August 2022 Release Notes

SMS Notifications for Completed Work Tickets

As an Aspire client, you can now send one-way SMS notifications to customers opting to receive the service for transactional purposes. In doing so, your customers who opt-in will be alerted when a Work Ticket is completed as a daily digest or immediately after a work ticket is completed. 

The SMS messages will come from a toll-free number assigned and unique to each client from Aspire. When one of your customers opts into the SMS notification service, they will automatically receive an SMS message prompting them to confirm that they want to use the service. To adhere to national regulation and compliance standards, users who opt-in to receive SMS notification messages must confirm by responding with START, Start or start in the confirmation SMS message thread before SMS messages can be received. 

Please note  the following configuration and SMS notification setting details: 

    • As a system administrator, before configuring and managing SMS notifications, you must have the Manage Notification Settings permission enabled on your Aspire account at the system or branch level. 

    • To Manage and enable SMS Notifications and SMS Notification Settings, navigate to the Evolution Administration menu. 

    • As a system administrator, you can create the transactional SMS message that your customer receives under the Manage Notifications section of the Evolution Administration menu. Remember that the character limit is 320 characters, and if you use more than 160 characters, the message may appear as two separate SMS messages depending on the mobile carrier provider of your customer. 

 • Regardless of whether SMS notifications are enabled or disabled, you will still see the toll-free number listed under the option to enable SMS Notifications on the Notifications Settings screen. This number will always remain the same and is unique to your company.

• As a system administrator with the above-mentioned permissions, you can designate contacts to receive notifications after enabling the SMS Notification setting. To carry out this task, you can go to the Properties module, scroll to the Contacts section, and click on the kebab menu to the right of the contact's name. Then, checkmark SMS Notifications. The contact's mobile number will automatically populate if it already exists in the Aspire system. If not, you can add the number and click Save. The contact will then receive a message prompting them to opt-in. 
  • After your customer receives the Opt-In message, you can check their opt-in status by observing the status icon in the Notification column to the right of their name. 
    • The yellow triangular icon indicates that the Opt-In message was received, but the customer has not opted in yet. 
    • A green check mark icon indicates that the customer has opted in. By hovering over the green checkmark, you can view the date you opted in.
• Here is a video explaining how to configure and create your SMS message. 

Dashboard and Activity Enhancements

We have several new enhancements designed to ease your day-to-day management workflows. Please review the following new available  functionalities:

• The Activities section of the To-Do List is now a module you can access from the Aspire Navigation bar. 
  • After clicking on Activities from the navigation bar, you will see the Activities search list screen that displays all of the advanced search tools you can utilize in Aspire to view and manage your Activity searches.
  • By default, the search list you set will automatically appear the next time you navigate to the Activities Search List screen. 
  • The system default search has been updated to reflect Activities with a Due Date filter type of Through Today. This way, you can focus on time-sensitive items first. 
  •   From Activities, you can duplicate existing Issues and Tasks using the new Copy feature. When you use this feature, you can expect all detail fields to carry over to the new Task or Issue.  Attachments, Comments, and Notes from the original task or issue are not carried over to the New Task or Issue. 
• You will also notice enhancements have been added to your Dashboard. 
  • Both Issues and Tasks display overdue items that must be completed by default, and you can view current and upcoming issues. 
  •  You can now view Milestones and Issues from the To Do List. 
  • Once you update a Milestone, it will no longer appear in your To Do list after the Milestone date transpires. 
• For both Issues and Milestones, you can control how many days in advance to view upcoming work by clicking the kebab menu on the right side of the To Do List widget and changing the Next # of Days from the default value of 0 to what you prefer.
• Your Recent Activity can be seen on the Dashboard, making it easier to access and pinpoint items that require immediate attention. You can also continue to access Recent Activity from the recent activity hyperlink located at the bottom left corner of the navigation menu bar when you select Search Aspire. 
• Tasks and Issues with a past due date listed in your To Do List widget now contain visual flags so that they are more easily identifiable.

Enhanced Site Audit Image Management

How you manage and add images to your Site Audits has been improved to increase the ease and efficiency you will experience when marking up, adding, and saving images to your site audits. Most notably, you can add multiple images to a site audit simultaneously. Please note the following functionality enhancements: 

Image Upload Screen: Mark-Up Tools 

    • You can now add elements such as shapes to your Site Audit images more precisely by choosing the element you want to add to the image and then by clicking on the area of the image where you want to place that element. After doing so, the shape, text, line, arrow, or drawing tool you selected will appear in the place where you clicked on the image. The intent behind this enhancement is to save you time by mitigating instances where dragging and rearranging elements on an image are required. Please note that an element within the tool picker with a blue background indicates that the tool is currently in use. 

    • If you would like to use a different color aside from the default color of red for your image mark-ups, you can do so with more accuracy as the color picker is now paired with a color tile that lets you see the color you selected easily. 

Image Management 

    • You will find it easier to find and retrieve images because now, when you elect to Add an Image from the More menu of a Category, the name of the category that you choose to add an image to will automatically appear in the Category field on the image upload screen.

    • You can simultaneously Add Multiple Images to a Site Audit Category by clicking on the new image icon or selecting Add Multiple Images from the More menu.

Within the Image Upload screen, you will find that the Tags field is fixed to the same screen as the mark-up tools. Additionally,  both the Save button and the Tags field are responsive to the changed dimensions of your screen. So, you can zoom in, out / minimize, or maximize the size of your screen, and you will always see where to Add Tags and Save changes to your image. You will also find that next to the save button is a new option called Save + Add New Photo, which enables you to Save the image you have just finished marking up and automatically add a new image to mark up.