Release Notes 16.05

NEW FEATURES

  • Billing:

    • In the Billing tab of the Project there is a method to show all “uncosted” Jobs. This displays a list of the Jobs that have not got to the billing stage. There is now a new button to “bring these jobs up-to-date” and this will effectively cost all the jobs in the past on this list. This will actualise the jobs (using the booked time) and cost them up for you. And finally change the Job status to Costed. Hold on. I’m not sure that by reading this you have really figured out what this means. It means that you no longer have to open each Job, click Re-Cost, and then change the Status to Costed. You can just open the Project and say “Hey – make all those Jobs in the past Costed”. Which is quite frankly, ground-breaking. You’re very welcome. [6770]

    • We have added a new button that allows for the creation of a single negative CREDIT interim row. This can be used to create partial credits for INTERIMS. This means that if you want to raise a credit note for an Interim – you can. You no longer have to reverse out the entire Invoice and create a new one. [6871]

  • Dashboard:

    • Added a new home page to the Dashboard for Producers. They now get to see a button to add new projects, a list of their currently active Projects, and any Jobs for their Projects in the prior or upcoming 7 days. [6500]

  • DMG:

    • Added a feature to import services from Quote sections into DMG Instructions – see ‘Import Quote Section’ menu option. This makes creating DMG jobs much simpler, where the services have been previously quoted for. Prior to this update, the quotes services would need to be manually added one-by-one to the job. [5521]

  • Projects:

    • Added ability to display, load and save custom fields, as per Quote screen. – Requires new settings.json setting – “custom_fields_project”. This is exactly the same in operation as the existing “custom_fields_quote” setting. [6637]

    • Added log of the date that project is first Confirmed. This may be useful for custom reporting, where the date projects are *first* Confirmed is important. Note that as Projects may be reverted, and re-Confirmed, there could be a big difference between the ‘first confirmed’ date and the ‘confirmed date’ (which is the latest). – See datedata table. datedata.sourceID = projectID, datedata.sourcetype = ‘project’, datedata.operationnotes = ‘Project first Confirmed’ [6428]

    • Added option for project #’s generated to mirror projectID. The projectID is a unique MySQL ID, so using this as the Project # will avoid the potential issue of duplicate identical Project #’s, which can be caused by database replication problems at multi-server installs.- Requires new settings.json setting – “project_number_generation_method”. Possible values = “allocation” (default) or “projectID” (enables new feature). [6711]

    • Added ‘Margins by Quote’ tab, which is essentially the same as ‘Margins’ with the added ability to filter by quote. [6004]

  • Milestones:

    • Adding a new Project will automatically add a Milestone for the full duration of the Project. Milestones allow you to see a schedule of bigger, longer term events within the software – by Producer. For more information click here. [6399]

  • Quotes:

    • Added the ability to create a team for a specific quote, via a new option in the quote menu. Team members added here will automatically be added to the Team tab on a Project. [3070]

Changes

  • Admin

    • Improved and redesigned the view editor to make it a little bit more user friendly [6828]

  • Artist iCal Subscription

    • Added the ability to hide ‘shifts’ from the subscription URL that artists use to see their jobs in a calendar. If you have no idea what this is – iCFM provides a method that allows Artists to view their CETA Jobs and holiday via an iCal subscription. They can set this up on their phones or other calendaring application. [6905]

  • Company and Contact

    • Added the ability to specify custom mandatory fields on the Contact page. If you need to make sure you get a Fax number for every contact – now you can do that. [5287]

  • Contacts

    • Revamped the resources and contacts link to make more of a connection. Resources that are people, i.e. artists, freelancers, etc are now related to a certain contact. This gives us more control over actioning what to do with resource styled events [5488]

  • Day Schedule

    • Added Equipment (resource category) items to output of days work scheduled by suite, along with People/Staff. [5536]

  • Despatch

    • We’ve improved the way costs are calculated on a despatch note. More info. [1806]

  • DMG

    • We deprecated a setting so that ALL lines on a DMG job will now be costed unless their QTY is zero. [6630]

    • When adding a new DMG line, it comes complete with blank INPUT and OUTPUT fields ready for user input (saving a couple of clicks each time!) [6888]

  • Jobs

    • It is no longer possible to apply actual times to a Job which has a start date later than the current date (only when using start and end time-based actuals). [3610]

  • Projects

    • Added the ability to set mandatory fields as “soft” – this means you will be warned that they should be filled in, but it won’t stop you saving it. [6024]

    • Added new column to the Margins and Bid vs Actual Project tabs to show the number of No Charged units. Requires new setting in order to appear. $SHOW_NO_CHARGED_UNITS_COLUMN_ON_SERVICE_MARGINS [5553]

    • Milestone dates will be updated whenever changes to a Project’s dates are made. [6399]

  • Purchase Orders

    • Added a date range for delivery date in the Purchase Order search. [5189]

    • Added a feature to allow the system to create a PO job immediately when a PO is saved. Historically a job was created at the point of the PO being authorised [5966]

  • Quotes

    • You can no longer confirm a Quote if it has ratecard items on it that are marked as HIDDEN [6697]

    • When setting a line item on a Bid to be non-discountable, the rate for that item is no longer reset to the ratecard value. [6250]

    • Added additional text for some risk assessment emails (eg. if custom fields are used on the bid page, we can now allow them to be included in the risk assessment subject) [6308]

    • You can now press the ENTER key on the quote discount box to apply a new quote discount, rather than use the mouse to click the icon [6250]

  • Ratecard

    • We have stopped users from being able to change the service code or the unit type of a ratecard item once its been used on a job or costing [6667]

    • We have stopped users from creating a duplicate service code, even if the other has been marked as DELETED. All service codes MUST be unique. [6693]

  • Reporting

    • Added columns showing production company and director (as well as M+ if relevant) to ‘Mels Report’ [6277]

Bug Fixes

  • Admin

    • Fixed the caption in Combo Box Options when adding new resource categories and sub-categories. [6422]

  • All

    • Fixed some issues created by a Firefox update that messed with the z-order of objects on the page, meaning items that should be at the front were displayed at the back – and vice-versa. [6466], [6425], [6331], [6741]

  • Billing

    • Fixed an issue where an accounts transaction opened from the Find menu item would not display correctly. [6539]

  • DMG

    • Fixed a bug which played the “new dmg job” alert sound when you first opened the DMG control – it no longer does this [6405]

  • General

    • Fixed and removed many PHP errors and warnings which were adding numerous entries to log files. [6406]

  • Invoicing

    • Fixed a loophole which meant a user could create an external invoice in a different depot to the project [6687]

  • Message Queue

    • Fixed a problem with the event queue which meant that Job ID might be inserted in to the notes field of the JSON packet. [5916]

  • Projects

    • Fixed a bug which meant the financial ribbon A (on the project screen) would show you costs rather than revenue [n/a]

    • Clicking the refresh button in Bid vs Actual would reload the full Margins page. This now refreshes correctly. [6398]

  • Purchase Orders

    • Purchase orders created in a non-project currency now always convert to the Project currency for reporting and billing purposes. This does not affect how the order prints or looks on screen. [6727]

    • Fixed a loophole that meant users could assign a PO to a jobID belonging to a completely different project [6753]

  • Quotes

    • Fixed a small cosmetic issue where the discount would appear to be incorrect after a quote discount was applied [6250]

  • Reporting

    • The drop down list of Our Contacts in Management Reports would sometimes not populate correctly. [6367]

    • Fixed a bug which stopped the Suite Utilisation report from being exported [6966]

  • Resources

    • Fixed issue where setting the tier on a staff resource would result in the staff cost rate being zeroed if the resource did not have a ratecard set. [6340]

  • Schedule

    • Fixed an issue where splitting a job would not pick up the latest rates for Staff Costs [6319]

    • Fixed an issue where splitting a job might not calculate the duration correctly. [6429]

    • Fixed a bug which meant you could change the booked hours of a job from within the job screen and no conflicts would be displayed [6710]

Robert Salmeron