News and Blog
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In the last Friday Feature, I made a quick mention of quick starts. I gave an example of entering “vr ref vr09-00150” to launch the Vendor Requisition activity and open the VR09-00150 req, It is really that easy. So, for this Friday Feature, I thought I would give more examples of this awesome productivity tool. Using quick starts, you can launch an activity without using your mouse! When you login, your cursor is in the Quick Start field. (If you are an all-org user, you will need to press tab to leave the Organization drop-down and proceed to the Quick Start field.) You can enter a short code (like vr for Vendor Requisitions or em for Employees) and press Enter. |
Escape Online automatically launches the activity, enters the search criteria and opens the record (if appropriate). Notice in the screen capture below how an activity is launched and a record is opened but I never had to open the activity tree. Tada!
It is so versatile. You can launch activities, open individual records or create a list. If you need any help, just press F1 while you are in the Quick Start field and Escape Online will display all the possibilities. In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorites.
| Description | Entry | Result |
| Get an employee | em id 5685 | Lists employee with emp Id 5685. |
| Get a list of emps | em last a..b | Lists employees with last names that start with a or b. Notice how you can use all of the same features (ranges, etc.) as the search. |
| Get a list of members | pers year 2009; month 11 | Lists PERS members reported in month 11 of 2009. Notice how the semicolon allows you to enter more than one criteria. |
| Get a req | vr ref vr09-00150 | Opens requisition vr09-00150. Remember in finance, if there is only one record on the list, Escape Online automatically opens it. |
| Get assets at a loc | fa loc café, dist | Lists all assets at the café and the district office. |
| Go to req approvals | ar | Launches the Approve Requisitions activity. |
| Go to 1099 Process | v1 | Launches the Finance – Processes – Tax Reporting – Vendor 1099 activity. |
| Go to W2 Process | W2 | Launches the HR/Payroll – Processes – Tax Reporting – Employee W2 activity. |
| Go to Fiscal Reports | rf | Opens a list of fiscal reports. |
As you can see, it isn’t always about opening a record. You can use this to create a list or to jump to an activity. (I especially like the 1099 and W2 activity quick starts!)
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One of the first tasks for our transition team was to compile counts of customers currently using Version 3 (and Version 1), and to work on a timeline for transitioning our remaining version 1 customers to version 3. Since our beta program officially ended in October, we have rolled out the following customers:
Three of our remaining four XCOE customers are being upgraded this month. In January, Sonoma County (55 orgs), and Sacramento City USD will be upgraded. At that time we will have nine customers with a total of 108 organizations running Version 3 of Escape Online 5. That will represent over half of our total Escape Online 5 organizations! Additionally we have seven implementation projects scheduled for the first half of next year, all using version 3 of Escape Online 5.
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I’m happy to announce a new addition to the Escape Family. Jacque Santana joined our Customer Care team last month and will be supporting our XCOE customers on Finance. She came to us from Middletown Unified School District in Lake County where she worked as a Fiscal Specialist for the district and also served almost six months as an interim Business Manager. Her main duties included developing, monitoring and analyzing the budget. Additionally she provided finance, attendance, and software support and training to site staff. Jacque was introduced to Escape during her district’s conversion to Escape Online 5. It was then she discovered that she loved the software and her favorite part of her job quickly became teaching herself and supporting others in learning how well the program could and would meet their needs. Jacque has a BA in Management of Human Services, and recently completed the USC School Business Management Certificate Program. Jacque also loves to read and is always trying to learn something new. She is really looking forward to working with customers, but you’ll want to stay on her good side as she enjoys cardio kickboxing. |
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What’s with our software and all the version numbers? All software must have versioning, and our version numbers do serve a purpose. But with our effort to move to an updated .Net platform it has gotten a bit confusing!
.Net 1.1 versus .Net 3.5, 3.5 software, 3.5 beta software, release 1.9.7 versus release 3.9.7. And then we have to add the short names to the list, 9.7, 3.5, 1.1, 10.1!!!
Why all the numbers? For quite a while now we have been working on two sets of software, one compatible with Microsoft’s .Net 1.1 platform, the other with .Net 3.5. For several months we have released software compatible with both platforms, and now we have customers live on both. But it doesn’t really need to be this complicated, so I’ll condense all those numbers down to make it simpler:
We have customers using Escape Online 5 Version 1 and customers on Version 3.
For reasons we have previously reported, we intend to move all customers to Version 3 as soon as possible. To manage this transition effort we have created the “Escape Online 5 Version 3 Transition Team.” The mission of this team is to facilitate our customers’ transition to Version 3 of Escape Online 5. The team will compile information regarding benefits and issues with Version 3, track customer version status and upgrade plans, report progress and events as customers make the move, and generally assist as needed until all customers are on Version 3 software. I will report progress to you here on our news blog over the coming weeks and months.
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I'm happy to report that another customer has made the transition from Online 5's 1.1 platform to the 3.5 platform. Our Santa Maria Jt UHSD implementation made the transition back on November 20th. In keeping with our previous practice, we waited for over 3 weeks before making this announcement, to see if any problems unique to the 3.5 based system showed up. None did! |
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In the last Friday Feature, I talked about finding employees using the handy-dandy employee Id lookup. Now, let’s talk about finding vendor requisitions using the reference number. There you are in your purchasing office and someone calls with a question. They give you a number. It could be the requisition number or the PO, but it doesn’t really matter if you think of both of them as a “reference number.” |
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Sure, you could suffer through the extra mouse clicks to put your cursor in the correct field, OR, you could take charge and enter whatever number they give you in the Reference Number field of the vendor requisition search. This field has additional logic that looks for a match in both requisition numbers and PO numbers. |
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But wait there’s more. You could also use the new Quick Starts, available in 09.07 version 3. Quick starts allow you to enter a few codes to quickly start your search. For this example, you could type “vr ref vr09-00150”, where “vr” stands for vendor requisitions, “ref” stands for reference number and “vr09…” stands for the requisition number or PO number. Your entry would look like the screen capture on the left. |
No joke! You enter the quick start and press Enter, and Escape Online opens the search page, fills in your entry, launches the search, and opens the form. It is that easy.
By using the reference number field you save a lot of time and energy. Marrying that with the Quick Starts puts you in an even better position to get a quick answer.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
On Monday, I attended the Project Kickoff Meeting for the Santa Rosa Junior College implementation of Online5. Kickoff meetings are an orientation meeting for customer staff who will participate in the implementation, providing an overview of tasks and milestones. The meeting was held at the college and led by Ramona Marshall, along with project managers Carole Williams (HR/Payroll) and Gayle Lucas (Finance). The college had about thirty in attendance, from HR, Payroll, Accounting, Purchasing, Computer Services.
While kickoff meetings are held for every implementation, this one is especially significant for several reasons. This will represent our first community college using all modules of Online. It is the first where a community college AND County office (Sonoma County) are using our product. We will implement all modules concurrently, with the college fully live next July. Carole and Gayle are perfect for this project in that Carole is the PM for the Sonoma County implementation, while Gayle is the PM for South Orange CCCD, who just rolled out Online5 Finance. We will provide all interfaces between the County and college systems. Here’s to the successful implementation of our first County/college partnership!
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