How to Set Your Dashboard Counting Rules
The counting rules decide which calls the Home screen counts and how it sorts them into Open, Active and Completed. They are the four dropdowns labelled Call types, Open, Active and Closed beside Counting rules on the Home screen, to the right of the period pills. They are yours alone and are saved as soon as you change them.
How do I change which statuses count as Open on the Home screen?
To change which call statuses count as Open, open Home, select the Open dropdown beside Counting rules, and tick or untick your company's call statuses. The Calls by status panel, and the grouping card when it is on Type or Customer, are counted again straight away, and your choice is saved for next time.
- Open Home from the menu.
- Select the Open dropdown beside Counting rules. It shows the statuses currently counted as open.
- Tick each call status you want counted as open, and untick any you do not.
- Press Escape, or click anywhere else on the screen, to close the list.
The Active and Closed dropdowns work the same way. Calls in the statuses ticked under Closed are shown on the Completed tile. The lists offer your company's own call statuses, in your company's order. Cancelled is not offered in any list: a cancelled call is always counted as cancelled.
How do I count only some call types on the Home screen?
To count only some kinds of call on the Home screen, select the Call types dropdown beside Counting rules and untick the types you do not want. The whole screen is counted again for the types left ticked.
- Select the Call types dropdown beside Counting rules on the Home screen. It says All followed by the number of types when every type is ticked, and lists your company's call types in alphabetical order.
- Untick the call types you want to leave out, keeping at least one ticked.
- Close the list by pressing Escape or clicking elsewhere.
Call types is the one rule that narrows every panel: Calls by status, Actions by status, the grouping card and Today on the board all count only calls of the ticked types.
Call types is also the only way to narrow the Home screen. There is no filter for one engineer, one customer or one area: to see how much one engineer or one customer had, set the grouping card to Engineer or Customer and read their own row. The Customer grouping lists only the busiest customers, up to 100 with Show more, so for a quieter customer filter the Calls list by that customer instead.
Note: The Call types dropdown on the Home screen cannot be saved with nothing ticked. If you select None while every type is ticked, nothing changes: every type stays ticked, the button still reads All and a number, and the message "Your counting rules were changed here but could not be saved for next time." appears. If only some types were ticked and you untick the rest (or select None), the button reads None but the Home screen counts every type, and the change is not saved, so Home opens next time with the call types you had before; the same message may appear, sometimes only for a moment. Leave at least one type ticked.
What do All and None do in the counting rules dropdowns?
At the top of each counting-rules dropdown on the Home screen, All ticks every entry in that list and None unticks every entry. Beside them, a count such as "3 of 10" tells you how many are ticked.
Choosing None in Open, Active or Closed is a real choice and is saved: that tile will then show zero, and the calls it used to count become uncategorised until you tick their statuses somewhere else. The dropdown's button shows the ticked names, None when nothing is ticked, or All and a number when everything is. When the ticked names are too long for the button they are cut short; hover over the button to read them all.
Call types is the exception on the Home screen: it cannot be saved with nothing ticked. Selecting None there while every type is ticked changes nothing, and selecting it when only some are ticked makes the screen count every type without saving the change.
Do I need to save my counting rules?
No — there is no Save button for the counting rules on the Home screen. Every tick is saved for you as soon as you make it, and the Home screen opens with your rules next time.
The rules belong to your ABM user only, so they follow you to any computer, in a web browser or the ABM Service desktop app, where you sign in as yourself. Changing them does not change anybody else's Home screen, which is why two people can see different numbers for the same week.
They are also the same rules ABM's own Calls & Actions Dashboard uses for your user in the ABM desktop program, so a change on the Home screen changes that dashboard too, and the other way round. ABM Service reads your rules once, when it is first loaded, so a change made in the ABM desktop program shows on Home the next time ABM Service is reloaded or opened again. And they decide the Open, Active and Completed counts on the Calls card of a customer's Overview in ABM Service; if you had already opened a customer before changing them, customers keep being counted the old way until ABM Service is reloaded or opened again.
If you have never set any rules, the Home screen uses the defaults: ABM's built-in Web and Open statuses count as open, Active as active, and Closed and Matched as closed. Cancelled is always counted as Cancelled and cannot be moved. Every other status, including ABM's built-in Email status and any your company has added, is uncategorised until you tick it under Open, Active or Closed.
Why did a status disappear from Active when I ticked it under Open?
A call status can only be in one group, so when you tick it in two dropdowns on the Home screen, ABM Service keeps it in the first one and takes it out of the other. Open comes first, then Active, then Closed.
When this happens, a note appears under the period bar naming the statuses that moved. It begins "A status can only be in one family, so" followed by the status names and "counted as Open" (or, for a status taken out of Closed, "counted as Open or Active"). If you want the status counted as active instead, untick it under Open and tick it under Active.
The same note can appear as soon as you open Home, if your saved rules already had a status in two lists.
What does uncategorised mean on the Home screen?
"Uncategorised" on the Home screen means calls (or actions) whose status is not in any of your counting rules. They are still counted in the panel's total and drawn as a grey band in its bar, but they are not on any of the four tiles.
When there are some, a label such as "12 uncategorised" appears beside the panel's total. Hover over it for the explanation: they "have a status your counting rules do not mention. They are counted here and shown in grey." To give those calls a tile, tick their status under Open, Active or Closed. A new status your company has added will be uncategorised until you tick it somewhere.
On the Actions by status panel the grouping is fixed rather than yours to set, so uncategorised actions there are always visits in the Not assigned or Re-Assign status, which ABM does not place in any group.