New features in Replicon

Timesheet, Time Off, & Punching

• Voice-controlled punching with CloudClock
• New timesheet and time off conditional approval rules: Second level supervisor approves
• Ability to copy timesheet rows

• Timesheet Modified notification

Project, Billing, & Costing

• Time Workbench

Payroll

• New pay run list page filters

System

• Dynamic re-assignment of group access
• Report Schedule template
• New API documentation
• Ability to limit cost manager’s access
• Ability to limit who can be assigned reports and as a substitute
• Options for analyzing data using Tableau and Microsoft Power BI

Voice-controlled punching with CloudClock

CloudClock users can create punches using voice commands, as a way of minimizing touch and the spread of germs in the workplace. 

If employees use Face ID or QR codes to log in, and voice-controlled punching, they never need to touch the clock.

Users can use voice commands to punch in, punch out, and punch in and out of breaks. No other actions, such as entering time off or viewing your timesheet, are currently supported. On-screen indicators show users where voice commands can be used.

To use this feature, you must first enable voice-control for CloudClock. To do this:

1. Tap and hold on CloudClock home page for 10 seconds.
2. On the page that displays, ensure the Speech Recognition toggle is set to on, and allow use of the microphone.

Refer to Setting up CloudClock for fore information.

Note: Punching against projects, activities, and custom fields is not currently supported. While users can use voice commands to create punches against these items, they’d need to tap to select values, so it would not be a no-touch experience.

New timesheet and time off conditional approval rules: Second level supervisor approves

These new rules will automatically send timesheets and time off bookings to the owner’s supervisor’s supervisor. Refer to Setting up conditional approval rules for more information.

Ability to copy timesheet rows

You can now copy timesheet rows in configurable timesheets; this functionality was already available in legacy duration-based timesheets.

For In/Out configurable timesheets, you can copy a row within a day, or all rows from one day to another.

We’ve also added a Suggestions option to Replicon Mobile, which lists recently-used projects, tasks, or activities that you can copy to a new time entry card.

For more details, refer to Adding, deleting, and copying timesheet rows in the Replicon Help, or read the preview announcement we posted on Jan 16.

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.

New pay run list page filters

To help you more easily find older pay runs, we now include Description and Creation Date filters on the Pay Runs list page of the Payroll Workbench.

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.

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.

Dynamic re-assignment of group access

Often, companies only allow employees to access members of their own group.

For example, Jim is part of the Accounting department, and is only allowed to share reports with, or assign as substitute, his fellow Accounting teammates.

However, if an employee moves from one group to another, their access doesn’t automatically change with them, which makes work for admins, and can cause data security issues if access isn’t updated.

Now, you can set a user’s access to automatically update if they change groups by assigning them one of the User’s Location options, rather than assigning an explicitly-named group (e.g. ‘Finance’).

For example, if Jim is assigned one of these new options, and is later moved from Accounting to the Finance team, he will automatically be limited to accessing members of the Finance group.

This functionality is available in all products that offer customizable group types. It also applies when assigning time off calendar visibility in user profiles.

Report Schedule template

We’ve launched a new report template you can use to track and manage your scheduled reports. Among other data, the template includes:

• The schedule owner’s name
• The names of all recipients
• The next and last runtime

This report can help administrators manage scheduled reports set up by employees who have since left their company.

New API documentation

We offer our API to customers for use in building custom apps and integrations using Replicon data and operations. However, in the past our API documentation wasn’t optimized for customer use, and therefore presented some usability challenges.

But now, we’ve completely revamped our API documentation, to make it easier for customers to use. Among the improvements are:

A more complete user guide

The new user guide includes updated code examples, an easier authentication method, and information on getting started, errors, filtering data, and concepts referred to in the reference documents.

A curated list of services

Replicon uses roughly 4000 operations. But, when customers are building apps using our API, they’re typically only interested in a small subset of these. So, we’ve filtered out the operations you’re unlikely to want to use, so you can more easily find the ones you want. But, you can still access all services, if needed.

More useful field-level documentation

We now offer clearer indications of required fields, more examples, more definitions and explanations, more complete call responses, and information about using operations to filter data.

We plan to continue making improvements to these documents based on customer feedback. Each reference page includes a link to a feedback form; please let us know if there are things we can add, or any additional improvements we can make.

Ability to limit who can be assigned reports and as a substitute

In the past, if you set up a substitute user, you could choose any user in the system. Similarly, if you set up a report schedule, you could choose to send the report to any user. And, you could share a report with anyone who had access to that report’s template.

Now, to improve data security and promote usability, we’ve introduced an option to limit which individuals a user can select when scheduling or sharing reports, or when assigning substitutes, based on user group assignments.

To limit access, select the groups the user can choose from using the Roles and Permissions tab in their user profile.

Unlike group limits for other roles, this option does not allow the user to view other users’ items; The user will just be able to share reports with any member of the assigned groups, or set any member as a substitute. If you don’t select any groups for a user, their access won’t be limited.

This feature is now available in all enterprise-level products, plus ProjectTime Plus and our ADP products.

Refer to Limiting which groups a user can access for more information.

Ability to limit cost manager’s access

You can now limit what user data cost managers have access to, using groups. This works the same way other manager visibility limits work – you select which groups a manager should be able to access from the Roles and Permissions tab in their user profile.

This feature is now available in Professional Services Automation, Project Portfolio Management, ProjectTime Plus, and our ADP Premium products.

For more information on groups and how to limit access by group, refer to:

https://www.replicon.com/help/setting-up-user-groups/

https://www.replicon.com/help/limiting-which-groups-a-user-can-access/

Options for analyzing data using Tableau and Microsoft Power BI

Replicon is a rich source of information that you can use as part of your business intelligence strategy. We currently offer an in-app analytics dashboard where you can view your data in chart form, but some companies prefer to use a dedicated visualization tool to analyze data.

So, we’re pleased to announce the launch of our data connectors for Tableau and Power BI. We offer the following options for each:

• A workbook of demo charts populated with sample Replicon data, that illustrates visualization options
• A workbook of demo charts populated with your organization’s Replicon data, that you can use as a starting point in creating your own custom visuals
• A direct connector, that lets you connect Tableau or Power BI to your Replicon data, so you can create charts from scratch with your current data

We also offer resources for companies that warehouse with BigQuery, or that want to create their own data connector using the Replicon API for BI Services.

Refer to Gaining business intelligence using your Replicon data for more information on all of these options.