Introduction
When somebody fills in the contact form on your company's website, their message lands in RentVisie on a screen headed Contact. Each message is one row: the sender's name, email address and phone number, the subject they typed, and a Status that is either Pending (nobody has dealt with it yet) or Archived (dealt with, kept for reference). The screen is a single list with a search row under the column headings and a New button underneath. Your daily overview carries a Contact requests tile that counts the messages still Pending.
You will use this when:
- the Contact requests tile on your daily overview shows a number above zero
- a customer rings to say they sent a question through the website and heard nothing back
- somebody phones with a question you want on the same list, so a colleague can follow it up
- you have answered a message and want it off the waiting list
- you are simply checking, at the start of the day, whether anything new has come in
Words this screen uses
| The screen says | It means |
|---|---|
| Contact | The list of messages from your website's contact form |
| Contact requests | The tile counting messages that are still Pending |
| Pending | Waiting — nobody has marked it as dealt with |
| Archived | Dealt with. The message stays on the list |
| Body | The message text itself |
Every way a message gets onto the list
| Route | What you get |
|---|---|
| Your website's contact form | A Pending message that always has an email address, a subject and message text. Name and phone are only there if the visitor typed them |
| New on the Contact screen | A message you type in yourself, for example a question that came in by phone |
Use this screen to read and close off website messages. It does not reply to anybody and it does not create a customer or a booking; you do those elsewhere.
How to use
Configuration
There is nothing to set up. Messages arrive on their own once your website's contact form is connected to RentVisie — whoever built your website does that, not anyone inside the app. The only switch involved is your own Contact switch in the daily overview's settings panel, which shows or hides the Contact requests tile. It starts on; see Change which tiles your dashboard shows.
Before you start: changing a message — archiving it, deleting it or adding one with New — needs the Company admin role. Other roles can at most read the list: the boxes on a message are read-only and nothing you change can be saved, and some roles cannot open the screen at all. Ask your administrator if you need to archive messages and cannot.
Using the Contact screen
Open the screen in either of the two ways the app offers:
- click the Contact requests tile on your daily overview, or
- from the main menu open Bookings — the screen with sections headed Bookings, Shortlease, Quotes, Transport and Fines — and click Contact in the Quotes section.
Both open the same list, headed Contact.
- Show only the messages still waiting. In the filter row just under the column headings, open the box under Status (it reads Select) and choose Pending.
- To find a particular sender, type in the search box under Contact name, Contact email, Contact phone or Subject.
- Click the pencil icon at the right-hand end of the row. The message opens on its own screen, also headed Contact, with Status at the top and then Contact name, Contact email, Contact phone, Subject and Body — the message itself.
- Reply to the sender from your own email program or by phone, using the address and number shown. RentVisie has no reply button.
- Open the Status box, choose Archived and click Save. You are back on the list, and the message now shows Archived.
- To put a phoned-in question on the list, click New under the list. Fill in Contact email, Subject and Body — Save refuses to store the message while any of those three is empty — add a name and phone number if you have them, leave Status on Pending, and click Save.
To undo an archive, open the message again, set Status back to Pending and click Save. Cancel closes the message without saving anything you changed; so does Back, at the top of the screen.
Key details
What archiving does and does not change
Archiving changes the Status and nothing else. The sender is not told, the message is not moved or hidden, and no customer, quote or booking is touched. Its only visible effect elsewhere is that the message stops counting on the Contact requests tile.
Editing a message overwrites what the sender wrote
Every box on an opened message can be changed, not just Status — including Subject and Body, which hold the sender's own words. Save replaces them, and the app keeps no earlier version or record of who changed them. Write your notes about a reply somewhere else, and change only Status here.
The tile and the list count different things
The tile counts Pending messages only. The list shows every message your company has ever received, Pending and Archived together, until somebody deletes one.
Say your tile reads 3 on Monday morning. You open the list and see eight rows: five archived last week and three pending. Set the Status filter to Pending and you are down to the three. Reply to one and archive it, and the next time your daily overview loads the tile reads 2.
Everyone sees the same messages
Messages belong to your company as a whole, not to a branch. Whatever locations you work in, you and every colleague see the same list and the same tile count. When one person archives a message it is archived for everybody, so agree who looks after the list.
What to do next
Work through the Pending messages before anything else on this list. If the sender wants to rent, create a customer record for them and then create a booking. Archive each message as soon as you have replied, so the tile only counts what is still waiting.
Q&A
A message has disappeared from the list. Can I get it back? Not if somebody clicked the bin icon at the end of its row. That deletes the message straight away, with no question asked first, and it cannot be restored. Delete only spam; to take a real message off the waiting list, set its Status to Archived instead. Deleting needs the Company admin role.
Why did nobody tell me a new message had come in? RentVisie sends no email or alert when a website message arrives. It only appears on the Contact list and in the Contact requests tile. Keep the tile switched on — see Change which tiles your dashboard shows — and look at it every day.
How do I see when a message was sent? You cannot. The app keeps no date or time for a contact message, and the list is not in date order. If timing matters, note the date in your reply, or ask the sender.
Why are all the boxes on a message greyed out, and Save does nothing? Your role only lets you read messages. Archiving, editing, deleting and New need the Company admin role; ask your administrator.
Why does the tile say 2 when the list has twenty rows? The list includes every archived message as well. Choose Pending in the box under Status and the two rows match the tile.
Why is the tile missing from my daily overview? Your own Contact switch is off. It is named Contact in the settings panel, not "Contact requests". See Change which tiles your dashboard shows.
Why can't I read the message from the list? The message text is not a column. Click the pencil icon on the row and read Body. For the same reason, the search boxes cannot find a word that appears only in the message text — search by name, email, phone or subject instead.
Why do some messages have no name or phone number? The website insists only on an email address, a subject and the message. Anything else is filled in only when the visitor typed it.
Can I turn a message into a customer or a quote? Not from this screen; nothing links a message to anything else. Copy the details across by hand: create a customer record, then create a booking.
Related pages:
- Check your daily overview — the other tiles next to Contact requests, and what each one counts.
- Change which tiles your dashboard shows — turning the tile on or off.