Forced Journals Overview

Forced Journals help automate the process flows used to service your customers. They ensure consistency by making sure that all customer service activity is properly documented and they also speed up the service flow by eliminating manual tasks. When this functionality is enabled, the IDI platform will automatically create a Journal on an account when a user opens or edits the account record. Whether they are created for just one or both events is configurable.

There are two types of Forced Journals that are supported, Prompted and Silent.

Setup

Forced Journals can be enabled in Customer Care under Manage -> Settings -> Forced Journals.

When enabling this functionality, you must specify the mode and default configuration to be used.

Mode: options are ‘Silent’ or ‘Prompt’

Default Journal Type:

• If you are using Silent Journals this will automatically be set to ‘Forced Journal’. This cannot be changed.

• For ‘Prompt’, you must select a default journal type from a list of valid journal types.

Default Journal Status: Select the default status for your Forced Journals. For Silent Journals, this is the status that they will always have since these entries cannot be changed or edited. For Prompted Journals this is just the default status which can be changed by the user when they are prompted or by just editing the Journal later.

Default Description: Free form text to be used as the description of the journal. For Silent Journals, this is the description that they will always have since these entries cannot be changed or edited. For Prompted Journals this is just the default description which can be changed by the user when they are prompted or by just editing the Journal later.

Applies To: You can limit the application of Forced Journals to only your users who are members of selected groups. This can be useful to exclude the Journals from users with Backoffice roles who may be viewing/editing customer account outside of a direct servicing role. Selecting no restrictions for this option will result in it applying to all users.

Example configuration:

Prompted Journals

Prompted Journals help service groups where users are required to document on the account the reason why they are opening an account record, the reason they are editing it or both. Prompted Journals will automatically create the Journal record for the user and prompt them to add details when they close the record or attempt to save edits. With Prompted Journals:

• The journal is created with default information.

• The user can edit the journal information.

• The user is forced to save the journal.

• Journal can be edited or deleted.

View Account

As soon as a user opens any page for a customer, an icon appears in the top right corner indicating a Forced Journal is pending.

Note that Forced Journals for viewing an account apply to any page within the account, not just the main customer page. For example, if a user is viewing a customer ticket in the Tickets modules, and clicks the ‘View Service’ link, a new tab opens the Services and Features page in Customer Care for specific service on the ticket. If forced journals is enabled for ‘View Customer Account’ for that user, a journal will be created/prompted.

Journal Prompt

The icon will remain at the top right until the user exits the account. When the user exits the account the Journal dialog will open, and the user only has an option to ‘Save’ the Journal.

Manual Update

A user can manually open the Journal Prompt without need to leave the account by clicking on the Forced Journal icon. This is useful when the user is done with their activity however they need to keep the current account window open.

The user can edit any of the properties. If they save the Journal, the icon is no longer present for the remainder of the time the user navigates within the account.

Bypassed Prompted Journals

In some instances, a user may view an account but bypass filling out the Prompted Journal. Examples of when this could happen are If the user’s session times out before they fill out the Journal, or if the user chooses to close the browser window without updating the Forced Journal.

In these cases, the IDI platform still has a record that the user viewed the account however the Journal Type will be set to ‘Forced Journal’. This is done so that you can use the existence of these records to track when a user bypassing the Prompted Journal (either intentionally or unintentionally).

Edit Account

When Prompted Journals for account editing the user will see the Journal prompt when they click ‘Save’ from the Edit Customer page.

The user can edit the journal information and is required to save the journal in order to complete the account edit.

If the user closes the browser window or their session times out without saving the journal, the updates made to the customer are not saved and no journal is created.

Note that forced journals for edit customer are only created when a user edits the main account details. Other activities such as creating payments or adjustments, editing a follow-up or journal, editing service level information, adding an E-Pay account, etc. do not result in a forced journal being created.

Silent Forced Journals

Silent Journals help service groups where the goal is to be able to easily track customer service activity on accounts but not necessarily requiring their users to document this in the Journal. Silent Journals will automatically create the Journal record for the user but this is done in the background and is not visible to the user. With Silent Journals:

• The journal is created behind the scenes with no visual indicator to the user.

• These journals are created with default information, and capture the user and date/time in the ‘Created By’ and ‘Create Date’ fields.

• Journal cannot be edited or deleted.

View Account

A silent forced journal is created upon initial viewing of an account by a user. This applies to the initial arrival of any page for the customer record.

If a user navigates to multiple pages for an account still only one Forced Journal would be created for that activity. The Forced Journal does not capture the specific pages the user viewed; it captures that the account was viewed.

If the user leaves the account and then re-opens the account, an additional forced journal is created when the account is re-opened.

Page Refreshes

If a user forces a refresh to the page when on an account, an additional forced journal will be created.

Edit Account

Silent forced journals are created when a user clicks ‘Save’ from the Edit Customer page. It will contain the default journal information from the forced journals configuration, with the user id and date/time stamp created.

Viewing Silent Forced Journals

The journal type of ‘Forced Journal’ is reserved for Silent Forced Journals and bypassed Prompted Journals. These journals are never pinned to the Journals tab on the InfoCenter. They are not displayed by default on the journals page.

To view journals of type ‘Forced Journal’, the user must click ‘More Options’ on the Journals page and choose to Include Forced Journals.

Reviewing Bypassed Forced Journals

When Prompted Journals are bypassed you can view the Forced Journal record that is created using the Journal search. The Journal Type of ‘Forced Journal’ is reserved and cannot be set by users manually. Searching for Journals with this type will show you instances where the Forced Journal prompt was bypassed by the user.