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November 11, 2006
2. Projects: Daily rate multiplier; budget alerts; other Project enhancements. Several enhancements have been added to OpenAir's Projects module. First, users can now specify a daily rate multiplier on time billing rules. This can be particularly useful if you bill at different rates for weekend days compared to weekdays. On the time billing rule edit form, users can enter a multiplier for each day of the week. When billing is run, the user rate will be multiplied by the multiplier for the day associated with the time entry. To activate this feature, please contact OpenAir Support. Second, budget alerts now have the option to exclude specified charge types in the budget calculation. To leverage this feature, navigate to Projects > Alerts. Select a budget alert and in the "TimeBill/Charge types to exclude" section, specify the types to exclude. If you use the alert option based on total timebills/charges as a percentage of project budget, this new feature would allow you, for instance, to exclude flat rate or expense item timebills/charges when calculating the percentage that triggers the alert. Other Project enhancements include: • The OpenAir Projects Connector has been enhanced to include a "one touch" integration to OpenAir from within Microsoft Project. Users will now see an OpenAir toolbar in the Microsoft Project application. With the new one touch integration, users can either push Microsoft Projects into OpenAir or pull OpenAir projects into a new Microsoft Project file. OpenAir resources can now be pulled into an empty Microsoft Project file. In addition, resources are automatically mapped based on name. The existing Projects Connector wizard mode is also supported and can be run independently. • Billing and recognition rules that are associated with a task can now be duplicated when the related task is duplicated within that same project. This is an extension of the feature introduced in an earlier release, allowing you to copy or move tasks with associated billing and recognition rules from one project to another project. A checkbox on the duplicate task form gives users with appropriate role settings the option to duplicate the billing and recognition rules. The feature applies to fixed fee type rules only. To activate this feature, please contact OpenAir Support.
3. Resources: Daily utilization alert; new custom search option. There are two significant enhancements to the Resources module in this release. First, users can now set up a scheduled "Daily utilization alert" to check booked utilization for the current day. Users with the appropriate role settings can view and edit their own alerts. The list of users that exceed the utilization threshold, provided in the email notification, is limited to users who report to the creator of the utilization alert. To set up a daily utilization alert, navigate to Resources > Alerts. From the "New entries > Create" dropdown, select "Daily utilization alert". Enter in the alert name and specify the date and time you would like the alert to run. Specify the daily utilization threshold, indicate the email addresses to which the alert should be sent, and check the option to "Add information about users exceeding the utilization threshold". Second, there is a new Custom search option for availability searches. In Resources > Custom search, users can now select to "Allow no intervening bookings when determining availability". This feature allows users to search for consecutive available hours instead of hours that might be split up over the search period.
4. Other module enhancements: Account-wide, Reports. Account-wide enhancements in this release include: • Administrators are now able to create and modify payment terms. In addition, they can specify default payment terms for clients and invoices. To create a new payment term, navigate to My Account > Account > Invoices > Payment terms. From the "New entries > Create" dropdown, select Payment terms. Enter the name of the payment term and save. To establish a default payment term, administrators navigate to My Account > Account > Invoices > Payment terms. From the list of existing payment terms, select the desired default payment term. Check the box "Default payment terms " and save. • Administrators now have the ability to hide the "Company status" and "My Status" views on the Dashboard on a per-role basis. To restrict access, navigate to My Account > Account > Roles > [select a role]. Uncheck the options "View company status" and/or "View user status". Click save. Reporting enhancements in this release include: • Summary reports have been enhanced to include the ability to subtotal by controlled custom fields associated with the service. Controlled custom fields include custom fields of type checkbox, radio group, dropdown, or dropdown/text. Previously, the ability to subtotal by controlled custom fields was limited to custom fields associated with users, projects, and customers. For more information on subtotaling controlled custom fields, please see the April 2005 product update. • There is a new denominator choice for Historical Utilization values. The new denominator is "Use base work schedule hours minus timesheet hours". There is a "Project" and "Timesheet status" filter where users specify the time entry hours to subtract from the base work schedule hours. • Time entry custom fields have been added to the report layout options for time entries detail reports. To leverage this feature, navigate to Reports > Detail > Time entries. In the Report layout, select the time entry custom field and other desired fields, and run the report.
5. Would you like to see previous OpenAir updates? Click here to browse previous product updates including all new features, modules and functionality.
6. 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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