Quick demo I did on our SMS Central product to allow your customers to download product documentation to their phone by just texting a picture of a barcode on the product.
Give your customer quick access to product, safety, and other documentation without an app or website. Your customer can just text a picture of a product barcode from their phone (no app needed). SMS Central will then text the document back to your customer’s phone based on that barcode. You can store your documents in SharePoint, OneDrive, DropBox, a file server, a document imaging system (like Metafile or Papersave), or most any other location. SMS Central will decode the barcode and retrieve the proper image and send to your customer or field personnel.
Getting product documents to your customers and your field technicians is always difficult. SMS Central makes it easier. Your customer or field personnel only needs to take a picture of a barcode on the product and SMS text it through SMS Central, which will look up the proper document and text it back. No app is needed, no website, no jotting down of serial numbers and then running to a computer to google. Just simply text a picture and get the document.
You can link any type of barcode to a document. Whether it is a manufacturer’s barcode or you have your own barcode standards. We just link that barcode to a document and when a customer or field person texts a picture of a matching barcode or QR code, we lookup the appropriate document and send it back to them.
Documents can be stored in SharePoint, SQL Server, Azure Storage, Web, or we can store it for you in our cloud storage.
Catalina’s Account Central provides an online bill payment solution for your customers. Below is a demo that I did a few months ago showing some of the main features and how it integrates back into Dynamics SL’s AR Module. We are also using Nodus’ PayFabric to handle PCI Compliant payment to maintain security for your customer.
NOTE: Account Central can not only be used by your customers but your sales support and field personnel can use it to by paying invoices for your customers and taking payments against workorders. We are also adding Square card swiping before the end of the year.
Catalina Technologies Integration Toolkit is IoT ready with strong MQTT connectivity.
You can subscribe to feeds on existing MQTT brokers, publish to feeds on MQTT brokers, and the Catalina Toolkit even has it’s own built in broker that can be published to which maps and routes the MQTT packets to other systems.
Features:
Subscribe to feeds
Catalina Integrator can subscribe and listen to feeds on existing brokers. This allows you to monitor data coming in from devices and map that data to other systems and storage. If you don’t have an existing MQTT broker, Catalina Integrator has a built in MQTT broker.
Data mapping and route to other systems
When data is received from a monitored feed, Catalina Integrator can then push it to a script and redirect it to other systems such as field service, ERP, CRM, Support, and Help Desk systems.
Send data to an MQTT broker
So far, we have been talking about subscribing to MQTT feeds and acting on them. But what if you need to send data to a device through MQTT? Catalina Integrator allows you to redirect any data to an MQTT broker feed. This means that you can send messages and control devices out in the field directly from your Service, Helpdesk, Dispatch, CRM, ERP, or other system. Below, is an example where we are turning on lighting based on an event in the service call system in Dynamics SL.
Over the weekend, I connected our home hydroponics system to Catalina Technologies SMS Central messaging system. This system allows you to receive notifications from your sensors as well as even control devices just using SMS messaging. No apps needed. You can even control devices and get notifications from an old school flip phone.
Here is a video I took of doing simple control of lighting and hydroponics pumps just using SMS messaging.
Most of the time, you have to write code that drops data into an Azure Service Bus Queue. Catalina Technologies Integration Toolkit can simplify this process by allowing you to easily create a webhook that can read data, transform it, and then send it to any message queue you have a valid shared access key for.
The toolkit can also automate reading data from other API’s and then bridge that data to Azure Message Queues as well. It is very customizable and configurable.
Below is a quick demo showing how you can create a webhook, assign security to it, and then transform received data before pushing it to an Azure Service Bus Queue.
So many times, as a programmer, I get a 3rd party solution that asks me to provide them a quick “webhook” so that they can post back data. Normally this requires me to write some type of web API to receive this data.
Catalina’s Integrator Toolkit allows you to quickly create webhooks with a custom endpoint path without having to do any programming.
I did a quick demo on this here
Basically, What we can do is create a custom endpoint and define the path that it will go to. The payload passed can then be pushed through a script and redirected to other API’s, databases, etc. without doing any major programming.
Plus, if you just need to get something up quick, all you have to do is create it in our toolkit and it will just pass back the original data that was posted to it. Great for quick testing of your callback functionality of whatever is calling the webhook.
There are many times where someone out in the field doesn’t have access to a field service app. Or doesn’t need one. SMS is one of the easiest ways for relaying information.
Catalina Technology’s SMS Central now automates communication between systems like help desks, dispatch, CRM, service, and others by giving two-way communication between the technician or sales guy, in the field, and your back-office system.
This means that you can send dispatch SMS notifications and the person receiving those SMS messages can then respond to them by simply replying to the text message. SMS Central will update the back-office system based on the mobile user’s SMS reply. All without any special app.
1. Create a service call in your dispatch or other system
Create a service call, sales opportunity, customer service case, etc. in your back-office system system like you always do.
Assign it to one or more people.
SMS Central will automatically pick this up, from your system, and send as an SMS Text Message to the assigned people.
2. SMS Central then automatically sends an SMS message, from your back-office system, to the assigned person
Send to any phone with SMS (even including old flip phones).
Can be done hands free with Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant to do voice response of texts!
Customize the messages that are sent out.
Your field personnel can actually respond to the SMS message with customizable acceptable responses like “Yes”, “No”, “In route”, “can’t make it”, or any other response you want.
If the person doesn’t respond to the message, SMS central has routing and escalation capability to send to others.
Responses can even include pictures, files, video, GPS coordinates, or other attachments. SMS Central will save this for you.
3. SMS Replies are automatically routed back to your system!
Your system is automatically updated based on the response that was sent back.
Any additional replies to this SMS text thread will be logged as notes or history in your system.
Attachments such as pictures, files, video, voice, and GPS coordinates will be stored and tied to the service call.
There are many times where someone out in the field doesn’t have access to a field service app. Or doesn’t need one. SMS is one of the easiest ways for relaying information.
Catalina Technology’s SMS Central now automates communication between systems like help desks, dispatch, CRM, service, and others by giving two-way communication between the technician or sales guy, in the field, and your back-office system.
This means that you can send dispatch SMS notifications and the person receiving those SMS messages can then respond to them by simply replying to the text message. SMS Central will update the back-office system based on the mobile user’s SMS reply. All without any special app.
1. Create a service call in your dispatch or other system
Create a service call, sales opportunity, customer service case, etc. in your back-office system system like you always do.
Assign it to one or more people.
SMS Central will automatically pick this up, from your system, and send as an SMS Text Message to the assigned people.
2. SMS Central then automatically sends an SMS message, from your back-office system, to the assigned person
Send to any phone with SMS (even including old flip phones).
Can be done hands free with Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant to do voice response of texts!
Customize the messages that are sent out.
Your field personnel can actually respond to the SMS message with customizable acceptable responses like “Yes”, “No”, “In route”, “can’t make it”, or any other response you want.
If the person doesn’t respond to the message, SMS central has routing and escalation capability to send to others.
Responses can even include pictures, files, video, GPS coordinates, or other attachments. SMS Central will save this for you.
3. SMS Replies are automatically routed back to your system!
Your system is automatically updated based on the response that was sent back.
Any additional replies to this SMS text thread will be logged as notes or history in your system.
Attachments such as pictures, files, video, voice, and GPS coordinates will be stored and tied to the service call.
So many times, as a programmer, I get a 3rd party solution that asks me to provide them a quick “webhook” so that they can post back data. Normally this requires me to write some type of web API to receive this data.
