Defining Rules

The case tracking system of Tiny ERP has a builtin rule engine to help you automate recurring tasks like sending reminders after some days, prioritize the case based on the partner category, routing the case to the right person or section, sending automatic questions to the customer, eso.

To create a new rule, go to the menu: CRM & SRM > Definitions > Cases > Rules.

You have to write a name for the rule and you can active or not a rule. If a rule is desactivated, it has no impact on futur cases.

The first part of the rules consist in a series of criterions to compute if the rule have to be applied or not. All rules are evaluated after each user actions.

You can provide different criterions:

State From: Applies the rule if the state was in this state before the action.
State To: applies the rule if the state arrive in this state after the action.
Section: Applies the rule only if the case is in the provided section,
Category: Applies the rule if the case is in the provided category
Responsible: Applies the rule if the internal responsible match the provided user,
Priority Min: applies the rule if the case priority is equal or bigger the provided one,
Priority Max: applies the rule if the case priority is equel or lower than the provided one,
Partner: applies the rule only if the case is attached to the provided partner,
Partner Category: applies the rule if the partner attached in the case is in the provided category of partners,
Trigger Date and hours: is used to launch actions in the futur.

If you provide several criterions, they all have to be valid to process the rules' actions. The actions to process are given by the second part of the form named 'Rule Actions'. All the actions are computed on the case.

Set State To: set the case state to this new value,
Set Section To: move the state to the following section,
Set Responsible To: Assign the state to the provided user,
Set priority To: Change the priority of the state,
Add these watchers: Add the comma separated email list of watchers to the case,
Remind Partner: send an email reminder to the partner using the latest email sent ,
Remind Responsible: send an email reminder to the responsible using the latest email sent.

Developpers may also develop their own python method on the case object (using inheritancy) and provide this method in the 'Call Object Method' field.

In the second tab of the rule, you can also provide an automatic email that will be sent to the list of destinators you checked: responsible, partner, watcher or static emails.

Each time an email is sent, the case ID is added between bracket in the subject of the mail. To quickly go to a provided case ID, you can search for it or use the shortcut CTRL ^G.

Rules may be executed in cascade. For example, the result of a rule (changing the state to open) may trigger another rule (assign all open cases). They are executed in the order provided by the sequence field.

Examples of rules

Here are a few examples of rules usage.

Better priority for gold customers

Some companies have different level of support contracts: bronze, silver, gold. Suppose you want to put higher priority to all customers that have a gold support contract with you. The easiest way is to create categories for partners for the different types of contract. Each time a partner sign a contract, you must assign the contract level in his parter form.

Then you create the following criterions for your rule:

State From: /
State To: draft
Partner Category: Gold Partner
Section: Support Contract

With the following action:

Set Priority To: High

If you use the email gateway, that will be explained in the following section, do not forget to sort emails by priority and then by date.

Thanks customers for incoming sales requests

If you want to send an automatic email response for all incoming sales requests, you can create a rule with the following criterions:

Section: Sales Department
State From: /
State To: draft

And for the action:

Set State To: open
Assign To: fp@tiny.be

And complete the second tab to write a mail to the partner. Here is an example of mail you can use:

  Hello %(partner_name), 

  We successfully received your request. A ticket have been asigned to track
  all communications between our two companies:
    Ticket ID: %(id)d 
    Subject: %(name)s  

  Your assigned contact for this request is:
    %(user_name)s 
    Phone: %(user_phone)s 
    Mail: %(user_mail)s 

  He will process your request and reply to you within the next 48 hours.
  Thanks for having contacting us,

  -- 
  The sales team.

Send automatic reminders

The buyer department often have to track complaints sent to suppliers. To problem is that suppliers do not often replies within the required delay. You can then send automatic reminders to suppliers based on the priority of the case.

So, create the following rule:

Section: Buyer Department
Priority: High
Trigger Date: Last Action Date
After X Days: 5

With this action:

Send reminder to the partner.

And eventually:

Set priority to: Highest.