News and Blog
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
In the Friday Feature series, I have written quite a bit about how I don’t like to clog my memory with “unimportant” things. If it is something I don’t need to know on a regular basis – my driver’s license number, children’s birthday, color of my husband’s eyes or something like that – then, I pretty much let it slip on by. Yes, a lot gets stored anyway (Thank goodness!) but the bottom line is that I don’t try very hard to remember things that I can rely on technology to remember for me. |
That is why I like Escape Online’s history records. They keep track of things. On the Finance side, I don’t have to wonder about when a status changed or an event occurred (like printing a purchase order), because Escape Online remembers it for me. Nearly every finance document has history records, including journal entries, budget models, budget items, customers, invoices, receipts, vendors, payments, vendor requisitions, department requisitions, stores requisitions, assets, stores items, and work orders.
Below you can see the history of a requisition: its submission, approval, PO printing and check processing. It even tells you register and invoice numbers. Very handy!
Here's another one. This is a fixed asset record for a computer. You can see that it was received on 1/8/2007 when Michael filled in all of the required information that was not ported over from the requisition. (This was in Escape Classic. Escape Online copies a lot more information from the requisition.) The history also shows that the computer moved from classroom to classroom at the beginning of the next two school years. The history record lets you know what the field held before it was changed, which user changed it and when. Nice!
On the HR/Payroll side, practically any change made to a credential, employee or retirement record is recorded. Of course it is there for the big ticket items, like name, address and social security number, but in Escape Online we even record changes to the less-used Preferred First Name field. So, if I decide that Leslie is just too much and want people to start calling me Les, Escape Online will write a history record showing that change.
But the history record does so much more! Really, it does do more than just keep track of changes. For example, the employee record documents when you save the record with a validation error. Now, you may be asking yourself why you would want to save a record with a validation error. The answer is that the employee record is one of our most complex records. It has more tabs and more fields than another document. For good reason!
I tell you, honestly, I wouldn’t want to be required to enter every little bit of information into it before I could save. However, and now we get back to that whole memory thing, what if I intended to finish up after lunch, but I was distracted and forgot. No worries! The employee record documented what I did and now if there is any problem this history record can help in trouble shooting.
Now you can see why I like history records so much. It really contains all of the essential information I need to do my job but don't need to remember on a regular basis. Nice!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
With our 3.5 conversion work behind us, the PTF (Performance Task Force) was able to pull in a member of our Research team and go to work on the performance of certain forms. We, and our customers, have not been happy with the way a certain form geometry loads. This is the one used in the important Adjust Pay activity, and it is also used in the Employee Leave screen.
Both these forms see a lot of data entry, close to paydays, so they need to perform well.
This particular form has several tabs up at the top, which is not unusual for us. But it also has “embedded tabs,” which are tabs with lists that are inside the top row tabs.
All of these visual elements, the tabs, forms, lists, embedded tabs – these are all built on your screen by the Windows operating system. Our code asks Windows to build these visual elements for the user. Basically, we give it the instructions; then it is out of our hands.
And that’s when things go downhill for this particular form geometry. Unbeknownst to us, until now, is the fact that Windows struggles with these embedded tabs, and it lays all the elements out THOUSANDS of times, trying to come up with the optimal layout, minimal scroll bars and so on. These thousands of iterations are taking about 5-7 seconds on average, it depends on XP vs. Vista, the graphics hardware, and other esoteric factors.
All our other forms perform well, and now we know why this particular configuration does not display quickly enough for our users. Changing Windows is of course out of the question, so we focused on the area where we do have control.
We are going to do two things to make these activities super-speedy for our users. Today, I’ll tell you about the first one. The second one will take a couple of weeks, but it is pretty exciting.
What we will build is a new Adjust Pay activity. We are going to make this an addition, we won’t change the existing one, and we won’t remove it from our users’ menus.
The new one will not use embedded tabs, but it will have the same functionality. Depending upon what the user is doing, there may be one extra mouse click here or there. But to have a form that appears and is ready to use very quickly will be worth it.
So payroll users, keep the faith, the fix will be here shortly. We know this slow form has frustrated you and we are glad to now have discovered the source of the delays and come up with a solid way around this deficiency in Windows. Stay tuned to the Escape News Blog for more good news shortly.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
|
Ok, I’ll admit it. I love newsletters, and not just because I write the newsletter for Escape. I subscribe to a bunch of “other” newsletters: recipes, software products, poetry, world news. I try them out. I change my mind about what topics I find interesting. I unsubscribe. I re-subscribe because I miss them. It is empowering. So how does all of this good will translate to the newsletter for Escape? As you know, there is a lot going on and sometimes it is hard to keep up, what with all of the new releases, government regulations, and technology enhancements. |
For example, did you know that as of July 1st, the government requires you to identify the race and ethnicity of every new employee? Did you know that Escape Online has two different forms, depending upon account type, for budget entry? Or, how about the year-end webinar that occurred in June? Do you know when the next release webinar is scheduled?
All of these questions are important, but the most important question is, “What is important to you?”
So when we started looking around for a better way to deliver our newsletter to our customers, one of our goals was to allow you to choose the information you receive from us. The tool we found is made by Constant Contact. For the past several weeks, we have been using it; in fact, we used it to send out the last newsletter. And, the consensus is that we love it.
It automatically gives YOU the ability to unsubscribe (no more Leslie not getting it right and you end up with an extra newsletter or two in your inbox). And, it allows us to have multiple lists, so you can choose what information you want. And, it has an online survey tool which will let us create surveys (like the ones you take in the release reviews) and put them on our web site or in a newsletter.
Our first step is to allow you to sign up for emails: newsletters, webinar notifications, training notifications, Escape alerts (company holidays, phone disturbances, etc.). The sign up is on the right side bar of the News page on our web site.
If you already receive the newsletter or any other communications from us, then you will be prompted to confirm your email address and be emailed instructions on how to update your “email profile,” which is where you can define which emails you want to receive.
If you have never received a communication from us (or haven’t for a really long time), you will be prompted for information and given a list of emails you can sign up for.
Once you sign up, we will send only emails that you selected; you can change your profile or unsubscribe at any time. And, note that Constant Contact will NOT have access to your email address or any other information. Escape Technology would be the only company that would have access, and we will NOT provide your email address to anyone else.
Our next step is to put surveys on our web site and in our newsletters to learn more about how you use the software, how you feel about proposed updates, what trainings you would like to be added to the schedule, and other questions that only YOU can answer. For example, the new government regulations concerning ethnicity require report changes. We could put a survey in an email or on our web site (or BOTH) to find out what you want and need. Or, we could ask you about some specific new development where we want everyone to have a voice.
We hope that you sign up right away for email notifications and plan to participate in our surveys. Our goal is provide you with more helpful information about using our system, our improvements, and we want YOU to be in control of what kinds of information you will receive from us!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
|
One of my tasks is to maintain the Knowledge Base. The software I use provides sundry statistics, things like the number of views, popularity, and user-choice ratings. Both Terri and I troll these statistics looking for ideas about documentation updates, trainings, Friday Features, and tips and tricks. Well, I was fishing the other day and the question “Why does the form look different sometimes?” caught my eye. Created in January of 2008, this item has been viewed 168 times, thirteen times in the last few weeks. |
It is a really good question with a really good answer.
Escape Online has several activities that PAY ATTENTION to what you are doing and react accordingly. For example, Vendor Requisitions actually has two forms: one for Admin users and one for everyone else.
As you can see, the “admin” form is much simpler, displaying on those fields that they need to fill in or get information about. This is especially nice because Admin users aren’t in the software all the time, just now and then. There is no need to bother them with information that they really don’t need to know about, like the API Status, FOB, or Terms for shipping.
We do something similar for Budget Entry. This time, though, the work flow is not based on your role, but your account type. Since salary and non-salary accounts have such different requirements, Escape Online has different “forms” for each type.
If you open a non-salary account, you will see a simple form with only a few fields for data entry.
If you open a salary account, you will get a form with all of the fields necessary to define the employee, position, subject gross and other salary information.
As if that was not enough, we have the ever magnificent extended records, which are about as custom as you can get. Drum roll please. Yes, Escape Online does include the ability to add “custom” fields (aka extended records) to department and vendor requisitions, employee benefit setup, employees, positions, position detail, and assignments.
Check it out! You can search by the extended fields and sort by them on the list. Escape places the fields directly on the form with lookups for data validation, and, in the case of employee records, on their own tab.
While extended records are incredibly useful, they are not to be implemented lightly. They require custom programming for adding the fields and modifying any associated reports. Several districts and most of the counties using Escape Online have taken advantage of this feature.
We are also currently working on quick links that will open multiple forms in a single activity, such as a requisition from a vendor record. This functionality will be rolled out over the coming year and, of course, will be the topic of a future Friday Feature!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
As has been reported previously, our Report Task Force is reforming as the Performance Task Force. We have been collecting end user statistics from all our customers for about a month. We have been waiting to do any reporting because we have been moving our statistics db to SQL 2008, in order to take advantage of the much more powerful Ad Hoc reporting environment it provides.
There are numerous kinds of new reports available, and a much better development environment. So while that process moves along, we did an analysis of user-based report utilization and performance for June 2009. Here are the salient numbers:
108,708 |
Number of reports run. |
48% |
Percentage of reports completed on the servers in less than one second. |
90% |
Percentage of reports completed on the servers in less than six seconds. |
99% |
Percentage of reports completed on the servers in less than one minute. |
314 |
Different reports run by our users. |
1,349 |
Total number of users that ran reports. |
1,289 |
Number of reports run by our single most prolific report user. |
1.08 |
Average number of seconds for report completion by above user. |
976,993 |
Number of (virtual) pages generated. |
18,477 |
Greatest number of pages generated by a single user. |
15,216 |
Number of pages of the largest single report. |
72 |
How many seconds it took for the above report to run. That’s 211 pages per second. |
535 |
Number of pages generated per second by one run of ReqPay01, 3,164 pages in 5.91 seconds. |
3.2% |
Percentage of reports that got a Crystal error. |
.0025% |
Percentage of reports that still had an error after going through our “retry code.” |
Now reporting is incredibly fast with far fewer Crystal errors. Perfect? No. Our report developers continue to refine reports that take too long to run (i.e., the 1% club), as well as really honing in on Change Requests submitted by our customers for report defects. Reporting is great, but not perfect, so we are still working on it.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
|
While it is always great to start fresh, this fiscal year has arrived with added budget stresses and without party poppers. Escape understands this, so we put a lot of extra effort into this latest release for year end processing. As most of you know, we have been automating year end procedures since 1992. We used that knowledge to take Escape Online 5 automation to a much higher level. In the summer of 2008 (our first real year end for Escape Online 5), we asked our users for feedback. We considered those responses, plus more recent suggestions, and used them this spring to develop an extensive set of enhancements! |
By far the biggest improvement is in the Year End checklist. In a single activity, you can carryover, accrue and release funds from requisitions and invoices. Essentially, all you have to do is fill in the amounts (literally, type numbers in the accrual or the carryover fields) and Escape Online does the rest.
If you enter a carryover amount, Escape Online changes the fiscal year of the requisition, adds accounts for next year, reverses the outstanding encumbrances in the closing year, encumbers the amounts in the new year, and writes the appropriate history records.
If you enter an accrual amount, Escape Online creates a journal entry in the closing fiscal year to set up liability, adds liability accounts in the next year, and a writes a history record.
You can also “release” all funds by zeroing out both the accrual and carryover amounts. If you do this, Escape Online changes the requisition status to Completed, reverses outstanding encumbrances, and writes a history record.
If you make a mistake, you can go directly to the invoice or requisition and adjust accounts and liability amounts. When you save and close the record, Escape Online creates all of the necessary journal entries for the current and prior fiscal years. Amazing!
These easy steps work great for the majority of scenarios. For the more complicated situations, the How To in the activity contains more information, AND we recently created a knowledge base item with tips and known issues to help you stay up-to-date during this time-sensitive process.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Reporting is a large part of school business. So large, that during a single week in June, Escape Online customers generated over 25,000 reports. In a single week! While that seems surprising at first, when you start doing the math (120+ live districts multiplied by 380+ reports), it seems like the number of reports run is going to grow exponentially.
So, with 380+ reports available, you would think that we have everyone covered. But, not every user wants a cookie-cutter report. Sometimes, users crave something more flexible: something that allows them to specify EXACTLY what they need. Well, Escape Online has several reports that are zen-like in their ability to design just-the-right report.
You define the columns. Both the Comparative Object Summary - Fiscal06 (seen above) and the Comparative Account Summary - Fiscal04 allow advanced users to create custom reports, where they can select columns (actual, actual with encumbrance, original budget, revised budget, account balance, and budget model), define calculations, and make comparisons.
And then there is the Item Activity Summary - Stores03 report that allows users to define which columns the adjustments, issues, receipts, and returns appear in.
You define the data filtering. Recently, we introduced “wildcards” to report criteria. This exciting new feature allows you to select particular records without having to type in every one that you want. The Benefit Provider Reconciliation - Benefit03 includes two fields (benefit providers and bargaining units) where you can enter wildcards. For example, you could use the following wildcards for the benefit provider code:
? (question mark) – Single character: “BL??O” would return BLHMO and BLPPO, but not BLHDHP.
* (asterisk) – Multiple characters: “Kaiser*” would return KaiserCE, KaiserCL, KaiserCO, etc.
, (comma) – Series: “CVTDD, RCDD, RSIGDD, SIGDD” would return only the benefit providers with these codes.
.. (two periods) – Range: “RCHMO..RSIGPPO” would return all medical benefit providers for retirees (excluding RCDD and RCVSP).
You can also mix and match these wildcards. For example, you could enter “BL??O, RBL*, SUPBL” to return all Blue Shield plans for current employees, retirees and the superintendent.
And, we’re not done yet. There are more reports and more flexibility on the way. We are regularly seeking customer input for new reports and new functionality within existing reports.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Sign up for the newsletter, notices for webinars, trainings, and release reviews. |
