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June 10, 2006
2. Account-wide: Departmental calendars; email templates; copy custom fields; default module access; FTP notification; advanced filter enhancements; other Account-wide enhancements. There are several major Account-wide enhancements in this release. First is the ability to view Departmental calendars. Administrators (and users with necessary role privileges) can view the calendars of multiple resources from a department in one screen. Accounts must have active departments with active users. Departmental calendars enable users to view the bookings, schedule requests, task assignments and work schedules of entire departments. When a department is selected, the user list is narrowed to only users in that department. Users may select a resource from within a department to be listed first in a display, facilitating the ability to isolate a user within a department. To use the departmental calendar, users navigate to My Account > Dashboard > Calendars. Select the department name from the department dropdown box. A second major Account-wide enhancement is the addition of email templates. To create or edit email templates, users navigate to My Account > Company > Email Templates. With an email template, users can now create customized email notifications using text and fields from the database. If a subject is specified in the email template, it will be appended to the existing OpenAir system subject line. For example, on an email concerning changes to a task assignment, the system generates an email with the subject "Task modified". Users can specify additional text (e.g. " in OpenAir"), and this text will be appended to the system-generated subject line. If the notification body is defined it will replace the text of the email normally used by OpenAir. If no email template is defined for a particular case OpenAir will send a generic email. Below the email body box a drop-down box with available database fields is displayed. Once a user selects a field, the field will appear in a text box surrounded by "%%". Users copy this text (in the text box to the right of the dropdown field) and paste it into the email subject or body. For example, in an email concerning a task modification, you can paste a link to the project, by selecting "Project URL" from the "Field" dropdown and pasting the corresponding text into the body of the email. For this release, email templates have been implemented for authorizations, bookings, project ownership, and project tasks. A third major Account-wide enhancement is the ability to establish default module access for new users. Establishing default module access saves time for Administrative users (and users with necessary role privileges) when creating new users. To establish default module access, users navigate to My Account > Account > Users. Select an existing user who has the modules access desired for new users. Click on "Access control > Modules access" and confirm that the correct modules have been selected. Then, check the box "Make this the default module access for new users" and save. This will ensure that all newly created users will be defaulted to this level of module access control. A fourth Account-wide enhancement is the ability to display the fields from an advanced filter directly on the main list screen, with a search button. Users can change the search values without opening a pop-up window, making it significantly easier to modify advanced filters and find data. The feature applies to the projects view as well as to other list views where the advanced filter appears. A blank value can be also used in advanced filters. If a value is blank the search condition will return all possible results. To take advantage of this feature, users with necessary role privileges select one of the filters from the advanced filter dropdown, above and to the left of the list view. For example, a user may establish an advanced filter for "Project name contains" and select this filter on the project list view. Once a user selects the filter from the dropdown, s(he) will be able to type in directly a part of the project name and then click "Search". There is no longer the need to open a separate pop-up window to enter the search values. Other Account-wide enhancements in the current release include: • The ability to copy the contents of a custom field from one record to a companion record. Users with necessary role privileges navigate to My Account > Company > Custom Fields > [select a Custom Field]. This mechanism is currently supported for booking requests/bookings, authorization items/receipts, products/request items and request items/purchase items. When a custom field is mapped to a corresponding custom field, the contents of the custom field will be copied when the record is created. For example, you can map a custom field associated with booking requests to a custom field related to bookings. When booking requests are created, the user will select/enter values for the custom field. When bookings requests are approved, the new bookings that are created will carry over the values entered in the booking request for the mapped custom fields. • Updates to the FTP notification option for auto-back-up. If an email address is entered into a "Status email" field box, a status email (success or failure) will be sent out after every FTP transfer (My Account > Exchange > Automatic backup service).
3. Invoices: Invoice layout; other Invoices enhancements. . This release contains two new enhancements to Invoice layouts in the Invoices module. First, Invoice layouts contain the option to display the due date of the invoice. The due date is calculated by taking the date of the invoice and adding the number of days from the payment terms of the invoice (terms must be in "net xx" format). Users with necessary role privileges navigate to Invoices > Options > Invoice Layout > [select layout]. To activate this feature, users click on "Show due date calculated from terms". Second, the Invoice layouts can now contain a column to note the tracking number of an expense envelope (if one exists). Users with necessary role privileges navigate to Invoices > Options > Invoice Layout > [select layout]. To activate this feature, users select “Tracking number” from the list of available Invoice Columns. Another new enhancement to the Invoices module enables the emailing of invoice attachments to customers. If an invoice is emailed to a customer, that invoice can now include invoice attachments. If there are attachments on an invoice, a new checkbox will appear in the Email Invoice form, "Include attachments (currently [one] attachment)". If users with necessary role privileges click on this checkbox, the attachment(s) will be sent with the email. Users navigate to Invoices > [select invoice to be sent] > Email invoice [click on "Include attachments"].
4. Reports Several new enhancements have been added to OpenAir’s reporting features. First, with this release, reports can now be downloaded to PDF format. Reports can also be downloaded to Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. To configure PDF settings, users with required privileges navigate to Reports > Options > Global report options > Adobe Acrobat PDF settings. To download to PDF, run the desired report and click the "download" link at the bottom of the report results. Click the link to download to Adobe Acrobat (as a PDF formatted file). Second, most detail reports now support detailing in User, Customer and Project fields. Report layout options now contain multiple items for these fields, allowing for more comprehensive reporting. Users with required privileges navigate to Reports > Detail > [select report]. In the "Options" section , click to edit the Report layout and select the items to be included in the report Third, the TimeBills detail report now contains five (5) new data filter options for more flexible reporting. These filters are: Invoice date, Invoice created date, Invoice submitted date, Invoice approved date, and Invoice emailed date. Users with required privileges navigate to Reports > Detail > Invoices > [select "TimeBills" report]. Other enhancements to OpenAir’s reporting features are related to summary reports. New date-based filters for invoices, envelopes, timesheets and purchase orders are now available, when reporting on certain transactions related to timebills, receipts, time entries and purchase items. The new date filter options appear below the "Filters and details fields" section of the report configuration form. For instance, when reporting on timebills in a summary report, users select the period, number of periods and start/end date at the top of the report configuration form. Users can set this period very broadly, perhaps to cover a three-year span. The new feature allows users to filter the report results to show only those timebills that were invoiced as of a specific date range, perhaps "Last month". This will show any timebills during that three-year period that are on an invoice dated last month. In other words, these new date range filters do not affect the report span, but simply further filter the transactions that occur within that span. Another new feature applicable to any summary report enables users to filter or subtotal by project location in any summary report where they can filter or subtotal by project stage. Users with required role privileges can create project locations in the Account tab, and can associate a specific project with a location in the "Edit project" form.
5. Other module enhancements: Expenses; Purchases; Workspaces; Opportunities. Expenses: • Expense report layouts can now show approval history for associated authorizations. Users with required role privileges navigate to Expenses > Options > Expense Report Layout. In the Expense Report Layout form, the checkbox, "Show the authorization approval history" must be checked to enable this feature. Purchases: • The Request items and Purchase items lists now include the ability to customize columns with "Customer owner" and "Project owner" fields. To customize these lists, users navigate to Purchases > Purchase requests > Request items or Purchases > Purchase orders > Purchase items. Workspaces: • Workspace alerts have been enhanced to allow for more direct access via workspace email links. In all workspace email alerts, the workspace link will take the user directly to the appropriate sub-tab (i.e. documents or discussions) rather than to the default workspace dashboard. • In the Workspaces Edit document form, there is now a direct URL to the document that can be used in email to send to other users (requires user log in). • In Workspace alerts for documents added/replaced, a link to download the document is included in the email. Opportunities: • Attachments to proposals can now be included in the email when a proposal is sent. If there are attachments on a proposal, a new checkbox will appear in the Email Proposal form, "Include attachments (currently [one] attachment)." If users with necessary role privileges click on this checkbox, the attachment(s) will be sent with the email. Users navigate to Opportunities > Proposals > [select proposal to be sent] > [click on "Include attachments"]. This enhancement is similar to that for including attachments when emailing invoices to customers (noted above in the section relating to Invoices enhancements).
6. Would you like to see previous OpenAir updates? Click here to browse previous product updates including all new features, modules and functionality.
7. Suggestions, problems, or questions? As always, please contact us at support@openair.com or 888.367.1288 (outside the U.S. and Canada, call 617-351-0226). We pride ourselves on the outstanding care we give our customers. Please let us know how we improve your experience with OpenAir. |
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