HelpAdministrators

New features in Replicon

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

 

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Timesheet

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.

 

New mobile interface for Time Distribution Grid timesheets

We’ve now fully rolled out the new mobile interface for those who use Time Distribution Grid timesheet format. We first previewed this last November. This new interface offers several improvements, including:

  • A new, quicker time entry experience, including an option to enter time across multiple days at once
  • The ability to search clients, projects, and tasks at once, which is helpful, for example, if you know the name of the task, but not the client or project
  • The option to copy data from your previous timesheet or from your schedule

 Note that our improved interface for In/Out timesheet formats is currently being rolled out.

 

Auto-save of timesheet comments and cell-level custom fields

You may have noticed that any comments or cell-level custom field values you enter in timesheets are now saved automatically.

Users can click Ok to close the dialog, but comments are saved even if they don’t click that button.

Previously, if a user navigated away from the comments bubble without saving, the entry was lost.

 

Confirmation when deleting a timesheet row

A confirmation dialog will now display if you attempt to delete a timesheet row that includes entry data. This will help prevent users from accidentally deleting data they’ve entered.

 

Raw time entry report

Our new Time Entry Details report template will be useful to anyone who wants to export raw timesheet data from Replicon. It includes the Entry ID field, that you can use to track timesheet entries.

Along with raw entry data, the report includes basic fields that apply to the whole timesheet, such as approval status fields, and it also includes time off entries.

 

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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.

 

Right to disconnect enhancement

Our right to disconnect functionality allows you to prevent users from receiving emails or push notifications when they aren’t working.

Previously, this was limited to allowing messages any day, or only on working days (any non-weekend, non-holiday).

Now, we’ve added an additional option: You can prevent users from receiving messages on their approved days off – so, vacations, etc. – in addition to weekends and holidays.

In addition, you can now choose whether messages sent to shift workers are sent outside their scheduled hours. Plus, scheduled reports will no longer be sent on exempt days.

Right to disconnect settings are assigned to users on the Notifications tab of their user profiles.

 

Automatic updates to bookings when schedules change

We’ve launched the improvement to time off we previewed on Nov 21.

Now, if you’re using new time off, whenever you change a schedule and that change impacts the duration of a time off entry or booking, the time off duration will be automatically updated to match the new schedule.

Note that anyone still on the legacy version of time off will still have to make these kinds of updates manually.

Refer to What happens if we update an employee’s schedule for a day when they have time booked off? for more information.

 

New options for approvals are routed when time off bookings are edited

We’ve introduced two new global options on the Time Off Settings page that determine how timesheet and time off approvals are handled whenever a time off booking is edited.

One option relates specifically to approvals after a schedule is modified (related to the Updating time off when schedules change update described above).

The other setting applies when any time off booking is edited: Previously, by default, only fully approved timesheets would reopen for re-approval when a related booking was edited. Now, you can choose to have even partially-approved timesheets reopen.

This new option ensures timesheet owners and approvers have the opportunity to view modifications to the timesheet – such as new validation errors that might have arisen as a result of edits – every time a booking is edited.

See Defining how approvals proceed when bookings are reopened for more information on these options.

 

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Project, Billing, & Costing

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.

 

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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.

 

Ability to make an editable copy of a pay rule

You can now make a copy of any pay rule in your system. This functionality allows you to make changes to the default parameters assigned in standard rules, if your organization’s policies deviate from those standards.

To make a copy, select Make a Copy from the More button on the Pay Rules list page:

Or, click the link located at the bottom, right-hand corner of a pay rule’s detail page:

 

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System

IP Filtering

We’ve launched the IP filtering feature we previewed on Feb 13.

To use this security feature, you’ll define a set of IP addresses from which your Replicon instance can be accessed. Then, anyone using an IP address outside of your defined network range can't log in.

The range applies to web, mobile, and CloudClock access, and can be set up using CIDR format.

Note that there are some restrictions related to using this feature. IP filtering is not currently compatible with:

We recommend that you leave IP filtering disabled until all features you use are supported; we’ll let you know when support for these features is added.
Refer to Setting up IP filtering for more information.

 

Account lockout

As part of our push to expand our security offerings, we’ve launched an account lockout feature.  This functionality prevents a user from logging in once they’ve made several failed login attempts – you choose the number of attempts that will trigger lockout.

Account lockout helps prevent hackers from accessing your system via brute force attack.

You can choose whether the lockout expires automatically after a duration you set, or whether an administrator needs to reenable access manually. You can also allow users to break the lockout by resetting their password.

Refer to Setting up account lockout for more information.

 

SSO with OpenID Connect

We now support single sign-on (SSO) via third-party applications based on the OpenID Connect standard – we previewed this change on Nov 8.

This means you can now use one our pre-configured providers – available for Google, Intuit, and ADP. Or, you can create your own solution using any third-party provider supported by OpenID Connect.

Note that, as part of this feature, we’ve added an alternative login page, available by clicking the Try our new login page link on the existing login page.

Use of this new page is:

  • Optional for all non-SSO users, and for Intuit and Google SSO users; all of those users may log in via the old or new pages
  • Mandatory for anyone who logs in using SSO via a third-party OpenID Connect provider (with the exception of those using Google or Intuit as providers)

Refer to Setting up single sign-on for more information on setting up a provider, or on using one of our out of the box options.

 

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