Automatic escalation of approvals
Escalate approvals to another approver if the entity (e.g. timesheet) is not approved after a certain number of days.

"Own proxy" email notifications for submissions
Send submission emails to "Own proxy" users.

Details ...


Multiple schedule exceptions per day via time off requests
Allow users to submit a time off request on a day populated with a company schedule exception. Allow users to create multiple time off requests per day.

Enhancements to OpenAir Offline
Several enhancements to the OpenAir Offline mobile application.

Details ...


Organize saved reports in specified folders
Associate a report with one or more folders.

Details ...


View "Day" values for daily rate charges
Display the number of billed days in various list views when using daily rate charges. Populate the number of hours from days billed in charge and project billing transaction list views.

Define charges to recognize in "As billed" revenue recognition rules
Select what charges are available to be recognized via the "As billed" rule on a per project basis.

Details ...


Timesheet line item rejection enhancements
Enhancements to line item rejections for time entries and rejoin functionality.

Details ...






Automatic escalation of approvals
Many employees must enter time and expenses per company policy. To expedite the billing process, it is beneficial for these items to be approved in a timely manner. With this release, users are now able to escalate an approval to another approver(s) if the item has not been approved by the standard approver within a certain timeframe. For example, if Mary Adams has not approved a timesheet within 5 days, the approval can be escalated to Jim Admin. Once escalated, Jim will receive an email notification alerting him that a timesheet is ready for approval.

Note: In addition to timesheets and expenses, automatic escalation of approvals can be leveraged for invoices, time off requests, proposals, expense authorizations, purchase requests, purchase orders, and booking requests. This functionality can be leveraged for both project and user level approvals.

How to configure auto-escalations for approvals:

1. Users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Administration > Application Settings > [select the appropriate application settings link from the dropdown] > Approval processes. Click on an approval process or create a new one.
2. Designate the standard approver under the first "Approver" dropdown.
3. To designate the escalated approver, select a user in the next "Approver" dropdown and change the "Sequence Number" dropdown to "1".
4. Check the option "A sequence number requires only one approval".
5. Once checked, a new "Assign after" column dynamically appears. Enter the number of days in which the approval should be escalated. For example, enter "5" if the approval should be escalated to the next approver if the entity has not been approved within 5 days.
6. Click Save and assign the approval process to the desired entity (e.g. timesheets, expenses, etc.).

"Own proxy" email notifications for submissions
OpenAir's proxy capabilities allow users to log in on behalf of other users to perform certain actions. Users with specific role privileges may designate who can proxy in as them via the proxy form. For example, if an approver is on vacation for a specific week, he or she may decide to allow another user to proxy on their behalf to approve any submitted timesheets for that week.

In addition to proxying for another user to perform actions, it is also valuable for the proxy user to be notified of any submissions that require an approval. For example, if Mary Adams is on vacation and has designated Jim Admin to be her proxy, it is helpful for Jim to also be notified that something is ready to be approved. With this release, any user designated as a proxy for another user will also receive the submission email that is sent to the standard approver.

Note: This feature is available for all types of submissions (e.g. timesheets, expenses, booking requests, etc.)

To enable this functionality, please contact OpenAir Support.

To allow users to create their own proxies, navigate to Administration > Global Settings > Users > Roles > [select a role]. Select the option "Create own proxies" and Save. This role setting will allow users to select who can log in as them on their behalf. To create the proxy, users navigate to Home > Proxies.

Multiple schedule exceptions per day via time off requests
Companies often have varying holiday policies that allow for half or partial working days that occur the day before an official holiday. For example, some companies will allow for a half day the day before Christmas. In such a case, some employees may choose to take the rest of the day off as part of their personal time off (PTO).

Previously, for accounts that have the company setting "Automatically create schedule exceptions when a time off request is approved" enabled, a company schedule exception could be entered for the half day. However, in order for the user to take the rest of the day off, an exception on the user's work schedule would need to be manually created.

In this release, users can now enter a time off request even if there is an existing company schedule exception for the same day. If there is an existing company schedule exception for partial hours, users will be able to create and submit a time off request for that same day (available time permitting). In addition, users can now create and submit multiple time off requests for the same day.

Note: It is not possible to manually create more than one schedule exception on the same day for a company work schedule or an individual user level work schedule.

To allow for multiple schedule exceptions in a day, please contact OpenAir Support.

To enable time off requests, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Administration > Application Settings > Timesheets Settings > Other settings. Check the option "Enable time off requests" and Save.

How to create a time off request:

1. Navigate to Timesheets > Time off requests > New.
2. Enter the "Start date" and "End date".
3. Select a Customer:Project and/or task if required. Click Next.
4. Enter the number of hours requested to be taken off and click Save.
5. To submit the request, click on the "Submit/Approve" link and click Submit.

Enhancements to OpenAir Offline
With OpenAir's Offline client, users have the ability to enter time and expenses without Internet access. Once connected, users can then sync their time and expenses entered offline to the web application. With this release, OpenAir is pleased to announce significant enhancements to the Offline tool that will greater facilitate offline time and expense entry. Enhancements include:

• Users can now view "Approved" and "Submitted" timesheets and expense reports in Offline.
• For users that have timesheets or expense reports that contain the same information every week, the ability to clone a timesheet or expense report has been added.
• For accounts that allow for overlapping timesheets and expenses to be configured at the role level online, Offline now supports this functionality as well.
• Users can now leverage the dynamic search capabilities (click on the magnify glass) to search for customers and projects for expense reports and timesheets.
• If project job code overrides are enabled for an account, users are now able to select the job code directly on the timesheet grid.
• Checkbox custom fields are now supported on the timesheet grid.
• The ability to filter on payroll type and service based on the project selection is now supported in the timesheet grid.
• Users can now choose to filter on just the "Open" items when viewing timesheets or expenses.

• Navigate to Administration > Global Settings > Account > Integration: Add-on services. Click on the download link.

Organize saved reports in specified folders
OpenAir reports often fall into distinct categories such as Financials, Project status, Resource management, etc. As an account may have a very high volume of saved reports, it is helpful to group specific reports together based on report type. With this release, saved reports can now be organized into different report folders and sub-folders. Report folders can be expanded or collapsed depending upon the need to view certain reports in a particular folder. In addition, folders can be shared with other users - reports within the folder will also be shared.

To enable report folders, please contact OpenAir Support.

Additional notes:

• A single report can associated with multiple folders.
• Sub-folders can be created.
• Several reports can be placed into a folder in bulk.

1. Navigate to Reports > My reports.
2. Click on the "File" icon next to a report. In the pop-up window, select "New folder" from the dropdown. Enter the name and select a parent folder if necessary. Click Save.
3. Once the folder is created, select that folder name from the dropdown and click Save.

1. Users that have the role privilege to share reports navigate to Reports > My reports.
2. Next to the report folder that is being shared, click on the "Share" icon next to the folder.
3. Select the user(s) or assignment group to share the folder with and click OK. Note: Sub-folders will need to be shared separately.

1. Navigate to Reports > My reports.
2. Check the box under the "Bulk File" icon for each report to move into a folder. If the "Bulk file" icon is not display, click on the "Customize list view" link in the upper left and add "Bulk File". Click OK.
3. Once the reports have been selected, click on the "Bulk File" icon at the header (above the checkboxes). Select an option to either "Move" the reports to another folder, "Remove" the reports from their current folder, or "Copy" the reports to create a copy of those reports to another folder.

View "Day" values for daily rate charges
For companies that bill projects with daily rates, it is often helpful to see a display of the actual number of days that have been billed as well as the hours that were generated from time entries. In this release, we have added the ability for users to customize list views to display "Day" values. These list views include the project, task, create billings, project billing transactions, project outline view, and charges list views. In addition, if "Days" is displayed, the "Hours" column will be populated with the hours generated from time entries in the charges and project billing transaction list views.

To display the day value in a list view, users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to a list and click on the "Customize list view" link. Add "Days" or "Days-Billed".

There are several ways in which companies can bill by day and create daily rate charges. To enable the ability to define daily rates for billing rules, please contact OpenAir Support.

How to create a daily rate charge via billing rules by user:

1. Once the daily rate functionality has been enabled, navigate to Projects > Projects [select a project] > Financials > Billing.
2. Create or modify a time billing rule. In the "Bill rates" section, select "Users" under the "Get the billing rates from" dropdown.
3. Select a user from the dropdown, enter their rate and select "Day" from the dropdown. Click Save.

1. Once the daily rate functionality has been enabled, navigate to Administration > Global Settings > Jobs, Rates > Rate cards > [select a rate card or create a new one].
2. Select a job code, enter the rate, and select "Day" from the dropdown.
3. To assign the rate card, navigate to Projects > Projects [select a project] > Financials > Billing.
4. Create or modify a time billing rule. In the "Bill rates" section, select "Rate cards" under the "Get the billing rates from" dropdown.
5. Select the appropriate rate card and Save.

1. Users with the appropriate role privileges navigate to Invoices > Charges > New other rate.
2. Fill in the appropriate fields as necessary and in the "Rate" field, enter the daily rate value and select "/day" value in the dropdown.

Define charges to recognize in "As billed" revenue recognition rules
OpenAir's flexible revenue recognition engine allows companies to recognize revenue based on various criteria. Specifically, the "As billed" revenue recognition rule allows companies to recognize all revenue generated from charges. At times, projects may have charges that have been generated, but should not be recognized. Under existing functionality, users were able to configure as-billed revenue recognition rules (on a per-rule basis) to include/exclude charges by charge type or by charge stage. With this release, we have added functionality to allow users to configure each individual as-billed rule to recognize revenue based on the invoiced status of charges as well.

To enable this feature, please contact OpenAir Support.

How to select what charges to recognize:

1. Once enabled, navigate to Projects > Projects > [select a project] > Financials > Recognition > New > As billed rule.
2. In the "Charges available for recognition" section, select either "All charges", "Invoiced charges", or "Charges on approved invoices".
3. Click Save.

Timesheet line item rejection enhancements
In the January 2009 release, OpenAir introduced the ability to reject individual time entries within a timesheet. In addition, users were able to rejoin the rejected time entries back with the original timesheet. Line item rejection of individual time entries was introduced to allow for individual time entries to be approved and ultimately invoiced, while enabling users to correct other erroneous time entries on the same original timesheet without impacting the billing process. For accounts leveraging line item rejections and the rejoin functionality, several enhancements have been introduced:

• If line items have been rejected, accounts can now enforce that a full approval process occurs on all related sub-timesheets to ensure a full approval history merge onto the original timesheet. Please note that if this is enforced, a subsequent double approval may occur. Please contact OpenAir Support for this functionality.
  
  
• The approval history for rejected sub-timesheets can now explicitly report line item rejection events when rejecting one or more time entries in one action. Please contact OpenAir Support to enable this functionality.
  
  
• If the rejoin functionality is being leveraged, any empty and approved timesheets (occurs after rejected sub-timesheets have been approved and time entries have been rejoined to the original timesheet) can now be auto-archived. Please contact OpenAir Support to enable this functionality.
  
  
• If line items have been rejected and the rejoin feature is enabled, the approval history for the original timesheet can now contain the approval history for all sub-timesheets. Please contact OpenAir Support to enable this functionality.

Suggestions, problems, or questions?
Contact us at support@openair.com. We take pride in the outstanding care we give our customers. Please let us know how can we improve your experience with OpenAir.