News and Blog
November 2007

W2 Processing Is Now Available
Dateline: Roseville - November 2007

It is that time of year again! And, Escape Online is ready. With version 1.07.10, released yesterday, Escape Online helps customers review, process and print W2s.

The screens are easy to use, and the tasks are self-explanatory. You can load, generate, print and close. The process is that easy for an entire county!

More Software Now!
Dateline: Roseville - November 2007 - Leslie Bailey

Last month, I introduced you to the new release process and discussed how our new Project Office strategy would help us deliver more software, more often, on time!

The new Escape Online build strategy is working great!

At the end of this month, we will be preparing a build of software that includes 86 enhancements, fixes and new features.  And, it will be delivered on time.

Next week, customers can read about all 86 updates in the release notes on our web site. In the meantime, let's take a look at some of the really exciting new features:

Introducing 1099 Processing!!

We have released a beta version of 1099 processing.  It is very similar to the W2 Processing which we released last month, with easy-to-use lists and automated processing.

Customers have been asked to take a close look at the software and provide us with feedback that we will implement with the December release.

The two main activities will be Vendor 1099s where you can view and edit individual 1099s, and 1099 processing where you can generate the file and create a PDF of all 1099s for easy printing.

Breakthrough Budgeting

We have rewritten the budget management and entry activities to complement each other and your processes!

  • Versioning - IT IS HERE!  The blog entry you read in late July is now implemented.  Now you can save versions of your budget.  This allows you to take a "snapshot" of the budget at a particular time (e.g., initial load, principal input, presented to the board).  It also allows you to perform what-if scenarios on a budget model without having to make a copy of the model.
  • All changes tracked per user/per day - As users make manual adjustments to budget lines, these changes are permanently recorded. You can now view the changes made across the entire budget by any individual, for any date range.
  • Rolling back changes - Now you can "rollback" mass changes to the model and individual changes to budget items.  Any mass change performed on the budget model creates a history record that can be rolled back.  Changes made on the budget item are "copied" to a history record that can be reapplied.
  • Sorting your budget entry list - Account components are now listed as separate columns on the budget entry list. This allows you to sort your list by individual components.
  • Loading budget transfers - Escape Online will now set the item comment as, “Budget Transfer #BR99-99999, posted mm/dd/yy,” and recognize transfers already loaded, so that if you load transfers more than one in a single day, only load new transfers will load.
  • Searching for budget entries - Now you can search for budget entries by user and date. The Modify User search allows you to find all accounts with an item that was created or edited by that user. The Modify Date search allows you to find all accounts with budget items that were created or modified on that date.
  • Reviewing job class budget entries - The job class is now displayed in the model account item's description.

Salary Schedule Mass Changes

We have added some great new features to the salary schedule setup. Now you can automatically mass change salary schedule cells (budget or actual amounts) by a percentage. There are five ways to modify the cells:

  • Copy Actuals to Budget - Copies the salary cells so you can use them in budgeting.
  • Copy Budget to Actuals - Copies the budgeting cells so you can use them for new year salaries.
  • Mass Change by Percentage - Increases/decreases the defined cells by the percentage specified.
  • Mass Change with Percentage Relationship Between Columns - Increases/decreases the defined cells based on the relationship between columns.
  • Mass Change with Percentage Relationships - Increases/decreases the defined cells based on the relationships between rows and columns.

Each type of mass change has its own easy-to-use dialog that allows you to define the percentage, the rounding method and the range of the change (i.e., cells, rows, columns).

Multiple Deductions/Contribution Rates

Now districts can define two employer rates for a single contribution.  For example, many districts have different rates for separate bargaining units for PERS and worker's compensation.  

LIVE Customer Requests

While the majority of the enhancements are due to implementation projects (over 40 now underway!), we cannot forget that we have LIVE customers and they have some great requests, including:

  • Adding the ability to filter fixed asset reports by dollar amount and department.
  • Adding the ability of purchasing users to modify the comment field at anytime.  This means that they can modify the comment (which appears on board reports) even if the requisition is complete.

Stay Tuned

There are over 50 enhancements slated for next month and dozens scheduled all the way to September of next year.  We are working hard to make sure that you can rely on us, and using this new strategy we believe that we can deliver!

New Release Numbering Procedure
Dateline: Roseville - November 2007 - Leslie Bailey

With tonight's release, we are introducing a new release numbering procedure.  Our hope is that this new procedure will allow us to bring releases of software to our customers on a monthly basis.

The new procedure is a direct result of our Project Office efforts that we introduced a couple months ago.  Here's how it works:

  • We develop a list of TDs (which means "task document" and is how we track features and fixes) that need to be developed for current and upcoming customer implementations.
  • We schedule TDs on a monthly basis.
  • Ramona, our Director of Project Office, closely monitors the progress of the TDs, shuffling TDs into future months and notifying customers, if necessary.
  • TDs are "released" to quality assurance, where they are unit tested, making sure that TD works as specified.
  • TDs are then tested in an integrated environment, making sure that the current software and the new features and fixes work together as expected.
  • We bundle it all together in a "build" and release that to customers with updated documentation on the last day of every month.

Now, as you could imagine, this means we are going to start having a lot of releases.  Which brings us to our original topic: new release numbers. 

We have changed the release numbering scheme so that it now reflects when the release took place.  The release number will actually mean something and be easily recognizable, giving everyone a specific reference point for discussions about testing, implementation and production systems.

For example, release 1.07.10 tells you that it is for Microsoft .Net 1.0 with software released in 2007 in the month of October.

Since this was our first try with the new procedure, we were a day late, but we are all really liking the new structure and we think customers will really like it too. 

It gives everyone a sense of what is current, what is coming up and when.  Now that's progress.