Please note: We use Release Rings to systematically roll out new features to users in a way that minimises risk. This means that new updates aren't rolled out to every user on the day they're shipped. Instead, new versions are gradually delivered to a small percentage of customers each day within our specified Release Rings. Of course, if customers report issues with the new update, we can then pause the rollout while we investigate. So, if you can't see the newest updates yet, don't worry - you'll receive them in the next few weeks.
So, this is the first "Tech Corner" article we've produced. Some users told us they wanted a slightly more comprehensive set of release notes for each version. If that's not you, then you can stop reading now as all the "big updates" will still be posted as individual feature announcements. For those that love a bit of nitty-gritty, here goes:
👨🏻🤝👨🏻 New Data Importer De-dupe Rules (Internal Ring Only)
Added new de-dupe rules to the new data importer to make it easier to import lists of Contacts against existing Companies.
Unfortunately, the new data importer is currently only available to staff. How disappointing! But, don't worry this feature will be available to a wider preview audience soon.
🎁 Automatic Creation of Equipment Items from Unleashed Invoices
There's now an option on a Product to create equipment items automatically whenever new sales history lines are imported from Unleashed. This means that we're also now importing serial numbers against sales history lines as part of the invoice data.
At the moment, this feature only works for Unleashed, but can be expanded to other Inventory Management systems if there is enough interest from customers. If you'd like to see this feature developed for your Inventory Management system, then make sure you let know by posting and voting in our Feedback Portal
💰 DEAR Inventory Special Pricing
We now support the basic DEAR Inventory tier-based special pricing. This includes DEAR accounts set to use a price tier with a fixed price or a calculated price based on the average cost price of the product (+mark-up or +fixed value).
Note that this doesn't yet support all pricing options and in particular doesn't support pricing based on supplier specific prices, such as the fixed supplier cost or latest supplier cost. This is because we don’t import supplier information at this time. Pricing set to this configuration will revert to use average price in the CRM instead.
DEAR are expecting to provide more API support for their special pricing options in their new API, expected in Q2/Q3 2020. When this is available, we will be in a position to support more of the DEAR Inventory pricing options.
📦 Equipment Duplicate Button
A button has been added to Equipment record that will allow CRM users to duplicate the record. This can be a useful and quick way to manually create multiple similar Equipment items.
⌨ System Option to Make Task/Recall Notes Optional
A system option has been added that will allow Tasks/Recalls to be set without specifying note text. Search the system settings for "notes" to find the new setting. The default for this new option means you won't see a change unless you specifically choose to update this option.
🎭 System User Updates
While most updates in your CRM are made by your users, some records might be created or updated by our support and onboarding teams, and some could be automated by the system itself. To make this clearer (and prettier in the UI), The "Support User" has been renamed to “Prospect Support”, still with the Prospect icon for its avatar. The system user has been renamed to “System” and given a new avatar (a cute robot!).
🐛 Other Fixes & Enhancements
Fixed a bug in the Mailchimp integration that prevented more than 1,000 records from being updated in a single update.
Added a new automation import for DEAR Inventory price tier names (full support for displaying the price tier names will be included in a future version).
Primary keys no longer appear as editable if added via the customiser.
Updated Xero integrations to use OAuth 2.
Added support for Sage 2021.
Added a new system option to remove the 1 quantity limit when Quote lines have equipment tracking enabled. This is useful for anyone using Equipment in a loan/rental mode and wishing to quote for x days/weeks/months of rental rather than simply quoting for 1 rental period per item.
Fixed custom drop-downs not displaying correctly in Reports.
Added support for the “Sellable” flag in various cloud Accounting Systems. This is in addition to the Obsolete flag. So products can now be still active (not obsolete) and yet marked as not sellable. Only active items appear in the global search. Only active items that are also sellable are offered for adding to a Quote or Order. Where the integrated ERP/Inventory management system doesn't have support for one or other of these fields, they are defaulted to True.
Fixed a scenario where the Campaign Activity Source field wasn't saving properly when being set on a Quote record.
Added support for DEAR Inventory “service” products when posting orders through to DEAR.
Fixed a lock in the API that could occur if an address contained a double comma.
Updated default Overview Dashboard to remove the News section, and improved the relevance of several tiles. Also made small tweaks to the styling so as to be more consistent with the new Dashboards.
Added unit description field to Word Quote table. This is an optional field and is turned on by configuring the relevant quote table configuration.
Added weight description and volume description fields to Products. These fields combine data into a reader-friendly description and are available in the standard Product screen, and also available via the Report Builder and API.
Fixed the weight unit imported for DEAR Inventory - previously containing the wrong value
Added support for QuickBooks Commerce B2C flag. When automatically creating CRM records from new QuickBooks Commerce accounts, if the B2C flag is set in QBC then the new record in the CRM is automatically created as a B2C record.
Added an option to prevent the automatic creation of B2C records - this will default to "Off" for all systems but can be turned on again via the system settings.
Update to set “closedate” on all historical records where it was missing. In an earlier version this new field was added, and was already being set on all newly closed Opportunities. This update merely sets this for historically closed Opportunities.
Removed back orders Report as this report did not provide a full picture and was causing user confusion and misinterpretation.
Fixed the Problem owner drop-down not displaying any user information. This isn't a default field, but is a standard field that can be added to a Problem screen via the customisation.
Improved the appearance of all user selection drop-downs to include Avatars (user icons).
Added a new “Comment” field to the special pricing lines in the CRM pricing tables (only relevant to customers who are using the CRM pricing instead of the native ERP/Inventory Management pricing).
Updated OData API to automatically cancel requests after 1 minute to prevent excessive CPU usage by complex or stuck queries. The batch API has a longer timeout of 30 mins
Added skeleton loading to the detail page list to prevent the list of pages jumping around when the optional pages finish evaluating their visibility (particularly annoying if a user is trying to click on something while it is moving around!).
Fixed a crash that could occur if two Quotes had the same order reference.
Fixed UI bug where a field would be incorrectly marked as "Read only" when “Use Prospect ID's” system option is first loaded.
Fixed a scenario that allowed Tasks/Recalls to be set into the past
Fixed a caching issue that prevented changes to Problem's status details from appearing immediately.
Fixed an issue that prevented modified product descriptions from being sent through when using multi-line order entry.
Fixed the UI to prevent the bulk updating of Quote Line Product ID.
Fixed a crash when using "Export to Excel" with Reports based on procedure-view entities, such as the "Companies Near Postcode" or search entities.
Fixed an issue that would prevent the Google map tile from displaying properly if the address contained invalid characters
Added transaction type field to the Company Sales History view.
Fixed crash that happens when cancelling the product selection window when adding an upsell link.
Fixed the sequence of quick create documents to be by Description.
Fixed field sort order for Opportunity Status.
Fixed deleted Campaign Activities appearing in the Opportunity Source drop-down.
Updated the Opportunity Source drop-down to highlight expired Campaign Activities using grey text.
Text branding corrections for Sage 50, QuickBooks Commerce (formerly TradeGecko) and DEAR Inventory in various places
Fixed a bug that prevented the important document flag from being toggled via the Activity feed.
The Activity feed will now refresh automatically when the user adds new documents to the record.
Fixed a crash that would happen when creating a QuickBooks Commerce Account without modifying the name from its default value.
Rephrased “Forename” and “Surname” to “First Name” and “Last Name” throughout the CRM to be more in line with more common international terminology.
Fixed a crash that could occur when viewing the "Popular Products" list due to products appearing more than once.
Fixed various timeout errors in the imports.
Fixed issue that prevents the customiser from being closed if you view an alternate layout for dictionary other than your own.
Moved “Created” section on various details to be more consistent across the system.
Reduced the amount of data shown on the Quote header preview bar to make it easier to read in this format.
Added a foreign key to the “Paid” flag and more descriptive text on sales history to improve filtering and displaying of these values.
Fixed several graphical issues when images load.
Improved the handling of the materialised view “Refresh in progress” flag to prevent it from getting stuck.
Removed the deprecated My Portal entirely (all links and user-saved favourites/bookmarks will now redirect to the CRM).
Fixed a bug where the convert to Single Company button would report multiple Companies if there were some deleted ones.
Added missing documentation for “LastYearQtyDec” field on SalesLedgerMonthly so that they appear nicely in the report builder.
Fixed some scenarios where DEAR Inventory sales ledgers would display their ID instead of name immediately after creation
Fixed an issue where deleting a report from the Shared Reports list would also delete it from any detail pages it was part of.
Fixed a bug where changes to note dates would be applied even if the window was cancelled.
Fixed inverted gross and net group subtotal option names when using the grouped quote lines format.
Improved consistency of the “By Month” Order Report
Updated the "based on" drop-down to exclude closed accounts when creating a new customer account in your ERP/Inventory Management system.
Fixed issue where the Task/Recall list groups were being filtered based on local time instead of UTC.
Fixed an issue that could cause import configurations to become inconsistent between the database and automation systems if an error happened during initial connection.
Fixed user roles/permissions to allow Product Manager admins to upload new product images.
Fixed Unleashed equipment creation to work even if the product isn't setup to use serial numbers.
...Is that all? Well at least you now know how hard our lovely team of developers is working !! 😍