New features in Replicon and Polaris

This topic gives an overview of the new features added to Replicon and Polaris in the past few quarters.

Q1 2025

IN REPLICON & POLARIS

IN POLARIS ONLY

IN REPLICON ONLY

Q2 2024
New features video

IN REPLICON ONLY

IN POLARIS ONLY

IN REPLICON & POLARIS

 

 

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Q1 2025 - In Replicon & Polaris

ZEROTIME^TM

Auto Populate timesheets in ZeroTime^TM

Replicon/Polaris's ZeroTime^TM feature enables automatic collection of work hours and activities that users can apply to their timesheets.

Now, ZeroTime offers an Auto Populate feature. This feature allows time and related data to be collected and allocated to timesheets without any manual intervention by the user, resulting in literally zero time spent populating the timesheet.

To enable this feature in ZeroTime, ensure your data collectors are set up as desired, then go to Settings and enable the Auto Populate setting.

After that, as you work, ZeroTime’s machine learning algorithm will collect and assess data according to your work patterns, then add hours with their associated tasks and projects to your timesheet.

You’ll never had to take any other action in ZeroTime – you’ll simply have to review your timesheet to check that it’s correct before you submit it.

Refer to Using ZeroTime in Auto Populate mode for more information.

 

ZeroTime^TM suggestions based on historical timesheets, favorites, and defaults

Currently, when an employee starts using ZeroTime^TM, it can take a few days for our machine learning algorithm to train on their usage patterns. So, we’ve been looking for ways to make ZeroTime effective and efficient more quickly.

This quarter, we’ll be updating our algorithm to account for patterns in the user’s historical timesheets.

 With this change, ZeroTime will understand the work patterns of existing Replicon/Polaris users as soon as they start using the feature. They should see suggestions immediately and won’t have to give as much manual feedback, plus they can turn on the Auto Populate feature right away.

 In addition, when making suggestions, ZeroTime will consider an employee’s timesheet favorites:

 

and their timesheet custom field default values:

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Enhanced ZeroTime^TM inline timer

When using ZeroTime to record a note, a timer is available that you can use to keep track of time spent working on a particular task.

However, currently, you have to remain within the Notes dialog to keep the timer running.

So, to make the timer more useful, we’ll soon be upgrading it so it keeps running when you leave the Notes dialog. It will continue to run in the background as you work on other pages until you stop it.

While the stopwatch is running, you will see a banner on each page, to remind you that it’s still recording time.

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TIME OFF

Holiday calendar effective dates 

Currently, when you assign a holiday calendar to a user, you can’t include an effective date. This means you can only assign one calendar at a time, and any new calendar you assign will overwrite the last one. This can cause problems, such as the following:

• When calendars are updated, historical data that relies on holiday dates may be lost
• System administrators can’t set up new calendar assignments in advance

 

Introducing effective dates

So, you’ll soon be able to set effective dates when assigning holiday calendars to users.

You’ll be able to assign as many calendars as you need, that take effect in the future or in the past. For each calendar assigned, its holidays will be updated wherever they appear (such as in time off balance calculations or in the time off calendar), for its effective date range.

Holiday calendars are assigned on the Schedule tab of user profiles, and can be updated for multiple users at once using the user mass edit feature.

 

New option to update holiday bookings based on new calendar assignments

When you update a user’s holiday calendar assignments, you’ll see a new option that will let you update all automatically-generated holiday bookings to match the new assignment.

For example, if a US holiday calendar is in effect, and you switch it to a Canadian holiday calendar as of Mar 1, US holiday bookings will be retained for Jan and Feb, but will be removed for the rest of the year replaced with Canadian holiday bookings.

Notes:

• If, due to an updated holiday calendar, a holiday is added or removed from a time off booking, the booking will be reopened and recalculated, as will any closed timesheets that bookings appear on.
• If your organization doesn’t auto-generate holidays bookings or use timesheets, you’ll have to manually delete and add holiday bookings to reflect new holiday calendar assignments.
• If you have a customization or integration that may be impacted by this change, rollout of this feature may be delayed while we evaluate whether it will be affected by this change. We will update the customization or integration, if necessary.

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TIMESHEETS

New approval date/time column in Time Entry Details report

We’ve added a Time Entry Approval Date/Time column to the Time Entry Details report template.

This column is primarily useful for customers with multiple downstream ERPs, who therefore use reports to transfer data to their ERPs, rather than the Time Workbench.

The column lets those customers isolate time entries by the hour approved, every hour, allowing them to make very frequent – essentially real time – data syncs, so hours can be billed as quickly as possible.

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SYSTEM

Upgrades to meet new WCAG standards

WCAG standards are defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and help organizations ensure their products and websites are accessible to people with disabilities.

In December 2024 the W3C published revisions to its standards -- including revisions to WCAG 2.1 AA, which Replicon and Polaris support.

Therefore, we’ve been making some adjustments to our products to ensure we meet the new requirements. Those changes will be completed this quarter.

We’ll provide a link to our updates WCAG support documents once these changes have been fully implemented.

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Q1 2025 - In Polaris

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Dela project risk management (limited availability)

Project delays can have a serious impact on your business. Delayed projects equal ballooning budgets, sub-optimal resourcing, lost customers and prospects, and the delay or cancellation of new initiatives.

That’s why it’s so important to understand, as early as possible, which projects are at risk and require remediation.

To help project managers better predict project risk, we’ll soon be launching Dela Project Analytics, an AI-powered tool that will show project managers:

• Whether a delay is likely, and
• A predicted completion date, with a confidence threshold percentage

To arrive at these predictions, the widget compares the progress of the project to the progress and completion data for all historical projects in your Polaris system.

And, since a PMs tolerance for risk might differ depending on the project, Dela offers a risk tolerance setting that you can configure for each project. Higher tolerance means Dela must predict a longer delay before it will show a warning; for low tolerance projects, even short delays will trigger a warning.

In addition, to help PMs mitigate the risk of delay, Dela will show PMs a summary of current risks, based on an analysis of five key risk areas. And, it will provide a mitigation plan for addressing the identified risks.

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Linked projects

The projects project managers create are sometimes, or often, related to each other in some way.

For example, you might create a project for each phase of a larger project you need to complete. Or, you could create a project for each change request related to a bigger project.

Previously in Polaris, there was no way to link related projects to one another. But that has changed.

You can now link projects together. There are three types of links to choose from:

• Change Requests
• Phases
• Relates To

Linking projects can help users better understand how projects relate to each other, and allows you to instantly view hours, cost, and revenue totals for all linked projects, using the Linked Projects tab.

Note that linking projects does not establish a hierarchical relationship between those projects; Any linked project will have its own budget, resourcing, billing, revenue and costing, like any other project.

You can link projects when creating or duplicating a project or when using the new Linked Projects tab in existing projects:

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Task dates can be set to roll up to their parent

Previously in Polaris, when a child task’s dates changed, their parent task’s date range didn’t update.

So, if a child task was delayed or finished more quickly than expected, sub-task dates could have extended beyond the date range of their parent task.

Both of these scenarios created confusion and made project estimation and planning more difficult.

So in Q1, we launched a new setting that, when enabled, automatically adjusted parent-level dates to match the earliest and latest child task dates.

For example, imagine you set up a task with a date range of Feb 1 to 20. But, one of its child tasks that is set to end on Feb 20 is delayed, so you need to shift it to end on Feb 28. If you have the new setting enabled, when you update the child task date, the parent task’s end date will automatically update to end on Feb 28, too.

Similar automatic adjustments will occur if a child task’s start date is moved before its parent task’s start date.

Project managers can choose this new automatic mode or the existing manual mode, on a per-project basis. To do this, they click the settings icon on the Tasks tab:

Then, select the desired mode from the Project Task Dates field:

Administrators can set the system-level new project default for this feature on the Project Settings page. This has been set to Manually Set mode (the existing behavior) for existing customers, so your task behavior doesn’t change. But, you can update this if you want all new projects to default to manual mode.

Notes: 

• Once you’ve created a task in Manually Set, you cannot switch to Calculated Automatically, so you can’t change to automatic mode for any existing project that has tasks already. However, you can move from automatic mode to manual mode at any time.
• In automatic mode, once you’ve added a child task, its parent task dates will be uneditable since any date changes that follow will be based on the child task dates
• In automatic mode, if you have child tasks that have their own child tasks, changes at the lowest level will cascade up to the highest task level in the hierarchy
• Project dates will never update to match task date ranges
• In automatic mode, task dates are mandatory

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Cost manager role

This quarter, we’ve be added a new role to Polaris: Cost manager.

Users assigned this role are allowed to approve, force approve, reject, reopen, and delete time and expense sheets.

This role is similar to the cost manager role we currently offer in Replicon, and allows customers using it to more easily upgrade to Polaris.

Note that users assigned this role do not have access to the Time Workbench, as they do in Replicon. We plan to add the Time Workbench to Polaris in the future.

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Q1 2025 - In Replicon

TIME OFF

TOIL pay codes can be linked to a time off type

If you use time off in lieu (TOIL) in Replicon, for each pay code employees can select when allocating TOIL, you’ll soon be able to set an associated time off type.

Then, whenever a user selects a pay code for TOIL on their timesheet, the associated time off type will be automatically populated.

This change should make it easier for employees to submit TOIL, and should reduce errors.

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COMPLIANCE

New statutory pay rule: Cayman Islands

This quarter, we’ve introduced a new out of the box statutory pay rule for the Cayman Islands. It is currently available in our pay rules library.

We’ve also updated the Lithuania default pay rule to reflect a recent legislative change that requires any overtime work performed during night hours of a public holiday to be compensated at a rate not less than two and a half times (2.5x) the employee's standard wage.

You can find more information about each of these pay rules, and about the dozens of other statutory pay rules we offer for the U.S. states and other countries around the world, at Administration > Pay Codes and Policies > Pay Rules.

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New time off booking validation rule: Ensure a gap between two bookings

This quarter, we launched a new time off booking validation rule called Ensure a gap between two bookings that checks that there is, at minimum, an amount of time you specify between two time off bookings.

This rule can be used to meet Ireland's parental leave requirement that there must be at least a 10 week gap between two bookings.

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Q4 2024 - In Replicon

TIMESHEETS & PUNCHES

Report for project-dependent timesheet custom fields

Last year, we added the ability to set up project-dependent custom fields to timesheets – that is, fields that only display when the project they are associated with is selected on a timesheet. Refer to Setting up project-dependent custom fields for more information on setting up this feature.

In Q4, we added a Project Timesheet Field report template that project managers can use to track which fields and options are enabled for each project, along with their valid start and end dates.

This report provides a single location for checking whether your project-dependent fields are set up correctly.

Managers will need Projects > Timesheet Fields > View permission in their project manager permission set to view this report.

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Break reminder notifications

We’ve adding a Break reminder push notification that alerts punch employees that it is time for them to take a break.

This notification can help promote break schedule compliance, and can reduce the break penalties that are incurred, in some regions, when employees fail to take required breaks.

Administrators can enable these break notifications via the Notifications System > Notifications tab. They can set the required length of delay from the user’s first In punch to the time when the break must be taken, and can set up multiple notifications using different delays, if needed.

Notes:

• If an employee takes their break ahead of schedule, scheduled notifications will not be cancelled. Administrators can handle this possibility by including a statement like, If you’ve already taken your break, please ignore this message.
• Notifications won’t be sent for shifts that span midnight. We plan to add support for midnight crossovers in the future.

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TIME OFF

Inclusion of pay code details for TOIL deposits in the Time Off Transaction report

We now include the pay code used to deposit time off in lieu (TOIL) in the Description field of reports based on the Time Off Transaction report template.

This is helpful since TOIL policies can be set up to use several different pay codes – like Overtime, Double Time, etc – so it wasn't previously obvious to payroll and other managers what was used.

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SCHEDULING

Shift assignment download and upload

You can now download and upload shift assignments from and to the Schedule page using a CSV file.

This can help make adding and updating schedules easier; for example, you could download the current schedule, make changes in the CSV file, then upload your changes.

To upload or download a CSV, click the Actions menu on the schedule page, and select either Download CSV or Upload CSV.

If downloading data, choose which fields to download, and then click Download CSV.

All days will show, not just those with shifts scheduled, to aid in reading the spreadsheet.

If uploading, similar to our other imports, you can download a sample file to base your import on. Before it’s entered onto the scheduling page, your data will be validated for correct nomenclature.

Refer to Downloading and uploading a schedule for more information.

Notes:

• Imports will not be validated against schedule rules, though we plan to add that functionality in the future.
• Schedule managers will require Shift Upload permission in their schedule manager permission set before they can upload schedules.

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Schedule validation rules and schedule policies

You can now validate user shift schedules using schedule validation rules.

Schedule validation rules are similar to our timesheet validation rules, except they apply when user schedules are being created. For example, you could set up a rule that checks that a user has sufficient rest periods within their scheduled shifts, that returns an error or a warning when you're creating a schedule that has insufficient rest periods.

The warning or message displays in the top, right-hand corner of the job-based scheduling interface.

These rules can help enforce compliance with labor laws, or with your company's unique policies, and can help schedule managers set up schedules more quickly.

These are the rules that are now available:

Average Workday Hours in a Reference Period Average Workday Hours in a Rolling Period Average Workweek Hours in a Reference Period Average Workweek Hours in a Rolling Period California Meal Break Enforcement Prevent Scheduling for Consecutive Days Prevent Scheduling for Multiple Shifts in a Day Prevent Shift Assignment to a Office Schedule User

Require Advance Notice for Shift Scheduling Required Rest Days Validate for Daily Break Hours Validate for Daily Rest based on Reference Period Validate for Daily Rest Period Validate for Max Daily Hours Validate for Max Weekly Hours Validate for Weekly Rest based on Reference Period Validate for Weekly Rest Period

To assign schedule validation rules to users, an administrator must first create one or more schedule policies, where they can assign validation rules that are applicable to a user or group of users. Then, they can assign these policies to users in their user profiles.

Refer to Setting up schedule validation policies and rules for more information.

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Scheduling UI enhancements

On the Schedule page, we’ve added a Jump to Page option, and the ability to choose the number of records that display on the page. You can access both of these new options by clicking the page navigation widget.

We’ve also added the ability to navigate by month to the date picker at the top of the page.

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COMPLIANCE

Three new statutory pay rules in Replicon: Mauritius, El Salvador, Dominican Republic

This quarter, we’ve introduced three new out of the box statutory pay rules: one for Mauritius, one for El Salvador, and one for Dominican Republic. These rules are currently available in our pay rules library.

We’ve also launched an updated version of our Colombia pay rule; we reduced the Weekly Overtime Limit from 47 to 46 to align with a change in local labor laws.

You can find more information about each of these pay rules, and about the dozens of other statutory pay rules we offer for the U.S. states and other countries around the world, at Administration > Pay Codes and Policies > Pay Rules.

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Option to have the Payroll Workbench automatically distribute overtime to projects, tasks, and activities in U.S. pay rules

When customers export payroll data using Replicon’s Payroll Workbench, they often want those hours to be distributed against the projects, tasks, and/or activities the users worked on – using the correct pay codes (e.g. regular vs overtime hours), and according to the pay rule in use. This automated behavior is primarily needed when integrating with other applications. 

In the past, customers could only achieve this functionality by using a custom pay rule. But soon, we’ll be offering an out of the box solution in all of our U.S. pay rules that doesn’t require any pay rule customization.

To enable this feature, you’ll need to contact Deltek Support, and have them set up the key value pairs required for this feature to work. This is a one-time only setup step. Plus, you’ll need to select the project, task, and/or activity columns that hours were worked against in the Payroll Workbench.

Then, hours will automatically be distributed to the appropriate projects, tasks, and activities when you export using the Payroll Workbench.

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New time off accrual rule: Monthly/Yearly Accrual Based on Weekly Scheduled Days

We’ve introduced this new accrual rule, primarily to support compliance requirements in Austria. Using this rule, administrators allot annual or monthly time off by entering the number of weeks the employees should have off.

For example, an employee scheduled to work 4 days per week could be assigned 5 weeks of annual leave, resulting in 20 days off.

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INTEGRATIONS

Replicon - SAP Endorsed App integration updates

We’ve made some updates to our SAP integration, including the following:

• Support for Code Name and Code Code in the SAP User Criteria sync
• Additional data sent from Replicon to SAP to help customers monitor for, identify, and manage errors
• Ongoing scalability and performance improvements

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Q4 2024 - In Polaris

BILLING

Advanced rate card

Currently in Polaris PSA, you can bill clients using a resource, role, or project rate.

However, some organizations use other criteria to determine billing rates, such as whether the work is completed during overtime, or whether the work is associated with a particular activity. Some even use a combination of factors to determine at what rate clients are billed.

Soon, we’ll be updating the rate card for each project in Polaris to support a wider range of billing scenarios.

Initially, this card will support billing by pay code, along with the existing rate types. So, time that uses a particular pay code, like Overtime, can be billed at a particular rate.

You’ll also be able to bill according to multiple dependent dimensions. For example, you could set up a rate that bills overtime a resource works while performing the developer role, and a different rate when their colleague works regular hours as a development manager.

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EXPENSES

Option to have only approved expenses available to bill

Currently, all expense sheets are available to bill to customers – even ones that have not yet been approved.

But, some customers would like only approved expense sheets to be available for inclusion on bills.

So, we’ll soon be adding a Bill Expenses field to the Allowed Expenses & Estimates card in projects, which will let project managers allow only approved expense sheets to be available to bill.

With Only Approved selected, only expense items that have been approved will be available to add to bills on the Billing & Invoicing tab.

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RESOURCING

Project links on the Quick Allocation page in Polaris

We’ve added links to projects from the Quick Allocation page. This should help project managers access information about projects they’re allocating resources to.

To access a project link:

1. Click the arrow beside the resource name.
2. Find the project you want to view.
3. Click the icon located next to the project’s name.

4. Select View Project.

You will be taken to that project’s landing page.

PMs will only see a link under projects they have permission to view.

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Q4 2024 - In Replicon & Polaris

TIMESHEETS

New Daily Time Summary timesheet component

You can now add a new optional Time Summary component for timesheets, that will show daily time worked, along with timesheet-level totals.

When you add this component to a timesheet template, you can choose whether time is broken down by:

• Billable and non-billable hours
• Work hours, break hours, and time off hours
• Total hours

This table can help you gauge the content of the timesheet at a glance, and may be especially useful if the project includes many project rows.

With this component enabled, timesheet-level totals (for the options you selected) will also display in the top, right-hand corner of the timesheet (in addition to any other metrics displayed there, if applicable.)

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Submitted timesheets will not be reopened if a new booking is attempted, but is unsuccessful

Previously, if a timesheet was in a submitted state, and a user attempted to create a booking that fell within that timesheet period, the timesheet reopened, even if submission of the booking failed.

So, to prevent timesheets from having to be reapproved unnecessarily in this scenario, we now prevent timesheets from reopening if creation of a booking is not successful.

Note that this applies only when creation of a new booking is attempted; it won’t apply when an existing booking is edited.

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Pay code visibility for project managers

Some users have a Distributed Time Type column in their timesheet’s Time Distribution Grid that they use to allocate hours from punches or in/out entries to projects, tasks, and activities. This is sometimes called a ‘hybrid’ timesheet, and it requires that the Payroll time distribution category be enabled in timesheet templates.

Previously, the pay codes (e.g. Regular Time, Overtime) users select from the Distributed Time Type column did not display in the timesheet when viewed by project managers during approval. This made it difficult for those managers to track and limit overtime for their projects.

In Q4, we added a View Distributed Time Type Column permission in Project Manager permission sets that, when enabled, makes that Distributed Time Type column visible to PMs when approving timesheets for their projects.

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TIME OFF

Control over who can view files attached to time off bookings

In Q4, we started allowing limiting access to time off booking attachments or web addresses (URLs) to managers with a particular permission enabled. This change can help maintain compliance – for example, by limiting access in countries that allow only HR reps to view things like doctors’ notes.

To set up this restriction, enable the Restrict access check box when setting up the time off custom field used to attach the files.

Then, assign the new Restricted Field Values permission only to those who are allowed to view restricted files, within their Supervisor or Payroll Manager permission sets. Note that with this permission enabled users can view all files with Restrict access checked.

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Renaming of the Start Hours field in time off bookings

We've renamed the Start Hours field to Hours, in partial-day time off bookings, to clarify what this field means.

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EXPENSES

Ability to set a default reimbursement currency for a user’s expenses

On expense sheets, the reimbursement currency (that is, the currency used when a user is reimbursed for an expense they covered), currently defaults to your system’s base currency.

This means users who want to use a different currency, say their local currency, need to reselect this currency every time they complete an expense sheet. This can cause errors that lead to payroll delays and inaccuracies.

So, we’re introducing the option to set a default reimbursement currency on the Expenses tab in user profiles.

We’ll also be adding a User can override Expense Reimbursement Currency permission to expense templates which, when enabled, will allow users to choose a different currency than the default.

Without this permission enabled, the default currency is fixed and must be used in all expense sheets – the field will display but be un-editable.

Further, we’ll be splitting the existing Reimbursement Amount column on expense list pages into one that uses the Reimbursement Currency and one using the Base Currency . These can be shown or hidden by clicking the  cog.

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INTEGRATIONS

Replicon Resource Management for Costpoint add-on

We’ve launched an add-on to our Replicon-Costpoint integration, for Costpoint customers or prospects who want to use Costpoint for time tracking, and Polaris for advanced resourcing.

With this integration:

• Users, projects, budget assignments, and time off for users is transferred from Costpoint to Polaris
• Resourcing data is transferred from Polaris to Costpoint’s Budget & Planning Module

For more information, speak to your Customer Success manager.

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Approver name available in business analytics API

Replicon and Polaris offer a business analytics API that you can use to visualize your data using Tableau or PowerBI.

This quarter we’ll be adding an Approver name field that customers can include in their visualizations. This new field will save them from having to manually access this info when they’re analyzing timesheets that are awaiting approval.

For more information on analytics options, refer to Gaining business intelligence using your Replicon data.

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