PBJ CRM 1.19.0 and the New PBJ Dispatch — Files on Every Record, and Visits You Can Book
Two things went out today. PBJ CRM 1.19.0 gives every record a place to keep files and photos. PBJ Dispatch 1.0.0 is a brand new module for booking visits and appointments. The CRM update is free to anyone on the current major version. Dispatch is a separate $25 one-time purchase and needs PBJ CRM to run.
Files and photos on any record
You can now attach files to a contact, a business, a job or a deal. Drag them onto the record, paste them straight out of the clipboard, or press the camera button on a phone and take the picture there and then — the phone shrinks the photo before it sends it, so a job on a bad signal still finishes uploading. Photos of the meter, the serial plate, the signed sheet, the receipt: they live on the record instead of in somebody’s messages.
Where those files actually live
Not in the WordPress Media Library. The media store keeps its own private folder, the folder is locked at the web server so nobody can walk in from the outside, each file is saved under a random name, and the only way to reach one is through a route that checks who you are first. If a URL leaks it is a dead end. Files also ride the same rules as everything else in the CRM: delete a record and its files sit in the 30-day bin with it, and a GDPR erase takes them out for good.
Labels are their own list
Files get labels — Before, After, Receipt, Serial plate. These are a separate list from your contact tags, on purpose. Tags describe people. Labels describe pictures. Mixing the two turns both lists into a mess inside a month, so they do not share.
Showing one file to the customer
There is a switch on each file that shares it with the customer. It is off until you turn it on, one file at a time. How it works:
- Open the record and find the file.
- Turn on Share with customer.
- The customer signs in to your portal with their own login and sees that one file — nothing else on the record.
If that customer has no login yet, the switch tells you so instead of quietly doing nothing. The copy the customer gets is also stripped of the hidden information a phone writes into a photo: where it was taken and what took it.
What is not in 1.19.0
No cloud storage providers, no automatic moving of old files off the server, and no browsable Files area where you can look through everything at once. Those are a separate module, pbj-files, and they are not in this release. What you have today is files on records.
And from the day before
PBJ CRM 1.18.0 fixed businesses disappearing from the list for managers and employees. If your staff opened the company list and found it empty, that was the one. Full detail on both releases is in the PBJ CRM changelog; the product page is at PBJ CRM.
New module: PBJ Dispatch
PBJ Dispatch is the fourth module for the CRM, after the help desk, invoicing and the archive. It answers one question: who is going where, and when. One record covers both directions of that, with a mode switch on it:
- A visit is when you go to the customer.
- An appointment is when the customer comes to you.
Both share one run of reference numbers — V-1, V-2, V-3 — so there is one sequence to quote down the phone, not two.
Arrival windows
You do not enter a range. You enter the time, and the site-wide arrival window does the rest:
- Set the window width once in settings — say 30 minutes.
- Book the job for 2:00pm.
- The customer, the portal and the paperwork all say 1:45–2:15.
Change the width later and every booking reads out of the new width. There is one time stored per job, so nothing has to be re-entered.
Where you will find it
There is a Visits section in the customer portal, a visits tab on every contact and company profile, and the settings sit inside the CRM with everything else. Nothing new to learn to find it.
What Dispatch 1.0.0 does not do
Being straight about this matters more than a longer list. Version 1.0.0 has no reminders, no .ics calendar invites, no map links, and no way to turn a help desk ticket into a visit. All four are planned. None of them are in this release. If you need any of them today, this is not yet the module for you. The PBJ Dispatch changelog tracks what lands and when, and there is a fuller write-up in the PBJ Dispatch 1.0.0 announcement.
Updating
PBJ CRM 1.19.0 arrives in your WordPress updates screen as usual, free to owners of the current major version. It updates the CRM database to version 16 on the first admin page load after the update — nothing to run by hand. Update the CRM before installing Dispatch: the CRM is the hub, and Dispatch will not run without it.
Both products, and the rest of the suite, are listed on the WordPress Plugins page.
Two things went out today. PBJ CRM 1.19.0 gives every record a place to keep files and photos. PBJ Dispatch 1.0.0 is a brand new module for booking visits and appointments. The CRM update is free to anyone on the current major version. Dispatch is a separate $25 one-time purchase and needs PBJ CRM to run.
Files and photos on any record
You can now attach files to a contact, a business, a job or a deal. Drag them onto the record, paste them straight out of the clipboard, or press the camera button on a phone and take the picture there and then — the phone shrinks the photo before it sends it, so a job on a bad signal still finishes uploading. Photos of the meter, the serial plate, the signed sheet, the receipt: they live on the record instead of in somebody’s messages.
Where those files actually live
Not in the WordPress Media Library. The media store keeps its own private folder, the folder is locked at the web server so nobody can walk in from the outside, each file is saved under a random name, and the only way to reach one is through a route that checks who you are first. If a URL leaks it is a dead end. Files also ride the same rules as everything else in the CRM: delete a record and its files sit in the 30-day bin with it, and a GDPR erase takes them out for good.
Labels are their own list
Files get labels — Before, After, Receipt, Serial plate. These are a separate list from your contact tags, on purpose. Tags describe people. Labels describe pictures. Mixing the two turns both lists into a mess inside a month, so they do not share.
Showing one file to the customer
There is a switch on each file that shares it with the customer. It is off until you turn it on, one file at a time. How it works:
- Open the record and find the file.
- Turn on Share with customer.
- The customer signs in to your portal with their own login and sees that one file — nothing else on the record.
If that customer has no login yet, the switch tells you so instead of quietly doing nothing. The copy the customer gets is also stripped of the hidden information a phone writes into a photo: where it was taken and what took it.
What is not in 1.19.0
No cloud storage providers, no automatic moving of old files off the server, and no browsable Files area where you can look through everything at once. Those are a separate module, pbj-files, and they are not in this release. What you have today is files on records.
And from the day before
PBJ CRM 1.18.0 fixed businesses disappearing from the list for managers and employees. If your staff opened the company list and found it empty, that was the one. Full detail on both releases is in the PBJ CRM changelog; the product page is at PBJ CRM.
New module: PBJ Dispatch
PBJ Dispatch is the fourth module for the CRM, after the help desk, invoicing and the archive. It answers one question: who is going where, and when. One record covers both directions of that, with a mode switch on it:
- A visit is when you go to the customer.
- An appointment is when the customer comes to you.
Both share one run of reference numbers — V-1, V-2, V-3 — so there is one sequence to quote down the phone, not two.
Arrival windows
You do not enter a range. You enter the time, and the site-wide arrival window does the rest:
- Set the window width once in settings — say 30 minutes.
- Book the job for 2:00pm.
- The customer, the portal and the paperwork all say 1:45–2:15.
Change the width later and every booking reads out of the new width. There is one time stored per job, so nothing has to be re-entered.
Where you will find it
There is a Visits section in the customer portal, a visits tab on every contact and company profile, and the settings sit inside the CRM with everything else. Nothing new to learn to find it.
What Dispatch 1.0.0 does not do
Being straight about this matters more than a longer list. Version 1.0.0 has no reminders, no .ics calendar invites, no map links, and no way to turn a help desk ticket into a visit. All four are planned. None of them are in this release. If you need any of them today, this is not yet the module for you. The PBJ Dispatch changelog tracks what lands and when, and there is a fuller write-up in the PBJ Dispatch 1.0.0 announcement.
Updating
PBJ CRM 1.19.0 arrives in your WordPress updates screen as usual, free to owners of the current major version. It updates the CRM database to version 16 on the first admin page load after the update — nothing to run by hand. Update the CRM before installing Dispatch: the CRM is the hub, and Dispatch will not run without it.
Both products, and the rest of the suite, are listed on the WordPress Plugins page.