Workbench Release Notes
Sharperlight release
Upcoming Functionality & News
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Price Codes now support Plant Group and Plant Class on the Plant tab:
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 specified.
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.
Important things to remember:
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 the Due Days period defined by the user and again on the day the Insurance has expired.
Example: Due Days = 10
The first email will be sent 10 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.
Utility Parameters
The parameters must be defined and the body text can be tweaked if preferred. If you have multiple Financial Companies, the signature at the bottom of the email includes the Financial Company name. This can also be removed if preferred.
@@To= , mandatory
@@CC=,
@@ErrorToEmail=, mandatory
@@Subject=Notification of Insurance expiry $InsuranceName $InsuranceCertificateNo expires $InsuranceExpiryDate, This text can be changed if prefered
@@Body=<p></p><p>It looks like your insurance is due to expire:</p><p>$InsuranceDetails</p><p>Kindly attend to this.</p><p>Thanks</p><p>$FinCoDesc</p>, This text can be changed if preferred. If you don’t want the Financial company name included remove this part: </p><p>$FinCoDesc</p>
@@DueInDays=20 Number of days to be notified before the insurance expires
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.
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.
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.
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 columns are automatically migrated to use these Pickers.
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 | 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:
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 Cofirm 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.
Administration
Advanced Timesheet licence:
Users with an Advanced Timesheets licence can now access the mobile Plant datasheets screen:
Fixes & Technical changes
Integrations
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 some clients.
🔎 Custom Views on List screens, and exploring the ability to add extension columns to these views. This will expand your reporting ability on the List screens.
Audit for configuration changes.
⌛ Month End Process: controlled and easy to follow.
📈 Analysis graphs on Sales Invoices.
🔨 Interval- Based Equipment Maintenance in Upvise (e.g. 250-hour increments- 250, 500, 750, 1000 repeat)