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Alert Version 5, Release 2
Alert Version 5, Release 2 is now available!
Overview
Alert Version 5 Release 2 has been developed to introduce two primary changes in Alert. These are:- 1) A facility to automate the delivery of customer invoices by e-mail and 2) update the technology used by the Alert Background Manager facility.
A summary of these follows:-
E-mail Invoices
One of Alerts strengths is it’s Billing facilities. Alert is used to manage the high volume billing requirements of large organisation’s. Types of billings include both Agreed Charge and Time and Material. Organisation’s that have a high number of staff and bill largely on a Time and Material basis can result in a high number of invoices being generated by Alert.
Alert provides tools to assist with, and automate as much as possible, the process of recording and approving timesheets and generating invoices.
The Problem
The last step in the process is ‘Invoice Delivery’. Previously, organization’s either printed and posted invoices or generated invoices as PDF files and then manually created e-mails, attached the files and sent the e-mails. Both approaches are manually intensive and prone to errors.
The percentage of invoices now being delivered by e-mail is increasing and is now the preferred delivery method by most organisation’s using Alert. The process of sending invoices by e-mail to date has been a manual one as follows:-
1. Invoices are generated as electronic files in PDF format
2. An e-mail is manually created for a particular recipient of invoices. Text is added to the Subject line and Body of the e-mail.
3. One or electronic invoice files are attached to the e-mail
4. The e-mail is sent
The above process is time intensive and prone to errors. It is important that invoices are only sent to the correct authorised recipients as sensitive, confidential information is contained within the invoices.
The Objective
The business objective therefore was to automate and streamline the ‘Invoice Delivery’ process of sending invoices electronically resulting in cost savings, greater customer satisfaction and more timely delivery of invoices.
The Solution
A facility has been developed in Alert (V5r2) to automatically generate and send e-mail invoices to those customers that choose to receive invoices this way.
The facility assist the user to ensure that all invoices have been sent and that they have been sent using the customers preferred method of delivery. The ‘e-mail’ invoices facility therefore allows the user to define which invoices are to be delivered by post (hardcopy) and by e-mail (electronically).
The facility has been designed to be flexible enough to cope with the different needs of different customers and different billings. For example some billings for a customer may need to be sent to different recipients for different projects or orders.
The facility allows the user to review and change aspects of the invoice e-mails prior to e-mails being sent. This ‘confirmation’ step is extremely important due to the confidential and sensitive nature of invoices.
Scope
The scope of the solution is:-
1. The solution has been developed and contained within Alert
2. Invoices to be e-mailed are limited to those that have been generated or manually entered in Alert
3. The solution uses data that is contained within the Alert system only i.e. e-mail address are required to be within Alert and are not be read from an external source
Benefits Provided
The solution proposed in this document provides the following benefits and value to Alert users:-
- Improved Productivity
- Streamlined ‘Invoice Delivery’ process
- Automation of previous manual task
- Greater customer satisfaction through invoices being sent to the correct people in a timely manner
AlertV5r2 also includes an upgrade to the Alert Background Manager application.
The Alert Background Manager application performs a number of functions which are:-
- Messaging (generating and sending e-mails based on events that occur in Alert)
- Responsibility Assignment (automatically assigning people to requests based on set rules and events that occur in Alert))
- Escalation (automatically creating escalation events for requests that exceed service level agreements)
- Request Entry (for adding requests, that are entered using Alert web services, to the Alert database)
- Request Maintenance (for changing requests, that are changed using Alert web services, in the Alert database)
- Request Attachments (for adding or retrieving attachments for requests using Alert web services)
The driver of doing this has been to improve reliability and performance of these background functions. The previous Background Manager required the Background Manager application to be running which caused reliability issues at some customer sites. Frequently it was terminated or not re-started with computer re-boots etc.
The ‘new’ Background Manager facilities are integral to the Alert SQL Server database. As long as the Alert SQL Server database is started and running then the Alert Background Processes will also be running.
The ‘new’ Background Manager facilities have been provided to some customers who are running AlertV5r1. The ‘new’ Background Manager facilities are incorporated with AlertV5r2 so every upgrade to AlertV5r2 includes them.
It should be noted that the upgrade to AlertV5r2 does NOT automatically change the Alert installation from the ‘old’ Background Manager facilities to the ‘new’ and nor is this absolutely necessary. The customer may continue to use the ‘old’ Background Manager facilities after they have upgraded to AlertV5r2.
A transition from the ‘old’ Background Manager facilities to the ‘new’ is required to be coordinated with VBS and this may be done at any time after the upgrade to AlertV5r2.
VBS however recommend that the customer move to the ‘new’ Background Manager facilities for improved reliability and performance.
Complete enhancement details are available in the AlertV5r2 Application Notes document. Please send an e-mail to info@AlertIT.com to request a copy of this.
Alert - Version 5, Release 1
Alert Version 5, Release 1 is now available!
Overview
Alert Version 5 Release 1 is a significant release with extensive changes to the Alert user interface that have been driven by user feedback.
The user interface changes have been designed to make Alert easier to use but at the same time make information more readily available and the management of business processes more streamlined. A summary of the primary interface changes are below. As well as these interface changes there have been a number of new facilities provided and fixes for higher priority bugs.
Summary of user interface enhancements:-
Non Modal
A new capability is the ability to run a number of Alert forms and reports in Alert concurrently. For example in a single Alert session a user may have open Timesheet Entry, Request Maintenance and the Timesheet Status report.
Full Screen Usage
Alert has been enhanced so that it ‘optionally’ uses all of the available screen space at any screen resolution. Alert forms and reports were previously fixed at the resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. Users may now ‘optionally’ use all of the screen space at any screen resolution at or above 800 x 600 pixels. Much more information is displayed on screen if higher screen resolutions are used. For example 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 720 pixels etc.
Sizeable Forms
The Alert application and forms and reports may be run in either Maximised mode, where the full screen space is used, or in a “Restore Down” mode where only part of the screen space is used. Similarly within the Alert application forms and reports may use all of the screen space ‘within’ the Alert application window or may use only part of the screen space. These preferences are controlled by the user and saved by Alert. Each time a user runs the Alert application or an Alert form or report then Alert will display this at the screen size and in the screen position that the user last set it to. This means that Alert will always display the Alert application and forms and reports in the size and position that the user prefers.
Toolbars
Toolbars have been implemented in AlertV5r1. Alert now has a number of ‘Standard’ toolbars that apply to all similar forms or reports and a number ‘Custom’ toolbars that are specific to an Alert form or report.
Search Form enhancements
Alert Search forms have been enhanced to make the finding, management and display of information much easier.
Following are some of the main enhancements:-
a) Search forms as lists
Prior to AlertV5r1 it was necessary to go into a blank maintenance form and then start the Search form to retrieve records. It is now possible in AlertV5r1 to firstly start the Search form, find the appropriate record and then select that record for display in the Maintenance form. In addition it is possible to leave the Search form open when a record is selected and retain the ‘list’ of records currently displayed in the Search form. The benefit is that users may now work from lists of records such as Requests or Projects displayed in Alert.
b) Fast Querying
All search forms have been optimized to reduce the time taken to query and return records from the database to the search form.
c) Feature Rich Data Grid
The results data grid on Search forms has been replaced with a feature rich data grid control. There are a number of display preferences that may be set using this grid. These are all set and stored in Alert by user and search form. This means that when a particular user opens a particular search form then the results data grid on that search form is formatted as the user last changed and saved it.
User configurable features of this data grid are:- drag and drop column order, column width, sorting, grouping, row height, copy and paste.
Record Scrolling
A new capability in AlertV5r1 is to be able to scroll through all records that are currently displayed in a Search Form list. It is now possible, in AlertV5r1, for a Search form to remain open while a Maintenance form is also open. For example the Request Search form may be open at the same time as the Request Maintenance form. This capability has now allowed ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ scroll buttons to be added to the Request Maintenance form with the result being when pressed that Alert scrolls to the next record in the list in the Search form.
Other Alert V5 enhancements:-
Timesheet Entry Enhancements
The Timesheet entry form has benefited from a number of enhancements as follows:-
- Full screen usage – the form now expands to the full screen size (no longer limited to 800 x 600)
- Sizeable form – data grid expands as timesheet entry form size is expanded.
- Timesheet Entry is now ‘Non Modal’ allowing the form to stay open while other Alert forms are used.
- Optionally display additional information columns in the timesheet entry data grid (such as Project Title)
- Set column widths and sort sequence by user
- Allow timesheet records to be sorted in the sequence in which they were entered
- Display a count of how many Draft entries
- Optionally display timesheet record details in form footer
Alternate shading of timesheet rows - And more...
A new “Time Entry” facility has been provided in AlertV5r1. This facility allows users to select the "Time Entry" option in the menubar or press the "Time Entry" button in the toolbar and for Alert to use a 'user selected' method for recording time. The method used is determined by a new parameter on the system user record meaning that each system user may use their preferred method.
In addition to using a preferred Time Entry method Alert also now automatically appends time to an existing time record, if a matching timesheet record already exists for the employee for the week. This means that the number of individual timesheet entries may be reduced.
List Manager Enhancements
The 'Queue Manager' has been renamed 'List Manager' and has been enhanced to provide more user configurable options over how it is used. For example a feature rich data grid is now used to display records in the List Manager allowing the user to change how data is displayed and for these settings to be retained for each user.
Standard Project Plan Runs
This release of Alert includes an enhancement that streamlines the ‘recurring’ task of keeping Microsoft Project Plans up to date. Users of Alerts Project Planning facilities run regular updates to Microsoft Project Plans. Weekly updates are typically updates of Actual and Remaining Work. Other recurring updates are for Calendar and Resource changes. The enhancement in AlertV5r1 is to include ‘Standard Runs’ that may be configured for these recurring updates and to simply process these runs. Previously a new run needed to be manually created for each of these updates.
and more......
Complete enhancement details are available in the AlertV5r1 Application Notes document. Please send an e-mail to info@AlertIT.com to request a copy of this.
