Web Release: Week Commencing 11th December 2023

Features scheduled for release on 12/12/2023. The functionality detailed will not be available in the system until this date. However, please note that this is an ETA and may be subject to change.

Release Topics

1. Goods Received Notes

2. Undelivered Purchase Order Item Invoices

3. Subcontractor Portal Updates

Release Details

1. Goods Received Notes

• We gave you all a few early Christmas presents in our last couple of releases and in this release we are excited to share a few more with you before the year is out

• This week we have a real biggie for you – Goods Received Notes

• Goods Received notes is a brilliant new tool which will allow our users to better manage the stock purchasing process

• The feature is integrated within our Stock Purchase Orders (P.O’s) module allowing users create notes and items for goods received when procuring stock items

• It will allow users to better record supplier delivery reference numbers, receive partial deliveries to later be matched to supplier invoices and help to more effectively handle general details, price variances and communication concerning goods obtained for stock

• To switch on this great new feature, head to the settings area > system settings and enable the ‘Goods Received Notes’ tick box to check out all of the extra benefits for your stock purchasing teams to utilise

• We have also made up a user guide on this for you. See here to check this out

2. Undelivered Purchase Order Item Invoices

• Goods Received Notes isn’t the only great new purchasing tool that we have for you in this release

• We’ve added another setting under settings > system settings named: ‘Raise Invoice against Undelivered Purchase Order Item’

• This handy little setting will allow you to include undelivered P.O items on purchase invoices

• It means that when enabled, items from purchase orders whether marked as delivered or not will all be included within the supplier invoice lines once raised (only delivered items do with this setting switched off)

• This combined with Goods Received Notes will give you fully detailed information when it comes to purchasing, an improved workflow to cover any delivery situation and an improved purchasing journey overall – how’s that for a Merry Christmas!

3. Subcontractor Portal Updates

• This is one is for all of our Subcontractor Portal Users

• Due to popular demand, we first launched our fantastic new Subcontractor Portal earlier this year and while the tool has indeed proven to be a very good one it wasn’t without it’s feedback

• We have therefore dedicated an ongoing effort to refining and enriching our subcontractor portal based on the invaluable feedback received from the most important source ... our users!

• Details of what we have done in this release on the contractor side of things can be found below:

• We’ve added a new ‘Times’ tab against jobs to allow main contractor users to view and follow the progress of subcontractor’s engineers in real time (similar to how the system works in general)

• It is now possible to assign subcontractor team visits in addition to just individual engineers

• Within the quick view of jobs, subcontractor engineer details are now shown to allow users to summarise how much time is spent between inhouse and subbie engineers at a glance

• Finally, a new ‘Area’ dropdown and column has been added to the ‘Batch Deploy Subcontractor PPM Visits’ screen allowing contractors to filter PPM subbie visits via the respective areas of the jobs

• It’s not just the contractors who we have put the work in for though

• We’ve also added some of the functions reported in the Subbies feedback

• The subcontractor’s P.O Number will now show as the job’s ‘Customer Order Number’ for them. This field is also editable if you do things differently

• In addition to this, a new option within the subcontractor template named ‘Subcontractor Priority’ has been added. If granted, this will activate the job priorities module within the subcontractor’s account allowing subbies to receive the contractor’s Job Priorities if they choose for them to

• If you have previously provided feedback and don’t see it above, don’t worry. This is just the first of many more customer feedback-based upgrades to come so keep an eye on our further release notes for more updates in the New Year

Improvements

Improved Job Status Workflow

• The (Job)logic around how our automatic job statuses have previously worked has sometimes been questioned by our customers and so we have made some improvements to how these work

• Now, when all visits against a job are cancelled, the system will automatically update the jobs status to ‘New Job’. (This is so long as the job is already in an open status such as "Allocated, Attended, Awaiting Parts or Parts to Fit". We won’t go interfering with your completed jobs)

• Further to this, if the job is in a completed status (Completed or Invoiced) due to all visits against it being marked as completed but an additional visit is then added and cancelled, the job status will revert back to the previous completed status

Outbound Email History - Email Attachment Details

• We’ve also made some extra improvements to the ‘Outbound Email History’ area

• Emails that contain attachments and the number of attachments that they have, can now be viewed via the new ‘Email Contains Attachment’ and ‘Attachment Count’ details

• But wait.. There's more. All of the attachment item names that were sent can also be viewed within the quick view icons

• Some simple but effective changes making outbound email history that little bit more detailed for you!

Timesheets – Mobile App Permissions

• We have added some new timesheet permissions for the mobile app to help you more specifially manage what aspects of this your mobile users have access to

• You can now choose whether users can view, create, edit and delete timesheet items

Recurring Non-Productive Times Deletion

• We have improved how the deletion function for recurring non-productive times work

• When deleting non-productive time items, users now have the option to delete either just the selected event or that event and following reoccurring events associated to it

Bug Fixes

• There were a couple of (Bah Hum)bugs which needed sorting this week, so we have fixed these to allow everyone to head into 2024 without any unwanted headaches. These fixes are details below:

• A problem where target attendance and completion dates where being affected by British summer times (Daylight savings times) has been rectified

• An issue where subcontractor P.O emails were being sent to multiple recipients has been sorted. Now only one email will be sent to the primary contact’s details

• A problem where Two Factor Authentication could not be amended within the user details screen has been fixed

• Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused by these bugs and thank you for your understanding and patience whilst they were being fixed

Future Changes to be Aware of Following this Release

Increased Password Security

• Data security is an important thing that we take very seriously

• Therefore, within the early months of 2024, new password security measures will be put in place for all Joblogic systems

• Password locking and verification mechanisms are going to be applied in order to help prevent password guessing from the naughty ones amongst us

• Following a certain amount of unsuccessful password attempts, user accounts will lock for 30 minutes and/or require the user to complete a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) challenge-response authentication

• In addition to this, a password strength policy will be in place whereby passwords must be a minimum of 12 characters in length and contain at least 3 of the following:

• Upper case characters

• Lower case characters

• Digits

• And special characters (examples: -@?>)

• These changes will not take place until early 2024 and we will confirm once they are in place with more specific details for you via our release notes

• For the meantime though it can’t hurt to be prepared and update your password beforehand, covering the above to prevent yourself from getting locked out when the changes do take place