In order to make use of the PSA in Exact Synergy Enterprise and start to enjoy the Time&Billing capabilities, you can do that in two ways:

1. Having a Synergy user with a professional role. Such a user can be granted any other license role (like Hour entry role) free of charge and without any further license checks
2. Assign a Synergy user, who doesn’t have the professional role yet, with  the hour entry role. When doing so, a license check is done whether the customer has sufficient available Hour entry roles (YA1401) in his license
3. #1 and #2 also apply to the situation where the user doesn’t need hour entry capabilities, but rather project controlling capabilities. So a Synergy user who already has the professional role, can be assigned with the project controller role free of charge and without any further license checks. Those Synergy users who don’t have a professional role, can only be granted the project controller role if there’s sufficient available project controller roles (YA1402) in the license

All the applications needed to make use of PSA in Exact Synergy Enterprise, are downloaded via the standard update mechanism of Exact Synergy Enterprise, so no seperate installation on the webserver is required.

More info on how the role mode works via this video.

On behalf of Exact Product Management I’m pleased to announce that as of today Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 245 is generally available.
 
In this product update we focused on multiple improvements in the following areas:

• New features and user interface in Synergy Mobile (video)
• Project administration in professional services automation
• Managing reintegration of employees (video)
• Central Master Data Management in extended controlled release (video)
• Real time integration Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe (video)

Moreover, as in every product update we implemented a number of new functionalities and enhancements which are a result of direct customer feedback.

• Again more pages are Multi-browser compatible
• Updates to the License Model: a split of the CRM role into ESS and CRM role
• New out-of-the-box reports, offering insight in both Synergy as well as Globe data
• Documentation of function rights
• Update on the new User Interface   
   

If you would like to know more about improvements and changes in this product update, check the Product Update News or please contact Ronald Voets (Product Line Manager) at ronald.voets@exact.com.

We would like to thank all colleagues, customers and partners who contributed to this product update.

As of today, product update 245 is in controlled release. The handover from product development to product management took place in Kuala Lumpur/Delft yesterday. This new product update is planned to be generally available early February 2011.

The highlights of the new update are:  

• Mobile  (video via this link)
• Managing reintegration of employees (video via this link)
• Converting Quotations to Sales orders in Exact Globe
• PSA: new hour entry screen
• Central Master Data Management
• Separate set of 15 request types available for CRM and ESS roles

For a full overview of all new functionality, please refer to the release notes for product update 245 as well as several articles on this product blog. More videos are being prepared and will be announced via this product blog as well.

Important to note is that as an enhancement to the new role-based license model, introduced in product update 244, the CRM and ESS role are now fully split. So a user with only CRM role will not automatically get ESS role functionality as well. More information on the roles and their behavior can be found here.

For more information on this announcement, please contact Ronald Voets.

When working with fixed price projects, the registration of labor hours will not lead to a sales invoice for these realized hours, because the invoices are generated via project terms. This document explains how customers can register the costs related to these labor hours, independently from the sales revenue process.

Step 1: After you’ve created and activated your fixed price project, go to the project rates and fill in 0.00 for the hour categories you intend to use on this project:

Step 2: go to Project>>Reports>>Invoicing term requests and create the project terms:

Step 3: start planning the people who will perform activities on this project

Step 4: hour realizations are being registered on the project. Each request will automatically have a “to be invoiced” sales amount of 0.00

Step 5: the project manager approves the hour realizations

Step 6: The project manager is in control when he wants to send the costs of the realizations to his financial Globe administration. He creates a new project term with a zero revenue amount, just to register the costs:

Step 7: The project manager approves this zero invoice-term for invoicing:

As a result, the invoice will appear under Invoices:

Step 8: run the PSA background job that generates the invoices and costs in Exact Globe

As a result:

-          The costs are already registered in Exact Globe on the fixed price project:

-          The project term request as well as the hour registration request, will get the status Processed:

That’s all!  The costs are correctly registered in the financial administration where, optionally, several Work-In-Progress calculations can be done and project profitability reports can be shown.

More info

- Working with project terms on fixed price projects: chapter 10.2  of the Exact Synergy Enterprise PSA manual

- Setting up the PSA background job : chapter 12  of the Exact Synergy Enterprise PSA manual

- Introduction video on Exact’s PSA solution

On behalf of the Product Management team, I am pleased to announce that Exact Synergy Enterprise will move into the controlled release phase for product update 244 as per today, August 26.  Depending on the results of the controlled release of course, this new product update is planned to be generally available end of September.

.More than 30 customers are already lined up to participate in the controlled release and start using it. On top of that all of Exacts partners/resellers are able to download the 244 product update as well. Your feedback is very much appreciated so that we can make this update a great experience for all our customers.

The high lights of the new update are:

• Preview of new design
• New role-based license model
• Labor cost, Material & Expenses in PSA
• Enhancements in Mobile via remarks and documents
• Subscription to reports

For a full overview of all new functionality, please refer to the release notes for product update 244 as well as several articles on our product blog. Updated material from Exademy will soon become available via this link and will be announced seperately on this blog as well.

Important to note is that due to the new role-based license model, Controlled release customers who are using Incoming Invoice Register or an SDK solution, will need an updated license file. The existing licenses will be updated by Exact over the coming period before General Availability. If you happen to be a Controlled release customer or partner who has either one of these 2 modules today, then please contact Robin den Buurman.

For more information on this announcement, please contact Ronald Voets.

How to schedule replication when Exact Globe and Exact Synergy are in different, non-trusted, domains

In situations where Exact Globe and Exact Synergy are installed in 2 different domains, the replication between these 2 environments will not be possible out-of-the-box simply because the user, under whose credentials Exact Globe is approached, isn’t recognized as a valid user in the other Exact Synergy domain. This situation can occur when Exact Globe is ran on-premise (at the customer’s site) and Exact Synergy is ran in an external or hosted environment.

This document will give a step-by-step description how to enable replication between Exact Globe and Exact Synergy in such a situation.

In this example, we’re using the following data:

Exact Globe

SQL server of Exact Globe : SQL_Server_DomainA

Database of Exact Globe: 001

Domain: DomainA

User Name: Henry@DomainA.com

Exact Synergy Enterprise

URL: https://Synergy.DomainB.com

User Name: John@DomainB.com

Domain: DomainB

Windows Server 2008

If the server, on which you want to schedule the replication task, is Windows 2008, the steps are as follows:

1. Log in to the operating system OS as the user under whose credentials the scheduled replication (Asimport.exe) will run. This user will need to have sufficient rights in Exact Globe to perform XML replication and update data. In our example, this is user Henry@DomainA.com.

2. Go to Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Security -> Trusted sites -> Sites and add the Synergy URL, https://Synergy.DomainB.com, to the list of trusted sites

3. Go to Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Security -> Trusted sites -> Custom level and check under User Authentication -> Logon that the option Automatic logon with current user name and password is enabled.

4. Go to Control Panel -> Credential Manager -> Add a Windows credential and enter the following:

• Internet or network address: Synergy.DomainB.com
• User name : John@DomainB.com and his password

Note 1: this means if the password for John in Domain B is changed, you will also need to change the password in the Credential manager.

5. Close all Internet browser screens

6.  Test the configuration in a new browser by going to the URL https://Synergy.DomainB.com. If everything was configured correctly, the browser will login directly to the Synergy website, without prompting for login credentials.

7.  Create a new Windows scheduled task to run the replication (Asimport.exe) using the user name and password of Henry@DomainA.com

The syntax, using our example, for a scheduled task to replicate Accounts would be:

“C:\Program Files\Exact Globe\bin\AsImport.exe” -r SQL_Server_DomainA -D001 -u -~ I -URLhttps://Synergy.DomainB.com -TAccounts -OPT18 –Oauto

Windows Server 2003

If the server, on which you want to schedule the replication task, is Windows Server 2003, only step 4 is slightly different:

4. In Windows Server 2003, you’ll need to go to Control Panel à Stored User Names and Passwords and enter the same data as described above under step 4.

A special credit to Parentix for their help and input on this blog post.

Happy replicating!

Related information

• Scheduling the import function
• How-to: Scheduling Import and Export of Data between Exact Globe and Exact Synergy/Exact Synergy Enterprise

In an earlier post, we’ve updated you on the five highlights of Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 243. One of these highlights is the request notification.

Now we’ve made this video to inform you in an easy way what this new functionality is all about and how it can help you in your daily use of the workflow capabilities in Exact Synergy Enterprise. It will only take two minutes of your time, so enjoy!

As of today, product update 243 is General Available. This marks the end of the controlled release for 243, which started on April 10. Survey results by the customers participating in the controlled release hves been very encouraging, with a score of 8.3 for the product, 7.9 for release notes/online help and 8.6 for the support given during controlled release! Truly customer feedback to be proud of.

On our product blog, you can find the article ‘Five highlights of the product update 243 of Exact Synergy Enterprise’ . A summary of those highlights:

• Request labeling;
• Time & Billing;
• Notifications on updated requests;
• Synergy mobile;
• Integration with Microsoft SQL Reporting Services.

Product management invests a lot of effort in making Synergy Enterprise as friendly and easy to use as possible, but still training is required to get to know about its raw power. To show you how Synergy Enterprise works, we film demo videos for each new product update. For example this video on Mobile:

We’ve also started publishing videos with tips how to get the best mileage out of Synergy Enterprise. Even if you are an experienced user, we hope that you find out something new about it. For example, did you know how easy it is to organize your workflow the way you see fit? Or how to personalize the cards with your accounts?

As usual, these videos are done by Exademy, Exact’s corporate center of learning. That means that the videos are short, down-to-the-point, and entertaining. Take a look at the start page for more tips.

For a full overview of all new functionality, please refer to the release notes for product update 243.

For more information on this announcement, please contact Ronald Voets at ronald.voets@exact.com

Exact sees an increase in the usage of internet browsers other than Microsoft IE in its customer-base. This may increase further after Microsoft press release last week that they’ll be shipping Windows 7 with a ballot screen, allowing Windows 7 users to select their preferred internet browser.
As a result of this trend in adoption of other browsers, Exact has started developing multi-browser support for Exact Synergy Enterprise. This will be delivered in pieces to the market during the quarterly product updates where each product update will see an improved level of support for browsers other than IE.

We’ve started in 242 by removing a check that Exact Synergy Enterprise can only be started by users with an IE browser. In 243, scheduled for general availabiltiy in April 2010, we’ve made several adjustments ‘under the hood’ that give us a good starting point for further enhancing Synergy Enterprise with multi-browser support. You may already notice these improvements in i.e. the request area.

Via this blog we’ll keep you updated of what the next areas will be that have multi-browser support in upcoming product updates of Exact Synergy Enterprise.

This presentation contains the user story of Miriam, a project manager using Exact Synergy in her daily work. We’ll describe her situation, a problem she faces and how it could be adressed in a future update of Exact Globe/Exact Synergy Enterprise. Looking forward to your feedback on the topic.

For better viewing, please click ‘full’ in the slideshow below.

Image credit for Miriam: www.rallydev.com/