On behalf of the Product Management team, I am pleased to announce that Exact Globe product update 401 is in controlled release. This new product update is planned to be generally available at the end of May 2011.

 A large group of 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 401 product update as well.

With our users’ needs in mind, we have added in this product update new functionalities that are important to our customers’ operation and will facilitate their business. Among others, we have enhanced Exact Globe with the following features:

• Central Master Data Management for Items is in extended controlled release
• B2B E-commerce Portal that facilitates wholesale trade and manufacturing companies in their need for optimizing electronic ordering process in a Business-to-business  environment 
• Handling of bounced and refunded collections in cash flow management
• For the Dutch customers of Exact Globe we introduce Rabobank Online. This solution offers online integration and automatic exchange of local bank payment files, bank collection files and bank statements with the help of the Exact Online platform.
• To better support manufacturing companies several improvements in production order entry, BOM and logistics have been implemented

Moreover in this product update we have further extended and improved support legal as well as banking requirements.

Based on direct customer feedback, we continuously improve our products. In this product update you will find among others the following enhancements: 

• Multilingual unit description supported in logistics
• Ability to fulfill Sales orders in combination with underpaid pre-payment invoices
• Update purchase prices based on sales prices

Additionally, the Word merge functionality in Exact Globe is now fully supported with MS Word 2010 thanks to the Content Controls solution.

More about this product update soon!

Picture credits

Based on your feedback after the introduction of the new user interface in product update 244, we did some major enhancements. As of the product update 245 we did, among others, the following improvements:

• Mega menus display options of what you have access to based on your license roles
• The Right top menu includes for example alert menu which displays your ‘to do’ list, document menu to view or create documents and a list of your recent contacts
• We have added a Quick links section in the right bar with links to for instance reports and activity
• Self-service wizard has been moved to the right side and includes now time-off, personal file and new wizard for medical leave and expense claim
• We have standardized the layout for account, project and personal card. They include a business card view and quick links. You can now adjust the tabs on the card according to your needs by simply dragging and dropping them

Watch the video below to see other changes we did in the product update 245.

We are constantly working on improving the new user interface and we highly value your feedback. If you have any suggestions or comments please submit them by clicking on the feedback button in Exact Synergy Enterprise or by sending email to ux@exact.com.

Since the product update 243 and 244 we have been working on integration of SQL Server Reporting Services directly in the Synergy administration. In the product update 245 we went a step further and created 30* ready to use business reports which transform enterprise data into clear information that is crucial for timely and accurate decision making. These out-of-the box reports offer a real time access and clear insight of both Synergy as well as Globe data.

* Currently we provide 26 reports; the complete package will be available mid-March.

Click here to view the list of reports related to CRM, Financial, HRM, Logistics and Project areas that provide an instant value for your organization.

Please let me know if you think that the list should be extended with some other reports/dashboards. Replies are highly appreciated and will be taken into consideration for the coming update(s). Detailed suggestions can be sent via email.

Thanks in advance!

In the previous blog post ‘E-banking solution and introduction of SEPA‘I have shared some knowledge and  ideas of what market requires and expects from Exact  in field of electronic banking solutions.  

In the coming years SEPA will significantly affect the handling of electronic banking formats by the European banks.  

As of this product update 400 Exact Globe supports SEPA direct debit (SDD) schemes. Now this is possible to generate CORE and B2B national and cross-border euro direct debits in Globe functionality in compliance with SEPA rules.

To give you an introduction on the scope of this solution we created a video:

Please have a look at our video (by clicking the picture above) and share your feedback!

Please follow our further publications regarding Cash flow management developments and SEPA implementations on the Exact Product Blog

I’m happy to announce that product update 399 of Exact Globe is general available. As you are used to, we further extended and improved the important features in order to fulfill your legal requirements. Some important extensions in this product update:  

• Availability of prepayment invoices with or without VAT 
• USD currency change in Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba
• VAT reporting and EU sales list reporting in Luxembourg

In addition to numerous enhancements based on the feedback we received from customers, we have also enriched the design of Exact Globe user interface. With the new skin called “Globe Sky” we would like to create more pleasant work experience, improve the efficiency and increase the user satisfaction.

A considerable slice of our development capacity, is allocated to what we call ‘small enhancements’, which result directly from your feedback to us. Some of the suggestions we have implemented in this product update:

• Invoice payment date displayed in debtor and creditor cards
• Date filter section added to overview of debtor and creditor cards
• Option of not copying description from previous sales or purchase invoices
• Enhancements to the Picking List

To find out more about “Globe Sky”, extensions in legal requirements and enhancements check the Product Update News. You can find there as well a preview of Central Master Data Management that supports effective collaboration between individual departments.

Last Monday, 18/10/2010, the feedback button in the Synergy 244 update went live, and we sure did notice that. When we checked the mailbox that morning, we were happily surprised with all the feedback we got from you. People actually took the time to look at what we did and told us what they liked and what could need improvements. As much as we would love to answer all the emails individually, just like how you took the time to write us an email, it’s too much work, hence this blog post. We hope you guys understand.

As for the people who didn’t know yet, a redesign of Synergy is currently in the works and we encourage everyone to give us feedback on it, before we roll it out. It is currently still under development, so some things may not work a 100% and/or are missing, but a large part of it does work.

Before moving on to the feedback, we would like to thank everyone for the feedback, and please keep it coming. We love reading what you guys think of the new Synergy and it helps to keep us motivated and inspires us on how to improve it further.

So for the feedback, we’ll try to answer most of the things that came in below. First of all, we got a lot of people mentioning that there’s no easy way to access the ‘Planning’. This is true and it will be placed in the ‘Personal’ menu. We understand this is a commonly used  item and should be placed more visible as opposed to as it is now (‘My profile > ‘Monitor’ > ‘Planning’).

We also received a lot of feedback mentioning the search. A lot of people mentioned that they’d rather see this: See one search box, that searches everything (like Windows search or Spotlight search on a Mac). This is not (yet) made due to technical and time restrictions. And as much as we would love to see it ourselves, this would take some time to develop and it was scoped out of the project. I can’t say anything about this in the future, except for the fact that we would also want to see this happening, so we will definitely keep this in mind!

Some people also mentioned that they would like to customize their homepage, as a lot of the users who tested this have other functions they use on a daily basis, and the ‘Self- Service’ widget does not suit them. We’ll will try to give a little more background on this subject. What you see now is what we designed for the people with a ‘Self-Service’ license only. This is a group of people who have limited access to the functions of Synergy and only need a few things when they log in, which are the items you find in the widget. The initial design was focused on building a ‘Home’ screen with the ‘Self-Service’ user in mind, hence the fact that when you log in, you see this screen and it is the default ‘Home’ for everyone, while 244 is in development phase. The idea for the future is, of course, to offer a customizable ‘Home’ page for everyone, as well as dashboards or cockpits (whichever term you prefer) tailored to the different kind of people have. This is under development now, and should be there soon.

Other mentions are a quick way to find either ‘Favorites’ or ‘History’. Currently these 2 menus are quite hidden, but I can assure you that the next product update will provide an easy way to access both these menus, I will have to ask you to wait, yet again, but this will surely be there in the coming months.

Some other comments were on the ‘To do’ list or what used to be an overview of the ‘Workflow’ menu. We’ll try to elaborate on this a little more. For new users (and even old users) the term ‘workflow’ is not something that would trigger anything and puzzles people. We changed this term to ‘to do’, since it’s composed of things that require the users action (most of the time) e.g. approving, rejecting, processing, etc. This is still your old list which was found under ‘My workflow’, only with a different name.

One more things was on customizing the colors. This is something we want to offer in the form of different themes users can choose. We will offer this, but we first want to work on the fundamentals of the product first, and the cosmetics will come later. Since the product is still in development phase, we will work on other parts first, before we are going to work on the themes, but this (like the others before) is something we will do in a future release.

This is it for now, we hope answered most of your request/questions here. If there’s anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us again through: ux@exact.com or comment on this post. As we said before, we love hearing what you guys think of it, so keep the feedback coming!

As of 18 October 2010, product update 244 is generally available. This marks the end of the controlled release for 244, which started on August 30 and had 33 participating customers.

In addition to new features such as quotations and a range of small changes and bug fixes, Exact Synergy Enterprise 244 includes several improvements in the focus areas of our product roadmap plans for 2010.

• User experience
• Mobility
• Automation of professional services

We’ve created a nice landing page especially for update 244 that provides you with overviews and hyperlinks to all information you need on this update. Also, on our product blog, you can find the highlights of 244.

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

Related information

• Exact Synergy Enterprise Tips&Tricks startpage

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

Let me introduce myself. As of 244 every user that can use Exact Synergy Enterprise will be a Synergy User. I am the most basic of users in Exact Synergy Enterprise; intended for employees that don’t rely in their daily work on the use of Exact Synergy but do need to have access to ask for a day off and view their calendar. Maybe they need me to find contact information of colleagues or allow them to communicate with colleagues in a structured way. On top of me you can stack multiple roles to expand my functionality. I can make use of the following functionality:

View Intranet news page

This allows me to be informed on what is going on within my company, access links to start pages, read the most important news that gets broadcasted within my company. This makes sure I am always involved and informed!

Create tasks for myself and other users

Maintain a to-do list and request jobs to be done from others. It also allows me to keep track of the progress of these tasks.

Receive tasks

Receive tasks from others.

Request a vacation

Ask my manager for approval on days off.

View my calendar

Check my calendar for upcoming events and jobs to do.

Maintain favorites

Allow to store shortcuts to documents and other resources for quick access.

Synchronize my Calendar with Microsoft Outlook

Make sure Microsoft Outlook represents the Exact Synergy Enterprise calendar.

View my resource card

View if my personal data is correct, correct and add information to it.

Setup my Exact Synergy Enterprise preferences

Adjust the language and language settings for me personally.

Find colleagues

Search for colleagues and look at their contact information.

View Microsoft Reporting Services reports

View MS Reporting reports if the reports rights allow me to.

Synergy User Interface

Extending my functionality can be done by assigning me one of the roles below:

Extending the functionality which is available to me as a Synergy user can easily be done by assigning additional roles. The Synergy User can be extended by the following roles:

1. Professional Role.
2. Employee Self Service Role.
3. CRM Role.
4. Incoming Invoice Register Role.
5. Report Manager Role.
6. Hour Entry Role.
7. Project Controller Role.

And the best thing, I am free to use and only require a small annual fee to support me.

Want to know more about Exact new license model?

In our vision every employee can benefit from the use of Exact Synergy Enterprise in your organization by using workflow, documents, CRM, HRM and the many other features. Our answer is a very affordable basic user; the Synergy User.

Watch this video to know why and how we changed it. Also for more detailed information on each role; take a look at this page.

After months of designing, developing and many tests Exact Globe product update 398 is now general available. With this product update our local brands Grote Beer available in The Netherlands and Exact Pro in Germany will migrate to Exact Globe. Updating to product update 398 for those local brands means automatically start to work with Exact Globe.

For this product update we also did many, many, many legal changes to help you fulfilling your legal requirements. A few examples are:

• Support of Italian INTRASTAT return,
• Extended SEPA to Austrian legislation,
• Added additional Bank Formats.

We further extended the method Work-In-Progress Cost and Revenue; started to support Microsoft Office 2010 32-bit & Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and renamed Pick-IT into Warehouse Management System (E-WMS) to reflect its growing functionality and full integration into Exact Globe as a standard module.

Besides those bigger changes we also looked into the feedback you shared with us and based on your feedback we also made it possible to:

• Store more layouts in PDF format,
• Run the MRP cleanup tool also for production orders and stock allocations,
• Process unauthorized Incoming Invoice Register (IIR) entries when closing a period,
• Export ‘Flow of Goods report’ to Microsoft Excel.

The functionalities mentioned in this blog are just a few of all the improvements we did in product update 398. Check the product update news page for the high lights and video’s and check the release notes for an overview of all the improvements and their details.

In this blog post I will explain what’s planned for the next product update. Have you read the highlights of Reporting Services Integration which are mentioned in the blog post Empower your key decision-making? Have you seen this video or read the user guide? It will provide you have a clear picture what the possibilities are with Reporting Services Integration in Synergy Enterprise release 243, which is currently available.

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