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November 17, 2007
2. Account-wide: Triple cost structure per user. A significant Account-wide enhancement has been added in this release. Users now have the ability to enter up to three levels of loaded costs for individual users. To activate this feature, please contact OpenAir Support. Once enabled, to enter multi-level loaded costs for a user, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Account > Account > Account data > Users > [select a user]. Click on the "Cost" link. Enter the various loaded cost levels and save. Each loaded cost level can maintain separate historical tracking of costs for specific date ranges. This feature is beneficial in scenarios where a user might have separate loaded cost categorizations such as salary, salary + benefits, and salary + benefits + overhead. Users have the ability to modify the terminology for each loaded cost level. To modify the terminology, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Account > Company > Terminology. Users have the ability to modify the "Primary loaded cost", "Secondary loaded cost", and "Tertiary loaded cost". There are several areas where the loaded cost level can be specifically chosen: • For accounts that have the project and task loaded cost overrides enabled, users have the option to override the loaded cost for all levels. For more information on project and task loaded cost overrides, please contact OpenAir Support. • Within a specific project, a specific loaded cost level can be chosen to be used in the project analysis. To enable the Analysis tab for a project stage, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Account > Projects > Project stages > [select a project stage]. Check the "Analysis" box and save. To specify a loaded cost for the project analysis, navigate to Projects > Projects > [select a project] > Analysis. Click on the "options" link, select the loaded cost from the "Loaded hourly cost" dropdown and save. • The "Incurred vs. forecast" revenue recognition rule allows users to select a specific loaded cost level to use for the calculation. From within the "Incurred vs. forecast" recognition rule edit form, in the "Other" section, select the loaded cost to use under the "User cost to use" dropdown and save. • When running summary reports, all reporting fields that use loaded cost in the calculation will be broken out into multiple values, one for each loaded cost level. For example, the summary report value, "Projected cost [rules]", will be broken out into three separate report values: "Projects [primary loaded cost][rules]", "Projects [secondary loaded cost][rules]", and "Projects [tertiary][rules]". Please note that the "Primary loaded cost" will be used as the default loaded cost in scenarios where a loaded cost level is not explicitly chosen.
3. Reports: Reporting tooltips; roll up fields by group in detail reports; other Reporting enhancements. Several important Reporting features have been added in this release. First, in Summary reports, when users scroll over a report value, a pop-up box will now show the definition of the value and how it is calculated. This feature gives users a better understanding of the reporting values, how they are calculated, and how they differ from each other. To leverage this feature for summary reports, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Reports > Summary > [select a summary report]. In the "Available values" section, scroll over a report value. A pop-up text box will display the value definition and how the value is calculated. Please note that viewing the tooltips within the report edit form requires either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0. Due to browser limitations, other browsers are not presently supported, but will be upon available functionality. The tooltips are also available from the report results screen. Users can view the tooltips by scrolling over the column headers. Viewing tooltips from the report results screen is available for all browsers. Second, users now have the option to roll up transactional data into groups. Previously, in detail reports report results were shown in a flat view with data displayed in single rows. With the new roll up feature in detail reports, the flat rows of transactional data are rolled up based on the group selected. For example, users can run a time entries detail report with notes with the ability to roll up time entry hours by groups (e.g. client, project and task). To leverage this feature, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Reports > Detail > [select a detail report]. From the report layout form, select the rollup group fields and rollup fields as desired. Please note that it is necessary to place rollup group fields before rollup fields in the report layout form. In the tips section within the report edit form, fields that are available to be rolled up are noted. These available rollup fields are specific to each report that is run. Example rollup groups fields are also noted in the tips section. Users also have the ability to identify rollup fields by scrolling over the report value from the "Available Items" box within the "Report layout" edit form. From the report edit form, in the "Other" section, check the option "Subtotal rollup" and run the report. Other Reporting enhancements in the current release include: • A new Detail report has been added in this release. Users now have the ability to run a Customer PO project assignments detail report. This report allows users to view each project and their associated Customer POs. This detail report is beneficial when designating the report as project specific and running the report via the project dashboard. By doing this, only the Customer Pos pertaining to the specific project will be displayed. To run the report, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Reports > Detail > Invoices > Customer PO project assignments.
4. Other module enhancements: Projects, Timesheets. Projects: • Budget alerts have been enhanced to allow users to exclude billable or non-billable tasks from alerts. For instance, this feature is beneficial in situations where hours for non-billable tasks should not be counted towards the budget. To leverage this feature, navigate to Projects > Alerts. Select a budget alert and in the "Rules" section, next to the "Exclude tasks" section, select either the "Billable" or "Non-Billable" radio button. Additionally, users now have the option to filter budget alerts by project owners or project stage. From the "Rules" section, specify the project stage or project owner filter by selecting the radio button next to the associated filter and click on the "Create" button. Select the appropriate filter and click OK. Save the budget alert. • Users now have the ability to prevent the creation of multiple projects with the same project name for a single customer. Please note that it is recommended that this setting be enabled for accounts that are integrated with QuickBooks. Currently, QuickBooks does not allow for multiple projects to have the same name for one customer. To enable this setting, navigate to Account > Company Settings. Under "Projects Options", select the option "Require unique project names by client". Timesheets: • OpenAir introduced leave accrual functionality in September, 2006. With our current release, we are adding a number of significant enhancements to this feature. First, there is an advanced report that lets managers see at a glance leave time accrued, drawn down and available leave balances by user and by period, along with details like department, manager and user cost center. To run this report, users with necessary role privileges navigate to Reports > Advanced > Timesheets > Leave accrual summary. Select a pre-defined date range (or select "Custom" as the date range, and enter start and end dates in the fields provided). There is an option to include projected leave accrual transactions (based on future-dated accrual transactions and approved schedule requests; see below for more information on leave accrual projections). In the "Filters and layout options" section, configure any user detail fields to be included in the layout. Ability to filter by user, department and/or manager is provided. Configure the remainder of the report as desired. Name, save and run the report. Dropdowns in the column headings of the report results allow additional filtering (e.g., by leave accrual rule, or by cost center). You can also drill down to view individual leave transactions for each rule, by clicking the hyperlinked rule name. Second, as noted above, it's now possible to report on leave projected to be accrued and drawn-down in the future. In the new leave summary report described above, to see total leave projected for 2007 for example, simply select "Custom" as the date range, enter start and end dates for 2007, and check the box to "Include projected transactions". When you run the report, the "Accrual" value will include projected transactions to be accrued through to year end, in addition to actuals already accrued. The "Draw-Down" value will include actual hours drawn down to date, and projections for future draw-down based on approved schedule requests. The "Balance" value is the difference between the two. Third, we now permit transfer of leave balances from one rule to another rule. This can be useful if a user has multiple leave accrual rules, and some of those rules have end dates applied. For example, the user may have a leave accrual rule that applied for 2006, and a different rule that applies for 2007. Under the 2006 rule, the user has 20 hours of leave that has accrued and can be carried over. To transfer the 2006 balance, simply go to My Account > Account > Users > [select user] > Leave accrual. From the "Transfer Balance To" dropdown for the 2006 rule, select the rule number (from the far left column) that applies to the 2007 rule, and save. Finally, on the form used to create or edit leave accrual rules, we have added several new options including: • An option to delay loss of leave accrual. In the "Delay loss accrual" text box, enter a number of days by which loss of leave accrual will be delayed. This is intended to allow for timesheet approval after the date when leave might otherwise have been lost. It can be useful, for example, if the user has a leave accrual rule where leave would be lost on the anniversary date, and that date falls in mid-week, while the user's timesheet is not due until the end of the week. Enter a delay period to allow the user to submit the timesheet by the end of the week, and keep the leave hours accrued. • An option to enter a number of carry over hours and to specify whether the carry over applies only to an optional grace period. If applied only to the grace period, carry over hours will be available during the grace period and will expire thereafter. • An option to include partial accruals. With this option checked, if a leave accrual rule is applied to a user for a partial period, accrual will be calculated on a prorated daily basis. Under previous functionality, users only accrued leave for full periods, which could result in over-calculation or under-calculation of leave accrual. • An option to modify draw-downs when an approved timesheet is changed. With this option checked, if a timesheet is un-approved, previous draw-downs created by the timesheet's approval will be deleted automatically. When the timesheet is re-approved, the draw-downs will be re-generated. To turn on leave accrual, users with necessary role privileges navigate to Account > Company > Settings > Timesheet options > [select "Enable the leave accrual feature"] > Save. For more information on this feature, please see the September 2006 product update.
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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