How to Customize the Call Screen and the Customer Overview
You can rearrange the fields on a call's Details page and on a customer's Overview page: move them, group them, rename them, hide the ones you never use and add ones that are not shown yet, including your company's own custom fields. Open the call or the customer, select the small arrow beside Details (or Overview) in the sections rail on the left, and choose Customize this layout….
How do I start customizing the call screen or the customer screen?
Open the call or customer, open the layouts list beside Details or Overview in the sections rail, and choose Customize this layout… at the top of the list. The foot of the sections rail says the same thing: "Details ▾ arranges the form" on the call screen, and "Overview ▾ arranges the overview" on the customer screen.
- Open a call from the Calls list, or a customer from the Customers list.
- Point at the sections rail on the left of the call or customer screen. If it has folded away, hover over it to make it peek out, or select Keep the sidebar open so it stays.
- Select the small arrow beside Details (on the call screen) or beside Overview (on the customer screen). Its name is Layouts followed by the layout in use, and it opens the layouts list for that screen.
- Choose Customize this layout…, the first row of the list.
If you were looking at another section, such as Analysis on a call or Notes on a customer, the screen switches to the Details page or the Overview for you, because that is the page being arranged. When you point at Customize this layout…, the foot of the list explains it: on the call screen, "Arrange the fields of this form: move them, group them, hide them, add the deployment’s own."; on the customer screen, "Arrange the overview: move its fields and panels, group them, hide them, add a field from any section."
You can customize a new call and a new customer too. The layout belongs to you, not to the record, so what you arrange on a new call is what your saved calls open on.
What changes on the screen while I am customizing?
While you customize, the top of the call or customer screen shows a note and the customizing buttons instead of its usual buttons (Status, Schedule engineer and Save on a call; Refresh, Log a call and Save on a customer), and two panels appear to the right of the form. The note on the call screen reads "Customizing the form — drag fields from the right, drop them on the form; right-click an item for more." The customer screen says the same about the overview.
The buttons at the top are:
- Undo — takes back your last change. You can also press Ctrl and Z together (Ctrl+Z).
- Redo — puts back a change you undid. You can also press Ctrl and Y together (Ctrl+Y), or Ctrl, Shift and Z together (Ctrl+Shift+Z).
- Reset to default — puts the form back as it comes out of the box.
- Revert — puts the form back as the layout you started from was saved. It is greyed out while there is nothing to revert.
- Done — finishes customizing and returns the screen to normal.
On the right, the Hidden items panel lists every field and panel that is not on the form, plus the pieces you can add (empty space, separators, splitters, labels and groups). Under it, a properties panel shows the settings of whatever you have selected on the form.
The fields on the form stop working as fields while you customize: you cannot type into them, because a click now selects them for arranging. The Save button at the top of the screen is replaced by the customizing buttons, but anything you had already typed is kept. If a call that is already saved, or a customer, has unsaved changes, the Unsaved changes bar at the foot of the screen still offers Save, and pressing Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S) still saves them while you customize. A new call that has not been saved yet has no such bar: press Ctrl+S to save it while you customize, or select Done to bring back the Save call button. Saving the call or customer does not save the arrangement; Done does that.
What do Done, Revert and Reset to default do?
Done keeps the form exactly as you arranged it and ends customizing; Revert throws away the changes and goes back to the layout you started from; Reset to default puts back the form as ABM Service ships it. All three are at the top of the call or customer screen while you customize.
- Done does not ask anything. Your arrangement stays on the screen, and ABM Service remembers it as your Last Used Layout, so the next call or customer you open looks the same, unless you have starred a different layout to open on. To keep it under a name you can come back to, save it as a layout from the arrow beside Details or Overview (see How to Save and Switch Form Layouts in this section).
- Revert returns to the layout named in the layouts list as it was saved, and the message line on the form says so: "Back to", the layout's name in quotation marks, and "as it was saved." When you are on Last Used Layout or Default Layout it returns to the form as it stood before you started, and says "Back to the form as it was." (or "Back to the overview as it was.").
- Reset to default replaces your arrangement with the shipped one and says "The form as it comes out of the box — press Done to keep it." Nothing is final until you press Done, and Undo is cleared by both Revert and Reset to default.
Your arrangement is kept only when you press Done. Picking a layout from the layouts list beside Details or Overview while you are customizing puts that layout on the form in place of what you had arranged, and clears Undo; closing or reloading the browser tab, or the ABM Service desktop app window, while customizing loses the changes too.
Tip: If you only want to undo one step, use Undo rather than Revert. Undo remembers up to 100 steps, and one drag or one resize counts as one step.
Who else sees my changes to the layout?
Nobody. Every layout of the call screen and the customer screen is saved for you alone, under your own sign-in, and nobody else's screen changes when you customize yours. There is no way in ABM Service to arrange the call screen for everyone, and your system administrator's layouts do not change yours either. To give a colleague the same arrangement, tell them what you moved, hid or added, and they customize their own screen the same way and save it as a layout of their own.
The same applies to the names you give fields. If you rename Customer ref to something your team uses, only your screen shows the new name. The Hidden items list and any message about the field still use its original name.
Because the layout is yours, it follows you from computer to computer when you sign in, and it is the same whether you use ABM Service in a browser or in the ABM Service desktop app. Two small things stay on one computer: where you last dragged a splitter while not customizing (see How to Add Groups, Labels, Separators and Splitters to a Form), and which saved layout's name the layouts list shows when the screen opens on Last Used Layout. On another computer the arrangement comes back the same, but the list may call it Last Used Layout.
The layouts of the call screen, the customer screen, the Calls list, the Customers list and the Scheduler are five separate sets. Saving a call screen layout does not change how the Calls list looks.
Why can't I start customizing?
Customize this layout… is refused in two cases, and the screen says which: while the call or customer is being saved, and while you are already customizing.
- The record is being saved. If you select Customize this layout… while a call is saving, the message line on the form says "The call is being saved — the form can be customized once that finishes." On a customer, "The customer is being saved — the overview can be customized once that finishes." Wait a moment and try again.
- You are already customizing. Pointing at Customize this layout… in the layouts list shows "The form is being customized — press Done first." (or "The overview is being customized — press Done first."), and selecting it does nothing. Press Done at the top of the screen, then choose it again if you want to start over.
Having unsaved changes in the call or customer does not stop you. You can customize in the middle of typing up a call; what you typed, including the text in the Details and Resolution documents, is kept exactly as it was while the form moves around it.
If two calls are open at once, each keeps its own arrangement while you work, and Undo only affects the call you are looking at.