Projects: Create and display task assignments in chart form; cloning a project; other Project enhancements.

Resources: Booking at the task level.

Expenses: Expense grid enhancements.

Account-wide: New filter set meta value, "Bulk user change wizard" enhancements, form permissions more widely available.


Projects

Create and display task assignments in chart form; cloning a project; other Project enhancements.

Several significant enhancements have been added to the Projects module in this release.

Managers can now create and display task assignments using the new assignment chart.
To activate this feature, email OpenAir Support: support@openair.com.

To configure the new assignment chart, administrators and users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Projects > Assignments. Click on the Settings link. Define the period (daily, weekly, or monthly), the number of periods, and unit of utilization (hours or percentage). If desired, restrict the resources to be displayed by setting a maximum number of resources, and by filtering on resource and/or job code. Once the specified criteria have been saved, click on the "Chart" link to display the resources that meet the criteria defined in the settings. Users have the option of viewing the assignment chart in either an "Assigned vs. Overage" or "Color coded by time" view.

In the "Color coded by time" view of the assignment chart, the chart displays time with the following color coding:

    • Assigned time - blue
    • Time off - yellow (from user schedule exceptions)
    • Holiday time - green (from company schedule exceptions)
    • Available time - red
    • Unavailable time - grey (days which are not scheduled workdays)

Additional information on the "Color coded by time" chart view:

Clicking any bar will display the list of task assignments for the user, during the specified time period.

To view all task assignments for a specific resource, select the "Tasks" option from the dropdown in the "Resource" column.

The Calendar and Engagement history can also be viewed from the dropdown in the "Resource" column.

Hovering the cursor over a bar will display the actual breakdown in number of hours for each of the possible times, e.g. "Available: 8 Assigned: 0, Timeoff:0 Holiday: 0, Unavailable: 0 Total quantity: 8 of 8.

Users have the ability to add additional information to the hover for the "Assigned" bar. Additional information available to be added includes fields associated with the client, project, project location, task, and custom fields. For more information on adding fields to the hover, email OpenAir Support: support@openair.com.

Users now have the ability to clone a project.
With the clone feature, all fields from the source project will be copied over to the new project with the exception of bookings. This feature is beneficial in scenarios where the majority of the fields for a project need to be copied to a new project, while still allowing users to modify any necessary fields. In order to clone a project, users must have the ability to edit projects. To clone a project, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Projects > Projects > [select a project]. From the Edit project screen, in the hints section, click on the link "Clone this project". Once the link is clicked, users will be brought to the new project Edit screen. A new Project name must be specified. Other fields on the form may be modified if necessary.

The "As billed" revenue recognition rule has been enhanced to allow users to filter by timebill/charge stage.
If timebill/charge stages are leveraged, users will have the option to include specific timebill/charge stages when running the "As billed" recognition rule. To apply the filter, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Projects > Projects > [select a project] > Recognition. Select the "As billed" recognition rule. From the "Edit" form, in the "Recognition rule filters" section, click the "Create" button and select the appropriate timebill/charge stages to include. Click OK.

Resources

Booking at the task level.

An important enhancement has been added to the Resources module in this release: users have the ability to create bookings at the task level.
To activate this feature, email OpenAir Support: support@openair.com. Once enabled, to create a booking at the task level, users with appropriate role privileges navigate to Resources > Bookings. From the "Create" dropdown, select "Booking". Select the resource, client:project, task and date range for the booking. Configure the rest of the settings as desired and save.

Additional enhancements to the booking at the task level feature include:

From the Bookings list view, "Project-Task" can be added as a column.
To customize the Bookings list view, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Resources > Bookings > List. Click the "customize" link at the bottom of the bookings list page. Move "Project-Task" to the list of selected items on the right, and click OK.

The task name has been added to booking notification emails.
When resources have been booked to a task on a project, the notification email will now contain the task name as well as the client, project, booked period, and percentage booked.

Users have the ability to include Booked hours and Booked users as columns in the Project Outline view.
To customize the Outline view, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Projects > Projects > [select a project] > Outline view. Click the "customize" link at the bottom of the page and move "Hours - Booked" and "Booked users" to the list of selected items on the right, and click OK.

The task name is now an available reporting field in the Bookings and Bookings assignments detail reports.
To run these report, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Reports > Detail > Resources > Bookings or Booking assignments.

Expenses

Expense grid enhancements.

In this release, several significant enhancements have been made to the expense grid.

Custom fields associated with the receipt are now supported by the expense grid.
Text, Text Area, Numeric, Dropdown, Checkbox, and Date custom fields with a receipt association can be added. To create custom fields, users with the required role privileges navigate to Account > Company > Custom fields. From the "Create" dropdown, select one of the supported field types. In the "Association" dropdown, select "Receipt". Configure the rest of the settings as desired and save. To add custom fields to the expense grid, email OpenAir Support: support@openair.com.

Users now have the ability to duplicate an existing row when adding new rows to the expense grid.
With this feature, new added rows will be automatically populated with the previous row’s receipt information. Previously, when users added rows to the expense grid, blank rows were added. To leverage this feature, users navigate to Expenses > Expense reports > [select an expense report] > Expense Grid. Enter the necessary receipt information. To duplicate the existing row, select the "Add row duplicated from selected row" radio button and from the "[Add]" dropdown, select the number of row to add. Click Save.

Form permissions configured from the Edit receipt form are now respected on the expense grid.
For example, fields that have been designated as read-only on the receipt edit form are now also read-only on the expense grid. To utilize form permissions, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Expenses > Expense reports > [select an expense report] > Receipts > [select a receipt]. Click the link "Modify the form permissions" at the bottom of the form. Configure the necessary settings and save.

The expense grid now has an amount column that is the product of quantity multiplied by price.
The amount column displays the totals per receipt on each row of the grid. The cumulative amount, which is the total of all receipts, is also displayed at the footer of the expense grid. For additional information on the expense grid, please see the September 2007 product update.

Account-wide

A new filter set meta value has been added in this release.
Users now have the option to select "[Access to users booked to my owned projects]" as a value. This value is beneficial in situations where users would only need to have access to users who are booked to projects of which they are the project owner. To configure a user’s filter set, administrators navigate to Account > Account > Account data > Filter sets > [select a filter set] > Access control. Select "User access" and move "[Access to users booked to my owned projects]" to the Selected Users box and save.

The "Bulk user change wizard" has been enhanced.
It now includes the ability to copy the settings "Enable enhanced user interface" and "Hovering over menu links reveals menu options" to other users and/or departments. The Bulk user change wizard allows administrators and users with the appropriate role privileges to configure and modify user settings for multiple users and/or departments at one time. The wizard is available from Dashboard > Overview > Wizards > Bulk user change wizard.

Form permissions have been enabled for broader availability throughout the application.
Users with the required role privileges can now select "Modify the form permissions" from the bottom of Purchase module edit pages including: purchase item, purchase order layout, purchase request, and purchase request layout, as well as the Edit expense authorization form. Form permissions enable OpenAir administrators to configure user privileges with greater precision; on a role-by-role basis, specific fields can be configured to be read-only, required or hidden.

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.