How To Setup The WIP List

This document will assist administrative staff in setting up the Work In Progress for your operators. The aim of your setup should be to provide your operators with the tools they need to manage their work load efficiently and perform the steps you require to keep your business operations running smoothly.

The Work In Progress is the best way for all of your operators to organize and attend to their work loads, no matter what department they are in. You can custom tailor the Work In Progress settings to suit each one of your operators individually. This means that Collectors, Accounting personnel, Managers and System Administrators can each load their WIP List and see at a glance the immediate business they need to address.

Each item in the Work In Progress To Do List is a Contact scheduled for a Debtor in your system. If you have the Client Management extension module, you may also see contacts for clients in the To Do List. Items are divided into WIP Lists for each Operator. Only the contacts assigned to a particular Operator will show up in that Operator's WIP List.

Settings in several areas of Collect! depend on proper setup in other areas. So you will want to ensure that you have properly set up your Debtors, Operators, Contacts and Auto Dialer, if applicable. Review help on Reload Work In Progress List, WIP Options, WIP Reload Filters and Work In Progress so that you are familiar with the topics touched on in this document.

Work In Progress

The Work In Progress screen may be accessed when you are on the Main Menu. Select the WORK IN PROGRESS button.

Work In Progress

Press F1 to read detailed help for fields, settings and buttons you see on the Work in Progress form and the To Do List.

The Work In Progress screen has many settings for filtering the items in the To Do List. There are additional settings in The Reload Work In Progress List, WIP Reload Filters and WIP Options. These setup areas are accessible through the RELOAD button on the Work in Progress screen.

Through the Work In Progress, an operator may sort items in To Do List by Priority, Status, Type, Client. Pressing the RELOAD button refreshes the To Do List according to the underlying settings in the Reload Work In Progress List, WIP Reload Filters and WIP Options. Depending on access rights, pressing the RELOAD button may or may not actually open the Reload Work In Progress List form.

Reload Work In Progress List

This area enables you to filter contacts to load by Date, Time, Operator or Client. You can also access WIP Filters and WIP Options from the Reload Work In Progress List.

Reload Work In Progress List

You can select settings in this form that will be applied whenever the operator presses the RELOAD button on the Work In Progress form. By default, Promise, Review, Phone and Other contacts are loaded automatically for the current Operator ID.

Other types of contacts are not displayed usually, but you can load other types as needed through the WIP Filters.

When the RELOAD button is pressed on the Work In Progress form, the Reload Work In Progress List form opens. This depends on the access rights for the operator. If the user level does not have access to view the Reload Work In Progress List, then pressing the RELOAD button will refresh the Operator's To Do List without opening this form.

WIP Reload Filters

Filter contacts to load by Type, Priority. Set maximum to load, look ahead days and Promise grace days.

WIP Reload Filters form

WIP Reload Filters controls the type of contacts that are loaded into the Work In Progress To Do List. It also controls how many days, weeks or months are displayed in the list at a given time. It also can be used to set a default grace days to use when displaying Promise contacts in the WIP List.

If there are no active contacts that match the criteria you set here, Collect! will load all types of contacts instead and default to Load all types.

WIP Options

Settings in the WIP Options control the behavior of the WIP list as accounts are displayed and worked. WIP Options can also be used to set defaults for use with Schedule Next Contact functionality.

WIP Options form

Examine the options carefully in the F1 help on the topic. Some of these switches can cause undesired results if not used properly. Please refer to Setting WIP Options further on in this document.

Setting Up Operators

Operator setup controls what screen an operator sees when they sign into Collect!. Selecting "Collector" as the Operator Type will bring the Operator to the WIP List as soon as they sign in. The setting for User Level will determine what other forms they can access.

To view the operator settings, select System from the top menu bar and then select Rights, Operators from the drop-down choices. Press F1 when the Operator list is displayed and you will see details about the fields in the Operator form.

Setting Up Debtors

Each Debtor must have an Operator assigned to it if you want to work the account through the WIP List. Ensure that each account has a valid Operator ID in the Operator field on the Debtor form.

Setting Up Contacts

Each item displayed in the WIP List is a Contact scheduled for a particular Debtor. Contacts maybe created manually when you are viewing a Debtor or they may be created by running a contact plan. Please refer to Help topic, Contacts Versus Contact Plans for details.

Contacts have a particular Type, a Due Date, a Description and a Collector. WIP Reload Filters may be set to control the types of contacts loaded into a WIP List. The Due Date determines when each contact shows in the WIP List. The Description enables the operator to tell, at a glance, what the To Do List item is about. The Collector determines whose WIP List the contact shows up in.

Setting WIP Options

There are many settings in the WIP Options form. These play a very important part in the functioning of the WIP List. Press F1 when the WIP Options form is displayed to see details about each setting.

Only use the settings you need. By default, Collect! ships with the most commonly used settings. You can make changes as needed and even save different settings for each one of your operators.

Saving Operator Configuration

You can select an operator in the "Load contacts for operator" area of the Reload Work In Progress List and then proceed to select any settings you need for this operator in the Reload Work In Progress List, WIP Filters and WIP Options forms.

Select the SAVE AS DEFAULT button in the WIP Options form and again in the Reload Work In Progress List form to save your settings. Collect! will create a special configuration file for the particular operator you have displayed in the "Load contacts for operator" field. A folder and file will be created in the CV11\config folder to store the settings. The next time the operator signs into Collect!, all the settings you saved will be loaded for that particular operator.

Once you have saved the Operator Configuration for an operator, you can use the Copy Operator Configuration feature, to set the same settings for all operators in your system with the same User Level.

Dialer Setup

If you intend to use automatic dialing through Collect!, you will want to visit the Collect! Auto Dialer help documentation to ensure that you have set up your preferences and your operators as required to use the dialing features in Collect!.

Summary

This document was intended to assist administrative staff in setting up the Work In Progress and underlying forms. Efficient use of the Work In Progress is the best way for your operators to work accounts. Many settings are available for customizing this area to suit the way you do business. You can also set custom settings for individual operators so that Collectors, Accounting personnel, Managers and System Administrators can each load their WIP List in the way that works best for them.

Each item in the Work In Progress To Do List is a Contact scheduled for a Debtor in your system. This means your Debtors must have an Operator assigned to them and you must schedule contacts so that they can work the accounts.

Please refer to Help topic, How To Use the WIP List for general usage guidelines once you have completed the WIP List setup.

See Also

- Management Topics
- Setup Topics
- Copy Operator Configuration