Greeneville City Schools

Please use this forum to post problems/suggestions with the new TotalTrac. While we cannot promise that all of our suggestions will make it into the product, it might be helpful to the programmer(s).

Suggestions would include new features or ways you believe the user interaction with the program can be improved.

Please use the program for a while and then complete the above poll.

Here are a few suggestions after spending some time with the product:

When a user only has the ability to enter trouble tickets, that should be what comes up when they log onto the program. They should not have to click anything to begin entering a ticket.

When they enter the GUID (which should be unique), that should start them through the process of entering the problem rather than making them click on the trouble ticket icon at the bottom.

There should be an option to limit the GUID entry to the location to which the account is assigned. For example, if I have a teacher at Eastview, I do not want them entering a call for another building (either accidentaly or on purpose) since it would be assigned to someone outside their building.

When we assign a call to a technician, we should not have to enter any comments. We should be able to select the tech, then assign and be done.

When we are editing users and click finished we are taken back to the first screen of users. The program should remember what screen we were on.

IP entry ought to work like IP entry; that is, the program should see the period and the tab as the sign to move to the next box.

As part of the personalization, the user ought to be able to select their department which the program - not the browser - remembers so that on subsequent logins they only see their department, not the top one on the list.

We should not have to enter an email address for a user (or make that option selectable by the administrator).

We need a way to mark a user as inactive. I realize why TT has to keep the user in the database, but we should have a mechanism to mark a user as no longer with the organization so they do not show up in any lists. I created an inactive department and assigned our inactive users to it, but that is not an ideal situation.

When we filter by building, the building does not show up in the field on the screen so you are never really sure what you are looking at.

The location entry is very cumbersome. I have close to 1,000 rooms/locations (I think - I am not really sure how many locations I have). When I select the location drop down, I have to scroll through all of those locations to find the one desired. We should - especially when entering technicians - have the ability to filter everything but the building out of the list. I understand that some locations have to be more granular than that, but there should be some way for the administrator to choose what locations are shown in dropdowns. Perhaps one which selects the top level locations (the building), then another which is built from the list of locations (the rooms) within that location. Of course, in the case of personnel, we should not have to go beyond the building level if not needed. Same thing with the location screen. I should not have to scroll through all of my rooms to find a building. Perhaps you could list the top level with a "+" next to it which would expand the locations within the building continuing on down the chain for sub-sub-locations. I like that we cannot put an asset into a room which "does not exist," however selecting the location of an asset is maddening!

The program seems slow in places. For example, when I log in and then click on assets it takes several seconds to get the screen. On my install, there are 392 pages, so I realize that takes some time, but is there any way to speed up the load process of that screen?

We need more granularity in the hardware types. I can enter a computer. Under computer I need to be able to add, for example, Dell GX-270, which would then hold all of the items which are Dell GX-270's. Same thing with printer models, etc. I see in the search dialog there is a place to select sub-types but I don't see where to indicate something is a subtype of something else. Perhaps I have missed it. I will continue to search.

When I am looking at the detail record for an asset it does not show me the location. Look at 303653 which is a VCR. It shows me it is in 205. 205 in which building? That goes back to the way location is presented. I am sure TT knows which building this particular room 205 is in, but if it does not show me it doesn't really help. Also when I edit the asset, all I am shown is -- 205. Again, I know if I click the drop down and do enough scrolling I will find the building, but that kind of information is critical and I should be shown that without having to search for it.

The search tools ought to also contain an option to search the technicians comments. For example if in fixing a machine I discover a specific set of steps needed to fix something and enter those instructions into the comments of the trouble ticket, our users ought to be able to search those comments for clues on how to fix a problem they are facing. On this subject, I tried to do a document search (I know we don't have any, but I thought it might search the technicians comments) and it produced an error.

I like the ability to change the status of a call from closed to open (as well as the other options)! I have accidentaly closed calls more times than I can remember on the old version.

We ought to be able to set up a user as a "building monitor." For example, the principal might want to be able to see both maintenance and IT (as well as other departments) calls from their screen (With, of course, the ability to filter them through the use of a drop-down). They don't necessarily work on the calls, but want to be kept aware of what is going on in their building. I think I can accomplish this through the options you have already provided. If so, I will repost the solution here for the rest of the team.

This one is really minor. We ought to have the ability to customize the initial screen (the login screen) the user sees. We should be able to include text and/or pictures. For example, we might want to include our system logo on the page.

I know you don't have reports working yet, so I am excited about seeing the reports we will be able to produce. I hope a report builder will be part of the product so we can construct reports to find information which might not be produced by a canned report.

We should also be able to exclude supervisors (or any other user via a checkbox in their user information screen) from being listed in the dashboard or on the list to whom calls may be assigned.

It does not appear that any of our IP's made it into this version. Is there any way to correct this problem?

On screens where more than one screen of information is presented, there needs to be a "Next," "Previous," "First," and "Last" arrow or control rather than just a list of numbers and an ellipsis.