How to Set a Customer's Address and Location
The customer's addresses and their place on the map are kept on Address & location, the second item on the customer screen's sections rail. The location is what puts the customer on the map beside the Calls list and the Scheduler, so engineers are sent to the right building. Changes here are saved with the rest of the customer, using Save.
How do I change a customer's address?
To change a customer's address, open the customer, select Address & location on the sections rail, type the new lines in the Mailing address card and select Save at the top right of the customer screen.
- Open the customer from Customers.
- Select Address & location on the sections rail.
- Type the address in the Mailing address card: Street 1, Street 2, Suburb / city, County / state, Post code, Country and, where it is shown, Eircode (the Irish postcode).
- Select Save at the top right of the customer screen, or press Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S).
The mailing address is "The address used on this customer's printed paperwork." You do not type the printed version yourself: change any line, Country and Eircode included, and when you save the printed address is rebuilt from Street 1, Street 2, Suburb / city, County / state and Post code. Country and Eircode are saved in their own boxes but are not part of the rebuilt printed address, so if the old printed address showed them, it no longer does after the rebuild. If you change no line, the printed address is left exactly as it was.
The Delivery address card has the same lines, for "Where goods and paperwork are delivered, when that is not the mailing address," and its printed version is rebuilt the same way. Leave it empty and deliveries go to the mailing address.
Street lines and Suburb / city hold up to 50 characters, County / state and Country 30, and Post code 10 on the mailing address and 20 on the delivery address.
Why is there no Eircode box on the customer's address?
The Eircode box appears in the customer screen's Mailing address card when your company is set up in Ireland, or when this customer already has an Eircode stored. On a company outside Ireland a customer with no Eircode simply has no box, so nobody is shown a field that could only ever be empty. The Delivery address card follows the same rule with its own delivery Eircode.
On an Irish company the Overview's Address box also shows the Eircode, or not set with an Add it button that brings you to Address & location.
The Eircode matters beyond the paperwork: when a customer has no pin on the map, ABM Service looks up the Eircode first, because an Eircode points to one building while an address may only point to a street.
How do I put a customer on the map?
To put a customer on the map, open Address & location on the customer screen and use the Location card beside the addresses: either accept the estimated location with Use this location, or select Set location and place the pin yourself. Then select Save for the customer.
When nobody has placed the customer yet, ABM Service looks up the Eircode, and then the mailing address if the Eircode finds nothing, and shows the map there, marked Estimated from the Eircode or Estimated from the mailing address. The line under the map names what it found and says "nothing is stored until you use it". It looks the address up again a moment after you stop typing, so you can type an address and watch the map follow.
- Check that the estimated spot is the right building.
- Select Use this location if it is, or Set location to place it exactly.
- Select Save at the top right of the customer screen.
An estimate is never saved on its own, because a mistyped Eircode can find a perfectly believable wrong place. Use this location appears only once the lookup has finished, so it always offers the spot for the address as it is now. Once the customer has a pin, the line under the map shows its coordinates as "Lat" and "Lng".
Note: A pin is saved with the customer. Until you select Save, the Unsaved changes bar counts it, and the line along the foot of the Overview's map still gives the coordinates that are stored.
How do I use the Set location dialog?
The Set location dialog, opened with Set location on the customer screen's Address & location section, is a map that you move under a fixed pin: the centre of the map is what is saved. It starts where the map behind it was looking, on the saved pin or the estimate.
- Type an address or an Eircode in the search box at the top ("An address or an Eircode…"); it starts filled in with the customer's Eircode, or their address when there is no Eircode.
- Select Find, or press Enter, and the map moves there. The button reads Finding… while it looks.
- Drag the map until the pin sits on the building, and scroll to zoom in.
- Select Save location, then Save for the customer.
The foot of the Set location dialog shows, as Lat and Lng, the latitude and longitude that will be saved, changing as you move the map. The line above it says "The centre of the map is what is saved. Move it if the building is not where the address says." This matters for a site whose entrance, yard or unit is not where the postal address puts it. Finding an address only moves the map; nothing is kept until you select Save location.
If the search finds nothing it says Nothing found for that. If it cannot search at all it says Address lookup is not available on this deployment., and you can still place the pin by dragging. Cancel or the close button leaves without changing anything.
Why does the Set location dialog on a customer ask me to type a latitude and longitude?
When no map is set up, the Set location dialog on the customer screen asks for Latitude and Longitude instead, as numbers, and says "No map is configured for this deployment, so the pin is typed rather than dropped." Find still works there when the address lookup is available, and fills both boxes with the place it found. To enter a position yourself, paste each number in whole, for example copied from an online map. These boxes do not take a number typed one key at a time: a decimal point typed on its own is dropped, so the number comes out different, and a minus sign typed on its own turns the box to NaN. If that happens, select everything in the box and paste the number again. Check Lat and Lng at the foot of the dialog before you select Save location.
Warning: When the customer has no saved pin and no estimate, the Latitude and Longitude boxes in the Set location dialog start on the map's default starting point in central Dublin, not on the customer, so replace both numbers. On the customer screen a number further than 180 from zero is saved as typed, and the customer then counts as having no location, so check both numbers before you save the customer.
How do I remove a customer's pin?
To remove a customer's pin, open Address & location on the customer screen and select Clear the pin under the map, then Save. The customer then has no location: it stops appearing on the maps beside the Calls list and the Scheduler and, if it is an active customer, it joins the Customers without a location page until somebody places it again.
After clearing, the map goes back to showing an estimate from the Eircode or address, if one can be found, so you can place the customer again straight away.
What do the messages on the customer map mean?
The customer screen's map always says which of three things you are looking at: a saved pin, an estimate, or nothing to go on.
- No pin yet / "The address has no pin. Set location puts one on the map.": nobody has placed the customer, and there is no address to estimate from.
- Checking the address… or "Looking the address up…": the address is being looked up.
- "The address has no pin, and it could not be found from the address either.": the Eircode and address were looked up and found nowhere. Check them for typing mistakes, or use Set location.
- "The address has no pin, and the address lookup is not available on this deployment.": looking addresses up is not switched on for your company. Place the customer with Set location.
- Under the map on Address & location, a line starting "Nobody has set where this customer is." says the same things in a sentence: that an estimate is being checked, that the address could not be looked up, or which Eircode or address the estimate came from.
- "No map is configured for this deployment.": your company has no map set up. The coordinates are shown instead, and the Set location dialog shows Latitude and Longitude boxes to paste the numbers into, with "No map is configured for this deployment, so the pin is typed rather than dropped."
- "The map could not be loaded.": the map failed this time; the coordinates are shown instead.
Your system administrator or IT contact is the person to ask when the map or the address lookup is not available.