How to Open a Call or Log a New Call from the Calls List
Each call on the Calls list opens from its call number in the Call column, and a new call starts from New Call at the top right of the toolbar. When you are finished with the call, Back brings you to the Calls list exactly as you left it.
How do I open a call from the Calls list?
Select the call number in the Call column of the Calls list. The call's own screen opens in the same tab. You can also double-click anywhere on the call's row, or on the comment line under it.
- Find the call on the Calls list, using the filter rail and the date window if you need to.
- Select the call number in the Call column.
A single click elsewhere on a row marks it, drawing it highlighted, without opening anything. With a row marked, press Enter to open that call. The arrow keys move the mark up and down the list.
Clicking a link or a button inside a row also marks that row, so when you come back the list shows which call you were working on.
If the call is not on the list, use the Find a call box on the Calls list's toolbar instead: type part of the call number, which finds the call from any date, or at least three letters of its reference, comment, problem description or resolution, which finds calls logged in the last 12 months. Then click the call in the panel that drops down, or press Enter. The call opens without changing the list. How to Find a Call explains the box in full.
How do I open a call in a new tab or window?
Point at the call number on the Calls list: a small open-in-new button appears beside it. Select it to open the call in a new browser tab, leaving the list where it is. In the ABM Service desktop app, the same button opens the call in a new window, and its tooltip says so.
The call number itself is an ordinary link, so the usual browser shortcuts work on it too:
- Ctrl and click together (Ctrl+click), or a middle-click, opens the call in a new tab.
- Shift and click together (Shift+click) opens it in a new browser window.
This is handy for comparing two calls side by side, or for keeping the list open while you work on several calls. Each tab or window is separate, so remember to save each call you change.
The open-in-new button also appears when you move to the call number with the Tab key, so it can be reached from the keyboard.
How do I open the customer of a call from the Calls list?
Select the customer's name in the Customer column of the Calls list. The customer's own screen opens, and the row you opened it from is marked, so Back brings you to the same place in the list. Point at the name to show an open-in-new button that opens the customer in a new tab instead, or a new window in the desktop app.
Every call on the Calls list has a customer: a call with no customer, or whose customer is no longer in ABM, is not listed at all. To open such a call, type part of its number into the Find a call box on the toolbar, where it shows "No customer".
If you have added the Invoice to column, each name in it is a link too, and opens the customer the call is billed to rather than the customer whose site it is.
Does Back return me to the same place on the Calls list?
Yes. When you open a call or a customer from the Calls list and then press Back — the browser's Back button, or Back in the ABM Service desktop app — the Calls list comes back exactly as you left it: the same date window, Which calls choice, filters, columns, sort, page and map, with the call you opened marked and scrolled into view.
That works however you left: from a call number, a customer link, the map, the Find a call box, or New Call. When you opened a call from a row of the list, that row is the one marked when you come back. When you opened it from the Find a call box or the map, the call may not be on the list at all, so the row you had marked before stays marked, and the Find a call box is empty again.
Opening the Calls list afresh from the navigation menu is different: it opens on your saved or last-used layout instead, without a marked row.
How do I log a new call from the Calls list?
Press New Call at the top right of the Calls list's toolbar. The new call screen opens, ready for you to choose the customer and fill in the call.
- Press New Call on the Calls list's toolbar.
- Fill in the new call and save it on the new call screen.
When the Calls list is filtered to one customer, New Call opens the new call with that customer already chosen, and hovering the button names the customer. A line above the calls says so too: "One customer:", the customer's name, and "— a new call from this screen is logged for them." The customer's name, code and first address line are filled in; a contact's name, phone number and email are not. You can still change the customer on the new call before saving.
If you press Back from the new call screen, you return to the Calls list as you left it.
New Call always starts a fresh call: there is no way to copy an existing call into a new one from the Calls list. To log the same work again, open the old call to read how it was done, then press New Call and fill in the new one.