HelpAdministrators

New features in Replicon

This topic gives an overview of all the new features added to Replicon for the past six months.

You can subscribe to have our weekly product updates delivered directly to your inbox. Updates include information on upcoming features, newly-released features and improvements, and bug fixes.

 

Timesheet

Timesheet Modified notification

We’ve launched a new notification sent to timesheet owners when their timesheets have been modified by their supervisor or another manager. The notification is sent on days when timesheets are modified, and includes a summary of all changes made that day.

This notification:

  • Pro-actively informs the employee of changes, so they don’t have to seek out information themselves
  • Gives employees the opportunity to confirm that changes are legitimate
  • Lets employees know who revised their timesheets
  • Ensures employees are aware of their timesheets’ contents at all times

Note that this feature currently supports English only, but other supported languages will be added in the next couple of months.

Refer to Setting up automated notifications for more information on how notifications work.

 

Improved mobile interface

We’ve finished rolling out our new mobile interface. All users using In/Out and Time Distribution Grid configurable timesheets should now see the new UI.

Along with a new look, this new UI offers:

  • Quicker time entry
  • The ability to enter time across multiple days at once
  • The option to search clients, projects, and tasks at once, and
  • Support for certain timesheet components

Click here for more details.

 

Crew timesheet

We’re proud to announce that we’ve launched our crew timesheet, that allows a crew manager to enter and allocate hours for all members of their team from a single, daily page.

Crew timesheet makes entering time for multiple users quick, easy, and more accurate, especially compared to commonly-used paper-based approaches. It can also save costs by keeping workers focused on their key duties, by decreasing the need for data entry labor, and by allowing project managers real-time insight into what’s happening at work sites.

Supervisors and team managers can be assigned as crew managers by giving them Crew Time permission. Note that team manager is a new role in Replicon – see the section below for more details.

Then, on the Team > Crew Time page, crew managers can:

  • Choose which of their team members appears on the crew timesheet’s daily view
  • Mass add time entries (or copy them from older timesheets)
  • Allocate hours to different jobs using Replicon projects, tasks, or activities, and
  • Mass submit timesheets

Crew timesheet is available both in Replicon Mobile, where we’ve optimized it for use on tablets, and in the web app. Refer to How crew timesheets work for more information.
Please note that crew timesheet:

    • Only supports configurable timesheets
    • Is not available offline
    • Is available in the TimeAttend Plus, Workforce Management, Replicon for ADP RUN, and Replicon for Workforce Now products. Note that if workers’ time is tracked against projects or tasks, they and their managers will also need to be assigned a TimeBill or TimeCost product. And, if you plan to use the team manager role, you'll need to use and enterprise product.

 

back to top

 

Time off

Time off notices

Administrators can now include a notice on time off bookings. You can include a different message for each time off type, but all bookings for a particular type will display the same message.

For example, you could use a notice to give information about policies specific to particular time off types, such as instructions for how to submit supporting documents for bookings.

 

back to top

 

Project, Billing, & Costing

Time Workbench

We’ve finished rolling out our brand new Time Workbench. This new feature is similar to the Payroll Workbench, but is used to export time entries and related data, for use in third party systems.

Unlike report exports, Time Workbench tracks deltas – meaning you can choose to export only data that’s been added or has changed since your last export.

Time workbench also has broad filtering and sorting capabilities, as well as the ability to freeze data intended for export, making it easy for users to review and make regular exports of the precise data they choose.

The Time Workbench is available in the Cost section of Replicon, to users assigned applicable Cost Manager permissions.

It can be found in the following products:

  • TimeCost Plus
  • Professional Portfolio Management
  • TimeBill Plus
  • Professional Services Automation
  • ProjectTime
  • ProjectTime Plus

Refer to Exporting time data using the Time Workbench for more information about this feature.

Ability to assign groups to project/task teams

If you use Replicon’s groups functionality, you can now assign an entire group to a project or task team. Once you’ve created a group, such as a location, you can assign it to a project the same way you assign departments to the team.

This can make it easier to assign groups of project workers to the correct projects, while omitting workers who shouldn’t be working on those projects.

Improvements to the task interface

We’ve launched the updates to the task interface that we previewed a while back. We’ve added a search field, consolidated all resourcing fields in one location, and improved how task statuses display – see details of these changes below.

Note that, to safeguard page load performance, the interface no longer includes a Collapse All option. The full hierarchy of tasks for a project will always display, unless you use search. By using the search field, you can view tasks in context of their parent and sub-tasks – search results always show all parents of tasks that match the search term, and can be set to show all sub-tasks. See below for details.

Ability to search

The major improvement we’ve made is adding a search field, where you can search your list of projects and tasks by their name, code, or words in their description.

The search field offers a couple of filter options:

  • Resource Assignment - only tasks assigned to the resource you select will display
  • Show Matching Sub-Tasks - all sub-tasks of tasks that match the search text will display

Consolidation of resourcing fields

Previously, you’d add team assignments on one location, and assign them to dates from another. Now, all resourcing fields are accessed from a single location, under the resource icon.

Improvements to how task statuses display

We’ve added a Status column, where you can mark tasks as open or closed. Previously, no open or closed labels displayed, and closed tasks were shown as strikethrough text.

 

back to top

 

Time & Attendance

Compliance updates mailing list

To help keep interested customers up to date with changes to global labor laws, such as new payroll or time off regulations, Replicon publishes updates on our website whenever laws change.
To make this content easier to follow, we’ve introduced a mailing list service to our Compliance Dashboard. You can choose which regions you’re interested in subscribing to, and then whenever laws change in that region, we’ll send you an email update summarizing the change.


Refer to Using the Compliance Dashboard for information on subscribing.

 

New role: Team manager

This new role can be assigned to managers who need to manage timesheets, time off, and expenses for a team.

Previously, only supervisors and payroll, cost, or billing managers could manage team data. However, those managers have rights you might not want certain team managers to have. And, supervisors can approve items, and need to be directly assigned to users in user profiles, and you may not want a team’s manager to have approval permissions, or to be directly assigned.

Instead of being assigned to team members directly, Team Managers are assigned via groups that you define, based on their location, division, or other factors.

You might use this new role to create, for example:

  • A crew manager, for use with our new crew timesheet (described above)
  • An administrative manager, who completes timesheets for everyone in a particular office, but doesn’t approve items

See Setting up team managers for more information on configuring this role.

Note that team manager is available only in our enterprise products: Professional Services Automation, Project Portfolio Management and Workforce Management.

 

Punch map view and geofencing

We’ve finished rolling out our new punch map view and geofencing feature that we previewed a couple of months ago. This feature can help you identify whether an employee was at their assigned work site when they punched in or out, helping verify that their work times are valid.

Punch and payroll managers can now view punches on a map, so they can easily see which ones fall outside a user’s work location.

In addition, administrators can assign each punch user a ‘place’ (representing their work location) which shows as a circle on the punch map (a ‘geofence’), to help managers identify invalid punches. Administrators can also assign punch users the Punching at work location punch validation rule, which will automatically flag as invalid any punches that fall outside the user’s assigned place.

Note that to coincide with these improvements, we made some small changes to the filters available on the Team > Time Punches page.

 

back to top

 

System

Data import from within Replicon

We’ve just launched a new, more convenient method of mass importing data – our new in-app data import feature.

Currently, the new import feature support adding, editing, and deleting the following data types:

  • Users
  • Holidays
  • Activities
  • Groups (locations, cost centers, etc)
  • Projects
  • Tasks
  • Clients
  • Project assignments
  • Task assignments

    As with RIA, the new import feature relies on CSV files that you set up with data you want to import.

    Note that, for most customers, this tool is disabled by default – you must enable it in the Administrator permissions for all users who need to carry out imports.

    Refer to Mass adding, updating, and deleting data using data import for details on how to use the data import tool.

    NOTE:

    Be sure to warn any users that when they carry out an import:

    • This tool does not include a revert option
    • They are working with your live data
    • Any additions, modifications, and deletions made cannot be undone

    The Replicon Import Add-in (RIA) utility is still available; this new import feature addresses some of RIA’s limitations, namely that:

    • It needs to be installed and set up before it can be used
    • It’s an Excel add-on, and some companies don’t allow installation of add-ons
    • It’s not supported on Macs

    back to top