News and Blog
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Since 1997, Escape Technology has been sponsoring children through Children Incorporated. In December of 2003, we adopted Marino when he was in the second grade. We receive updates of his progress on a regular basis. This week we received this picture. He is now in the eighth grade! It is amazing to see how much he has grown. Marino lives in Uruguay, and his teacher rates his educational potential as capable of completing high school and beyond. His mother works long, hard hours recycling trash to support her children. This job is not a steady one and the income does not begin to supply even the basic needs of Marino and his family. Children, Incorporated serves over 17,000 children in over 300 projects in 24 countries worldwide, is reputable and does amazing work. Founded in 1964, over 83% of their funds are spent directly on Program Services. |
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“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.” This is as true today as it was in 1775. I have been working with Escape Online software for more years than I am willing to admit, yet I still have to look things up, which is kind of funny considering often I am reading words that I either edited or wrote – certainly I have read every word of our documentation, web site, and marketing materials at one time or another. So, how come I don’t know everything? |
The answer is: I do, thank you very much. Well, sort of. I know where to find the information that is not on the tip of my tongue, and knowing where to get the answer is an answer in and of itself, which brings me to the topic for this Friday Feature: the Escape Online Knowledge Base (Kb).
So, what is a Kb? (Excellent question. Samuel Johnson would be proud.) Most major software companies maintain a knowledge base so users can access valuable info in a self help mode. Escape is no exception. You can think of a Kb like a library. It is a repository of articles that is organized for retrieval. Escape's Kb articles are categorized by the activity tree, but you can use the search tool to find just about anything. Each article has links to print the page in a nice format, email to a friend, add to favorites or export to a PDF.
Where does it come from? (You're getting very good at this.) We add items to the Kb every week, usually three or four. They come from a variety of sources:
Since the beginning of last year, we have slowly been growing the Kb. I think it is at the point where it can be a big help to you. In fact, it is already a big help for many users. Let me give you some of the statistics.
Live date on our web site: January 10, 2008
Number of Articles: 130
Number of Views: 13,549
Most popular articles based on number of views
Most popular search terms
Most popular failed search term
Pretty cool statistics, huh? The software we use to administer the Kb allows us to get statistics like this. It gives us a basis for where we need to improve, like an entry about Vista.
Power to the people!
If you are a system manager, we urge you to add a link to the Kb to your Escape Online home page. The file is located on \\ EscapeTech\servername\Documents\Forms\homepage\ HTMLPage1.htm. You can add the following code to your page for a link.
<a href=" http://www.escapetech.com/kb/index.php" target="_blank">
Escape Technology Knowledge Base</a>
If you need any help, contact your project manager or Escape Customer Care.
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Now, I know all of you just love reading user documentation. It is such an excellent way to get a good-night’s sleep. ;) Of course, user documentation has its place, the How-Tos of Escape Online have been a big hit, but, sometimes, you just want someone to show you how to do it. There is nothing like a good video! That is why we have created tutorials that walk you through an activity or process. Some of them are very simple: the Vendor Requisition tutorial is designed for Admin users that don’t use the software all of the time. It is very quick, running about two and half minutes. Others are very complex: the Budget Management takes you through all the activities and data entry of creating an original budget. It obviously takes much longer, running a little over eight minutes. |
Each release of the software, we add another tutorial. While that may not seem like much, our list of tutorials has slowly but surely grown to quite the selection. Check it out.
Finance
HR/Payroll
System
So, next time you are in Escape Online and just wish someone would “show me how,” check out the tutorial and see if you aren’t pleasantly surprised and wide awake, ready to get some work done.
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Just because Ramona is out this week on vacation doesn't mean the Report Task Force is not on the job!
The report statistics that we are gathering are very encouraging. With the enhancement that we built in the report service, in version 9.01, to keep retrying reports that get Crystal errors, last week most customers on that version had error rates of less than 1 percent.
No customer has experienced a Crystal License error for two weeks.
Here are some interesting statistics for the past two weeks regarding completion times for reports, for all customers:
| Seconds | |||
| from | to | Count | Percent |
| 0 | 20 | 24,220 | 93.95% |
| 21 | 40 | 357 | 1.38% |
| 41 | 60 | 231 | 0.90% |
| 61 | 120 | 691 | 2.68% |
| 120+ | 281 | 1.09% | |
| 25,780 | 100.00% | ||
* Data is based on 25,780 reports run at all customers. 93.95% of reports completed in less than 20 seconds.
This shows that 99 percent of reports complete in less than two minutes, which is pretty amazing.
We will continue to hammer away at reports that cause Crystal to generate an error. We are also focused on any report that takes over 2 minutes to run.
On the downside, we have seen some problems introduced in our 9.01 release having to do with the XML code that drives the report request forms. There are about 300 xml files involved here, and for the 3.5 system, each one had to be manually converted to a newer coding style. Users are reporting filtering and sorting issues with a few reports, which are a result of this effort. Please let us know if you notice any report request forms with missing fields or lookups that do not work as expected. We will get those fixed!
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In my previous posts I’ve talked mainly about our efforts to minimize the amount of Crystal errors users received when running reports, either by adding logic to individual reports or by adding the re-try logic to the report service itself. Another very important part of the Report Task Force is to validate report integrity. We have many different reports that contain many of the same data elements, yet there have been instances when customers thought there were inconsistencies across the reports. Although we could argue which reports are the most important, we started with the finance reports. All finance reports and their shared data elements were charted so we would have a roadmap of what needed to be compared. A portion of this chart is below.
| Amount Field | Adopted Budget | Revised Budget | Encumbrance | Encumbrance by Period | YTD Actuals | Actuals by Period | Account Balance |
| Fiscal 01: Object Summary | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Fiscal 02: Acct Summary by Object | X | X | X | X | X | ||
| Fiscal 03: Acct Transaction Detail | X | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Fiscal 04: Comparative Acct Sum by Object | X (Either from account or model) | X | X (Only has Enc + Actual) | X | X | ||
| Fiscal 05: Account Summary | X | X | X | X | X |
From there the testing started and all reports were run with the same set of parameters and then the totals were compared. For example, the Account Balance total appears on the Fiscal 01: Object Summary, Fiscal 02: Acct Summary by Object, Fiscal 03: Acct Transaction Detail, Fiscal 04: Comparative Acct Sum by Object, Fiscal 05: Account Summary, Fiscal 06: Comparative Object Summary, Fiscal 11: Period Statement of Rev & Exp, Fiscal 13: Financial Statement. So, all of these reports were run with the same parameters and all reported the same Account Balance totals!
Another example is Adopted Budget. It appears in various forms on Fiscal 01: Object Summary, Fiscal 02: Acct Summary by Object, Fiscal 03: Acct Transaction Detail, Fiscal 04: Comparative Acct Sum by Object, Fiscal 05: Account Summary, Fiscal 06: Comparative Object Summary, Fiscal 13: Financial Statement, Fiscal 51: SACS Extract, Ledger 04: JE Fund/Object Summary, Budget 01: Budget Comparison, Budget 02: Budget History, Budget 03: Budget Summary, Budget 04: Budget Detail by Account, Budget 05: Budget Salary Proj by Account, Account List. All of these reports were run with the same parameters, the Adopted Budget totals were compared and all were the same! This process was continued for all of the shared data elements across all of the financial reports and I’m happy to report that no issues were found.
And just to be sure, the process was repeated using several different sets of report parameters. Reports were run for a fiscal year, certain months within the fiscal year, for a combination of different funds, resources and finally with custom accounts. Once finance reports were completed we moved onto Position Control. This comparison was not quite as easy since these reports were created for different purposes and include different elements in totals. For example, POS02 reports only gross pay while POS03 and POS04 report gross pay with addons so comparing these reports required a more manual effort. But once again, across all the different test scenarios and parameters, we could balance all reports. If you come across a situation where totals don’t match across reports and you don’t understand why, please send to me and I will assist getting the issue investigated further. Next we’ll be moving onto comparing the HR/Payroll reports.
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Escape Technology is committed to ensuring that our software complies with all Federal, State, County and agency regulations.
Keeping up-to-date is no simple task. We are constantly monitoring web sites and news alerts to make sure we can spec, program, test and deliver software to our customers with plenty of time for them to test before putting into production.
We often get emails from our customers regarding upcoming changes required by various agencies such as retirement systems, federal and state entities. In a recent statewide Escape County Office of Education user's group meeting, someone brought up an upcoming PERS change, wondering if we were aware of it.
So we thought we should have a single web page that describes all of the upcoming regulatory changes that we are aware of. On each item, we briefly describe the change, and provide a link to any helpful web sites or PDFs. We also tell you our planned release date for the version that will accommodate the new requirement.
So check the Regulatory Changes page when you hear about a new regulatory requirement. If we don't already have the information, there's a link on the page to send it to us.
We hope that this useful information will help you feel confident that your organization will be in full compliance, on time, every time.
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Sometimes work is like dancing: everyone moves together in a line, people waltz around the issues, and, sometimes, you need to rumba. Escape Online packages data in a lot of different ways: forms, lists, snapshots, and reports, but what if you need the data to be a different format? For example, perhaps this year you need to send a letter to all employees about budget considerations, or you want to send a letter to all vendors requesting discounts. Obviously, these would not be standard letters; they would be tailored to your needs. |
This is where the Export button on Escape Online lists comes in handy. If you click the icon, Escape Online automatically launches Microsoft Excel and displays a spreadsheet with all of the information from your list: filtered, sorted, and in the same column order. It even includes the headers and column tips from the list.
Now you can manipulate it; sort it a different way; move, add, or remove columns; use it as a data source for a mail merge in Microsoft Word; or create your own charts and graphs right in Excel. With almost three dozen fields on the list, you have a lot of dance moves to choose from.
Some districts use this feature as a method for budget control. While Escape Online allows Admin users to enter budget figures, some organizations want more information before the data is input. For these organizations, principals and others are set up with read-only access to the Budget Entry activity. They can get a list of their accounts, export it to Excel, enter the updated figures and send it back to the district office where it is reviewed and then imported into a budget model.
Now that’s a highly choreographed movement. The Export button is on EVERY list, so the uses are as many as you can imagine.
(When exporting a list of accounts to Excel, you will need to “unprotect” the document. In Microsoft Excel 2007, go to the Review tab and click Unprotect Sheet. In the screen capture above, the Unprotect icon is highlighted at the top of the screen.)
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Here at Escape, we love keyboard shortcuts. We actually have “sharing shortcuts” as an agenda item in our Escape Customer Care meeting. That’s because, according to a 2005 study at Rice University, using keyboard shortcuts is the fastest, using icons is intermediate, and using menus is the slowest. Check it out. The research found that overall, it takes users 1.4 seconds to use a keyboard shortcut, compared to 2.2 for an icon and 3.1 for a menu. Yet, in their conclusion, the researchers are compelled to write, “What is striking about the results of this study, though, is that keyboard shortcuts are not used despite their being relatively easy to learn.” |
My reaction to their conclusion is not so striking: those users probably don’t know what the keyboard shortcuts are. So, I say to myself, where can I get a list of keyboard shortcuts? Stat!
Almost every icon in Escape Online has a keyboard shortcut. There are so many shortcuts that we made a document called Escape Keys. You should download it and keep it by your computer. It is really handy. Here are three of my favorites:
Am I saying that you should ditch your tried and true methods of data entry? No! I am all for productivity, but not at the price of getting at least some work done on a daily basis. The study supports this. People cannot just change their ways in a day. They need time. The researchers at Rice University suggest you try to learn three for today and then try to add one a week.
While my three favorites all have to do with searching (yes, I am always searching), Escape also uses Microsoft Standard shortcuts that are already familiar. These are an excellent place to start increasing your productivity. You can open a record (Ctrl+O), create a new record (Ctrl+N), save a record (Ctrl+S), close an activity (Ctrl+F4), close the application (Alt+F4), and more!
One a week. That’s all we ask.
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When I joined Escape in September 2007, we were implementing our very first XCOE customer, Sierra County, and had portions of Ventura, Alameda and Placer counties already live. Since that time we’ve been busy implementing 5 additional counties — Trinity, Tehama, Modoc, Lake, and Sonoma — and have completed the full implementation of Placer County. Implementing districts across 5 counties concurrently is an undertaking for any company. We have added many additional resources to an already strong Escape team, and other than the occasional hiccup, these implementations are proceeding nicely.
We’ve been very fortunate to have wonderful customers that are easy to partner with, which is so helpful considering the massive scope of these projects.
At Trinity COE, the project plan called for the "county district" to go live first, and have the COE staff get used to the system before bringing on the remaining districts. This happened in January. I asked Denise Raggon, Chief Business Official for the Trinity County Office of Education, for an update:
The Trinity County Office of Education is very excited about our implementation of Escape’s Online 5. With a great deal of team work and effort between the TCOE Business Office Staff, TCOE Project Manager Beth Penner, and Escape Project Manager Kathy Carlson we are indeed "up and running." We have been live since January 1st with both payroll and finance and continue to discover new and exciting aspects of the software each week. The remaining 10 districts in the County are on target for a July 1st implementation and are all looking forward to the enhanced capabilities of our new system. After several years of coordinated effort with the Tehama and Modoc COE’s, we are confident that Escape Online 5, XCOE model, is the right solution for us.
Small COE's are definitely "resource challenged" and so Trinity COE has much to be proud of. We are happy that the Escape Online 5 XCOE model can contribute to their business operation with a cost effective and low impact IT offering for all the districts. For more information on Escape's XCOE model, see our Project XCOE page.
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And that is no April foolin. Back in September 2008, I committed Escape to deliver the first version of the .Net 3.5 platform Escape Online 5 system in April 2009. It's been seven months of a very dedicated effort, involving a lot of design, new code, reconfiguration and conversion of over 10,000 programs that make up our system. I want to thank everyone at Escape for their dedicated effort, and thank our customers for their guidance and patience during this phase.
We have been testing daily for most of March. We are quite pleased with the results of our internal testing.
And now we are ready to move forward with the Customer Beta phase of the project. We are making the new system available for customers that are ready to proceed with testing. Placer COE will be up first, in the next couple of days. What we have found with our Online 5 system over the past 18 months is that testing on Customer networks is very informative, and this is what shakes out issues that we then resolve.
We have developed some new web pages to assist everyone in tracking the Customer Beta phase of the project. These are located under the "Escape Online 5" menu of our web page, and here is a direct link:
http://www.escapetech.com/escapeonline5/online5betahome.php
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
While everyone knows that we have been working hard on the conversion of Escape Online to .Net 3.5, you may not know about some of the really cool features in the latest release Escape Online for .Net 1.1.
Yes, this release was a little smaller due to the focus on conversion, but it has a couple of features that really pack a wallop for a wide variety of users.
Now you can determine how the customer name, contact name and address prints on the invoice. Do you want one line or two? If you want two, just enter a slash-slash (//) to indicate where the line break is. For example you could enter:
Celeste Michaels//DBA Accounting Associates
so that it prints as:
Celeste Michaels DBA Accounting Associates
Plus, we added a field for the customer’s cell phone number. And, of course, the standard Escape invoice was updated to accommodate these changes. If you use a custom invoice, please contact Escape Customer Care.
Accounting and budgeting professionals will really like the new Fund/Object Detail (Ledger05) report. It prints transactions for an account for a particular period. You can limit the type of transactions and the time period. Check out the example below.
Now you can specify which day of the week stores items will be delivered to a location. The new Stores Delivery Day field on the Location tab of the Organization record has a lookup for days of the week. The day you select will be utilized by the Delivery Report (Stores02) and the Pick List (Stores10).
The State Quarterly Report Employee Listing (Pay91) now includes the organization's Federal/State Ids. And, we added an employee count to the Org Recap section at the end of the report when it is run by an all-org user.
Now you have the flexibility to schedule when you want the Initiate Pay function to run. After hours? You bet. Using the new Requested Run Time field, you can enter the date and time you want the job to start (e.g., 03/18/09 10:00pm). Remember you can use your date and time shortcuts. For example, an entry of “18 10pm” would result in the job starting on the 18th day of the current month at 10:00pm.
Even better, just enter 10pm and it will run at 10pm tonight!
Payroll processes launch a lot of job requests (leave granting, pay date changes, pay computes, etc.). Now you can track and monitor the status and queue position of these requests. Using the new Job Request List activity in the System Module, system managers get a comprehensive list of all job requests.
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