What Is ABM Service and How Is It Organised?

ABM Service is where the office works on your company's service calls, customers and engineers' diaries, on the same data as ABM (Advanced Business Manager). It has four main screens, Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler, which you reach from the menu, and a call screen and a customer screen for working on one record at a time. This page says what each part of ABM Service is for and where to read more.

What is ABM Service for?

ABM Service is the office application for service work: logging and updating calls, scheduling engineers to visit, planning the engineers' days on the Scheduler, and looking after customer accounts. It works on your company's ABM data, so a call or a customer changed in ABM Service is the same call or customer in ABM, and you sign in with the name and password you already use for ABM.

You can use ABM Service in two ways, and the screens inside are the same in both:

In a web browser, at your company's ABM Service address. You sign in on the sign-in page, and your company may also ask for a code from an authenticator app on your phone.
As the ABM Service desktop app, a Windows program you open from the Start menu, or from ABM Service buttons your company has put on the ABM toolbar. It opens screens in windows of its own and keeps itself up to date.

Many of the lists you see are set up by your company: its call types, call statuses, customer groups, engineers and custom fields, for example. So the choices on your screens are your company's own. Some things are yours alone and follow your sign-in from computer to computer: your saved layouts, the colours you give to items in the filter rail, and your counting rules on Home.

In a browser, open your company's ABM Service address, choose your name in the Who you are box, type your ABM password and select Sign in; ABM Service opens on Home. To move between the main screens, open the menu: it is Menu on the Home screen, and Navigation menu at the top of the filter rail on the Calls, Customers and Scheduler screens.

The ABM Service menu holds:

Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler, the four main screens.
Appearance, where you choose one of eight colourways and Light, Dark or System mode.
Your name and company, with Authenticator (when your company uses authenticator apps) and Sign out beneath them, in the browser.
The version of ABM Service, at the very bottom.

The system administrator also sees an Administration part of the menu; nobody else does.

The call screen and the customer screen have no menu of their own: use the back arrow at the top left (Back to calls or Back to customers) to return to the screen you came from.

What is the Home screen for?

Home is the screen ABM Service opens on: a one-page dashboard of the calls logged and the engineer visits due in a period, with today's visits laid out by engineer. It is ABM's Calls & Actions Dashboard, rebuilt for ABM Service.

The period pills, Today, This week, This month and This year, choose what is counted, and the arrows either side step to the period before or back towards the current one. Home always opens on This week, and counts only up to the end of today.
Counting rules, the Call types, Open, Active and Closed dropdowns, decide which calls are counted and how they are grouped. They are yours alone and are saved as soon as you change them, which is why two people can see different numbers.
Calls by status and Actions by status split the period's calls and visits into Open, Active, Completed and Cancelled.
Today on the board shows one line per engineer with today's visits, and Open the Scheduler → takes you to the full board.
The grouping card ranks the busiest engineers, customers or call types, switched with Type, Customer and Engineer.

The buttons at the top, Customers, Calls, Scheduler and Log a call, go straight to those screens. The numbers themselves are for reading: apart from customer names, nothing on Home opens anything.

What is the Calls list for?

The Calls list is the office's working list of service calls: every call logged in a date window, with who is scheduled to do it and how far they have got. Open it by choosing Calls in the menu. Each row is one scheduled engineer visit, or the call on its own when nobody has been scheduled for it yet, so a call with three engineers appears on three rows.

The filter rail on the left narrows the list: Which calls (All, To schedule or Scheduled), the By Date window on Logged or Due, one Customer, and ticks under Call Type, Call Status, Action Status and Engineer.
The toolbar holds the filter chips, the Search calls box, Map, Refresh and New Call.
The Engineer column offers Schedule engineer on a call nobody has been given yet.

The first time you open it, and whenever you choose Default Layout, the Calls list shows this week's calls with only the Open and Active call statuses ticked, so a closed or cancelled call is hidden until you tick its status or remove the Call Status chip. After that it opens the way you last left it.

What is the call screen for?

The call screen is where you read and change one call. Open it by selecting a call number on the Calls list, or anywhere else a call number is shown; New Call on the Calls list, and Log a call on Home or on a customer, open the same screen for a new call.

The header shows the call number, the call's type and status, the customer and the Comment, with the Status, Schedule engineer and Save buttons.
The sections rail on the left holds Details, Analysis, Actions, Existing calls and Attachments.
The Details form holds the customer and contact, the Call card (type, status, charge, job group, follow-up), the Scheduled visits card, and the two documents, Details and Resolution.

Most fields are changed where they stand (a saved call's customer, its address and the date it was logged are for reading only), and your changes are written when you select Save or press Ctrl and S together (Ctrl+S). Booking or changing a visit on a saved call also saves the call's unsaved changes first, when you press Done. A new call is created when you select Save call.

How does scheduling an engineer work in ABM Service?

Scheduling an engineer books a visit: a named engineer, due at a set time, for a set length. Giving a call to an engineer is always called scheduling in ABM Service; some people call it assigning. Use Schedule engineer at the top of the call screen, or in the Engineer column of a call on the Calls list.

The Engineer for this call dialog lists every active engineer with their next three days, and puts the engineers who have been to the customer's site in the last twelve months first, under Been here before. Set the time under When (Due, End and Duration); a clash with another booking is shown but never blocked. On a saved call the visit is booked as soon as you press Done.

More engineers: Schedule another engineer, the plus button beside the engineer pill, or Add engineer on the Scheduled visits card.
Changing a visit: open it from the engineer pill or its row on the Scheduled visits card to get Change this visit.
Reopening: booking a visit on a call at Web, Open, Closed or Cancelled moves the call to Active.

The call's Actions list shows everything logged against the call, visits included.

What is the Scheduler for?

The Scheduler is the planning board: one row for every active engineer, with each engineer's visits drawn as appointments across the days and hours you are looking at, placed by their due date and length. Open it by choosing Scheduler in the menu.

Dates and views: the arrows beside the date button, Today, and the Day, Work week, Week and Month views.
Moving work: drag an appointment to another time, day or engineer, or pull an edge to change its length. Each change is saved at once, and Undo is offered for six seconds.
The appointment card: click an appointment for its details, Open call and Change engineer.
Logging a call into free time: mark out a slot on an engineer's row, fill in the Quick call card and select Create & schedule.
Narrowing the board: Which engineers, Go to engineer, one Customer, and ticks in the filter rail.
Scheduler settings: the cog button sets the Working day, Cell duration, Colour by and Auto-refresh.

What are the To schedule column and the customer map for?

The To schedule column on the Scheduler lists the calls nobody has been given an engineer yet, oldest first, so you can work through the queue. Open it with To schedule on the Scheduler's toolbar. Select a call's card and the board lights every stretch of free time long enough for the job; select a lit gap to place it, then the tick to book it. The column has its own Type, Status and Logged filters, separate from the filter rail.

The customer map opens beside the Calls list or the Scheduler with the map button, and shows one marker for each customer behind the calls or appointments on screen. Its Key explains the markers; selecting a marker opens the customer's sheet with their calls and Directions ↗. A banner says how many customers have no location and cannot be drawn.

With the map and the column both open on the Scheduler, the map also shows where calls are waiting, and the Nearby panel lists appointments close to the call you are placing, with Put after to place it straight after one of them.

What is the Customers list for?

The Customers list is where you look up the accounts your company works for. Open it by choosing Customers in the menu. The first time, it shows Active accounts only, sorted by name; after that it opens the way you last left it.

The search box on the toolbar finds one customer by code, name, address or Eircode (the Irish postcode); Also search inactive accounts at the foot of its drop-down finds closed accounts and prospects too.
Which accounts at the top of the filter rail chooses Active, All, Inactive or Prospect.
Group, Category and Account manager in the filter rail narrow the list.
New Customer starts a new account, which starts as a Prospect unless you change its status before saving.
Customers with no location, when there are any, opens the Customers without a location page, a to-do list of customers nobody has put on the map, each with Set location.

What is on the customer screen?

The customer screen is where you read and change one customer account. Open it by selecting a customer's name or code on the Customers list, or a customer's name almost anywhere else in ABM Service. It opens on the Overview, a one-page summary of who the customer is, how to reach them, their calls, the engineers who have been there and how they are billed.

The header shows the customer's status, a chip for every hold that is on, the account manager, the trading terms and the one-line Remarks, with Refresh, Log a call and Save. The sections rail down the left holds:

Customer: Overview, Address & location, Contacts and Notes.
Account: Credit & terms and Bank & direct debit.
Service: Defaults & holds and Docket & e-mail.
History: Engineers, Calls, and Contracts, Docket history and Tags, which are marked for later.

One Save saves the changes in every section together; a contact is the exception and is saved on its own with Save contact.

The Calls list, the Customers list and the Scheduler share the filter rail and its chips, saved layouts and colours. The two lists also have the grid tools: sort by clicking a column heading, group by up to two columns, choose up to 20 columns with Choose columns…, filter up to 10 columns with the funnel in their headings, and show 10, 25, 50 or 100 rows a page.

Saved layouts, in the Layouts control at the top of the filter rail, keep a screen's arrangement under a name. Default Layout puts the screen back as it comes, and Last Used Layout is where you left it.
Colours come from the small square beside each item in the filter rail, and follow that item across ABM Service.

Your layouts and colours are yours alone and follow your sign-in to any computer.

Can I change how the call screen and the customer Overview are laid out?

Yes. Open a call or a customer, select the small arrow beside Details (on the call screen) or Overview (on the customer screen) in the sections rail, and choose Customize this layout…. You can then move, group, rename and hide fields, and add fields from the Hidden items list, including your company's custom fields, up to 20 on a form. Press Done to finish.

Your arrangement is kept as your Last Used Layout, and you can save it under a name and star the layout the screen should open on. Nobody else's screen changes: every form layout belongs to you alone.

What happens to my work when I move between screens?

ABM Service keeps what you typed when you go to another screen without saving. A reminder naming the call, customer, contact or Quick call appears in the bottom-left corner of every screen, marked unsaved; select it to go back, or select its cross twice (the second press reads Discard?) to throw the changes away. Your changes live only in that browser tab until you save.

Back returns a list or the Scheduler as you left it (its filters, columns, page and view, though not the exact scroll position), with the row or appointment you opened marked.
The open-in-new button beside a call number or customer name opens it in a new tab, or a new window in the desktop app.
Once two calls in a tab have unsaved changes, opening another saved call asks you to save or discard one first; starting a new call is never stopped.
Closing or reloading a browser tab with unsaved work makes the browser ask first. Closing a desktop app window does not ask, so save first.

What is the ABM Service desktop app?

The ABM Service desktop app is ABM Service as a Windows program. Open ABM Service Desktop from the Start menu, sign in with your ABM name and password and choose the company; no authenticator code is asked for. A button on the ABM toolbar opens a screen without any sign-in, because ABM passes on who you are.

Each window has its own title bar with the File menu (Check for Updates…, About, Exit), the Go menu (Home, Customers, Calls, Scheduler) and Back and Forward arrows.
A call or customer is only ever open in one window at a time.
The tray icon beside the clock, with your company's initials, offers Open ABM Service, Open scheduler, New call, Install update when one is ready, and Exit.
Updates download by themselves and install when you agree, or once every window is closed.

What is not in ABM Service in this version?

A few things people ask for are not in this version of ABM Service; where one of them appears on a screen, the screen says so:

Attachments on a call says "Attachments are not available in this version." Paste pictures or e-mails into the Details or Resolution document instead.
Contracts, Docket history and Tags on the customer screen are marked later.
Documentation on the desktop app's File menu is greyed out.
There is no timesheet screen and no job manager screen.
A booked visit cannot be taken off a call, and a booked visit's notes cannot be edited; you can move a visit or give it to another engineer.
The numbers on Home cannot be clicked through to the calls behind them.
The Calls list, the Customers list and the Scheduler cannot be exported to Excel or printed.
Customer holds such as Stop log calls are warnings in this version: they do not stop a call being logged or changed.
Custom fields cannot be created in ABM Service, and a layout cannot be shared with a colleague.

Read more in How to See a Call's Actions and the Customer's Other Calls and How to Set a Customer's Default Engineers and Holds. What Can't I Do in ABM Service? answers the other "can I …?" questions whose answer is no, such as e-mail notifications, deleting a customer or changing many calls at once, each with what to do instead.

What is ABM Service for?​

How do I sign in and get around ABM Service?​

What is the Home screen for?​

What is the Calls list for?​

What is the call screen for?​

How does scheduling an engineer work in ABM Service?​

What is the Scheduler for?​

What are the To schedule column and the customer map for?​

What is the Customers list for?​

What is on the customer screen?​

What tools do the Calls list, the Customers list and the Scheduler share?​

Can I change how the call screen and the customer Overview are laid out?​

What happens to my work when I move between screens?​

What is the ABM Service desktop app?​

What is not in ABM Service in this version?​

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