News and Blog
July 2007

New Release of Escape Online
Dateline: Roseville - July 2007

We have just released major functionality and speed improvements for Escape Online. With three live customers, two county-wide implementations and several district implementations in the works, this was quite a feat.

The most noteworthy features include:

  • No Speed Limits! - New client-side technology has provided amazing performance increases.
  • Requisition Year End Closing - This new activity puts all requisitions on a spreadsheet list that you can edit, making carrying over, closing out and creating payables very easy!
  • Adjusting Payroll - Faster. Every payroll requires adjustments. We understand this and have been searching for ways to improve the speed of displaying the form. We think we are off to a good start.
  • Manual Payrolls - Need to cancel and reissue, create a manual payroll, reprocess pay? These actions and more

Business Analysis>
Dateline: Roseville - July 2007 - Barry Collins

Last month, I introduced Project Office and discussed how Escape Customer Care is taking the next step in creating a better organization: one that provides you with the best support in the industry.

One of our main focuses right now is the implementation of Escape Online. Currently, we have a few districts in Ventura and Alameda counties live with the rest of the districts scheduled to go live at later dates. Placer County is live on HR, and we have their payroll and finance conversions upcoming. Citrus College and Pasadena City College are both live on departmental systems.

We have a great start, but there is a long way to go before all of our customers can be converted. And, in the process, we found that converting system data is far more time consuming than we imagined.

We are past the hard part of the learning curve, but there is much work to be done: like the rest of the county projects, Sacramento Unified School District, and many others.

What we need is to bring an individual in house that has expertise in database architecture and business systems analysis, so we can accomplish this amount of activity and continue to support our customers in the fashion to which they have become accustomed.

Jennifer Kenney

Let me introduce our latest hire: Jennifer Kenney. She comes to us with years of experience in database design and business systems analysis. She will be working with our other ECC team members, playing the lead role in data conversions.

She has over 12 years experience with databases and data warehouses to support customer management and billing software for the cable and communications industry. Her repertoire includes numerous SQL DB’s, a variety of analysis and reporting tools, as well as data integrity diagnostics. She has already jumped into our customer conversions as well as an exciting new project we plan to discuss with customers in the next few months.

Jennifer’s title is Business Analyst.

Business Analysis

Business Analysis covers a lot of territory. We plan to leverage Jennifer’s background in two ways. First, as a database and conversion expert, she’ll be instrumental in making our customer conversions easier and less time consuming. Second, with her Business Intelligence background, we have numerous plans to enable our customers to better utilize the vast amount of data in our systems.

There is a lot of information out there for the taking, which can enable people to make better and more informed decisions. This is not an area that school business systems have focused on, but you can count on us to lead the way.

Welcome!

We are very excited about Jennifer helping us to improve customer support and Escape Online. Please join us in welcoming Jennifer Kenney to the Escape Family.

Budget Enhancement
Dateline: Roseville - July 2007 - Leslie Bailey

Escape’s budgeting environment has always been a powerhouse, especially with automated position control for salaries and benefits. But now we are making it even stronger by developing several enhancements that we know our users are really going to like.

Mass Changes

Currently when mass changes are made (like adding two percent to all the accounts with a particular resource), the budget management activity makes the changes as you requested. There is a “change record” that shows the change that was requested, along with how many accounts were affected. But when you are looking at any individual account, you don’t have any idea how that exact amount was derived, what the value was originally, what calculations performed, etc.

Now all mass changes will create new account item entries, with a “change level.” That means the prior values are no longer lost, and can be viewed on screen. If you want to look at the history behind any changes to any given account, it will be simple to do. You will be able to follow the “chain of changes” that resulted in the account budget amount you are currently reviewing.

And you will also be able to “roll back” any given mass change.

Manual Changes Tracked Too

In the past, as users made manual changes to individual account budgets, we only recorded who the last person was to change it, and as was the case with mass changes, we wouldn’t know what the previous value had been. Now each manual change will create a new “change level” account item record, thus all changes – manual or mass – are preserved and can be researched.

We will also be creating a Model Management level change record for each user that does manual changes, by day. So the budget managers can see exactly who has manually changed model items, and what the changes are. Any changes made by a user (for a given day) can be rolled back if desired.

Versioning

It will now be possible to create a “version” of the budget, which basically “snapshots” all the account amounts at that time. Using reports, a user can compare several versions of the same model. And, you can roll back changes to a given model. In the past, if someone wanted to perform “what if” experiments with a model, they would often create a copy, so that they don’t hurt the “real one.” Now you will be able create a version, then do anything you want, and roll back to previous versions if you want to.

Because we are supporting the ability to save changes at the account level and the budget level, versioning can be a bit tricky to explain. To help, we created an example of versioning at the budget level.

Version A

Your district’s budget is originally created by the district office. After next year’s salary schedules and other setup records are created, next year’s salary, benefit and vacancy figures are loaded into the model. Other types of accounts might be loaded with last year’s figures, with mass and manual changes taking place. This takes quite a bit of time and is very important, so you save it as Version A.

Notice in the graphic that some accounts have more changes than others. This is perfectly realistic. But what if you had to undo the changes for the entire budget? It would be extremely time-consuming to research each account and undo changes.

This is why we created versioning at the budget level. With versioning, you can undo the changes made, and return the budget to any saved version. In our example, Version A is the amount and information in ALL accounts at that time. It doesn’t matter how many times each account has been changed. The version is date-based. It is a “snapshot” of the budget accounts at that date and time. So if you wanted to undo all of the changes made since you saved Version A, it would be just a matter of selecting an option from a Task menu.

Version B

Now your budget is ready for the principals to input their figures. They make the changes at the account level and then let you know when they are done.

This step takes a lot of coordination and involves dozens of people, so you save it as Version B. This means that if there is a major change to the budget (mandated by the State or for some other reason), you can “rollback” to either Version A or B and move forward. Or, you could create another budget model (or scenario) based on Version A or B. Your options on how to proceed without losing prior work are at your fingertips.

Version C

You make more changes before presenting your budget to the board. This is a major milestone. You save this budget as Version C. If the board approves, you can simply adopt the budget. If more changes are required, no problem you have Version C saved for historical purposes, documenting what you originally presented to the board.

And, this is where our example ends, but you wouldn’t have to stop there. You can save as many versions as you like in as many budget models as you like.

When Can I Try It?

These excellent enhancements will make budgeting easier to control and manage. Look for this functionality to be available in the next few months.

County Office Training
Dateline: Roseville - July 2007 - Terri Hammond

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of conducting a training at the Alameda County Office of Education in their board room. Over 20 people attended the full day session.

In the morning, we discussed the features and functions of Escape Online purchasing. In the afternoon, we had hands-on training in one of their labs. Check it out!

The hands-on exercises included adding a vendor, creating requisitions, processing purchase orders, creating fixed assets (both manually and automatically through requisition processing), and running reports.

It was very fun for me and everyone else. In fact, I stayed an extra 45 minutes so that users could continue to "play" in the system.

The training was in preparation for the county office to go live later this year. We have more trainings scheduled over the next few months and I am looking forward to being a part of them.

Implementing a Project Office
Dateline: Roseville - July 2007 - Barry Collins

In our effort to develop a better support organization, we spoke with our customers, researched business trends, and reviewed our previous and ongoing projects to learn from them and improve our processes.

In the process, we met Ramona Marshall. She is a career project management professional. After a few conversations, we all felt that Ramona could really make a difference at Escape. We were looking for someone to reorganize our implementation process, taking advantage of proven business tools, like Project Office. Ramona, in turn, was looking for a smaller corporate environment where she could play a true leadership role.

Project Office

Project office is a centralized business management strategy. It facilitates the organization's ability to manage its entire collection of projects as one or more interrelated portfolios and serves as a single source of information on project activity across the enterprise.

The project office does not run projects, rather, it enables project teams to function more effectively. The strategy does this in a number of ways: providing administrative support, establishing methods and procedures, maintaining standards, offering consulting and mentoring services, and helping in training efforts.

Ramona Marshall

Ramona has worked for large multinational corporations, rising to be the manager of project management teams. During the month of May, we invited her to work with Escape's top management to develop a project office strategy that would deliver our product implementations on time, within budget, and with expected results.

She dug right in, and fit right in. She worked with our project managers: Carole, Kathy and Gayle. She spoke with developers, management and support. She created templates and project plans that were customized to Escape practices and standards.

Everyone was so thrilled with the results, we asked her to join our team, permanently, as the Director of Project Office.

Beginning September 10, Ramona will be responsible for all of our project resources, coordinating our project managers and project management teams.

Welcome!

We are very excited about this new strategy. Please join us in welcoming Ramona Marshall to the Escape Family.