Product Roadmap

Bob Towery, CEO

Please use the links below to jump to particular topics.

Summary

The purpose of this Product Roadmap is to discuss with you the planned development of the Escape Online 5 system over this calendar year.

We are breaking this down into three areas:

  • Core Functionality
  • New Functionality
  • Support Functionality

At the end we will also briefly discuss the release schedule for the year, and there is a review of previous road map items as well.

Now these are not to be confused with our Infrastructure pages, which deal with third party software employed by our system, mainly Microsoft products. This is all about the Escape Online 5 system itself.

Core Functionality

Core functionality is our system's "activities." Journal entries. Requisitions. Employee records. Calculating and running payrolls. Generating W2 files. There are more than 250 of these activities that our users are using day in and day out.

Fixes / Enhancements. As an adolescent, our system still has plenty of functionality that needs additional work. We have several hundred CR's (Change Request, an electronic document within our change management system) reflecting both fixes and enhancements. Over the past 18 months, we have completed 75 to 100 of these each month. We see this continuing for the foreseeable future. The more users utilize the system, the more new ideas come along, and in some cases problems are uncovered. So we have a commitment to continue improving functionality in all areas.

Reports. We have now developed over 350 reports. Nearly every one is "ad hoc" in terms of the data filtering the user may employ, and many have ad hoc capabilities on the output side as well. However, we do have another 100 reports in our backlog. So we will keep plugging away at this list. Note that reporting is an important element of the "Ad hoc" discussion below in the New Functionality section.


New Functionality

With the basics covered, we are now in a place where we can begin adding "the fun stuff." This includes both some great user productivity tools, and resources for employees as well.

Ad Hoc Reporting/Data Grid. Status - In Development Dec 09/Jan-Feb 2010, planned for 3.10.02 release. A data grid is similar to the lists we currently employ, but include a great deal of extra functionality, such as grouping, master / detail, filtering and reporting. It's like Excel on steroids! And wonderful for end users. Including this functionality is our highest priority. Our implementation will be as a choice from any of our lists. Like right now you can do a one click export to Excel. Well, you'll be able to export the list to the Data Grid, but it won't just be the data on our list, it will be all the data for the "master" record (like employee) and then your selection of "detail" rows (like leaves, education, credentials, etc). From there you can rearrange, sort, filter, remove columns, even print. And you can save the various "grid formats" that you develop. This looks to be the ad hoc reporting solution that our users have been looking for.

Sample screen from our Data Grid

Detail Window.  Status - In Development Dec 09/Jan 2010, planned for 3.10.02 release. This new functionality will allow access to one tab of our existing forms, without opening the form at all. Take for example when people are entering payroll data. First they get a list of the employees they want to do data entry for, or just review. In order to do that data entry, they open the form, and then enter information into the Earnings tab. The detail window will be a window that opens up directly on the list, providing access to the Earnings tab (or whichever tab is desired). Users can also click a row in the main list, which will load that row's detail into the detail window. This will reduce data entry/review time significantly. And it will be very useful in many areas, not just payroll. Leave entry, payment accounts, all over the system.

Finance Module Workflows. Status- In development beginning Feb 2010, planned completion June 2010. We already have approval workflows for many of our financial documents. This year we are building a more robust workflow implementation, which will not only accommodate approvals, but many other types of actions, including notification.

HR Module Workflows/HRA's. Status - in development beginning June 2009, planned completion May 2010. This is a powerful enhancement that will monitor and administer HRA's (Human Resource Authorizations). Much like "HR Requisitions," these can be used for new Positions or Employees, as well as any change to Positions (including funding) or Employees. One HRA can accommodate new/changes for any number of Positions and Employees, and can have multiple approval cycles as the HRA goes through its lifecycle.

Report Presets. Status - underway, scheduled for 3.10.2 release. All of our Search screens allow for "favorites" or a preset group of criteria. Each user can develop unlimited numbers of these for every activity. We are extending this functionality to reports as well. Each user will be able to save report filter / sort criteria and recall it at will. Unlimited number of them for each user.

Message Center / Notification. Status - not yet begun. Notification of events pertinent to transactions in all modules will be enabled both within our application, and via email. Additionally, users will be able to send messages regarding documents in our system to each other, with QuickLinks to the documents. A general "broadcast" messaging capability will be provided as well.

Document Warehouse. Status - not yet begun. Much like our Report Warehouse, the Document Warehouse will enable users / organizations to store any types of files indefinitely. The most common usage will be reports from pre-conversion legacy systems. User Role enabled security will be provided for.

Employee Self Service / Email Integration. Status - not yet begun. Many systems now have employee kiosk functionality that allows employees to interact with the system. We are planning for similar functionality, but we plan to implement this through email, rather than as a website that the employee has to log on to. We anticipate providing email based interaction for many facets of the system, approvals for example.

WPF based client. Status - not yet begun. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is the way Windows applications are going to be built from this point forward. This is Microsoft's direction, and they have already begun converting their software to use this format. What it means to us as a developer is that the "presentation layer" (i.e. what the user sees and interacts with) is separate from the "business logic" (i.e. what the program does). It also means we have access to a much more modern interface, and new capabilities that we can provide our end users. The Data Grid we have selected, for example, is a WPF "control," and that's why it looks and works so cool. This year we will be replacing the current client program with a WPF implementation. We will not create change just for the sake of doing so, we don't want our users to have to be retrained. But everything will get even more professional looking than the current application.

Dashboards. Status - not yet begun. We plan to make "dashboards" (graphical displays of data) available in numerous parts of our system.


Support Functionality

We plan to include a forum capability for customers and Escape employees to communicate. Implementation date unknown at this time.

Release Plans

For 2010, we plan the following releases:

  • 1.10.1 / 3.10.1 - 2/10/10
  • 1.10.2 / 3.10.2 - 4/19/10
  • 3.10.3 - 6/14/10
  • 3.10.4 - 8/16/10
  • 3.10.5 - 10/11/10
  • 3.10.6 - 12/06/10

Review of Previous Roadmap Items

In this section we will briefly recap the status of previous items.

Online Resources. This was released in the 3.9.7 release. A wide variety of end-user support resources were made available within our application, just one click away. Also, customers can include their own support resource pages as well.

.Net 3.5 Based System. One of our single largest development efforts was the 2008/09 project to convert our entire system from the .Net 1.1 development platform to 3.5. This cured many problems experienced by end users such as memory leaks, etc. This project involved the conversion of over 10,000 programs, and for a period of about one year we had to maintain two separate code bases, testing environments and releases.

Ad Hoc Reports. During 2009, a significant effort was made to incorporate Microsoft Reporting Services into our system, as a solution for Ad Hoc reporting. During trials with our users, it was determined that the interface and database knowledge was not compatible with end users. So we closed the door on this one, in favor of the Data Grids discussed above.

 

Questions or Comments?

Please email Bob Towery: bobt@escapetech.com.