D tools now has a cloud portal for this. Proposals and docs all online. Status when customer views, notes can be made, things signed, etc.

Does Portal have a section for service orders or scheduling (for techs), or is it solely a bidding/estimating package? I'm looking tog et a better scheduling system going (currently just using iCal), and find a system for open/closed service tickets that can help me keep track a little better. We are in the process of looking at Dtools Mobile Install now. Does anybody use this as well?
TIA
JT

I don't believe it will do what you are looking for. If you don't have a Portal account, give me a ring and I'll let you login to my account to give it a look.

Happy to see someone so nice and helpful!

Jay is a buddy and has helped me tremendously in the past. I have no issues helping him in any way I can.

Jay,
we are looking at TigerPaw which is focused on the production side of the business. Tickets, change orders, resource management.

I absolutely HATE tiger paw. The mobile app is a steaming pile crap that locks up and crashes on regular basis.
I would NOT recommend tiger paw to anyone in any industry unless I wanted them to be miserable and waste a ton of money and time.
My daily interactions with the POS app make my life painful.
Contacting them about bugs is like calling RTI and being told that they have never seen or heard that problem before or that the new software fixes it. It never does.
We have actually made videos to send to tech support to show the constant failures that they claim don't exist.

I promise you your techs will hate you if you try to implement this $h!t show of a product.

Just my 2 cents.

Jay , is really a good guy. Did some work with him years ago. He is someone always willing to help out a fellow ci.

Thanks bro. I've got some RTI stuff I've ripped out for you to tinker with... Lets do lunch.
JT

Thanks guys for the input.
My calendar is an absolute sh*t show. As mentioned, I'm using iCal because all of my techs have iPhones. Its worked well in the past, but its been failing to update, so some techs don't know where to be. I'm a small shop (8 techs), and I'm trying to maximize efficiency here, as I'm seeing a lot of things slipping through the cracks.

It's always easier to be nice to a fellow CI than being a dick. You never know when you may need a hand yourself. I remember when I started my company in 2002 and I was subbing for a company (fairly large integrator) to fill the voids, as I wasn't busy enough myself. I asked the owner "what projector mount do you recommend using"? I was green to AV, coming from a security background. He basically told me to figure it out my own. I'm thinking he took it as a threat to his business. I never worked for him after that. I remember that feeling. I'm always willing to help out a fellow CI. If I lose a client to you, it's my fault for not doing my job right. I never think of it as "stealing" my work. If I walk into a C4 job and the client isn't happy with it, I'll bring in a fellow C4 integrator in to see if they can dial it in before I'd pitch a Crestron swap. We are all in this together guys. Good things happen to good people. I'm truly blessed to do what I love, and have enough work to keep my soldiers fed.
Cheers,
JT

If you're using iCal now, have you looked at trying the Google suite of apps? That's what we use mostly.

yeah def jay, lets set something up. I got your number from shawn a few months back. One of my part time guys bought a house you wired. so I was going to call you to find out where the kitchen speaker wires are. but they opened up the ceiling for a leak shortly after.

Jumping here late but have any of you guys heard of ePonti?  Bill Battaglia was the director of development at D-tools from early on up to 4.6, my favorite.  Bill developed an online app to handle your calendar, resources and equipment.  Some very cool features and very affordable with nothing down, just a small monthly charge.  I have been working with him and we are just finishing up our new interface to ePonti and QuickBooks with Bill's help.  We are on an integration tear right now as we come out with our open API.

​We all know I have a dog in this race but with so many softwares popping up over the last few years it is easy to miss one.

​Portal is a great app but a differnt type of service, still trying to decide whether to connect or not.  Mainly I don't like sharing all my dealers info about their clients so someone else can sell it.  The model works and allows them to put out a lot of data, not sure if it works for us yet.  I still like how we do things, at least for doing sales, floor plans and drawings even without an internet connection.

​This rush to the cloud just feels like hurtling headlong into a dark tunnel without a flashlight.  The cloud is great and we use it for certain things and some of our new products will only be on the cloud.  The difference is you don't need it to get your work done.  I am so old school I still have in-house drives for data backup.