Falcony's development team didn't stop during summer holidays either and huge thanks to them, we have a bunch of great new product updates. In this blog we'll go through the revamped open links with a possibility to sign up after the report is sent.
This is the second blog post from our recent launch event held on the 5th of September 2024. Even more blog posts about other updates will follow soon.
We've had open links for a long time and our customers have learned to love as a great way to involve people to report observations even if they don’t have user credentials. For all open links it’s been possible to limit which categories and places the open link allows reporting.
Three reasons why open links work so well is because, first of all, some people simply do not have credentials to Falcony. Second, even though many people could have their own credentials, they report observations so infrequently that it doesn’t make sense to have credentials for everybody. And finally, three, with open links it’s easy to limit the reporting to just one or two templates, places or combinations of the two. Then you can print the link as a QR-code and place the printout in a place where those observations are expected to be reported.
The common thread with all of these is that more often than not they all relate to external users.
The problem is that in the past the open links have been only one-directional. There hasn’t been an option for the reporter to stay in the loop of what happens to their reported observation. However, this is now about to change. From now on, when the reporter decides to leave their email at the end of the observation form, they are able to stay in the loop of what was done about it and even provide further information in the comment field.
So, when the reporter leaves their email address at the end of the form and presses send, there will be a pop-up modal to fill a four-numbered code. This code will be sent to the email address that the reporter gave. Copying the code allows the reporter to complete the process.
After that, if the user doesn’t have Falcony credentials before, they will be asked to complete the creation of those credentials by setting a password and logging in. What they can see in Falcony is simply just the observation they just sent. If they send multiple observations, they will also be able to see all of those when logging in.
What's the bigger meaning here, you might ask. It all links back to involvement. When the reporter sees what happens to their observation, they will become encouraged to share even more observations. So, the feedback loop increases involvement.
All the people who report observations through open links and decide to leave their email address, will be listed as external members in the users list view. What’s possible though, is that if some external member reports often enough, an admin can change that user’s role from external member to one of the internal roles.
On a high-level this update can of course impact pretty much all the reporting use cases but we decided to give four examples where it truly makes a difference: service requests, feedback, work permits and surveys.
For service requests, Falcony could now be a full-on solution to cover the entire process as anyone can truly report them and know what happens to their request or work order. However, we have thought about this further by providing off-the-shelf integrations to major maintenance management systems as some companies need to store their entire maintenance history and logs in one place such as Granlund Manager, Tampuuri or Nuvolo.
In practice it means that Falcony works as a one-stop solution to involve everyone for reporting but maintenance workers can keep using the solution they are familiar with.
The next use case is feedback meaning customers, suppliers or whoever providing the feedback, can now see and follow-up all their feedback in one place, regardless of which organisation they’ve shared it to. When it comes to true involvement, this will actually make Falcony more and more a platform with network effects.
In safety management, a lot of different types of work require by law, by insurance or by best practice, a permission process before the work can be done. These could be hot work permits, confined space work permits, ATEX work permits and permits to work at heights just to name a few.
We have obviously ready-made templates for all of these and more and now that we have the open link feedback loop, the contractors requesting the permit, will get notified whether they got the permit or if some changes are required.
With surveys, we haven’t actually had a proper roadmap before as they are also a hyper-competitive market. But still, many of our customers have nonetheless used Falcony for surveys for quite some time. This will now allow all those, and everyone else, to benefit from involving the respondents even further.
Open links will be rolled out to all customers but as an existing customer you'll get to decide whether you want to enable it for your open links or not. For those of you who want it ASAP, simply reach out to us and we will enable it for your open links.
If you are new to Falcony, simply reach out to use and let's book a meeting to discuss more! Or start a free trial to see Falcony in action:
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.