Release Notes 16.02

Welcome to the release notes for the first 2016 release of iCFM!

There are quite a few new features, including lots that should really improve the responsiveness of the application – as well as some important new additions like “Milestones”. Please see the detailed notes below for more information. If you have any questions about a specific feature or change, please contact us and mention the number in square brackets after the comment.

New Features

  • Gekko:

    • We have moved the reporting engine out of iCFM and in to its own application. This means we no longer have to wait for reporting data to be built with each process – making the user experience a lot, lot faster! This affects almost every part of the software, so your users will definitely notice this one. Read more. [5729]

  • Milestones:

    • Added the ability to create Milestones against a Project. These are phases or tasks – with a Producer, Start and End times and Status that live within a single Project. This allows Producers to mock up a basic schedule of their plan for a Project. Read More. [6032]

    • Added the ability to view Milestones as a Schedule. A new view should be created that includes the word “Milestones” – which contains the Producers who will have Milestones assigned to them. [6032]

  • Projects:

    • Rebuilt the Project tab system – using a new format that will eventually allow our customers to build their own menu systems. Read More. [6271]

    • Added an iCal subscription URL for Producers to see their Projects by start / end dates in the calendar app of their choice. [5903]

  • Contacts:

    • Added a script that can run through the iCFM data and clear up and merge duplicate contacts. [5953]

  • Leads:

    • The Leads information page has changed. It now has more information available to the user without having to open additional tabs. You can now see the history of any Contact you select, and the Comments are much more dynamic. [5214]

    • It is now possible to add custom lists and data to a Lead. Ask us for more information. [5214]

    • Added the ability to insert Budgets and Regions. [5552]

  • Media / Shipping:

    • Added a new feature where the scheduled Artist / Operator can be automatically set as the Allocated To person on a DMG Job. [5970]

    • Added the ability to add a custom tab with custom fields / controls to the Library page. [6241]

  • Products:

    • Added the ability to add a custom tab to the Product page, on to which you can add custom form fields and tables. [5519]

  • Quotes:

    • When saving a quote, if the Project it is attached to has been awarded a new Project Number, the Quote will refresh with the new Project Number. [5786]

    • Added the ability to specify a custom Risk Assessment pop-up – which can be shown before a user is allowed to Confirm a Quote. Please note: This requires some development if you wish to make use of this. [4898]

Changes

  • Companies and Contacts:

    • Changes to a Company name will now propagate to linked records. [6080]

    • Added Email Address and Job Title back on to the Contact list. [6133]

  • Leads:

    • Project Type is now a mandatory field. [5522]

    • Check-box selections in Leads Search are remembered for each user. [5522]

    • Added ability to create a new Lead from within the Company page. A new menu item is now available. [5998]

  • Quotes:

    • Changed the way that quote detail lines are redrawn after an edit or insert. We no longer refresh the entire page every time which results in a much faster editing experience. This also fixes an issue where the quote might ‘jump’ in the scroll bar after an edit. [6124]

  • Billing:

    • Changed the way that allocation works so as to prevent any changes to Invoices or prepared/exported Accounts Transactions what-so-ever. [6127]

    • It is no longer possible to revert the status of a Costed Job if there are billing lines allocated to an Invoice. [6196]

  • Holidays and Shifts:

    • Added back in the created date and user – to the list of existing holiday and shift records. [5838]

    • Clicking on a Holiday or Shift in the Schedule now automatically Checks the appropriate item in the list when the holiday page pops up. [5895]

    • Changing the description of a Holiday in the Combo Box Options page will now propagate changes to existing holiday records. [5961]

  • Projects:

    • When returning to the Project page, we now do a quick check to make sure that the Project number has not changed and update it if it has. [5741]

    • Added a column for “No Charged Units” to the Margins and Bid vs Actual pages on a Project. Note. Requires enabling by CETA if you wish to use this. [5553]

  • Ratecard:

    • It is no longer possible to add a ratecard service that contains an apostrophe. Many methods of exporting / importing ratecard data to other systems complained about it, so we have simply removed the ability to include them. [5686]

    • The ratecard editor now allows you to edit almost all fields without using the pop-up. You can edit all descriptions, GL codes, prices and costs in-line. This should make updating your rates a much smaller task. [4647]

  • Reporting:

    • Improved the SQL queries on the “Todays Jobs” pages – so that they require fewer system resources.

    • The “Bad Boys” list now shows all Producers, no matter how the /Producer code was added to their resource’s categorycode. [6164]

  • Resource List:

    • The boxes for Department, Category, Subcategory and Subcategory 2 are now drop-down boxes to help keep data tidy. Free-typing is no longer allowed. [5951] [5990]

  • Schedule:

    • Using the Lasso to edit the Project / Product will now always display an error message if it fails. Previously it would sometimes fail with no obvious reason as to why. [5973]

    • Cancelling rows from within the Copy To Another Date tool would previously open the cancelled Job. This seemed pointless and annoying so we no longer do it. [6166]

  • Security:

    • When attempting to reset your iCFM password, you will now be emailed and prompted to reset it from a link within that email. Previously it was possible for a malicious user to reset someone else’s password to something random if they knew their email. The malicious user would not be able to see or use the new password, as it would still only be emailed to the real users address – but it could still be annoying for the real user to then have to reset things. [5540]

    • Adding a user now forces a strong password, if not using Active Directory. [6210]

  • System:

    • Changed the way that the “Find” tool works in the main menu. Now all find methods work in the same way. If the resulting item can not be found, you will be told about it via an alert – rather than a blank page opening. [5829]

Bug Fixes

  • Leads

    • Fixed an issue that would sometimes hide the list of Leads on the Dashboard if the status of one was changed from within that table. [6007]

  • Quotes:

    • The modified date in the header no longer defaults to UTC. [4820]

    • Fixed an issue where the “Extras %” might be calculated incorrectly in the Quote header. [5840]

    • When applying markup to a Bid, it would refresh the whole page and forget the “Summarise” checkbox’s value. This is no longer the case. [5930]

    • Fixed problem where text colour of Bid section comments would be white on a white background – and hence not visible. [6063]

  • Reporting:

    • Gekko Trend data now only includes revenue from Confirmed Quotes. Previously it was also including revenue from New Quotes. [5155]

    • Fixed a problem in the “Quotes By Created Date” report which was actually searching by the quote’s end-date which meant unexpected results. [5392]

    • Fixed issue with some custom reports that might make holiday appear incorrectly. We now check the $HOLIDAY_HOURS_IN_DAY setting to make sure we calculate things correctly. [5730]

    • Fixed an issue with Gekko where rows may not have been correctly deleted when their source record was updated. This made reporting incorrect until Gekko data was rebuilt manually. [5807]

    • Added a check to prevent Gekko data being created twice for no good reason, which was taking up extra CPU cycles. [5807]

    • Fixed an issue where the “Absense Report” was using the artist’s name, rather than ID. This meant there could be confusion when there were two more more artists with identical names as information from both would be shown. [5839]

    • Fixed issue that would incorrectly convert the value of items added to the Media tab of a Job. We now assume that the currency of any item is that of the Media item’s Depot. [5579]

  • Media:

    • Fixed some problems with the page load – which was stopping QAR from loading correctly.

  • DMG Control:

    • Fixed issue in the Job List that would cause a never-ending ‘Please wait…’ message to appear. [5904]

  • Jobs:

    • Fixed an issue where the Job’s tab would not refresh when returning to the Job from another page. [5854]

    • Fixed an issue with the Actual Times tab which would prevent artist / editor names displaying crrectly if they contained an apostrophe. [5870]

    • Fixed another issue in Actual Times where the ‘Set to current time’ button would not work if the time was less than 10 minutes past the hour. [5870]

  • Products:

    • Fixed an issue that prevented the table formatting from loading correctly, on the list of Projects associated with a Product – on the Product page. [5921]

  • Schedule:

    • You can no longer apply changes from the Lasso unless there are actually some selected Jobs. [5732]

    • Stretching and sliding a Job would sometimes not update the Modified By user. Now it does. [5796]

    • If a Resource was set up to use the Include Resources feature, it would sometimes not include them correctly. Now they are always booked and always in the correct sequence. [5161]

    • Fixed an issue where Gekko data was unnecessarily rebuilt for Jobs, even if the Job did not change – when using the Lasso tool.

    • Splitting off the first day of a scheduled Job would sometimes reset the prices to ratecard. Now the rates are retained from the original Job. [5853]

    • Reinstated the tooltip that used to appear when you hovered over a Shift in the schedule. [5863]

    • Fixed a problem with the “Split Job in to Weeks” feature which would sometimes add an unwanted additional day for the first Friday in the date range. [5896]

    • Fixed problem that caused no Jobs to appear if the Dynamic Search was used on the schedule and a Product name containing an apostrophe was included in the search. [5892]

    • Resolved an issue where if the user was viewing two months or more, it would sometimes prevent them from sliding a Job to the first day visible. [5401]

    • Fixed an issue which would sometimes create two bookings for the first date when using the Copy To Another Date (repeat) booking tool. [6166]

  • Ratecard:

    • Fixed an issue where the staff cost fields would not load/save correctly for some ratecard columns. [5872]

  • Billing:

    • Fixed an issue where a reversal might have VAT added to it, even if it was created for a location that did not use VAT. [5762]

    • Fixed a bug in the “Uncosted” items list – which was sometimes incorrectly reporting the number of items outstanding. [5818]

    • Fixed an issue where the “Runner Fee” might not be added to Misc Costs, even if it had been configured to do so. [5840]

    • Found and fixed a problem that would prevent a Job with more than one DMG service from advancing to Costed status. [5884]

  • Purchase Orders:

    • Fixed an issue which would sometimes prevent a user from cancelling a Purchase Order. [6038]

  • System:

    • We now trim any white-space from the start and end of all entries being saved. This should result in fewer issues with company and contact names mis-matching due to invisible characters. [5914]

    • Changed all display pages to encode in UTF-8 in preparation for full compliance with foreign characters. [4673]

    • Changed all calls to our database to prefer UTF-8 encoding. [4673]

    • Fixed lots of PHP warnings as part of a concerted clean up. We will be doing much more of this in an effort to keep the log sizes down on your servers. [6042]

Robert Salmeron