News and Blog
August 2007
More Little Things that Are Really Big Things
Dateline: Roseville - August 2007 - Gayle Lucas
In my last blog, I showed you the new way that we are displaying the vendor address in the vendor requisition.
This time, I am going to show you the new, easy way to enter vendor addresses in the vendor record itself.
The issue is that many vendors have multiple lines in their address (and names!). Previously, Escape Online was simply breaking the lines at 30 characters. So, you either had to just let it break or start using your spacebar to get the right format.
Too much work! So we made it automatic!
Now, if you want to "break" to a new line, you just enter two slashes (//) or use the notepad editor and use your Enter key.
See how the field presents two slashes, but the notepad editor shows the formatting as you would normally type it.
You can enter as many lines as you need (but not more than your PO form can handle). As you can see below the PO automatically adjusts for the extra lines.
Citrus Community College and Pasadena City College were the first customers to request this enhancement. Their implementations were very close together and so are their locations, so we often find that they are looking for the same changes.
In fact, they have been contacting each other directly, learning from each other. It is great to see our customers working together!
Superior Support
Dateline: Roseville - August 2007 - Barry Collings
Over the last few weeks, I have been slowly introducing you to the new staff members of Escape Customer Care. Today it is my privilege to introduce our newest support representatives: Julie Dippold and Elen Meltonyan.
Julie joined us earlier this year and has been making amazing progress. With her excellent work ethic and college background, Julie has learned Escape Online and already held trainings for customers.
Elen came on board at the beginning of the summer. She has extensive finance and hr/payroll experience from the private sector. She has quickly translated that to school business.
Their responsibilities will include helping the customers with all questions about Escape Online. Seeing that they are new representatives, if they need help giving the customer a solution, all of Escape Customer Care is at their disposal: Robin, Gayle, Terri, Carole, Jennifer and Kathy.
I think customers will be pleased with the care and support they receive from these two bright women. This "leveling" of support will also allow us to better serve all of our customers, quickly answering the simple questions and escalating those that need more expertise.
Please join me in welcoming Julie and Elen to the Escape Family!
It's the Little Things in Life!
Dateline: Roseville - August 2007 - Gayle Lucas
With Escape Online, we have a huge system, which takes on enormous challenges. But we don't want to lose focus on "the little things" that can make life better for our users. So when I received a request from Pasadena City College (PCC) to simplify the vendor requisition form, I was very excited.
As an early implementer, PCC has been one of our partners in developing Escape Online. In the beginning of their implementation, they suggested that the software recognize the user's role so that Admin users (site users) would see a simpler form than Purchasing users. We implemented that request last year.
Their latest idea would affect both views. They want the vendor's address to take up less space AND have the form display the vendor's phone numbers.
So this is what it used to look like:
The old look...
And this is what it looks like now:
The NEW look...
As you can see, there are less fields, more information, and it is easier to read -- more like a mailing label than a data entry form. Keep in mind that the new "combined" fields are always read only, so there's no issue with data entry here.
Another customer, Citrus Community College, also gave us an excellent idea for entering addresses in the vendor form. I will show you that change next week.
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