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.

I already posted a few articles on specific functionalities in the new design of Synergy. Every feature we are adding to the product is the result of creative development processes and research. In this blog post I would like to inform you about the development of the new Synergy design.

The foundation of the new design is the great diversity of possibilities that Synergy offers. The look and feel is only part of the overall development process. To really grasp design is to intuit what you as our customer want. We intend to offer the new design of Synergy Enterprise based on needs in your daily work and to help you to make your work easier and more comfortable. We collect information via workshops in which we zoom in on certain specific elements of our product. Obviously the responses we receive via the Exact product blog are also very valuable for our development process.

The next step after we have collected all the information is to create wireframes. Wireframes are simple, schematic representations of undeveloped pages. We usually test our ideas with end users during one-on-one interviews, when we also present these wireframes. This often results in an interactive session. It is possible that we repeat the process if it happens that the wireframes need to be drastically changed. In general we have a good and clear idea of how you are using our software and as a result we are often on the right track. And that is what makes our job so interesting every single day.

One of the processes we are using in the Project team is User–centered design (UCD). UCD is a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

In this process, we also take the suggestions and ideas – which we receive from you via the feedback button in the software – into account for further development. As you probably already noticed there is also a feedback button in the preview version of the new design in Product update 245. Your feedback is always welcome! Please do not hesitate to contact us through ux@exact.com or comment on this post.

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 you know we are currently working on the new design of Exact Synergy Enterprise and in the product update 245 we have added additional self-service functionalities: medical leave and expense claim. When you use one of these new features you will be guided through a wizard, as we also offer at the personal time off page. In this blog I would like to zoom in on how you can easily register your medical leave.

There are many ways to navigate to the medical leave page. The fastest ways are:
1. the hyperlink medical leave in the self-service part of the personal menu;
2. the medical leave button in the self-service widget on the homepage.

When you start the medical leave page, you will directly see a list of previous requests grouped by ‘Current’, ‘Upcoming’ and ‘In the past’. The ‘Current’ and ‘Upcoming’ sections are always visible so that you have an overview of which current and future requests have been registered. The requests in the ‘In the past’ section are hidden, but you can easily open this section by clicking somewhere in the bar.

Register a new medical leave request is easy and requires only few mouse clicks. Just click at the ‘+ Register medical leave’ button and from there you will be guided through a wizard. In product update 245 we support six medical leave types:

1. Sick leave
2. Visit doctor
3. Visit dentist
4. Other specialist
5. Care leave
6. Emergency leave

Each type has its own page with predefined questions. The content is based on the information that the HR department needs to meet the regulations. In some cases we already prefilled some fields. For instance, if you register a sick leave we have prefilled the current date, the telephone number where the company can reach you and the address you’ll be staying. It is possible to prefill some fields only if the information is already available in Synergy. As a result you save a lot of time to fill in the form.

At the settings page the medical leave request types can be changed into a different request type by a person who has administrator rights.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how we could further empower the new design of Exact Synergy Enterprise, please feel free to contact us through ux@exact.com or comment on this post.

In my previous post about the new Synergy design I wrote that the order of the tabs on the Person, Account and Project cards can easily be changed via drag-and-drop as of product update 245. What does this actually mean?

When you open a card, you will find the tabs just underneath the contact details (Business card and ‘More’ section).

A number of tabs are shown and there is also a ‘+ ‘ tab. When you click on the ‘+’ tab, it presents a list of pages that are not used very frequently. Of course the list of pages is based on availability. By clicking on one of the items in the list, it will automatically open the related page. If you would like to add an item to the tabs bar, you can easily do that by drag and drop. It is also possible to remove a tab from the bar and put it in the ‘+’ tab list via drag and drop.

Next to that you can also easily customize the order of the tabs. For instance when you are an Account Manager, you would like to see the activities related to a specific customer. In that case you can move the ‘Activity’ tab to the first position in the row. The order of the tabs will be stored automatically. When you open an Account card, the Activity tab is shown by default, so you don’t have to click.

I hope these tips will help you to work with the new Synergy design with even more pleasure. Your feedback is always welcome! Please do not hesitate to contact us through ux@exact.com or comment on this post.

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.

At Exact Online we’re constantly trying to improve our solution and make it easier to use. As part of this effort we’ve created a new menu style. It has been available since May this year, so you might have seen it already.

This new style – ‘Tab’- is quite different from the original ‘Panel’ menu, so let’s look at its main properties and some of the ideas behind them.

• New colors
  Instead of the panel menu’s bright red, we used more subdued blue and gray colors (no other colors are available either)
• All menus in one place
  The panel menu offers three ways to access a certain menu or functionality – the toolbar (the top section with the icons),  the top menu (the drop down below the toolbar) and the left menu. They complicate setting up the menu and can lead to confusion.
  With the new style, the tabs in the top of the screen are the only navigation option. Move your mouse over the tabs to expand the menu and show the available menu options. They are organized into functional areas: Finance, Sales, Purchase, and Person. The tabs are displayed according to the modules in your license.
• Direct access to important functions
  We also made certain functions directly available from the tab menu – like creating a financial entry or viewing all customers. We obviously can’t place every menu option on the tabs so there are links that will direct you to the full menus for each module.
• Navigate with bread crumbs
  Just like for Hansel and Gretel, bread crumbs now show where you were coming from, allowing you to easily track back to an earlier page. They’re visible as links in the top left cornor of the screen.
• General search available
  The panel menu offered serveral search boxes. In the tab menu, one general search field accomodates all data types found in Exact Online. Just type what you want to search for, hit enter, and all results matching your request will be shown

Want to give it a try? You can easily switch. Just go to your user settings and select the drop down ‘Menu style’ on the general tab. Change the value to ‘Tab menu’ and press save. That’s it! Changing back to the ‘Panel’ menu works the same way.

If you haven’t tried yet, here are a few extra handy tips:

• The Home tab contains general menus like the user settings, your own user data and your account data, as well as access to the system menu.
• The right side of the menu bar contains the ‘Log off’ link and help access
• The ‘More’ links in the tabs lead to the full menu for the applicable module

We made the tab menu available to get feedback from you. So please do give it a try and tell us what you think. Your comments will help us to keep improving it and make using Exact Online easier for everyone.

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!

There are many sources of information on how Exact Globe works: manuals, release notes, Frequently asked questions, fact sheets and so on. All this information is text based and very usefull if you want to get the details of certain functionalities. As of this year we also present information on high lights of new releases via video’s (see the product update news page) so users can get up to date with little effort: the information is brought to you. 

But now there is more:

You may remember the introduction of a series of Exact Synergy Enterprise Tips that were released last Spring.  These quick demos are aimed at existing Exact users and each provide a quick tip which can you work more efficiently with the product.

We’re happy to announce that the first Exact Globe Tip is ready:  the Role Bar.

In this quick demo, you’ll learn how to use the Exact Globe Role Bar to create a personalized map of the functionality important to you, which allows you to carry out your daily work more efficiently.

We hope you enjoy this Exact Globe tip. Stay tuned because there are more in the works which will be available shortly.

Aad ‘t Hart has recently published articles about Functions and Features versus the User Experience, Simplicity, web identity and more. In this blog I want to zoom in on Employee Self Service (ESS) facilities in a simplified version of Exact Synergy we are creating, and especially requesting a day off. By making Exact Synergy simpler we aim to make it more designed for specific goals, more modern and easier to use.

The ESS portal gives your employees access to their personal data in a secure and transparent environment. As an employee you can for instance enter or change your time off period, enter an expense claim or change the personal address. This undoubtedly leads to reduction of administrative costs.

In the new simplified version of Exact Synergy, that will be available as a beta version in product update 244, we particularly focus on ESS features. One of them is Time Off.

The screenshot above is the entry part of Time Off. As you can see the screen is truly focused on getting the task of asking time off done easily. Also the user is presented the information he or she naturally needs, for instance “What is my balance?” The entry fields are linked based on the choices the employee made so the employee can quickly fill in the request and ask for approval without being confronted with unnecessary fields that may be left blank.

Now you can ‘dream’ about how to spend your personal time while entering the request instead of the think about which procedures to follow to enter a time off request. And that makes a lot more fun…

If you have any questions regarding this post, please create a comment to this article.

Image credit for the header image: neloqua.