News

Core mydigitalspace Part 1:

Support Issue changes
Pop Up Calendar
Find and View on forms
Partner - Default Templates against membership
Website Request for Information options
Diary and Action changes
Event Management major update
News update

1. Support Issue Changes

There will now be a single numbering system for all issues throughout the system. This will alleviate duplicated issue numbers and make things easier for support within all businesses.

From the support page as a customer the link 'View Manage Your Support Issues' takes you to a new page where you can perform quick searches on ALL issues (not just open ones).

When viewing a logged issue (as a customer) you will now see the status information of a linked project task that you advisor has created within their system. The advisor will also see this information on the full issue screen.

When viewing the Support Home page (as an advisor) you will now see a new link that shows ALL open issues irrespective of the type (ie all open 'help required', 'suggestions' and 'feedback' in the one place.)

From the Support page, under the Third Party section there is a new link to paint.net. This is a free tool for image manipulation.

2. Pop Up Calendar

When you click on the calendar icon next to a date field it now opens up within the same window instead of opening up a new window.

3. FIND and VIEW on forms

We have updated the FIND and VIEW buttons in most places in the system to be icons. The FIND button has been replaced with an icon with a magnifying glass on it. The VIEW button has been replaced with an arrow icon. The ... button for the calendar has been replaced with a calendar icon.

As part of this change you can now type in enough in the business and / or person fields to identify just one person and then press enter on forms such as the Action form it will automatically fill in that record without you having to select it. If you type in something and there are multiple records it will show them on the screen instead of opening up a new window.

4. Partner Updates

You are now able to attach default template files to a membership and when you register somebody with that membership, they will automatically get those templates attached to the business record. Great place for the invoice, quote etc templates.

It is also now possible to attach a file to a registration record.

5. Website Request for Information options

When creating websites, there are now two additional flags that can be set when linking to the Request for Information screen. You can now put '&Advanced=True' at the end of the link and this collects address information, as well as if the person would like to receive your newsletter and where they heard of you. The other option is '&Suggestion=True' which is a cut down version just allowing for the public to put in their views/suggestions about your website.

6. Diary and Action changes

The action form has been updated with a tab for some of the advanced options (such as billing, private flag etc).

The Diary form has also been updated to have a tab of 'Options' where you can set up your default look and feel for the diary. You can specify if you just want to see Meetings in your diary or all action types that are set to show in the diary.

You now specify against an Action Type whether or not that type of action will show in the Diary or not.

7. Event Management Update

The Event area has undergone a significant upgrade with the form now using tabs and including new functionality such as the ability to register for an event from your website, take credit card payments for those registrations, restrict the event to a specific number of people, determine whether just anybody can register or it is restricted and there is also the ability to send an invitation email (this updates the status to 'invited') or just an email to participants (no updating of statuses).

When sending bulk emails to more than 50 people it now displays progress information when sending or when saving (which it does by default when attaching any file to the email) so that you can see where things are up to.

8. News Update

The News area (where you create your news) now has the ability to use the full document editor for your news articles (just select 'Rich Text (HTML)' as the format. Please note: the document editor is not yet compatible with Windows Vista. We are awaiting an update from a third party vendor which should be available mid September. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes.

The News display area (in the footer area) has also been updated and now has tabs for the different types of news. Ie a tab for your internal news, a tab for the network news (ie other businesses within the same site), a tab for any RSS feeds you have set up and a tab for the site news (ie myworkspace). Also the news item that appears in the footer is now dynamic and will show (in the order it finds) your businesses latest news or the sites latest news.

Core mydigitalspace Part 2:

9. Project Task Resourcing report
10. Online shop - referral and promotion functionality
11. Website Visits update
12. SAN attachments storage
13. Directory Advertising
14. General Items

9. Project Task Resourcing Report

There is now a Project Task Resourcing report available on the Project home page and also on the My Project Tasks page. It shows all people within your business and the number of tasks they have per project task status. You can also select to see the duration (in mins) per status. This will assist in allocating tasks to resources within your business.

10. Online Shop New Functionality

It is now possible to create a referral structure within your business so that when people can come to your online shop and put in a reference number. This can give them different pricing, but also can give the referrer a percentage commission on the sale. There are some restrictions with this so please contact your support group for further details if you would like to implement this.

Also within the online shop you can now create promotional codes which will give the person a different pricing to the normal retail. This is managed through the existing Price Group structure of the system.

11. Website Visits Update

The Website visits / hits area has been updated to allow you to create your own visit types (ie Google etc) and if linked in with google adwords (or specific links from other websites) can keep track of where people came from to get to your website. The Site Visits page now has the ability to do quick searching on various filters and will show the IP address where the hit came from.

12. SAN Attachments Storage

We have upgraded the attachments storage area to use a next generation large file storage system (referred to as a SAN) - this will allow us to more easlily add storage as demand grows.

As part of this we have also changed where website files get stored - they used to be in one directory with each file starting with the site reference number - now they are in their own directory with each file keeping its orginal name - this will make it a lot easier to reference the files. eg what was: /directory/images/[siteref]_logo_[filename] is now: /site/[siteref]/[filename]

All existing websites will not be affected and users should not notice any difference.

13. Directory Advertising

We have implemented the first version of enabling advertising to show within a mydigitalspace based platform.
To set this up, click on the Directory link in footer, click on the Other tab, Click on Manage Advertising link. Click on Add / Manage My Advertising and click on Add button to add in an advert with a short title and short description. You can link this to a document within your system (set to be viewed publicly /
on your website), or any other URL. You can specify categories for the advert. You set a monthly maximum budget for your advertisement - you are then billed per time the ad is shown and every time it is clicked. Your budget and the advertising rates will determine how ofter your ad is shown.

As a partner you can set up category blocks to stop certain types of ads from showing to your subcribers. A business can also setup category blocks.

The system is currently only implemented with the myworkspace partnerships. The ads are shown in the directory footer and within the directory itself.

We can implement with other partners if it fits with that partners business model. As a partner you share in the advertising revenue. Contact Mark Byers for more information.

14. General Items

You can now select 'yesterday' in the right hand side bar of your days calendar.

The advanced search forms that have the 'email' field on them now have two new options in the drop down: EXISTS which will check that there is actually some text (of any kind) in the email field. IS EMPTY will check that there is NO text in the email field. This will make it quicker to find people in your system that have or don't have an email address.

On the Guest Logon page there is now a code that displays on screen that the user needs to enter in to give further security to this area.

Financial / Accounting mydigitalspace (Part 3):

Template Changes
Financial Information Import
Reconciling Bank Deposits
Auto Create Bank Account
Create PDF of invoices
Read Receipt for Invoices Sent
Expense Date
ABA File Creation Changes

1. Template Changes

The Expense Template has new tags available to place the bank information on the expense print (for RCTI's). ie EXPENSE.TOBANK, EXPENSE.TOBSB, EXPENSE.TOACCOUNTNUMBER, EXPENSE.TOACCOUNTNAME.

There is now a template that can be set up when emailing an invoice that can be different to the template used when printing an invoice. The new template is called INVOICETEMPLATEFOREMAIL.HTML.

There are also templates for when sending a quote out (this is an invoice that has not yet been set to 'Sent'. INVOICEQUOTETEMPLATE.HTML and INVOICEQUOTETEMPLATEFOREMAIL.HTML

The Statement template has been updated as some of the existing tags were not working as they should.

2. Financial Information Import

There have been some changes to the importing of financial information including:

Be able to look for unreconciled payments / receipts for the same amount:

link transaction to that payment or payment
mark transaction as duplication
mark payment or receipt as reconciled

Be able to look for unpaid expenses / unreceipted invoices for the same amount

transaction is lniked to invoice or invoice
do same processing as auto receipt / auto payment
transaction marked as transferred to financials
mark receipt as reconciled

You can also now specify a Project and / or Area when setting up a mapping.

3. Reconciling Bank Deposits

Reconciling a bank deposit. This is now working as it should, ie when you reconcile a bank deposit, all the receipts within that bank deposit are automatically reconciled as well.

4. Automatically Create Bank Account

When creating a receipt or payment within a new system and you haven't set up a bank account yet, the system will automatically create the bank account and a financial account that links to it for you.

5. Create PDF of Invoice Sent

It is now possible to produce a PDF of the invoice that you send to the customer. Click on the 'View/print as sent to customer' link at the top of the Invoice screen, and then, from the cog icon in the top right hand corner, select View as PDF or Email as PDF.

6. Read Receipt for Invoices Sent

There is a new financial profile setting that specifies whether you want a read receipt requested when you email an invoice to somebody.

7. Expense Date

The expense form has had the 'Accrued Date' field removed (except fo Roadmaster then it has stayed) and there is now only one date on the expense form called 'Expense Date'.

8. ABA File Creation

The ABA file creation program now has the option of creating a Direct Balancing Transaction. You can select to have the balancing transaction created within the ABA direct file. Some banks require this when uploading the file.

9. General Accounting Items

You can now create a Pay Period from the NEW drop down at the top of the screen.

An expense that is only linked to a person can now also be printed via the 'print' link.

You are now no longer able to delete a financial account that has been used as default financial account within your financial profile.

When selecting a financial account you can now type part of the financial account name and press enter, it will automatically fill in that financial account. If you type in something and there are multiple financial accounts that match that text it will show them on the screen instead of opening up a new window.

There is now the ability (for Australian businesses) to specify a set rate of tax for an employee.

You can now produce a P&L by Area and choose to include the child areas related to that area.

It is now possible to add attachments to General Journals. This is useful for attaching the calculations and supporting evidence for the journal.

You can now select which Area an employee is assigned to, all Payroll financial transactions are then created against this Area.