Using the Menu
The menu is the panel that slides in from the left of ABM Service and takes you between its main screens: Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler. It also holds Appearance, your name and company, Sign out, and the version of ABM Service you are using. Open it with Menu on the Home screen, or Navigation menu at the top of the filter rail on the Calls, Customers and Scheduler screens.
How do I open the menu in ABM Service?
Open the menu with the button with three short lines at the top left of the screen: on the Home screen it is called Menu, beside the greeting, and on the Calls, Customers and Scheduler screens it is called Navigation menu, beside the screen's name at the top of the filter rail. On those screens, hovering over it shows Menu.
- Select Menu at the top of the Home screen, or Navigation menu at the top of the filter rail on the Calls, Customers or Scheduler screen. The menu slides in from the left, over the screen you are on.
- Choose a screen, or use the other parts of the menu.
- Close the menu by pressing Escape (Esc), by selecting anywhere outside the menu, or simply by choosing a screen.
When you have folded the filter rail away on the Calls, Customers or Scheduler screen, Navigation menu moves to the top of the screen, beside the screen's name. The Customers without a location screen has the same Navigation menu button, and the system administrator's screens have a Menu button.
The call screen and the customer screen have no menu. Use the back arrow at the top left of the screen (Back to calls or Back to customers) to return to the screen you came from, and open the menu there. The back arrow is only there when there is somewhere to go back to: if you opened the call or customer straight from a link, a bookmark or a new tab, open your company's ABM Service web address instead, which opens on the Home screen.
The Home screen also has buttons for Customers, Calls and Scheduler at the top, beside Log a call, so from Home you can go straight to a screen without opening the menu.
What is in the ABM Service menu?
The ABM Service menu lists the main screens at the top and your own settings at the bottom. From top to bottom:
- The product's name, ABM Service, with DP Systems Ltd under it.
- Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler: the four main screens. The one you are on is highlighted.
- Administration: only for your system administrator, who is ABM user number 1, and who sees Database, Sign-in and Customer sign-ins there. Other people do not see this part of the menu at all.
- Appearance: the colourway and Light, Dark or System mode for every screen.
- Your initials, name and company: who you are signed in as, and which company's ABM Service you are in.
- Authenticator and Sign out, on a row under your name, when you signed in in a browser. Authenticator only appears when your company uses authenticator apps.
- The version line: the product's name and the version number of ABM Service.
The menu only lists screens that ABM Service has. There is no reports screen, no timesheet screen, no job manager screen and no screen for invoices, stock or purchasing in ABM Service in this version, so the menu does not list them; invoicing and the accounts stay in ABM itself. A customer's balances, read from ABM's accounts, are shown in Credit & terms on the customer screen, and the Home screen shows counts of calls and visits for a period.
When you leave a list screen through the menu, ABM Service remembers where you were on it, so your browser's back button brings you back to it as you left it.
Why is there no Database or Administration option in my ABM Service menu?
The Administration part of the ABM Service menu, with Database, Sign-in and Customer sign-ins in it, is shown only to the system administrator: the person who signs in as ABM user number 1. Everybody else's menu goes straight from the four main screens (Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler) to Appearance, and that is not a fault or a missing permission you can be given.
So if a manager or colleague has Database in their menu and you do not, they are signed in as ABM user 1 and you are not. The same is true in a browser and in the ABM Service desktop app.
What the administrator does there affects everybody: Database is where recommended improvements to your company's ABM database are checked and applied, Sign-in is where your company decides whether people need an authenticator app to sign in over the web, and Customer sign-ins is where your customers are given access to the Customer portal. If you need something changed in any of them, for example your authenticator reset, ask your system administrator.
How do I open a screen from the menu in a new tab or window?
To open a screen from the ABM Service menu in a new browser tab, hold Ctrl while you select it (Ctrl+click), or click it with the middle mouse button. Hold Shift while you select it (Shift+click) to open it in a new window. The screen you were on stays as it was in the original tab.
The entries in the menu are ordinary links, so your browser's own ways of opening a link elsewhere all work, including right-clicking the entry and choosing to open it in a new tab. On a Mac, use the Command key instead of Ctrl.
This is useful when you want two screens side by side, for example the Calls list in one window and the Scheduler in another. Your Appearance choice is shared by every tab, so a change in one reaches the others straight away.
All the tabs belong to the same sign-in. You do not sign in again for a new tab, and signing out in one tab signs out all of them in that browser.
The call and customer screens work the same way: links to a call or a customer in the lists can be opened in a new tab with Ctrl+click too, which lets you keep several open at once.
How do I find out which version of ABM Service I am using?
The version of ABM Service is shown at the very bottom of the menu, after your name: the product's name followed by the version number and, on most installations, a short build code after a dot. Hover over it to see when that version was built.
Support usually asks for this first, so read out or copy the whole line, for example when you report a problem.
The same line is at the foot of the sign-in page, so you can find the version even when you cannot sign in.
If the product's name reads ABM Service Development, you are using a development or test installation rather than your company's live one. Check that you opened the right address before you enter real work.
After ABM Service has been updated, the version number in the menu changes the next time the page is loaded. If you think an update has happened but the number has not changed, reload the page.
If the bottom of the menu shows no version line, ABM Service could not read it. Everything else still works; go to another screen or reload the page, and ABM Service asks for the version again.