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How to Log a Call by Voice

You can log a call for a customer by talking to Fiona, the office's voice agent, instead of filling in the call form. Open the customer, select Log by voice in the header of the customer screen, and choose Talk here to talk through your computer, or Call me back to have Fiona ring your phone.

How do I log a call by talking to Fiona on the customer screen?​

Open the customer, select Log by voice in the header of the customer screen, choose Talk here, and tell Fiona what the call is about. She logs the call for that customer, and a bar at the bottom of the screen gives you its number when it is saved.

  1. Open the customer from Customers, or by selecting the customer's name anywhere in ABM Service.
  2. Select Log by voice in the header of the customer screen, straight after Log a call.
  3. Choose Talk here ("Talk to Fiona in this browser. Uses your microphone") in the menu headed "Log a call by voice".
  4. Allow the microphone if your web browser asks whether ABM Service may use it. The ABM Service desktop app does not ask.
  5. Tell Fiona about the job in your own words: what is wrong, where, who at the customer reported it, anything the engineer should know.
  6. End the conversation in the voice panel once Fiona has logged the call. When the panel has gone, you are back on the customer screen as you left it.
  7. Read the bar at the bottom centre of the window, "Call", the number and "logged by Fiona", and select Open call in the bar if you want to check or add to the call.

The voice panel opens over the window in ABM Service's own colours, and when it closes the keyboard focus goes back to Log by voice, so you can carry on from the keyboard.

If the menu shows a warning sign beside Talk here, that way cannot be used here; pointing at it, moving to it with the keyboard or pressing it says why, and Why Is Log by Voice Missing or Not Working? explains each reason.

How do I have Fiona phone me to log a call?​

To have Fiona ring you, pair your phone once with Pair a phone in the Log by voice menu on the customer screen, then choose Call me back whenever you want to log a call that way. Fiona phones the paired phone and you talk to her on it, which suits you if you have no microphone on your computer or would rather walk about while you talk.

To pair a phone, once:

  1. Open any customer and select Log by voice in the header of the customer screen.
  2. Choose Pair a phone ("Scan a code once to carry on from your phone"). This does not start a call.
  3. Scan the code the voice panel shows with your phone, and follow what the panel asks.

To log a call with Call me back:

  1. Open the customer the call is for and select Log by voice in the header of the customer screen.
  2. Choose Call me back ("Fiona rings your paired phone").
  3. Answer the phone and tell Fiona about the job.

The result reaches ABM Service when the phone call ends, and with Call me back the bar can appear a few seconds after the voice panel has already closed. Keep ABM Service open in that tab or window until it does: the bar belongs to the page Fiona was opened from.

Pair a phone stays available even when Talk here and Call me back are blocked by the address ABM Service is opened at, and the message on a blocked Talk here suggests it for that reason.

What does Fiona already know when I start a voice call?​

Fiona already knows which customer the call is for: the one whose customer screen you opened her from. The menu says so before you start, "with Fiona, for" and the customer's name. She is not given a list of your other customers to choose from, so you never need to tell her the customer's name or code.

For that customer she has their code, name and address, the people on the customer's own contact list who have a name, and anything your system administrator has written for her about the customer. A contact shared with another customer, whom the customer screen's Contacts list shows with that other customer's name beside them, is not offered to her, so give her that person's name yourself if they reported the job. For the call itself she has:

  • the call types she may use: the ones your system administrator has chosen for her, not necessarily all of your company's call types;
  • your company's call statuses, starting from the default status your system administrator chose for her, or Open if none was chosen or the chosen one no longer exists;
  • the people she may name to follow the call up, if your system administrator has picked any; if not, she names nobody;
  • what your system administrator has written for her about your company and your call types, such as the words your customers use for things.

She also knows who you are: ABM Service tells her the ABM user you are signed in as, so the call is filed under your name without you saying it. You cannot log a call as a colleague.

If Fiona seems not to offer the call type you need, or names the wrong people for follow-up, that is part of her set-up: tell your system administrator, who decides it on the AI agents screen.

What does a call logged by voice look like in ABM Service?​

A call Fiona logs is an ordinary call in ABM Service, on the customer you opened her from, and it appears in that customer's Calls section, on the Calls list and wherever else calls are shown. Open it with Open call on the bar, or from the customer's Calls card. What it carries, by the call screen's usual field names:

  • Logged by you. The header of the call screen says "logged", the date and time it was saved, and "by" with your name, and the Entered by column, which you can add to the Calls list from its columns, shows you. Only the bar says "logged by Fiona", because she wrote it on your behalf.
  • Date: the moment the call was saved.
  • Type: one of the call types your system administrator lets Fiona log, with the Job group that goes with that type.
  • Status: the status Fiona filed it under, one of your company's call statuses.
  • Comment: Fiona's one-line summary of the job, cut to fit the comment's 300 characters.
  • Contact name and E-mail: the contact Fiona confirmed with you, or left empty if nobody was confirmed. Phone and Mobile are left empty.
  • Follow up: one of the people your system administrator lets Fiona name, or nobody. Follow-up date is left empty.
  • Details: Fiona's written description of the job, in the call's Details document.

Fiona does not schedule an engineer, choose a Charge, or fill in P.O. number or Customer ref. Once the call is logged, open it and carry on as with any call you typed yourself: correct anything she got wrong, add what she did not ask about, and select Schedule engineer to give it to an engineer.

Note: Contact name is required on every call. If Fiona logged the call with nobody as the contact, the call screen refuses to save a change to it with "Name the contact." until you fill in Contact name.

Can I keep working while a call is being logged by voice?​

Yes, within the same tab or window. Anything you had changed on the customer screen and not saved is left exactly as it was while you talk to Fiona, and the bar that announces the call sits above the customer screen's save bar rather than over it.

The bar follows you to other screens in the same tab or window, so once the voice panel has closed you can move to the Calls list, the Scheduler or another customer and open the call from the bar later. With Call me back, the result can come after the panel has closed; it still arrives wherever you are in that tab.

Two things lose the bar, though never the call:

  • Reloading the page, or closing the tab or window, before the bar appears or while it is showing. The call is still logged; find it in the customer's Calls section.
  • Another tab or window. The bar appears only in the tab or ABM Service desktop app window you opened Fiona from.

Only one voice panel can be open at a time in a tab or window. If you choose a way while one is already open, the menu says "AgentDesk’s panel is already open — close it first." Close the open panel, then choose again.