With the product update 242 of Exact Synergy Enterprise approaching general availability, here are top 5 highlights to whet your appetite.

Route incoming invoices from Exact Globe and follow up on them easily

Customers that use Exact Globe to register incoming invoices can now authorize or reject those invoices directly from Exact Synergy Enterprise.

Once an invoice is created in Globe, a request to approve it, complete with all payment details will arrive into the workflow of a designated employee with a sufficient purchasing limit. A scanned copy of the original invoice will be linked to the request as a regular Synergy Enterprise document.

Employees can use all flexibility of Synergy Enterprise workflow to process the incoming invoices  and resolve any arising questions.

Note, that this functionality was previously available for Exact Synergy only and is now also applied to Exact Synergy Enterprise.

View sales quotations from multiple Globe administrations directly from Synergy Enterprise

Existing Globe customers now get access from one location in Synergy Enterprise to key logistics reports per division. There are two important advantages that are delivered: The reports are available for multiple Globe administrations and the reports are delivered in real time.       

The following Globe reports become available:

• sales invoices;
• sales, service and purchase orders;
• item-balance lists;
• stock positions;
• quotations.

In addition to that, a user can enter hours into a Globe administration directly from Synergy Enterprise. With these reports available directly from Synergy Enterprise, many more users in the organization become updated with accurate back office information.

A colleague that you need to talk to becomes only one click away

Customers that already use Microsoft Office Communication Server can make collaboration between Synergy Enterprise users  easier and more spontaneous. Synergy Enterprise users immediately see which of their colleagues are now logged on, busy or available to talk.

One can start an instant chat, place a call or send an email just by clicking an Office Communicator presence icon next to a colleague’s name. The presence icon is an indication of the colleague’s availability and willingness to communicate and lets the others choose the time and the best means to contact him.

Integration with Office Communication Server allows a Synergy Enterprise user to contact the document editor directly from a document, a member of the project directly from a project card, an account manager directly from a card of a customer and a colleague that has a follow up action pending directly from the request.

Implement Synergy Enterprise faster and with less hassle

Consultants busy with Synergy Enterprise implementations can use a new tool to create best practice templates for typical customer cases.

Using the tool, a consultant can build start pages linked to documents and requests in one Synergy Enterprise environment and
save them into templates. He can import these templates into a customer’s Synergy Enterprise environment during the implementation and update the templates with new configuration data. Templates can also be shared with colleagues.

Additionally, the tool simplifies the job of internal IT staff that needs to migrate changes between separate development, test and production Synergy Enterprise environments.

The configuration tool is the foundation of Exact’s Business Made Easy offering.

Do less manual work when creating requests

To make the day-to-day work of a regular Synergy Enterprise user easier, two improvements have been added to requests:

It is now possible to attach files to a request without creating a document first. If a support desk employee wants to share a screenshot with a colleague, he only needs to create a task and attach an image directly to it.

Secondly, all fields are now duplicated when a copy of a request is created, including remarks and attachments. As a consequences, remarks in a sales cycle are accumulated and retained in each of the stages.

A typical Synergy Enterprise user usually creates a lot of requests. Now he save a few precious minutes every time he does it.

Photo credit: re-ality

Do you need a document approved quickly? Or what about that pool car you need in an hour for an urgent visit to your customer? Do you want to call an emergency meeting with your project team or just want to invite someone to lunch in a few minutes? One of the biggest efficiency boosters to come our way recently is the new presence control in Exact Synergy Enterprise update 242. With the presence control you can see exactly who’s available to help you out, and even better, contacting them is just a mouse click away.

Real-time intelligence
The presence control allows you to make intelligent decisions about whom to communicate with and about which medium is best, because it offers you real-time information about the availability of your colleagues.

So getting back to that document or request that needs quick approval. When your document is “pending” you can now see which of the approvers is available to act. A green presence “bubble” next to the name means the resource is available. By hovering over the bubble you’ll see some information about the person, like their availability status, job title, e-mail address and scheduling information. When you click on the bubble, you can select the means by which you want to communicate and even initiate the communication from there. If you want to send an e-mail, just click on the icon and an e-mail message will be created.

You’ll benefit in the same way when you want to call an emergency meeting with your project team. Look up your project team members and see who’s available, click on their bubble, and invite them immediately using the means most appropriate for their current presence status.

How does the system know?

The presence information you see in Exact Synergy Enterprise represents a combination of a user’s availability and his/her willingness to communicate. Availability is aggregated on the Office Communication Server. To represent the user’s overall presence state, the system uses the state manually set by the user (do not disturb, away, etc.), the machine’s state [briefly inactive (temporarily not typing) or away for longer (like a lunch break)], the calendar’s state (based on the user’s Microsoft Exchange calendar) and the phone state (busy or not busy).  

It’s very important to realize that in order for the presence functionality to work for you, a few basic requirements have to be met.

• Have Microsoft Office installed
• Have Microsoft Office Communicator installed and RUNNING!
• Include your Exact Synergy Enterprise website among your list of trusted sites within your Internet Explorer settings

Finally: start to enjoy the benefits of presence functionality!

As described in my previous post Feedback on enabling OCS Presence within Synergy Enterprise, we are currently working on enabling presence with OCS within Exact Synergy Enterprise.

OCS (Office Communications Server) is a Unified Communications (UC) platform and helps you to make intelligent decision about how and whom to contact. Exact Synergy Enterprise is the central work environment within an organization, and enabling presence strengthens this position.

Enabling OCS presence within Exact Synergy Enterprise, can limit delays in your day to day work. Because you can easily see who is available and how you can reach him. Communication becomes much faster and will enhance collaboration.

To give you an impression on what it will look like, we offer you this preview. This preview briefly shows you what we want to offer our customers. This functionality is expected to be available Q4 2009.

Photo credit: Mugley

 For the upcoming new product update 242 of Exact Synergy Enterprise we will, amongst others, deliver the integration of Office Communication Server (OCS) within Synergy Enterprise. The goal is to enable OCS presence within Synergy Enterprise in order to enhance collaboration and improve Synergy Enterprise as the central information point.

You might recognize OCS presence as the icon in Windows Messenger showing whether a person is available or not, like:  Martin Ortgiess.

From here, you can start up a communication via instant message, call, LiveMeeting or other methods based on the presence of that person. Starting a conversation is only one click away:

Communication methods OCS presence

Note that the communication methods available are dependent of the OCS implementation.

Presence within Synergy Enterprise is not new. This functionality is available since the beginning of the product. Every Synergy Enterprise user will recognize this icon. It shows how long ago the user has logged into Synergy Enterprise.

Where OCS presence is based on information from Microsoft  Exchange Server, usage of keyboard and other devices, the current Exact Synergy presence is based only on the last action of a user in Exact Synergy Enterprise. Where OCS presence has multiple statuses of presence, current presence is logged in not longer than hour ago, or logged in longer than hour ago.

OCS statuses of presence

Enabling OCS presence within Synergy Enterprise is a setting. Activating this setting will directly show OCS presence of users within Synergy Enterprise. OCS presence will not only be available on those places where the monitor was shown, but also in other screens like the resource card and in the requests. By enabling OCS presence, the old ‘monitor’ will not be available anymore.

Via this post I hope to get more feedback on especially this part. Should the current presence indicator (presented by monitor) remain available when OCS presence is activated? With OCS presence much more functionality is offered. The field on the resource card, showing the last action of the user remains available.