AMA: I'm Andrew Wilson, Xplan efficiency expert at Iress, Ask Me Anything!

Hi Mat, you are are definitely not alone.  I have found in dealing with many business the best place to start is asking, where is the biggest pain point within the business.  This generally tends to be one of two things.  Either Advice Document production or Workflows; too cumbersome, don’t know where clients are up to, don’t know who’s doing what on a client.  

Advice Document production fixes need to start with a template review. Are you making use of simple coding like using the client’s preferred name, including the adviser’s signature, etc.  Community has a wealth of information available. A great place to start is the Xmerge library

Workflows can be developed overtime so starting simple and building on that is a great approach.  You will find that there are steps that can be automated, like sending emails or sms. Understanding Cases is a useful place to start. 

Hi Kate, following on from my responses to Kerri, if Client Portal isn’t a good fit.  Would a tailored Xmerge document work OR would a editable PDF saved to Notes work OR could you tailor the comms to give the client direction.

There are a few excellent articles in community on Alerts that have all the detail you need.  Alerts Management and Example Alert Rules

AI is definitely front of mind.  Our 2025 Roadmap has committed to introducing AI to reduce time spent writing filenotes and Live transcription.  So, watch this space!  In the meantime you may enjoy the recent a webinar on AI.  Here’s the link

Thanks for the questions, Gurpreet

As mentioned above, we are actively collecting feedback for diary improvements.  If you could raise a Connect feedback that would be greatly appreciated.

Your Email/SMS question is a great use case for what AI could be used for going forward.  Again, feedback for this is welcomed.  Whilst AI isn’t not available now, my tips around email templates would be:

• Build one base template that you know works:
  • when being received in different email software (Outlook, GMail, etc)
  • viewed on different devices (phone vs tablet vs desktop).
• Once, you have the above working, view and copy the source to use for all other templates

• Make use of the email syntax within the toolbar.

Recently a webinar on AI was held on Advisely.  Here’s the link

For Visualise I am not sure what you mean by presentation format.  That said, the merge code for each chart is available on the menu item that you can use in your merge report.  This can also be applied with the infographics.

Hi Kerri, the DBFO 10 January 2025 will be here before we know it.  Fee consent changes will still utilise the Xplan elements Opt-in & Fee Consent and Opt-in History.  A detailed document is available on the community: Managing Ongoing fee arrangements in Xplan in 2025

For your client review process with a pre-review questionnaire you could have the questionnaire within Client Portal.  This would allow the client to enter/update data in real time and action steps upon completion. A detailed document is available on the community: Managing Reviews using Xplan and Client Portal.  If you aren’t using Client Portal you could have a merge document that prepopulates based on the client’s existing data and conditioned to include/exclude additional sections.  If this is the case you should look to automate sending of this to the client off the back a Diary event or Task or even use Scheduler.  

There have been some great discussions previously regarding the review process and go into a lot more detail AMA Workflows and Automating Client Reviews.

Hi Jeremy, I agree with you, linking Invoices to Cases would be beneficial.  This type of feedback is extremely valuable. Can you please raise a feedback item through Connect. 

While the functionality currently doesn’t exist to link from the Invoices element, you could do the following:

• Set your invoice template so it can be quick merged from invoices
• Set the type and sub-type so it can be easily searched
• Generate the invoice after that data has been entered.  This would put it in the Notes
• Link the invoice Note to the Case  

Diaries have indeed moved forward and are far more self service based.  We are actively collecting feedback for diary improvements and this is a great use case.  On the proposed Roadmap for 2025 is to improve diary and booking systems through third-party integration. It would be greatly appreciated if you could raise this feedback through Connect.

Hi Scott.  Thanks for the question, unfortunately we are unable to do a presentation on this platform in the time we have available. 

One of the key features of Xplan is that it can be tailored to suit your business so that it isn’t clunky or slow.  For example, if you can clearly define what your workflow is then you can design a case/thread to mimic this, but also remove any manual processes like sending emails.  Once this is implemented users can view tasks via the Task Hub rather than just in a list.  As you can see, the key part is understanding the business before implementing to ensure the right tool is being used at the right time and in the right place. 

Other areas to consider where this type of logic would need to applied, would include but not limited to:

• Interfaces
• Wizards
• Pages
• Cases
• Threads
• Tasks
• Emails
• SMS
• Letters
• Advice Documents

We also offer Advice Toolkit, which is our out of the box solution.  You can get more information here: Advice Toolkit  

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