Primarily check out the first 3 items
Our
current MASTAR DOS application demonstrating typical answering service tasks,
Taking a message, Paging, Delivering active messages Viewing older delivered
messages, Setting up accounts and clients and a little about the Billing system
Main Menu LOGGING--ON
The
'operator
logs-on'
before their shift using visible 3 letters ID then
continues entering a invisible portion called password, and then maybe
receive a 'operator bulletin board' ( ..not shown here yet ) if previously alarmed
by management before moving on to the 'main
menu' 
.
Options showing on the main menu and the on client screen depends on how the operator
password is setup limiting the operator from using various portions of the program,
i.e the billing system.
Most
all the time the operator will be in #2, Go On-line Telemessaging and wait at
the 'starting screen' 
until ready to do another process, i.e. Take a message from someone calling to
a DID# / isdn line, we want to first, to identify the calling party, the forwarded
phone number and cross reference it to an answer phrase and business the TAS is
answering for.
1.
TO TAKE
A NEW MESSAGE:
From the 'main menu'
press option 2 to go online telemessaging. And it's the next screen is where everything
starts and returns back to after finishing doing a process, i.e. take a new message
or deliver new messages or view older messages of your clients. We're normally
resting waiting here; this is 'starting
screen'
or sometimes called polling screen because it always polling for something to
do. MASTAR purposely uses lots of colors to separate information. This screen
has a lot thing happening just sitting here.. for now, we'll manually enter a
pre-entered account# 4247, usually representing the last 3 or 4 digits of your
assigned DID#. There's no limit for the number of accounts that MASTAR can handle.
The green window is an optional displaying of incoming calls account#, answer phrases and the line# when using various DID/ISDN optional hardware. The blue window displays only those accounts still having active new messages. The red window display active messages with pages timing out alerting the operator again and again to re-page the message. We might even have the optional Modem-server installed handling the alpha paging and digital re-paging functions that sometimes tie down the operators time.
Some of the additional functions happening from the starting screen are alarms timing out, the 24 hour backup, operator bulletin board, a search entry to find any client by name, then to take or deliver messages.
Okay,
we just entered into account# 4247, this is the 'client
screen' 
where we have choices 1-9 and more.. We'll mostly explore options 1,2 and 3
..to Take, Deliver and View older already delivered messages. For this discussing,
we are going to take a new message, pressing #1, then to entering into the client
list screen. Please stop, studying the screen, looking at all the other
options an operator might to do and then simply return back to the starting screen.
We just pressed 1 to take a new message, now to select 'Who' the message is for
from the 'client list'
shows only 26 of the many other possible configured clients, each selected by
a single key stoke. MASTAR can store up to 7 pages of clients, letter A-Z.
In addition has 1-9 custom quick messages and other options here.
Once
we have selected from the client list, in this case a digital pager type of client
you'll enter to a blank 'new message
screen' 
of which the client has been previously setup with a digital pager or other
personal information.. The standard message format is 4 blank lines, however
each account# or client can be configured with one of many special
'message templates' 
.
Or.. if you want to take a message to anyone, for any other person, then just
select fill-in, operator to enters the TO: name etc.
While entering a new message, the operator might want to jump to another account or view various other pop-ups returning back to complete the previous message the operator previously working on.. After the new message is entered, its sometimes up to the operator to engage whether or not to page, fax email, color code or print.
Once
the new message or page is completed, then the operator would probably return
back to the 'starting screen'
for the next incoming call.
2.
DELIVER
ACTIVE NEW MESSAGE:
Let's
pretend a new incoming call rings in for... DID# 4247, maybe its our
client checking in for messages. If MASTAR is optioned with certain
incoming call identifying hardware, the account#, line# (up to 16) and answer
phrase pops to the green window of the 'starting
screen' .
An operator can either enter 4247, 247 or press the F4 for incoming
line# 4, thus moving us to the next step or the 'client
screen' 
.
Look to the top right corner where displays how many New/ Old messages exists
currently for this account. Lets press 2 to give or deliver active new messages
and will show the first active un delivered message. There a number of things
the operator can do as we proceed through a process. Please take a moment to examine
all of the screen information. Maybe you might want to just step through each
message pressing <Enter> or if like, deliver a message, pressing <Del>
or D key will move the message to the old message pile, decrementing the new and
incrementing the old message counts in the top right corner.
3. VIEW OLD MESSAGES
From
the 'client screen'
lets explorer option #3 to 'view old messages'
,
notice the different options on the bottom of screen compared to when delivering
messages. In this case a message template #25, sorted in order of messages
from the newest or oldest message. You can re-activate any old message to new
again by pressing #3 or pressing S to search all messages matching any operator
entered keywords. Please take a moment to view all the remaining options.
Then when your finish returning back to the 'starting
screen'
beginning a new process.
4.
ACCOUNT#'s
AND CLIENT SETUPS
The
application can be configured to accept 3 or 4 digit account# including alpha
characters. From the'main menu'
press 5 for 'account maintenance'
and then press 2, entering to view or edit account #4247 will first show 'page-1'
followed by 'page-2'
and 'page-3' 
filling in the blanks setting up your accounts. The billing setup'page-4'
where each account can be charge differently and 'page-5'
for misc. recurring billing charges. Lastly Page-6 (not shown) sets 1-182
clients followed by the 'client list'
where we pick and edit each client setup; their name, phone#'s, alpha or digital
pager, personal and other personal and extended information.
There are several different type of clients we take messages for; mostly by name or by fill-in name, without pagers and those with digital, alpha and other types of pagers. Each client is pre-setup before continue taking messages.
This
is how we would fill-in the client information owning a 'digital
pager client' 
and this is a screen shot of a client owning a 'alpha
pager client' 
.
The difference between the two clients mostly pertains to the type of client or
the yellow middle portion of the screen and along with all the other options how
we handle the clients messages and pages.
5.
THE
BILLING SYSTEM
The
billing cycle start after we close the billing counters to zero and accumulate
a months worth of messaging and other charges. During the regular daily
activities, the billing counters increment for each account when operators does
certain things in MASTAR, i.e. taking messages, paging, faxing, posting charges
or credits, alarms, counting incoming calls from your hardware, etc. By setting
setup, charge differently each account# through 'account maintenance' page 4 and
page 5 and master billing option #4.
It's as simple as 1,2,3; From the 'Main Menu', select billing #6, show the
'billing menu' 
.
step-1 starts you viewing
or printing various 'billing reports menu'
,
most of these same reports are ask during the bill process. The are 2 places to
edit, one from the'transfer billing counters'
,
maybe adjusting them before generating all invoices invoice. In billing,
step-2 we then 'generate
invoices' 
for each account and the 2nd place we can edit add, view or print each account
invoice formatted WYSIWYG to various paper formats. As an option the operator
could print each account invoice one at a time. Then in step-3,
the operator would B/bypass the batch printing of all invoices at once prroceeding
to printing a 'production report' 
.
Finally closing the end of month or billing counters starting another billing
cycle.
