Using Your Calls List
The Calls list in the Customer portal shows the service calls on your account, newest first, with where each one stands and when an engineer is next due. Open it by selecting Calls in the portal's menu, or All calls under Latest calls on your Home page.
How do I see my calls in the Customer portal?
Select Calls in the Customer portal's menu. The Calls list opens on the account you are looking at, showing every call your sign-in may see, newest first, 25 to a page.
The heading says Calls, and the line under it gives your account's name. If you look after more than one account, the list shows one account at a time: to see another account's calls, select your account's name at the top of the menu and choose the other account. On a phone the account name is not in the menu along the bottom of the screen. Turn the phone sideways: on a screen that is wide enough, the full menu appears down the side. If it still does not, open the Customer portal address your service provider gave you again to reach Choose an account.
Above the list are three ways to narrow it: a row of date buttons (Today, This week, This month, Last 30 days, This year and All) for when a call was logged, the Search your calls box and the Status dropdown. When you open the Calls list from the menu, it starts on All, with every status and nothing in the search box, so you see your whole history.
The Calls list shows the account's calls whoever logged them: the ones you logged, the ones your colleagues logged in the Customer portal, and the ones your service provider logged for you after a phone call or an email. What limits the list is your sign-in, never who logged the call: your service provider may set a sign-in to show only calls of certain statuses or types, or only calls logged after a certain date. So a colleague with a sign-in of their own may see a slightly different list from yours.
If your service provider has allowed you to log calls, a Log a call button sits at the top of the Calls list.
The Calls list does not update by itself while it is open. To see a status your service provider has just changed, reload the page, by pressing F5 or with your browser's reload button.
What do the columns on my Calls list mean?
Each row of the Calls list is one call, and the columns tell you what it is and how it stands.
- Call — the call number. Quote it whenever you ring or write to your service provider.
- Logged — the date and time the call was recorded.
- Type — what kind of call it is, in your service provider's own words, shown as a coloured label.
- Status — where the call stands, again in your service provider's own words, as a coloured label.
- PO number — your purchase order (PO) number, if one was given.
- Your reference — your own reference for the call, if one was given.
- Next visit — when an engineer is next due on this call, and the engineer's name. A visit that has started but is not yet due to end still counts. It says Not booked when no visit is still to come on the call, and on every call if your sign-in does not include engineer visits; ask your service provider if you would like to see visits. A visit that is already over no longer shows here: open the call and read its Visits card, which lists every visit on the call, or select Visits in the menu and then Earlier. A visit your service provider has cancelled can still show here until its booked time has passed; open the call to see how each visit stands.
Under each row, a second line shows the call's comment: the one-line description of the problem. A call with no comment has no second line.
Those seven are all the columns the Calls list has, and there is no way to add another: it does not show who to ask for, when a call was finished, who at your service provider is dealing with it, or what it cost. Open the call to see its contact details, and ask your service provider, quoting the call number, for anything else.
The colours are there to help you scan. A status that means the call is new or open is blue, one being worked on is amber, a closed one is green and a cancelled one is red. Statuses your service provider has added themselves get a colour of their own that stays the same everywhere. Each type of call also always wears the same colour, so calls of one kind are easy to pick out. The colours are only a help: the label's words always say the type and the status.
How do I sort or page through my calls?
Select a column heading on the Calls list to sort by that column; select it again to reverse the order. You can sort by Call, Logged, Type, Status and Your reference. PO number and Next visit cannot be sorted, so selecting those headings does nothing.
Sorting by Status follows your service provider's own order for their statuses, not alphabetical order.
The Calls list sorts by one column at a time: selecting another heading replaces the sort rather than adding to it. To see the calls of one status in date order, choose that status from the Status dropdown above the list, then sort by Logged. To see calls in the order engineers are due, use the Visits page instead, which lists visits soonest first, because Next visit cannot be sorted.
Right-clicking a column heading on the Calls list opens a small menu with Sort ascending, Sort descending and Clear sorting, which goes back to newest first. The same menu also offers Group by this column, which puts the calls on each page under headings, Ungroup all once you have grouped, and Hide column (the Call column cannot be hidden). These only change how your own screen shows the calls. To bring a hidden column back, open another page from the portal's menu, such as Home, then select Calls again: the Calls list opens fresh with every column.
At the foot of the Calls list, a line gives the number of calls in all and the page you are on, such as "page 1 of 3". Use the page numbers, or the Previous page and Next page buttons, to move between pages, and the size buttons (10, 25, 50 or 100) to choose how many calls each page shows. Changing the sort or the page size takes you back to the first page.
With the keyboard, move along the column headings of the Calls list with the Left and Right arrow keys, press Enter to sort by the heading you are on, and press Shift and F10 together (Shift+F10) to open that heading's menu.
Can I make a column wider, move it or group my calls on the Calls list?
Yes, with a mouse, for as long as the Calls list stays open. Drag the right-hand edge of a column heading on the Calls list to make that column wider or narrower, and drag a heading sideways to move its column to another place; the Call column always stays first. Like a column hidden with Hide column, a width or an order you change is forgotten the next time the Calls list opens fresh, from the menu, from All calls on Home or from ← Calls on a call. When you open a call and come back with your browser's Back button, your widths and column order are kept.
To group the calls, drag a column heading upwards, above the row of headings, and let go on the bar that says "Drop", the column's name and "here to group by it". Or right-click the heading and choose Group by this column. The calls on each page then sit under headings, and a bar above the Calls list names the column you grouped by (a screen reader calls it "Grouping"): select × beside the name to stop grouping by it, or select Ungroup all. You can group by two columns at most, and PO number and Next visit cannot be used for grouping.
While you group by a column, its heading leaves the row of headings. The group headings follow the order the Calls list is in, so a new heading starts wherever the value changes from one call to the next. To have all the calls of one status together under one heading, sort by Status first, by selecting its heading, and then group by it: once the calls are grouped by Status, its heading is no longer there to select.
How do I open a call from the Calls list, and will the list remember where I was?
Double-click the call's row on the Calls list, or double-click its comment line. The call opens on a page of its own, and when you come back with your browser's Back button the Calls list is exactly as you left it.
With the keyboard:
- Select a row once, or move into the list with the Tab key.
- Press the Up and Down arrow keys to move from call to call. Home and End go to the first and last call on the page, and Page Up and Page Down move between pages.
- Press Enter to open the call that is marked.
A single click only marks a row; it does not open it. The Calls list marks one call at a time: there is no way to select several calls and change them together, because each call is changed from its own page with Edit.
What the Back button brings back is the whole view: the same date button, the same status, the same search, the same page and sort, and the call you opened is marked and scrolled into view.
The ← Calls link at the top of a call also takes you back to your calls, but it opens the Calls list fresh, on All with every status.
Can the Customer portal Calls list remember 100 calls a page or my own sort?
No. The Customer portal's Calls list has no setting to save a page size, a sort order, a search or hidden columns, so it opens in its standard view: 25 calls a page, newest logged first, every column showing, on All with every status and nothing in Search your calls. That is how it opens from Calls in the menu, from All calls on Home, from the ← Calls link on a call, and from a bookmark of the Calls list made after opening it from the menu.
The one different start is the Logged this month figure on Home: it opens the Calls list on This month instead of All. A bookmark made on a Calls list you reached that way opens on This month too, even if you selected All or another date button before bookmarking it, because only the date button you arrived with is part of the bookmark; a search, a status, a sort or a page size never is. Select All to see older calls, or bookmark Calls from the portal's menu instead.
The one time the Calls list keeps your choices is when you open a call from the list and come back with your browser's Back button: then the page size, the page, the sort, the search, the date button and the status all come back as you left them, with the call you opened marked. A column you hid with Hide column, from the menu you get by right-clicking a column heading, comes back when the list opens fresh, because the Customer portal has no column chooser.
So if you like 100 calls a page, choose 100 at the foot of the Calls list each time you open it, then use Back rather than ← Calls after reading a call.
Can I export my calls to Excel or print a call from the Customer portal?
No. The Customer portal's Calls list has no export or download button, so your calls cannot be saved as a spreadsheet, such as an Excel file, from it; besides Log a call, its controls are for finding calls: Search your calls, the when-logged buttons, Status, sorting by a column heading and moving between pages. A call's own page has no print or download button either: besides ← Calls, its only button is Edit, when your sign-in may change calls.
The only files you can download in the Customer portal are the invoices, credit notes and other documents in the Document column of Account history.
If you need a list or report of your calls, for example for your own records or an audit, ask your service provider: they can produce one for you. For a single call, open it and press Ctrl and P together (Ctrl+P). After clicking the call's heading, your browser prints the page as it is on the screen, because the Customer portal has no print layout of its own; after clicking in the text of the call's Details or What was done, only that document prints, in full, in a window of its own.