Introduction

At DTS, we have been using a custom built CRM we call "Direct" for many years, but we have today released a range of updates that give our clients the ability to log in and see a range of detail relating to their account(s) and service(s).
This post is intended to provide an introduction to the new Direct customer portal, and in doing so it will give a breakdown of features included in the recent release.

Background

We built this portal with the initial aim of improving access to call records, voice fixed services detail and hosted PABX configuration information for our Verse IP Telephony clients. However, while working on the importation of voice related information, we realised we could fairly easily extend the release of the portal to contain information that all users, even those without Verse, would find useful.

Getting to “Direct”

Please email us at support@dtsanz.com to confirm which employees you would like set up as users and which users should have administrator access. Admin access allows users to edit settings and make substantial changes, so choose carefully. Once we have set up the users as per your instructions, we will inform you via email and individual users will need to follow the steps below.

Your user name will be the email address we have for you on record. Insert that into the email address field then hit “I forgot my password” and you will see this screen, Follow the prompts from there to get your password setup.

Home Page

This gives a snapshot of the following:
  • Open tickets. These are tickets you have lodged via email or from within the portal.
  • Tickets you are following. You have the option to follow tickets if someone else within your business lodges them, or if you have access to multiple accounts.
  • Accessible accounts. If you have multiple locations using DTS service, this button gives you a shortcut to view them all.
  • On the left hand side you will see a menu, you can hover over each of these to see what they offer.

Customer details page

If you have access to multiple accounts, this view will be display a list of customers to select from. If you have a single account, you will go to your account detail page directly.
When you go to an accounts page, you will have access to the following information:

  • Your account manager’s name, mobile number and email address
  • Voice service detail
  • Internet connectivity service detail
  • Website hosting service detail
  • Domain service detail
  • Hardware managed by DTS
  • Invoice History

Voice Service Detail

  • Verse IP Telephony available credit, credit limit, billing type and billing cycle
  • Verse IP Telephony fixed service features and the monthly charge for each. These include items that don’t change from month to month, such as DDI’s, SIP lines, etc.
  • Phone numbers associated with your account
  • Contract start and end dates

By clicking on the button shown above you will be shown the names associated with each extension, the phone number associated with each extension and whether each extension has voicemail enabled.

By clicking on this button you will be able to see which phones are actually plugged in and registering on our network.

Internet connectivity

This section displays your internet connectivity service details, including:
  • Circuit provider
  • Circuit type and speed
  • Contract start and end dates
  • IP addresses allocated
  • Data plan information
  • A link to Data Usage Page which gives real time circuit and data plan utilisation information

Other services

If you have domains or websites hosted with us, or managed hardware for that matter, the service details will be listed here too.

Billing

  • Access to current and past invoices
  • Visibility of invoice payments made
  • Download the invoice, PDF or CSV version

Call Records Page

This page gives the following detail:
  • Source and destination numbers
  • Country of origin
  • Type of call
  • Cost
  • Duration
  • Start and end time – and you can set the time zone in which you wish it to be reflected
  • You can select a single month view or all records

Voice Call Rates Page

This page shows the most common calling destinations on the first tab, and a far more detailed list on the second tab. Both are able to be filtered and all pricing includes GST.

Data Usage

This page gives visibility of data usage of seleted month. There are six different reports for you to analyse the data usage of each month. You can also download the flow report by a single click.

Tickets Page

This page gives visibility of tickets you have opened and can be filtered to show tickets that are open, on hold, closed or all of these. You can also view tickets you are following as mentioned above. A new key feature is the ability to create a new ticket by clicking the green button on the top right.

Once a ticket has been created you can go back at any time and check for updates and add further comment, you will also have updates sent to you via email.