• Search Leads Date Selection – Has been improved and it’s now easier to select popular date ranges (today, yesterday, last month, etc.).
• Saved Searches/Reports – You can now save searches or reports that you use regularly.  To save or load a search/report, click on the ‘Saved Searches’ or ‘Saved Reports’ links at the top of the search leads or reports pages.  You can save a search/report for personal use, or create a search/report that all users can get access to (you need to have system management permission to add/delete these searches/reports).
• Quick Filter – The old quick filter feature, next to the search box in the top right corner, has been replaced with saved searches.  Clicking the quick filter icon will now allow you to load a saved search.
• Default Date Range – The default date range setting in ‘Configuration > Preferences’, is now used as the default range on the homepage summary, search and reports.  It previously only applied to search.
• Bulk Messaging – A new ‘contact’ option has been added to search leads bulk actions to allow an email, text message or letter to be sent in bulk.  Please not that messages must be sent in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.  It is important that you explain to consumers how to stop receiving messages from you.

We hope you enjoy using these new features – let us know what you think!

Here’s the details of the new features and improvements:

• Improved Bots Features & Interface: Bots have been improved with new ‘Change Status’ and ‘Assign to User’ actions.  You can also now set a task to any user/group rather than just the user assigned to a lead.  The user interface has been standardised with the lead actions interface so adding bot actions and lead type actions works the same way.  As a side note, the feature is now just ‘Bots’ instead of ‘Contact Bots’.

• Hover over the lead ID on the search leads screen to see a pop up box with more information about the lead including phone numbers, email, introducer and referral details.  Click the link to view the lead summary.
• There’s now a ‘Search Leads’ link in the top right hand corner of the lead summary/details screens.  Use this to either return to search leads if that’s how you got to the lead (your last search will reload for you), or go to search leads to start a new search.
• When viewing an reply email or inbound text message, the ‘Go To Lead Summary’ button has now been replaced by a link in the top right hand corner.  (This link only appears if the item is accessed from the homepage).
• A new ‘export’ option is available for downloading partner details.  Click ‘Partners > Details’ and then click the ‘Export’ button at the bottom of the page.  A download will start with a CSV (comma separated values) file containing a list of partners.
• There are now separate options for giving a user permission to view/edit the cost, value and billing point of a lead.

If you don’t use FLG 360 for CRM or lead management in your business, take a look at the features.

• Internal Messaging: Use the ‘Send Message’ link under the left hand menu to send a message to a single person or everyone in a group.  Messages will show up at the top of the ‘Tasks & Messages’ list on the user’s homepage.  If you don’t want a user to have the ability to send messages, use the new permissions setting under ‘Other Permissions’ in ‘Settings > Users > Edit’.  By default, this feature is enabled.
• Recently Viewed: You can now click on the ‘Recently Viewed’ link (again, under the left hand menu), to see a list of the last 10 leads that have been viewed since you last signed in.
• Notifications: The notification area at the top right of the screen has been tidied up a little, with a more detailed explanation of what the next item is.  Until now, whether an email or text message reply was waiting, you’d see ‘You Have a Message’.  You’ll now see ‘You Have a Text Message’, etc.. with a more relevant icon.
• Report Totals: On all relevant reports, you’ll now see a total line above the report detail, and you’ll see an extra line at the bottom of many downloaded reports.
• Import Validation: Many users have come across difficulties when Excel removes the 0 from phone numbers.  FLG 360 will now detect when a phone number is missing a 0 and prepend it for you.

If you don’t already use FLG 360, you can find more information and get a 14 day test drive at the FLG 360 website.

Pop Up Email/Task Lead Details

So that you can get a better idea of the lead that a task/email relates to, you can now click the title of the email or task on the homepage to see more details.  The ‘defer’ task options have also been moved into this pop up box, and options to prioritise or unprioritise a task are also available.

Here’s a screenshot of the new feature in action:

Pop Up Quick Filter

The ‘Quick Search’ links which used to be found right under the summary on the homepage now appear when you click the ‘filter’ icon at the top right hand corner of every page:

Clicking ‘New Filter Search’ will take you to exactly the same place as when you click ‘Search Leads’ in the left menu.  All other options will open up a search for ‘all time’.

• Search Leads is now split into ‘Filter’ search and ‘Keyword’ search.  Look for the link to the right of the ‘Search Leads’ header to change between the two.
• A new tick box selection method has been added to Search Leads which now works with the ‘Bulk Actions’ option to allow sets of leads to be selected.
• Hovering your mouse over the date of each lead will reveal the full date and time.
• More Leadbay lead types are now supported (the full range).
• The link to leads on email notifications now links to the lead summary page rather than the lead detail page.
• Several minor bug fixes.

For those of you that don’t use FLG 360, you should find out more about it and take FLG 360 CRM it for a test drive.

This evening, a new feature has been introduced that will alert you of any other potentially conflicting tasks.  Details of this and other updates are shown below.

• Task Conflicts – When a task is being created/edited, other tasks within 15 minutes before or after the due time for the task being created/edited are now flagged up to the user.  The user can then schedule the task more appropriately if necessary.  When assigning a task to another user, for privacy reasons only the times of the conflicting task(s) are shown, rather than the full task details.
• Permissions & Preferences – Changes to permissions and preferences (user or account level) now come into effect immediately rather than when the user next signs in.
• Message Received Notifications – For users who don’t sign in to their account often, it’s now possible to get an email notification when a message arrives into their account.  To enable this option, visit ‘Settings > Users > Edit’ and tick the ‘Send Email Notifications When a new email or text message is received’ option.
• Date & Time Formats – To improve consistency, all dates/times are displayed in the format ‘Tue, 19th Jan 2010 18:00′, or a subset of this.  Times in the 12 hour format have been dropped.

If you don’t use FLG 360 CRM, you can test drive the service for free.  The plans and pricing page has also recently been made clearer.

• New leads now show with a purple label within Search Leads, likewise, on the status summary bar at the top of the lead summary, new leads show a purple status.
• On the homepage, and on the drop down status selection on Search Leads, ‘All Valid’ is now labelled ‘All Open’ to better reflect the type of leads in this status (all except New, Invalid or Closed).
• A change has been made to the ROI reports; the ‘Valid’ column previously counted all leads except New, Invalid or Closed, but the column now counts every lead except Invalid leads.

This should hopefully make the interface a bit clearer.