Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Workbench Release Notes

Expand
titleBeta Release 4.7.5.1

Scheduled Release - 02 December 2024

...

https://webwbdoc.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/RN/pages/3163521059/2.5.4+-+20+August+2024#Sharperlight-Data-Model-2.5.4.2

Upcoming Functionality & News

Info

Enhanced Access Control for Financial Integration Screens

Access to Financial Integration screens (Xero, MYOB AccountRight, MYOB Acumatica, Business Central/Wiise) is controlled solely through licences.

We will be introducing enhanced access control with more granular permissions, allowing you to define what each user can do on the integration screens. Users will be able to:

  • Access only the data synchronization functionality from financial systems to Workbench.

  • Access the ability to set up or modify the integration configuration.

  • Have access to both.

These changes provide the flexibility to safely grant access to users who only need to perform data synchronization, ensuring more secure and role-appropriate access management.

image-20241202-041537.png

What you need to know:

  • Financial integration screens are available for all role licences (if included in the user’s site map profile).

  • 2 new permission:

    • Financials Admin to access the config fields and action buttons.

    • Financials Sync to access the sync button only.

  • Included by default in Administrator role and Finance role.
    Therefore, other Roles may lose access to the financial integration screen and must be setup by System Administrator.

  • The change will be released in January.

Info

Prevent users from seeing all Purchasing related documents for Jobs not in their Profit Centre Groups

We will soon be making changes to how Profit Centre Group security is applied on PO List and AP Invoice List. Instead of simply preventing opening the detail popup we will be excluding the item from the list entirely if the document includes lines with jobs that are not allowed in the user's profit centres. This security will also be extended to AP Vouchers list

...

New Features

Quotes

  • Create Price Codes from Quotes
    To ensure the quoted job is sold for the same price as quoted, and avoid errors in manual entry, a Price Code can now be created from a Quote.

    There are scenarios where the Sales Team doing the quote is not the same as the Project team delivering the actual Job, which could cause a disconnect between them and end up selling a Job for a different price than what was agreed on the Quote. This is no longer the case with this new functionality.

    image-20241203-005716.png

    • After the Quote has been Accepted, a new option on Perform is available: Create Price Code (Step 1).

    • If the same Costsheet line is entered in more than one Costsheet or on the same Costsheet, the first line on the first Costsheet will be used in the Price Code.

    • If the job has already been selected on the Quote, the Price Code on the Job will be automatically updated after creating the Price Code from the Quote. (step 3)

    • The Price Code Code will match the Quote Code.

  • Quote a Plant Class or Plant group instead of a specific Plant Item:
    There are scenarios where at the time of quoting the Job is not possible to know exactly what Plant Item will be allocated to the Job, but the user certainly knows what type of Plant item will be required to deliver that Job.

    This new Quotes module functionality allows you to use a Plant Group or a Plant Class in a Costsheet (At Revenue & Cost Element, At Cost Element formats), instead of having to select a specific Plant Item.

    Plant Classes now provide an extra feature which is the ability to define default values that will be used by the system to populate a Costsheet line: Default Plant Rate, Cost, Markup or Sell, Activity.

    image-20241202-222456.png


    If no default values are set on the Plant Class, these values can be entered manually on each Costsheet line. There are no default values for Plant Groups, so Plant groups will always require Costsheet line values to be entered manually.

    On Plant Class lines default values (Markup % or Sell $) and all Costsheet lines in a Quote, you will notice either the Markup % or Sell Rate cell turns red*. When you update the Markup % the system automatically updates the Sell value and vice-versa. The red cell means it was updated by the system after the other value was updated by the user.
    * The highlighting colour will be changed to yellow instead red, on the next release, to avoid confusing it for an error.

    image-20241202-223111.png



  • Price Codes now support Plant Group and Plant Class on the Plant tab:

    image-20241202-044951.png

Subcontracts

  • New scheduled utility for Subcontractors' expiring/expired insurance reminders:
    A new utility in the utility scheduler has been created to send reminders to an employee when a subcontractor's insurance is about to expire or expires on the day the schedule runs.

    Schedule: Subcontractor Insurance Expiry reminder
    Stored procedure: wbGenerateInsuranceReminderEmails

    The utility will find all active subcontractors with insurance with an expiry date of today or in the future within the DueDays period specifieda certain number of days (DueDays) defined by the user.
    If the Insurance is linked to a Subcontract that is flagged as Complete it will be ignored.
    If the Subcontract is under a Job that is Finalised or the Job is Closed for Posting it will be ignored as well.

    The utility has a few parameters that must be set:

    • The email address of the employee who will receive the email reminders, mandatory

    • a cc email address,

    • an email address where to send a notification if there was an error sending the email reminders, mandatory

    • and most importantly a number of days before the Insurance expiry (Due Days) to send a reminder that the Insurance will soon expire. Example: 20 days before expiring.

...

  • The schedule must be scheduled daily, as it compares today's date with the expiry date.

  • Sends reminders by email to an employee for Subcontractors' Insurance soon to expire.

  • Sends reminders by email to an employee for Subcontractors' Insurance that expires on the day.

  • It does not send emails directly to the Subcontractors.

  • The email subject & body are designed so it can be forwarded to the subcontractor contact if appropriate, without having to edit it.

  • The same Insurance will be included in one email when the expiry date falls within on the Due Days period defined by the user and again on the day the Insurance has expired.

    • Example: Due Days = 10 20

      • The first email will be sent 10 20 days before the Expiry Date.

      • The second email will be sent the day the Insurance expires.

  • The email body will include as many details as possible, in case the Admin person wants to verify if this is an appropriate email to send to the Subcontractor (for example: when did we use it last, does it have any active Subcontracts?).

    • It will include the subcontract code - description, the subcontractor contact name and email if there is one in the Subcontract, the Job the subcontract is linked to,

    • The Commercial Contact name and email

    • The Site Contact name and email.

...

Info

What is the Utility Scheduler?

It provides a mechanism to schedule the execution of specific tasks/utilities that have been registered as utility procedures and that have been flagged as a procedure that can be scheduled.

These tasks can be repetitive manual tasks that take too much time and could be automated and streamlined with a schedule.

More details here…

image-20241203-212543.png

...

Feature Revisions

Jobs

  • Setting "Output Quantity Decimal Places" now applied on Job Enquiry --> Outputs
    The Quantity field in the Outputs tab of Job Enquiry now uses the "Output Quantity Decimal Places" setting to display the right value.

Job Budget

  • Budget Cost and Quantity can now support 2 decimal places or 4 decimal places:
    There is a new control parameter to define how many decimal places budget lines should support on the Quantity and Unit Cost columns.
    By default, ‘Budget Quantity and Rate Precision’ new control parameter is set to 2, and it can be changed to 4.
    This addresses a particular scenario where BOM items are used and the value includes cents: in some cases, the sum of all the BOM lines in a Budget did not match the BOM value in the Bom List itself, due to rounding issues.

    image-20241124-215843.png

Daysheets & Dockets

  • Purchase Activity on Stock issues:
    The system now allows the use of Purchase activities on the Stock tab on a Daysheet.

Stock

  • Significant performance improvement on saving a new Stock Item and on saving Extension columns data on a Stock item. Saving of a new Stock item reduced to a second approximately.

Timesheets

  • New grid management for Admin Timesheets Entry:
    A new grid called Timesheet Admin Entry has been created to control the "Admin Timesheet Entry" screen. It has been separated from the grid shared with "Timesheet Administration", “Timesheet Approval” screens.
    The new grid will copy the existing shared grid to avoid disruption and unexpected changes on the screen.

Plant

  • Significant performance improvement viewing Plant details

    • Plant Item Maintenance loads much faster than before.

    • For certain Combo type Extension Columns, there is now an option to set it as a standard picker. For example, when using an Extension Column to select a Plant Group, the field can now be set on Extension columns as a Plant Group Picker. This provides a much faster experience when opening a Plant Item.
      These pickers replace the previous method which used a SQL query to populate the options for selection. New pickers are:

      • Plant Class

      • Plant Group

      • Pricing Group

      • Plant Location

      • Currency

      • Company

...

Standard Plant Extension Column Name

SQL query used before pickers

Generic Picker to Replace SQL Query

Driver

SELECT PersonID, Surname + ', ' + FirstName + left(' (Inactive)', Inactive * -11) AS PersonName FROM People WHERE IsEmployee = -1 or PlantUser = -1 ORDER BY Surname, FirstName

fnPickEmployees

LeaseCurrency
PurchaseCurrency

Select CurrencyCode, CurrencyCode from Currencies order by Currencies.CurrencyCode

fnPickCurrencies

 

Location

SELECT LocationCode, Description FROM PlantLocation WHERE Inactive = 0 ORDER BY LocationCode

fnPickLocations

PlantClassCode

SELECT PlantClassCode, PlantClassDesc FROM PlantClasses ORDER BY PlantClassCode

fnPickPlantClasses

 

PlantGroupID

SELECT PlantGroupID, GroupCode + ' - ' + Description FROM PlantGroups where PriceGroup = 0 ORDER BY GroupCode

fnPickPlantGroups(0)

PlantPricingGroupID

SELECT PlantGroupID, GroupCode FROM PlantGroups where PriceGroup <> 0 ORDER BY GroupCode

fnPickPlantGroups(1)

Companies

SELECT CompanyID,CompanyName FROM Companies WHERE Companies.Supplier = -1 AND Companies.Active = -1 ORDER BY CompanyName

fnPickCompanies

Resource Scheduler

  • Job & People Scheduler - can edit Job and Person:

    image-20241203-014527.png

    On Job and People Scheduler you can now edit and change an event to assign it to a different job, or possibly a specific subjob, and also change the person it is assigned to. Save with the Confirm button, and the event will reallocate.

System Setup

  • Price Codes now support Plant Group and Plant Class on the Plant tab:
    See Quotes enhancements for more details.

    image-20241202-044951.png

Administration

  • Advanced Timesheet licence:
    Users with an Advanced Timesheets licence can now access the mobile Plant datasheets screen:

    image-20241201-224907.png


...

Fixes & Technical changes

Expand
titledetails

Fixes:

Daysheets
Search Daysheets by Job lines:
The Job Line search has been fixed so it looks not only at the header Job on the Daysheet header but also any jobs used on the Daysheet lines.

Job Budget

  • workflow approvals:
    At the reviewing step, when the reviewer was trying to select an Account Manager from the list of Approvers to assign, some were missing. This only happened when navigating into the Budget from My Approvals. This has been fixed.

  • Budget creation from Quotes:
    In some specific cases, the budgets created from a quote were not exactly the same as the quote (when Sell rate was edited on the Costsheet line or the Costsheet Revenue line was 'Inherit Sell'). This has been fixed.

Subcontracts
Work Orders with mandatory Extension Columns:
Work Orders with mandatory extension columns now fail to save if the Ext column is left blank, regardless of the section being collapsed or expanded.

Workflows - Reassign option:
When using the Reassign option where a Named user was set in the workflow, in some cases the system wouldn’t find the correct review/approval limit. This has been fixed.

Users:
Fixed an error when searching users by Payroll Name.

Leave Management
My Leave requests were not displaying the From Date properly in the list. Fixed.

...

Upvise

  • Upvise backdated sync:
    Changes have been made to ensure the Upvise backdated sync does not run outside of its scheduled time.

...

Things we are busy working on...

🗓️ Contract Claims: record claimed and certified values on each Claim (similar to how it is done in Subcontract Claims). New approval process on Contract Claims to resemble the certification process. This is in Beta stage, and is being tried by early adopter clients. Check out details here

...