Announcement
Our hard-working development team continues to deliver significant improvements to TimeSite Pro's time tracking, costing and billing solution. Our most recent build, 12 April, has focused on three crucial functions of TimeSite Pro: the Enquiry, Approve and Settings tabs. And we've laid some core foundations for two exciting new enhancements that we'll be introducing over the coming months.
The Enquiry tab is one of the most popular functions in TimeSite Pro. It's used to build quick ad hoc enquiries, management reports, and data export routines. It forms the backbone for the reporting requirements of many of our customers. We've completely redesigned this feature to improve it's functionality, layout and efficiency.
We've implemented enhancements to the Approve tab to enable you to quickly change the timesheet Approver and the Status of the timesheet and then apply these changes to multiple timesheets. We've also improved the way that the Approve tab displays a timesheet and then drills down to a specific timesheet record.
You'll find two significant enhancements to TimeSite Pro emerging in this new release. We're beginning to roll-out our Geofencing feature starting with a new tab in the Project administration panel. Secondly, we'll be progressively releasing is the ability to send notifications to our mobile app including geofence alerts. Look for future announcements on these two enhancements including enhancements to our mobile apps.
We're continuing to work through each of the Settings sub-menus to apply our new UI style to each of these screens. You'll find that these new Settings screens have a much more intuitive layout and will make the configuration of TimeSite Pro features even easier.
You'll find a complete description of these and many other enhancements in our Knowledge Base article on this new build. We'll also be updating help articles documenting these new features and improvements in more detail, and they're linked in the Announcement article. Please also keep sending us any suggestions for improvement to support@timesitepro.com.
More information about this announcement…
New Enquiry features and layout
The Enquiry tab is one of the hardest working screens in TimeSite Pro. It's used to build quick ad hoc enquiries, important management reports, and data export routines. Saved Enquiries form the backbone for the reporting requirements of many of our largest customers. So we have paid particular attention to the redesign of this screen to improve this screen's functionality, layout, and efficiency. The most important change that you'll notice is that we've separated the "report builder" from the display of the enquiry report itself. This means that when you have built the report, the entire screen is used to present the resulting report. Clicking on the "Show report builder" tab pulls down the Group and Summarise, Data fields, field and date Filters, and the Export and Save Enquiry settings. When you have finished amending the enquiry settings, you can click the Build Report button which will hide the report builder settings and display the report.
Review the Enquiry KB article for more information.
Enhancement to Approve
We've implemented enhancements to the Approve tab to enable you to quickly change the timesheet Approver and the Status of the timesheet and then apply these changes to multiple timesheets. We've also improved the way that the Approve tab displays a timesheet and then drills down to a specific timesheet record. Finally, we're continuing to work through each of the Settings sub-menus to apply our new UI style to each of these screens. You'll find that these new Settings screens have a much more intuitive layout and will make the configuration of TimeSite Pro features even easier.
Geofencing
You will find two major enhancements to TimeSite Pro emerging in this new release. Firstly, we are starting to roll-out our Geofencing feature starting with a new tab in the Project administration panel. The Project > Geofence tab will enable you to select an existing address entered in the Project (Project, Bill To or Deliver To address) or another address that you can enter into the Geofence tab. You can then specify a radius around the specified location to indicate the geofence boundary. When our mobile app detects that it has entered this geofenced location it will notify the user to enter a timesheet record. Similarly, then the mobile app detects that it has left this location, it will notify the users to complete the timesheet record.
Mobile app notifications
The second major feature that we will be progressively releasing is the ability to send notifications, including geofence alerts, to our mobile app. We are introducing a series of enhancements to the Setting > Email & Messaging screen to enable you to send your users either or both an email alert or mobile app message to remind them to complete, submit or approve timesheets. We have released a new version of our mobile app (1.3.22) that included a number of changes to our server communications to enable these notifications to be presented by our mobile app. Look for future announcements updating you on our progress with these two important enhancements to our mobile app.
Settings Redesign
We're working through each of the Settings screens to redesign their layout and style, and also to organise them in a more logical fashion. We fell into some bad habits and need to make amends!
You can see this new organisation most clearly in the way that we have redesigned System Settings. Previously, this was one long and unwieldy menu, with too many options, poorly organised. We organise System Settings into four separate screens: Personalisation, Features, Rates, and Timesheets. Each of these screens has been further organised into topic areas. Features break down into company settings, client, project, task, users, and miscellaneous.
New Knowledge Base articles are being written for each of these new Settings screens over the coming days. We're confident that you'll find that configuring TimeSite Pro has become a more enjoyable and efficient process.
UI Improvements
We've introduced many improvements to the way that our UI works and ironed out quite a few wrinkles. Some examples:
Timesheet Weekly Grid has an improved and less confusing pop-up to enter a duration and other details into each daily entry. Use the new Save button to save the details that you've entered. Delete will remove the entry from that day. Note that the row will remain and can be deleted via the trash icon at the beginning of the row.
Popup data entry screens for Client, Project and Task have been improved and will layer of the top of the previous screen rather than being embedded within the previous screen. This will eliminate many of the sizing anomalies we had previously. We have also improved the performance of these screens.
Using the Add menu to create a new Client, Project or User record will no longer send to you to the Admin screen when you have finished adding a new record. We've also improved the way that new Clients, Projects and Tasks can be added in the Timesheet screen.
Import templates have been enhanced with the ability to be able to import additional fields. We've also added a new Action option that will enable you to Update an existing record in the TimeSite Pro database. If you use data import often, we recommend that you review these new import templates.
We've made a change to the terminology used in the Invoice tab. The workflow sequence is now shown as WIP (work in progress) -> Process -> Collect. Process refers to the activities available to transform a Draft invoice created in the WIP stage, to a Final invoice that can be sent to the client and exported to your accounting package. Once the invoice processing has been completed, you can set the Invoice to Complete to remove it from the Incomplete view in the Process stage.
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