12th Feb AMA: I'm Courtney Youngblutt, Xplan Design Consultant & efficiency expert, Ask Me Anything!
Hi Courtney, I am keen to know on what is the best and efficient way to merge duplicate client records as well as duplicate tasks on XPlan?
Also, just want to ask if Outlook emails (like task updates) is best to save on Xplan File Notes or Xplan Task Comments & Attachments?
Looking forward for this AMA Forum.
- courtney.youngblutt3 months ago
Iress Contributor
Saving emails
Knowing whether it’s best to save an email to Xplan file notes or as task comments & attachments can depend on your process. In my view, saving as a file note is always best, as it is far easier to locate the email at a later date. Searching through task comments and attachments can be tedious - this is slightly easier if you are using a case and have linked the task to the case - but still a manual process rather than being able to use the document note search function.
You can search images and content in document note attachments, such as a PDF. You cannot search task comments.
Task comments are great for progress updates or reminders - I like to think of them as replacing the old-school sticky notes - if you would throw it away once the job is complete - it’s a comment, if you would have placed it in a hard copy file, it’s a file note.
⁉️Speaking of merging - did you know you can merge document notes now too?
- courtney.youngblutt3 months ago
Iress Contributor
Duplicate Tasks
The easiest way to tackle duplicate tasks is to use the Classic Task view (the modify all function has not yet been introduced into the task hub).
Use the filter options to narrow down the list of tasks, or search for the task subject, if your duplicate tasks all have the same name. Then select the duplicate tasks you want to remove and select ‘Modify All’.
Modify All is also capability driven, so if you don’t have the option available to you, speak with your site administrator.
Don’t forget to circle back and discover the reason duplicate tasks were created in the first place, and adjust the process where necessary!
💡Tip: It is often better to abort rather than delete a task, so there is a clear record of it in the audit trail. If your task is part of a thread, you won’t be able to delete it, you will need to set it to abort.
- courtney.youngblutt3 months ago
Iress Contributor
Hi kenski.arriesgado, welcome to the AMA! And thanks for posting. I’ll answer each of your questions below:
Merge Duplicate clients
Sometimes the hardest part of managing duplicate clients is finding them!
If you’re using the standard Add Client Wizard, it will automatically check for duplicates when entering a new client. If you’re using a custom ‘add client wizard’, your site administrator can add the duplicate client check handler to it.
If duplicates do make it into the system, there is a standard management report that will help identify duplicate records.
Use Scheduler to automatically run this report on a regular basis to make sure you stay on top of duplicates.
Merging duplicate clients needs to be done one at a time so you can select the right ‘source’ and ‘target’ client. When merging, the data in your ‘source’ client is merged into your ‘target’ client record.
To merge clients,
- View the client list, then select Functions > Merge Client from the left-hand menu.
- Select the source and target clients.
- Click Merge.
There are some rules around how the data gets merged - you can check out the details here: Merging Client RecordsThere are user capabilities that control whether you can merge clients and also a system setting that controls whether clients of different entity types can be merged, so speak with your site administrator if you don’t have the capabilities you need.
- kenski.arriesgado3 months agoVisiting Enthusiast
Thank you so much for this, courtney.youngblutt! This would be a great help for us.
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