Setting Up Service Wizards

Midnight utilizes wizards to assist users in pricing jobs. The wizards present a series of questions (that you set up) that can adjust the price, run-rate, cost, setup fee and setup time for the selected service.

For example, a Wizard for Inserting with a Base Price of $0.014 will ask the user the following questions:

• How Many Inserts
• What size are the inserts
• What type of envelope
• ect...

These questions could modify one or many of the following service attributes.

• Price
• Run Rate
• Cost
• Setup Fee
• Setup Time

 

There is no limit to the number of questions a wizard may include. That being said it is a best practice to limit your wizards to a maximum 3-4 parent questions. Be sure to thoroughly test the wizards you set up in a sample estimate or order before having employees use them on actual orders.

There are two levels of detail that must be set up for each Wizard, a parent and child. To access the service wizard, click on the gear admin icon in the upper right of your screen, then click service wizards from the menu to the left. This brings you to the service wizard admin screen. 

Service Wizard Screen

For existing wizards, the parent record is initially displayed, and the child records are hidden until a user clicks on the expand button to the left of any wizard:

Expanding a Wizard to Display the Details

You can add additional options directly on this screen as part of the Wizard Detail. The fields are automatically filled in with existing wizard detail values:

• Choice Text – Text to be displayed and captured for use on printed estimates, work orders, and invoices
• RunRate Expr - Choice of add, subtract, divide or multiply, this expression will be applied to the variance for the run rate for the selected option.
• RunRate Variance - Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the Run Rate by
• SetupFee Expr - Choice of add, subtract, divide or multiply, this expression will be applied to the variance for the Setup Fee for the selected option.
• SetupFee Variance - Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the Setup Fee by
• SetupTime Expr - Choice of add, subtract, divide or multiply, this expression will be applied to the variance for the Setup Time for the selected option.
• SetupTime Variance - Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the Setup Time by
• Text Input – Allows the user to type in their own answers as the wizard is running in real time during estimate and order entry
• Price Expr – Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the base price by (i.e. to add $0.01 to a price select a Price Expr of ‘+’ and a Price Variance of .01)
• Cost Variance - Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the unit cost by
• Price Variance – Amount to add, subtract, multiply, or divide the Base Price by
• Variance Input – Allows the user to type in their own price variance as the wizard is running
• Sort Order – Sorting order for displaying the wizard options, 0 will show them in the order they appear on this screen
• Successor – Enter the Wizard # that follows, 0 ends the Wizard, clicking on the successor drills into the details for that wizard
• Edit and Delete – standard edit and delete options

Creating Your Own Wizard

If you want to develop your own wizards (as opposed to editing Midnight’s), please use the following technique (iterative process):

1. Write down a list of questions that the CSR would ask a customer to price the service correctly
2. List all options or answers the customer might choose.
3. Take the most common path through the questions and establish as your base price and run-rate for the base service.
4. Assign pricing variances to each option in each question
5. Prioritize the questions to make them work effectively with pricing variances in a linear process.
6. Test the unit price outcome of each permutation of a wizard choice path in a sample estimate
7. Apply run rate factors to your wizard choices.

The following need to be filled out for each Parent Wizard:

Adding a Wizard Parent Record

• Number - Unique number of the Wizard
• Category – Descriptive category appears at the bottom right of each screen in the wizard that prompts the CSR
• Description – Description of the Wizard
• Instruction – Appears on the top left of each screen in the wizard that prompts the CSR

Once you have saved the parent wizard, you will be able to add the details as needed.

Using Service Wizards

Assigning a wizard to a Standard Service

For a user to make a wizard usable in an estimate or order they must first assign that wizard to a standard service as a launch action. This must be done from the Standard Service setup screen which can be accessed by clicking on the admin gear icon in the upper right of the screen. Then clicking on standard services and selecting the desired service.

Once in the standard service setup screen in admin you will need to select Launch Service Wizard from the service action menu. Then select the desired starting wizard number from the Wizard Number dropdown. This will launch the selected wizard when the service is selected from an estimate or order.

Standard Service Launch Action

When selecting a standard service in estimates or orders that has a launch action of Wizard, the selected wizard will prompt you to start answering that wizards questions.

Standard Service Wizard screen as seen when launched from an estimate or order

When the wizard is complete it will automatically submit to the estimate or order. You can view the details of the selected options of the wizard in the item notes field by clicking on the detail icon for the service represented by a blue magnifying glass on the service line item.

Service Detail Icon

To relaunch the the wizard you can click the magic wand icon at the top of the service detail popup and reselect the options of the wizard.

Service Detail