So what’s new on the menu?

Appetizer
Do you want to start with something small to whet your appetite?

With the below small improvements and new possibilities you have more freedom and control on reports.

• Link and use more Synergy Enterprise entities in reports, e.g. items, opportunities and more default values
• Use same report definition but with different security/defaults by supporting linked reports, instead of creating new reports
• Improve management functions (security on report groups, link modules to report groups, hide reports in the report tree view)

Main course
Would you like beef, chicken or fish?

Having reports delivered via email by supporting subscription on reports allows you to view reports in MS Outlook or other email applications.
Viewing reports in multiple web browsers gives you even more freedom and control on how the reports should be served.

Dessert
Interested in pie or some ice cream? 

With the possibility to show and compare information from different sources in one report, you can make these key decisions faster.
Together with the support of drill down and drill through you can get a detailed insight, which helps you in your decision making.  

Coffee
Anything else?

By supporting more data sources types (OLE DB and ODBC) you can show information from almost any product in your reports.

Are you still hungry or thirsty?
Please let me know what you would like to have via a reply or mail so we can serve you even better.

Photo credit: macten

In the coming product update (244), we extend the IIR functionality with a document previewer, which shows automatically a preview of the scanned invoice that is attached to the IIR request. The big advantage is that the resource does not need to click on the hyperlink to open the attached invoice. The document is already visible in the request and the resource can directly compare the content of the invoice with the financial transaction lines in the request.
This saves the user a lot of time.

If you have any questions regarding the IIR document previewer, please create a comment to this article below or let me know directly via vincent.henricks[at]exact.com.

Image credit for the header image: cybrgrl (from Flickr).

Our corporate center of learning, Exademy, has released a series of excellent highlight videos about the latest update of Exact Globe.

Well, this is not that much of a news, since Exademy prepares such videos for every single product update for both Synergy Enterprise and Globe, and they have always been of notable quality.

However, there are two major differences this time.

First, Exademy filmed the new videos with our customers in mind and made them available to everyone. If you have already read about Globe product update 397, do watch the videos, because they are good and they tell a lot of interesting details. Since the videos are in now public domain, we encourage you to share them with customers, prospects and anyone else who is interested.

Second, Exademy produced the videos in such way that soon subtitles can be added easily to complement the soundtrack in English. This means that if you would like to share these videos with someone else, but you need to have them in a language different from English, there will be an option. You can get the subtitles files from Exademy, translate the texts yourself, and get a copy of videos with subtitles in your own language. We will keep you updated on the launch of this brand new service we will be providing.

Enjoy!

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

Product update 397 is the second update in 2010 and we expect to deliver 2 more in this year, keeping up with the steady rhythm  of 4 updates a year that we have been delivering the last 2 years. With this release cycle we want to deliver to you continuous improvements during the year.

As of this product update all users of Exact Globe will be notified in Exact Globe of the availability of the new update and are directed to a product update news page. You can find all the highlights and other documentation of Exact Globe product update 397 from this page. We have seen that people are more satisfied when they use a newer product update. With this notification we want to bring the advantages of the new product update in a better way to the users so they are more inclined to use the new product update and in the end be more satisfied with Exact Globe.

So check out the highlights of the new product update, upgrade to 397 and become a more satisfied user!

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 243 as per April 9. Our stakeholders were very helpful to verify the functionality for this update. Your feedback is very much appreciated so that we can make this update general available. This new product update is planned to be generally available in May.

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 will be able to download the 243 release as well.

Vladimir Bataev posted the article ‘Five highlights of the product update 243 of Exact Synergy Enterprise’ on March 31. A summary of the highlights:

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

 I will give you an overview of other items that you can expect in this update.

CRM

• Faster access to back office reports of the customers: quotations, sales orders and sales invoices are available from the account card;
• Complete controls over contact details for customer and reseller portal users with editable external references for social networks;
• Multiple contacts can be added during account import;
• Richer mail merges with additional tags for the main debtor;
• Opportunity management: tighter control over reasons why opportunities get lost.

 HRM

• More flexible absence calculations based on calendar and working days;
• Improved absence balance overviews in hours and per 4 weeks in the absence and cost analysis reports;
• Instant Visibility of Information in Competency, Performance Review, and Target Agreement Profiles;
• Easier overviews on people search results with sorting on various columns.

 Business users

• Business users can take part in workflows, because roles can be assigned to them;
• A Business user can edit documents that he or she created;
• Business users can see all requests and documents attached to their customers.

 Employee Self Service users

• Employee Self Service users can now participate in workflow routing. It is now possible to add roles to employees who are assigned the Employee self service user license type.

 Data synchronization

• Near real-time data synchronization between Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe. This offers customers who are currently using Exact Globe and Exact Synergy (asp) in an integrated scenario, to migrate to and start benefiting from Exact Synergy Enterprise.

 Smaller enhancements

• Synergy Office Integration: an easy overview of unread activities;
• Support for fully-fledged CRM template in the templating tool;
• Customizable project and contact cards;
• Filtering on pending remarks so that it is easier to see what colleagues need to be poked.

In April´s product update we will present you:

• Improved roles & rights in the area of credit limit check, bank and cash journals and accounts receivable & accounts payable.
• Product update notification: Globe´s menu-homepage will automatically show a notification that there is a new product update available. This notification will direct you to all relevant information on this product update.
• International bank formats: we will introduce more than 14 (!) new and optimized international bank formats
• Exact Globe will support Windows Server 2008 R2, for more information, see Windows Server 2008 R2 Product Information
• Electronic consolidated Value Added Tax (VAT) returns for German Legislation
• WIP cost and revenue: a method enabling you to make a distinction in WIP costs and revenue
• Importer Security Filing (ISF) is the additional shipping requirement by the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department. In his product update the ISF shipping requirement is extended to sales transactions
• A variety of international legislative enhancements
• A variety of ´tricks´ in order to align Globe even better to your daily business activities
• And lots more..!

Furthermore, we are in the process of doing research on improving your (user)interface and (user)experience with Exact Globe. I will keep you updated with our insights and findings, but please feel free to respond and inform me on your experience!

Please keep an eye on this blog for more information on product update 397 and complementary information on our product plans and product strategy.

Photo credit: Zarko Drincic

For our customers and partners, more information about the content of this update can be found in the release notes.

If you are a user of the E-Report module in Exact Globe, you are for sure going to benefit from Crystal Reports XI. This is our new reporting engine for Exact Globe E-Report, offering easier report design, simplified report maintenance and expanded data access. Every customer with an active maintenance agreement for E-Report will receive a DVD with the Crystal Reports XI software. Important: For E-Report users it is mandatory to install Crystal Reports XI together with product update 395.

Electronic Invoicing is a hot topic at the moment: it saves you the costs and efforts of printing and sending physical invoices, it saves your customers the costs of entering invoices in their bookkeeping systems and without using paper, ink and transportation services it also saves the environment. Product update 395 offers customers in the Netherlands and Belgium the opportunity to send invoices electronically. Electronic Invoicing currently supports exchanging invoices between Exact solutions and during this introduction period the use of this new service is free.

Under the hood, we have also done quite some efforts to improve the performance of Exact Globe. The degree of improvement you will notice is influenced by a lot of factors in your hardware and software. We are however proud to let you know that we received very positive feedback during the controlled release phase from both our partners and customers.
 
More information about product update 395 can be found in the release notes. Please let us know your experiences with product update 395.