Support Wait Times Shrinking!

Support wait times are shorter and YOU can make them even better!

If you’ve called Blue Bear Support recently, you've probably noted that our wait times are WAY DOWN! Yep, the numbers from last week just came in and they continue to be in the 3 to 5 minute range across all types of issues. That’s sure a big improvement from a year ago, isn’t it? Why the improvement? It’s mostly more Support Analysts on the phones, but also more extensive training and (finally) a more stable phone system!

But our users (that may mean YOU!) could help make our Support wait times even shorter! Support tells me that they’re taking a lot of calls from users wanting to order forms (checks, purchase orders, receipts) and customers wanting quotes for 2009-10 Client Care & Maintenance. When you call Support for forms or CC&M, they transfer you to your Account Manager – so I’m suggesting that you cut the corner and save time by calling your Account Manager up front!

You probably have the email address or phone number for your AM, but if you don’t, you can call our main Active corporate number (888.543.7223) and they’ll get you to the right person. You’ll be happy, Support will be happy and you'll have contributed to keeping those wait times low!

Volunteers: Help or Hindrance?

Everyone in schools has opinions about volunteers. Blue Bear users have traditionally used volunteers to help out primarily with Fall Registration – and we’ve heard so many stories – some good, some pretty awful! Volunteers can make your life lots easier (helping to manage long lines of students and parents) or create extra work (they accepted cash, but entered it as a check, but then reversed it as a credit card – and now it looks like the student has REFUNDS for 3 yearbooks!). Oh dear!

The “volunteer” story that had the most profound effect on our software? It’s about the parent who was selling yearbooks and decided it took too much time to enter the student’s name into the computer at the time she took the money – so she didn’t. The Blue Bear user called us in horror the next day when she looked at a yearbook list with 120 yearbooks sold to “blank”. This resulted in a FAST enhancement: The “Customer Required” feature in Tracks Item Maintenance was born on the spot.

My opinion? Volunteers need to be trained with expectations established and supervised. The problems arise when volunteers are put into situations where they have to make decisions and don’t understand the consequences.

New Update Available - Version 6.05.14.602

You should have received an email on June 17 with information about a new update available for Tracks and SchoolBooks. This update will be the last before school starts up again in the fall, so you'll want to make sure you get updated soon, especially before you take off for the summer.

To check out all of the new features in the update, in either Tracks or SchoolBooks, go to the Help Menu and select "Release Notes."

Some of the highlights in this last release include:

• SchoolBooks - There is a new optional Category Required functionality that will require a Category on all your transactions. If you love Categories and the Category Reports available, enable this new option to ensure that you never forget to assign a Category to a transaction.
• SchoolBooks - We fixed Purchase Orders to print the Vendor's address from the Addresses Tab instead of the Main Tab, if applicable.
• Tracks - We updated the transaction download process for the WebStore transactions and syncing to make sure all of your transactions are downloaded correctly from the WebStore.
• Tracks - We fixed the syncing of changes you can make on the WebStore/Software Options screens, such as enabling or disabling the "About Us" section on the WebStore.

Go get the update today to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as it possibly can this fall!

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Blue Bear Blog! We hope that this blog creates a way for us to connect with you! We will have updates about all things ActiveEducate and Blue Bear as well as helpful tips and tricks for using SchoolBooks, Tracks, and WebStore.

If you have any questions or comments, send us an email at bluebearblog@gmail.com.

If you specific support concerns, please email support.bluebear@activenetwork.com or call into the queue (888-490-1555) for the quickest response times!