracking, Land Area Mapping, and so on. With the condition of working from home being in play, Maplytics introduced its flexibility of being usable from mobile devices. Let’s have a look at all such account entries one by one!
Real Time Tracking
Managers can now track location of their field technicians on real-time basis with the help of this feature. The records of the past travel routes followed by the technicians too are maintained by this feature. Thus, this history of traveled routes can be utilized by the managers for future decision making and performance analysis.
Territory Assignment Rule
The year 2020 saw an advancement in Territory management by the introduction of automatic territory creation based on the auto-balanced distribution of the count of records. In 2021 the advancement was taken forward with assigning territories to the records based on defined rules.
With this addition, admins can create simple or advanced rules with required conditions based on which the territories can be assigned to the records that satisfy those conditions. Thus, organizations following a certain process of classifying the records into specific territories can successfully do so with ease!
Land Area Mapping
This feature shall help users to visualize area of agricultural, residential, commercial properties etc. on the map. Users can define the area of the land in Maplytics for the respective entity record and then visualize the same on the map.
This feature shall help users to analyze regions for each client, agent, farmer, etc. on the map. One can visualize land along with the respective pushpins as well as if dealing only with land then they can also visualize just the land on the map without any pushpins for the same.
Enhancements in Check-in
Organizations hugely dependent on their field services team and using Maplytics have been using the feature of checking in and out of the meetings by the field reps from their meeting locations. However, 2021 provided an enhancement to this unique feature by allowing the service reps to add notes such as MOM, client requirements, product orders, etc.
These notes could later be viewed within the timeline of the respective record thereby helping the field reps as well as the respective managers to keep an eye on the history or important findings from the meetings of the field team with the clients.
In addition to this, the second enhancement to this existing feature was the vantage provided to the Field reps to be able to check-in/out of the pending appointments or past meetings. These could be approved or rejected by their managers later on and the records thus created too could be utilized.
Select and Save Pushpins and Colors from Map
In order to plot the records over Maps and to visualize the same better, the record pushpins can be differentiated. Various styles of pushpins are now available and can be selected for specific categories.
In addition to that, the colors of the pushpins too can be specified as per the categories provided. Hence, if a manager wishes to check out the clients that use Product A against the ones that use Product B, he could specify two different colors for the two products and then visualize the same at a glance.
Enhancement in Detail Map control
A Detail Map is the primary source of display for client records. With new enhancements, users can now categorize a single entity based on multiple categories. Users can also save the created routes, open the existing ones on Detail map control from the ‘Directions’ card, and print the routes for reference. While out on the field, users following the route using the turn-by-turn navigation can use the feature of Check-in/out to check in or check out for the respective meetings conveniently.
Enhancements in Territory Visualization
From organizations using hierarchical territories in Dynamics 365 CRM, users can visualize multi-level territories on the map as well. If a territory is created for United States which also has child territories for Austin and Portland, in such a case, the territory manager and the members who are a part of the larger United States Territory can also visualize the child territories of Austin and Portland. Users can view all the levels of territories that they are responsible for with the help of this feature.
For organizations with a large number of teams with field professionals with n number of territories, the new feature of Maplytics will by default allow field professionals to visualize only those territories that they are responsible for and if enabled by the admin, can also view all the territories that are created in CRM.
Override Territory on Demand
This upgrade allows or prevents any territory to be up automatically updated based on changing situations and conditions. Thus, changes applied to one Territory may or may not be applied to selected others.
Maplytics on Mobile
Maplytics is now available on Dynamics 365 CRM, Power Apps and new Sales Mobile Apps as well. With the benefits of Dynamics 365 Sales mobile app and Maplytics together, one can now perform geo-mapping and become locationally intelligent right from the mobile or tablet. Field service reps can report to ad-hoc meetings from their field locations itself and even share minutes of the meeting and much more while being on the go!
The Year 2021 could thus be summed up as a year of extensive development and learning in critical times. While the world around was still grappled by the pandemic, Team Maplytics acted ahead of time and developed classic features to ease the life of field reps and their managers during the trying times. As the world gets used to the new normal, we are sure that the enhancements in territory visualization, overriding of territories, advance Detail Map control and many more shall contribute in increasing the overall productivity in every industry!
With this thought, here’s Team Maplytics wishing everybody a very happy and prosperous New Year 2022! Thank you for your kind association all these years, let’s work together to make 2022 another strong year together!
Welcome 2022!!
