How To Configure Scheduler Tasks

Scheduler Tasks that require configuration will display the CONFIGURE button when you select the task. Tips and details for configuring the various tasks are supplied in this topic.

Tasks requiring configuration:

• Import routine
• Update NCOA from file
• Batch processing
• Recalculate totals
• Letter service
• Print batch letters
• Print a report
• Generate statements
• Credit bureau reporting
• CBR - Reactivate All
• CBR - Reactivate 50,000
• Reconcile ACH Transactions
• Reconcile Credit Card Transactions
• Process TCN campaign
• Archive accounts
• Database check
• Database snapshot

Accessing The Scheduler

1. Access the Scheduler from the station where it is set up and left running. If you do not currently have it running, from the Server Station, click Tools, then Scheduler. This will popup the Scheduler Tasks window.
2. Click into the Task List to get the buttons which will enable you to enter New processes as well as Edit, Delete, Save, and Load existing tasks.
3. Click the Task drop-down arrow and select the task type you want to configure.
4. Click the Interval drop-down arrow to select the frequency on which you want to run this process.
5. Enter the optional Process ID and Priority.
6. Enter the Date and Time you want your auto Task to start.
7. Click the Configure button to enter the Configuration screen to configure the task based on the below instructions.

If you want your list of tasks to be saved and loaded whenever you start the Scheduler, you must select SAVE and also, select the SETTINGS button to make sure you are loading the SCH file that you want. Please refer to Help topic, Scheduler Tasks for details.

You should never automatically schedule a task that prompts for an ID, a Date or any other user input! The Scheduler ignores these prompts when performing the task.

Scheduler Task Form

Click Here to View this Form.

Import Routine

Configuration for the Import routine in the Scheduler uses the Import Menu to select the import map and the data file.

Repeating Intervals

If you are scheduling a file to be imported on a regular basis, you must ensure that the data file has the same name at each interval. For Example, if your client sends you a CSV file to import each day called, client98.csv, then the file must be named "client98.csv" every day.

If your client has to send you a data file where the file name changes each day, you can use Windows scripting to rename the file before your import routine is scheduled to start.

Import Menu

Update NCOA From File

This task uses the exact same functionality as running NCOA through File, Import/Export, Import NCOA, except that it takes its file name from what you configured in the Scheduler.

Select CONFIGURE to specify the location of the NCOA file.

Selecting the NCOA File

The summary of the process will be written to Collect!'s Log Viewer.

Batch Processing

This feature enables you to configure the scheduler to process contacts previously scheduled. You can schedule multiple batch processing tasks and Collect! will perform them one after another according to your settings. This enables you to perform any functions that you would normally perform through the Batch Processing, Process Automatic Contacts screen.

When you select CONFIGURE for a Batch Processing task, you will see the Process Automatic Contacts screen so that you can select the types of contacts to process.

Select Contacts to Process

Recalculate Totals

When you select CONFIGURE for a Recalculate Totals task, you will see the Recalculate Totals screen so that you can select the settings you need.

When you Recalculate Totals through the Scheduler, you can recalculate all Daysheets or set intervals and date ranges.

One Time Only

This setting will use the exact Date settings that you specify.

Repeating Intervals

Repeating values do not need a range entered in the "From" and "To" fields. You can leave them blank and Collect! will recalculate the Daysheets as follows:

DAILY with From and To values:

This will automatically set the "From" and "To" to the date on which the task will run, less a day. The time in which you schedule this task depends on the processes you want to run after it. For example, if you want to run analysis reports at the end of the day, then you would schedule this task for each night after your business closes and before you schedule the reports to print. If you want to print debtor letters and you charge interest or late fees, then you would want to schedule this task for after midnight and before you run your batch letters.

WEEKLY with From and To values:

This will recalc "From" and "To" based on the date the task is to run. "From" will be set to the current date minus seven days. So this will Recalculate a week's worth of data up to the current date.

BIWEEKLY with From and To values:

This will recalc "From" and "To" based on the date the task is to run. "From" will be set to the current date minus fourteen days. So this will Recalculate a week's worth of data up to the current date.

MONTHLY with From and To values:

This will take the date specified as the day of the month to run and recalc from the first of that month to the current date.

As your database grows, it's recommended that you schedule the recalc once per day and set any analysis reports to run based on the prior date.

Please examine your accounts to ensure that the Scheduler is performing the recalculations as you intended.

Configure Opens Recalculate Totals

Letter Service

When you configure a Letter Service task, the Scheduler takes you through the setup steps that appear the same as when you are manually creating your output file. The singular difference is the absence of "Prompt when there is a choice" option on the popup window. Since the Scheduler is intended to run without an operator in attendance, there can be no prompts which require an operator's response.

If you are scheduling both Letter Service and hard-copy letters you will still print in your office, it is very important to make sure you Scheduler tasks place the Letter Service job FIRST with enough time to complete before your inhouse print job for hard-copy letters is initiated.

The Batch Letter Options screen looks just like the manual version of this screen, except that you do not see the option to "Prompt when there is a choice". The choices must be decisioned in advance to avoid the process grinding to a halt when the screen is waiting for an operator response and no operator is present.

Batch Letter Options

The 3 necessary decisions surround what you want to do in the event of the following 3 items in particular:

(a) Print to Cosigners. Check the box if you'd normally answer Yes.

(b) Print to Closed Accounts. Check the box if you'd normally answer Yes.

(c) Print to Unverified Addresses. Check the box if you'd normally allow a letter to be generated on accounts where the Address OK on the debtor account is NOT checked ON.

If there are any other parameters on this screen that you would ordinarily modify, i.e. Date Range, Max Letters allowed to generate, Operator ID associated with the batch, enter those details on this screen.

For recurring tasks, the dates can be left in as is or blanked out. Collect! will always use the last 30 days.

Click the "Print" button in the lower right corner to advance to the next setup screen.

The Letter Service screen is opened and doesn't allow you to pick any other destination. If the path displayed for where the file will be saved is not where you'd like, you can edit this field to input your file path location of choice. All the other options are Read Only and cannot be modified. If just a filename is specified, the file will be outputted to the bin\global\\letters folder.

Letter Service File Options

Click the "Print" button in the lower right corner to proceed to the next setup screen.

Enter your preferences for the following options:

Print Batch Letters

Collect!'s Scheduler can be used to print your letter or email batches during off hours. When you configure a Print Batch Letters task, the Scheduler shows you the same screens you would see when setting the options manually for your Scheduled Batch Letters. There are a few restrictions when setting these options for the Scheduler. We will cover the details in this topic.

If you are also scheduling your Letter Service batch in the Scheduler, you should make sure the "Letter service" task is scheduled to be completed before the "Print batch letters" task starts.

The Batch Letter Options screen looks just like the manual version of this screen, except that you do not see the option to "Prompt when there is a choice". The choices must be decisioned in advance to avoid the process grinding to a halt when the screen is waiting for an operator response and no operator is present.

Batch Letter Options

On the Batch Letters screen, select the destination.

• Printer: Letters that have Email as the destination in the Report Options will be emailed. All other pending Letter Contacts will be printed to the printer.
• File: All pending Letter Contacts will be printed to a test file.
• Email: Only pending Letter Contacts with email as the destination in the Report Options will be processed. They will be either emailed or texted, based on the report configuration and whether the Use SMS boxes is checked on this form.

Report Destination Options

You can print batch letters to different destinations in the same letter batch. If you have letters that print to Email and some that print to Printer, they will go to the right destinations when you print your letter batch. Just set the Destination to "Printer" in your task, and Collect! will read the Destination set in the Report Options for each letter in the batch.

Repeat Scheduler Letter Batch Task

When scheduling Letter Service, Batch Letters, or Batch Emails through the Scheduler, a repeating Scheduler Task will automatically increment the Start and End dates as expected.

When the Batch Letter Options form is displayed during your configuration, the Start and End dates do not matter. Whether they are filled in or not, Collect! will use the last 30 days by default.

Configure Repeat Task

Configure your Repeat and Date/Time values.

Configure Repeat Task

Process Batch Emails In Scheduler

Collect!'s Scheduler can be used to print Email batches and SMS Email batches. When you configure a Print Batch Letters task, the Scheduler shows you the Email option. When selected, you can also switch ON the SMS option.

If you leave the destination as Printer, Collect! will process both printed and emailed letters together. The benefit of selecting Email is to only process pending emails or to process Text/SMS messages.

This feature processes Letter contacts, NOT Email contacts. When the process is complete and the Contact is being marked done, Collect! will change the contact type from Letter to Email or Text/SMS, depending on the configuration. This is for tracking purposes.

Create Email Message

If you want to use this feature, you would schedule a Letter contact for each account. Your Email or SMS message would be in the Report Body of the Letter you are going to schedule. Do NOT schedule an Email contact.

You can use any report or letter that you would otherwise print to the printer. You can create special reports if you want to print short text messages to SMS.

1. Create a Letter containing your message.


SMS Letter Report with General Message

The report system enables you to personalize your message. You can pull data from the account to include in your message, just as you would when printing to the printer.

2. Schedule a Letter contact on each account.

Letter Contact to be Queued in the Letter Batch

Letter Contacts that you are going to schedule for sending in your Email batch can be assigned to a special Collector so that you can schedule an Email batch for that particular Operator ID; otherwise, all Letter Contacts that are linked to a Report with a Destination of Email will be processed.

Configure Text/SMS Batch

1. When you select Email you have the additional option of selecting SMS.


Email Destination Selected

2. When you switch ON SMS the default Domain from your SMS Email Setup is displayed. You can edit this as needed for the batch.

SMS Switched ON

Letter Contact and Notes

When a letter is printed to Email, the Type field on the Letter Contact will changed to "Email" or "Text/SMS for tracking purposes. This will let your operators know that the letter was printed to Email or Text, not to the printer.

Also, when a letter is printed to Email, the Debtor's Notes will display "Emailed:" or "Texted:" in addition to the name of the Letter that was printed.

Email Content

The content of the Email letter will be saved to the Letter Contact. The Email contents are not turned into a metafile. They are stored as text only. When opening the Email blob, Collect! uses its standard Text Editor. HTML formatted emails will also open your default web browser to display how the email was sent.

The Data field will contain the words "Email: {File Number}." This is the Debtor or Client Number and is the same convention used when sending an Email directly from a Debtor or Client.

The Email content will only be attached to the Letter Contact if the Email was successfully sent to the mail server AND the Letter Contact is marked 'Done'.

Print A Report

When printing a report through the Scheduler, the CONFIGURE button first takes you to the list of reports that you can select. Only reports that START ON "Anywhere" will show up in the Report List.

Print Report List of Reports

The Scheduler does not prompt for a Date Range when configuring reports. If you want to specify a Date Range, you must do this in the report itself before using the Scheduler to schedule the report.

When you come to the Print Report form, you can change your report destination and enter other details as needed.

Print Report Screen

If you wish to print a report to file with an automatically generated file name, you can select "File" for the destination and put .csv in the "File Name" field, for example, when you are configuring the task. You can also configure this in the Report Options for the particular report. Collect! will pick up the settings from that form. Please refer to Report Options in the section entitled "File Name With Date/Time Stamp."

If you are editing an existing Print Report task, selecting the CONFIGURE button will prompt you to select a new report. Select 'No' to view the current settings. If you select 'Yes', Collect! will clear the configuration and display the Report Options for the newly selected report.

Prompt to Select a Report

Printing to Screen in the Scheduler will not open the report on the screen but will still execute write back calls contained in the report. Any output other than write back calls is discarded when the Destination is Screen and the report is printed through the Scheduler.

Print Preview is not supported in the Scheduler.

Generate Statements

When using the Scheduler to generate statements, you need to set the date range. Select CONFIGURE to display the Date Range prompt.

Generate Statements Settings

When you select a one time only task, the Scheduler will use the FROM and TO date range based on what you configure.

When you select any other time interval, it will pre-compute the FROM and TO values as follows:

DAILY will set yesterday as both the FROM and TO date.

WEEKLY will set the most recent Sunday for the TO date and the Monday from last week for the FROM date.

BIWEEKLY will set the most recent Sunday for the TO date and the Monday from 2 weeks ago for the FROM date.

MONTHLY will set the FROM date to the first day of the previous month and the TO date as the last day of the previous month.

Generating the Statements will not print them. As present, there is no Scheduler Task to Print Statements. If you email Statements, then you can create a Scheduled Task to do an Email Batch for Clients. This requires a repeating Letter Contact on each Client.

Credit Bureau Reporting

When using the Scheduler to run your Credit Bureau reports, select CONFIGURE to set the details in the Report to Credit Bureaus form.

Report to Credit Bureaus

You must have your Credit Bureau Setup filled in correctly prior to using the Scheduler.

CBR - Reactivate All

This option will invoke the Metro2 Contact Reactivation process for Credit Reporting. Setting this to run in the Scheduler reduces time for the actual Credit Bureau Reporting task.

This task will reactivate all Metro2 Contacts that can be reactivated.

CBR - Reactivate 50,000

This option will invoke the Metro2 Contact Reactivation process for Credit Reporting, but in a batch of 50,000 Contacts. Setting this to run in the Scheduler reduces time for the actual Credit Bureau Reporting task.

This task will reactivate only 50,000 Metro2 Contacts that can be reactivated.

Setting this task to run daily will significantly reduce the amount of time for Credit Bureau Reporting on larger databases.

Reconcile ACH Transactions

This process automates Payment Processing ACH Reconciliation.

After selecting the Task, choose your Interval. Daily or Minutes is recommended. A processing ID and Priority are optional. Select the time of day or number of minutes you wish the process to run.

The gateway processes the recurring transactions around 6:00 AM Eastern, so we recommend scheduling the task for no earlier than 7:00 AM Eastern, if you are only doing Daily.

The "Collect\Log Files\payments\\ACH" folder should be checked daily for Processing Summary and UnmatchedExternal reports. As well, the Application Log should be reviewed to ensure there are no errored transactions which require manual review.

Reconcile Credit Card Transactions

This process automates Payment Processing Credit Card Reconciliation.

After selecting the Task, choose your Interval. Daily or Minutes is recommended. A processing ID and Priority are optional. Select the time of day or number of minutes you wish the process to run.

The gateway processes the recurring transactions around 6:00 AM Eastern, so we recommend scheduling the task for no earlier than 7:00 AM Eastern, if you are only doing Daily.

The "Collect\Log Files\payments\\ACH" folder should be checked daily for Processing Summary and Unmatched reports. As well, the Application Log should be reviewed to ensure there are no errored transactions which require manual review.

Process TCN Campaign

Schedule Calls (create and send your campaign list uploads to TCN) and Download Report (retrieve your campaign call result download file from TCN) at times that are convenient to you using Collect!'s Scheduler Module. All the functionality available through the Process TCN Call Campaign option in "Tools\ Batch Processing" is available in the Scheduler as well.

Schedule Call Campaign Task

On the TCN Select Function screen, select Schedule Calls and click Next.

TCN Select Function

Enter your campaign settings, then click the Next button.

WARNING: The following fields are not supported for repeating tasks: Filters Button, Link Task ID, and Link Complete Percentage.

For repeating tasks, the report that you select for the Report Name field must be written to support the interval that you want to configure.

TCN Schedule Calls

Schedule Download Report Task

On the TCN Select Function screen, select Download Report and click Next.

TCN Download Report

On the TCN Download Report screen, select the Template Number and Import Routine.

TCN Download Report

You have two choices for processing Tasks:

i) Select a Task ID and process only the Task you select.

ii)Select a Date Range, leave the Task ID blank, and process all tasks within the date range.

If you setup a repeating task with the Task ID blank, the Scheduler will automatically update the date ranges for each period. To prevent duplicates Contacts, we recommend using the Dialer ID field on the Contact record as a Key in your Import. This will not stop duplicate note lines from writing.

When you have entered your settings, click the Next button.

Optional 'Real-Time' Download

In the above steps, you can only schedule a download once the campaign has finished. As an alternative, if you have a larger campaign, Collect! can download it every X minutes.

WARNING: You can only do this with 1 campaign per day.

After you have configured the task, you can set the INTERVAL on the task to Minutes, then type in how many minutes Collect! should repeatedly contact TCN to download the next set of results in the MINUTES field.

Archive Accounts

The Archive Accounts task in the Scheduler enables you to archive volumes of inactive accounts automatically during off hours, according to criteria you set. You can tag clients, select a Closed Date range and even set a maximum time for the task to run so that it does not impede other scheduled processes.

When you archive accounts in the Scheduler, you can set all the criteria and let Collect! handle the details. If you have large volumes of old or inactive accounts, the maximum time can be set and you can complete this archiving task over several evenings or the weekend.

WARNING: Archiving in the Scheduler can not be set to repeat as the system would not know what dates to use. Typically, sites won't archive until after the accounts are no longer needed for year end reporting.

Archiving procedures will run more quickly if you run the process from the machine that your Collect! Server is running on.

Archive Accounts

You can specify a range of clients OR click the TAG CLIENTS button to tag clients in the Client List.

When the Client List is displayed, you can use search criteria.

When you tag Clients, the TAG CLIENTS button will be Orange. You can click the button to see your tagged list. These are the clients who will be processed, even if you have values in the Client Range. Collect! will always use the tagged list instead. You can clear or update the tagged list.

Closed Date

Select a range of Closed Dates to include in this task.

WARNING: If you do not select a range of Closed Dates, Collect! will archive accounts WITH NO CLOSED DATES, meaning all debtors.

You can select a "Max Time" in MINUTES if you want to limit the amount of time the Scheduler spends on this task.

Configure the task to be performed daily to complete an Archiving process that cannot be completed in one evening. Once the process is fully complete, you can delete the Task as it will never run again.

Select OK to enter your archiving task into the Scheduler Task list.

Database Check

This will call the Collect\bin\checkSQL.bat file which will go through and check all the registered databases with SQL server.

Database Snapshot

This will call the Collect\bin\backupSQL.bat file which will go through and backup the registered databases with SQL server.

The backup is placed into the Collect\snapshot folder as a TAR file compressed inside a GAR.GZ file.

Order Of Operations

The order of operations is important, particularly if you accrue interest and print letters with a balance. Here is the recommended order for routine tasks:

1. Recalculate Totals - Debtor Interest and Fees
2. Import Routine
3. Update NCOA from File
4. Reconcile ACH Transactions
5. Reconcile Credit Card Transactions
6. Batch Processing
7. Letter Service - Debtor and Cosigner
8. Print Batch Letters - Debtor and Cosigner
9. Recalculate Totals - Clients and Daysheets
10. Generate Statements
11. Letter Service - Client
12. Print Batch Letters - Client
13. Credit Bureau Reporting
14. Print a Report

Save Your Tasks

If you are running repeating tasks, you will want to save the file to be reloaded the next day.

1. Click the Save button.
2. Navigate to a location. Collect! defaults to the active BIN folder.
3. Type in a filename.
4. Click save.

Troubleshooting

You must ensure that you have set up your login credentials in the applicable setup screens like TCN or payment processing.

TCN Setup Needed