Product Update

December 16, 2006

1. Expenses: "Per diem" expenses; envelope durations.

2. Reports: Enhanced calculated fields; new report date periods.

3. Workspaces: Bulk download of all documents across all workspaces; enhanced bulk upload of workspace documents.

4. Other module enhancements: Invoices, Account-wide, Resources.

5. Would you like to see previous OpenAir product updates?

6. Suggestions, problems or questions?


1. Expenses : "Per diem" expenses; envelope durations.

Several enhancements have been added to OpenAir's Expenses module with this release. First, expense items can now be marked as "Per diem". A per diem receipt policy can also be configured. To leverage this feature, users with required role privileges navigate to My Account > Account > Expense items (under the Expenses or Invoices module headings). Select the desired expense item or create a new one. Check the "Per diem" box to mark the item as per diem.

To configure a per diem expense item policy, in the "Receipt policy" section, make a selection from the "Limit per diem expense items" dropdown. Available options are "one per date per envelope" or "one per date across all envelopes". When the user saves a receipt, the system checks the receipt policy rules and will generate an error if there is a violation of any per diem expense item policy.

The "per diem" expense item value (yes/no) is available as a column in the expense item list view. To display the amount of the per diem, customize the expense item list view to include "Price". The "per diem" value is also available in the expense item detail report (Reports > Detail > Account-wide > Expense items). To display the amount of the per diem here, add "Cost" as a selected value in the report layout. The per diem receipt policy is also available in the expense item detail report; when configuring the report layout, include "Receipt policy" as a selected value.

Users with the appropriate role privileges can customize the "Per diem" terminology in My Account > Company > Terminology.

A second enhancement to the Expenses module is the ability to set envelope durations on a per-user basis. Envelope duration is an optional feature; up until now, the duration could only be specified at the company level. With this release, administrators or users with required role privileges can override the company level duration setting by navigating to My Account > Account > Users > [select a user]. In the user's demographic form, under "Expenses Options", select the envelope duration from the dropdown. Available duration options are Weekly/Bi-weekly/Semi-monthly/Monthly. To activate this feature or to activate envelope durations in general, please contact OpenAir Support.
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2. Reports: Enhanced calculated fields; new report date periods.

Two significant enhancements have been added to OpenAir’s reporting functionality. First, the calculated fields feature has been enhanced to include the ability to create a calculated field based on detail field values. For example, a calculated field can be used to highlight projects where you are over-budget compared to actual charges generated to date. In this case, the calculated field would be defined to express the difference between the project budget (money) amount (as entered in the "Edit project" form), and the timebills/charges generated to date. To create such a field, privileged users navigate to My Account > Company > Calculated fields. From the "New entries > Create" dropdown, select "Account-wide Project summary calculated field". In the "Left operand" dropdown, select "Project detail ~ Budget hours". For the operation, select "minus". In the "Right operand" dropdown, select "Invoices - Hours". Enter a title and description if desired and save. The new calculated field will be available for selection in summary reports; the particular reports where it is available depend on the type of calculated field created. This enhancement greatly extends the power of calculated fields, which previously could only be built based on summary report values. For more information on calculated fields, please see the October 2006 product update.

Second, there are two new report date periods available in summary reports. Users can now choose "Monthly YTD" or "Quarterly YTD" as an option for the time period when running a summary report.
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3. Workspaces : Bulk download of all documents across all workspaces; enhanced bulk upload of workspace documents.

There are two important enhancements to the Workspaces module in this release. First, users with the appropriate role settings can now download all documents from all workspaces to a single zip file. Within this single zip file, documents from each individual workspace are placed within a workspace-specific zip file. The download includes all folders and revisions within each workspace.. To download all documents, users must be administrators, or have a role that includes the ability to "Download all documents in all workspaces". To perform the download, privileged users navigate to Workspaces > Options > Download all documents. Click on the "Download" button. Please note that the download includes Workspaces documents only; it does not include document attachments in other modules, such as Expenses, Invoices, etc. To activate the feature to download documents across all workspaces, please contact OpenAir Support.

Second, an enhancement has been made to the bulk document upload feature. This feature is now available, even if your account has enabled the option to "Require a document category when checking in documents". If your account has this requirement in place, when users attempt to upload documents in bulk, they will be prompted first to set a default document category. For more information on the bulk upload of workspace documents feature, please see the October 2006 product update.
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4. Other module enhancements: Invoices, Account-wide, Resources.

Invoices:

    • When editing an invoice, payment terms can now be selected from a dropdown pre-populated with account-defined payment terms. Previously, the payment terms override was a free text field. To create payment terms, navigate to My Account > Account > Invoices > Payment terms. To activate the feature to display payment terms in a dropdown on the invoice edit form, please contact OpenAir Support.

Account-wide:

    • Administrators now have the ability to enable or disable the download functionality on reports and list views on a per-role basis. To enable or disable access, navigate to My Account > Account > Roles > [select a role]. In the "General settings" section, check/uncheck the options "Download lists" and/or "Download reports". Click save. Only users with roles enabling download will see the "download" link in the blue bar at the bottom of list views and report results screens.

    • For accounts that allow the editing of submitted entities (e.g. timesheet, envelope) by an approver, specific approvers within an approval process can be restricted from being able to edit the entity. To leverage this feature, navigate to My Account > Account > Approval processes (under Timesheets, Expenses, Invoices, etc.). Select an approval process. Check the option "Can not edit" beside the approver(s) that should not be allowed to edit an entity submitted for their approval.

Resources:

    • We have added the ability to display custom fields associated with the user in the Quick Search results list view. To conduct a Quick Search in the Resources module, click the "Quick Search" tab. Select the profile criterion for the search from the "Quick Search by" dropdown. To add the user custom field(s) to the results list view, click on the "customize" link at the bottom of the page. Narrow the search results by filtering on any of the available column dropdowns, including any user-associated custom fields.
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5. Would you like to see previous OpenAir updates?

Click here to browse previous product updates including all new features, modules and functionality.
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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.