Mind of Murph
One of the fundamental problems with Intuit is a lack of timely information. We get lots of press releases about the newest and the best, but we don't get needed information about the things that 'are not so great'.
I can't see that the "messages' feature of the new QuickBooks ProAdvisor App is any more useful than the "notifications" feature of the ProAdvisor website. When is Intuit going to start providing ProAdvisors with 'timely' (that is the key word.....'timely') information about problems Intuit is (or its various subsidiaries are) aware of that affect our ProAdvisor practice. Oh I know some people would say that Intuit is 'too big' to be able to accomplish up-to-the-minute information.....well let's look at how that argument doesn't hold up.
Most of you know that I live in the 'Tornado Capital of the World' (Moore, Oklahoma), the hometown of two F5 tornado events within a 10-year period, including one in which the 'fastest winds on the planet' were recorded. If you looked at my iPhone you would find not one, not two, not three, but 4 different 'Weather Apps'; why 4, in case one doesn't work...of course they all work and that is my point. If a tornado warning is issued by the 'National Weather Service' (another relative huge organization), I have an alert on my phone within 30-seconds. About the same time, within a couple of minutes, the 'local emergency management office' (aka: civil defense) is also calling my phone from an automated dialer service in which they notify the 60,000+ city population of Moore. Isn't that the kind of thing you expect from a 'messaging App'? I mean what good would a Weather App be if you only got the 'tornado warning' 5 days after the tornado had destroyed your home!
So why can't Intuit 'message out' to ProAdvisors via the ProAdvisor App and ProAdvisor (site) Notifications REALLY IMPORTANT TIMELY NEWS like........"Intuit Merchant Services is 'down', more information to follow"? I don't know about you, but every time Merchant Services goes down, my merchant clients (especially those running QB-POS) start ringing my phone off the wall asking what is going on. You tell them, well IMS must be down, you will have to call in for authorizations. That's about all we can tell them because we currently receive nether an 'alert' on the ProAdvisor App, or on the ProAdvisor site, about any such 'down status'; nor do we get any 'alert' when IMS is "up again."
Just as importantly it would seem that Intuit could build a little pop-up APP for IMS users (especially in QB-POS) that shows "IMS is down, call for authorization" and then "IMS is operational again, process transactions normally". But I am NOT JUST concerned about IMS users, it would seem that the ProAdvisor Messages/Notifications could be used to share any current 'critical information'.
Let's say Technical Support starts receiving calls at the rate of 300 per hour all complaining about some 'new specific problem'.........why wouldn't an 'alert' go out to ProAdvisors? It should be simple enough to develop some 'service-call criteria' where 'we' get notified about a problem Intuit is aware of BEFORE our QB-users start calling us about the problem. Intuit may not be able to give us 'any real details' but at least being notified will keep us from looking like idiots knowing less than our clients who are calling us.
I hate 'being in the dark' about things that Intuit should be shining the light on and warning us about. It seems like such a big 'technology company' could do a better job of making use of modern technology to give the troops in the field 'the intel' we really need.
Murph