Dear Personnel Manager Clients,

We are going to be upgrading the software again very soon, hopefully this evening.

There will be two new features added, one of which is very significant.

The View Shifts as Graph feature has been requested by several clients wishing to see their shifts presented as bar graph.

In order to do this we have purchased a new ‘class’ of software and the software to build this software, called ‘FLEX’ which is made by adobe/flash. At present this feature provides a graphical display, but it opens the door to whole new side of future development for the database including ‘AIR’ technology which will allow the Personnel Manager to reside on the desktop of your computer and be accessed, edited even when not online. The graphical view will also in the near future allow the user the ability to drag and drop shifts (swap between crew members, change start times). You will also be able to stretch the shifts to edit the finish times. It will also allow shift creation from this page. In short, you will be able to use this new page to achieve quite a lot when it comes to managing your roster.

We also have in the pipeline and very nearly completed a new Page entitled SMS which will allow you to send an SMS message to any of your staff (as many as you like, filtered by activity if you desire). This feature will also enable you to see ‘threads’ of your message history (all incoming and outgoing SMS messages can be viewed in relation their shift number).

And we have a lot of work completed (unfortunately not yet finalised) on an Inventory Management System. A new Page entitled Items will allow you to:

- Create New Items

- Add Stock of these Items

- Create non-labour based items such as mileage/km travelled

- Create Block bookings such as Day Rates/Half Day Rates/Weekly/Monthly Rates

- Discount Items/Crew on Invoices (apply a general discount of X% then edit each Item/Activity’s discount individually)

- Associate Items with other Items to prompt users when creating jobsheets

- Warnings for when Items are out of stock or due for servicing

- Associate Crew Members with Items for Wet Hire of equipment (Charge equipment+staff, automatically pay staff)

- Associate Crew Members with Items for Sub Hire of equipment (create your own list people and the equipment they hire to you and SMS them in bulk)

As you can appreciate this will open the Personnel Manager software up considerably. Some more info/screenshots can be found on our blog.

To view the official website of Personnel Manager go to http://www.personnelmanager.com.au

NEW FEATURES:

ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS:

- Graphical View

· On the Shifts Page, near the top on the left you can find the link, View Shifts as Graph

· Click the words View Shifts as Graph to open a new window which displays a graphical view.

· Shifts will be displayed in a bar graph, with Names on the left side.

· Shifts will be displayed starting with yesterday and showing the next 13 days (two weeks total)

· Arrow buttons on keyboard scroll from left to right

· Different businesses can be expanded/collapsed on the left

· Shifts can be zoomed in/out

· Flyovers display Client, Crew Name, Start Time, Finish Time, Instructions, Venue

- Ability to Select Reminders Per Shift

· Inside any Jobsheet or on Shifts Edit Page (Shifts Page, select some shifts then press the edit/pencil icon on the right of one of the shifts selected)

· To the very right hand side of the screen there are now Tick Boxes that say Reminder above them. Simply deselect these to NOT send reminder SMS messages to your staff for these particular shifts

Excerpt from email 25/05/2009

ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS:

- Dual Text Activities

· On the Activities/Rates Page, when you create or edit an activity, you now have the ability to select Dual Text Activity.

· Tick to indicate that this is a dual text activity.

· When this is selected, any SMS reminders will be sent out to the Onsite Contact AS WELL as the Crew Member

- SMS Content Custom Edit

· The ability to edit the content of ALL SMS messages is now possible. SMS?  and Confirm SMS has had this ability for a while.

· Now the Reminder SMS Messages and the SAME CREW SMS Messages also have the ability to be customizable

· All SMS Messages can be restored to Default Settings

· Go to Global Settings – SMS Configuration

- After Hr Reminder SMS

· Go to Global Settings – Software Configuration

· There is now the ability to set the start and finish time that the After Hr Reminder SMS messages will occur in

· After Hours Start Hour: After Hours End Hour:

- Assign Crew to Reminder SMS

· For both the Reminder AND After Hr SMS you now have the ability to select which crew will receive these messages

· Go to Global Settings – SMS Configuration

- Alternate Text for Client and Shift

· It is now possible to provide alternative text throughout the database for Client eg Project Manager, Facility, Hotel and Shift eg Customer, Appointment

· Go to Global Settings – Software Configuration

· Alternate text for ‘Client’: Alternate text for ‘Shift’:

CLIENT ACCESS:

- View Shifts as Calendar

· Clients are now able to view upcoming shifts as a Calendar in Upcoming Shifts Page

Excerpt from email 22/04/2009

ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS:

- Export Roster to Excell

·On the Shifts Page, under Select an Action, you now have the ability to export the results of your search to an excel spreadsheet.

·This is handy for importing the roster into other packages once the scheduling has been done. You can save an excel sheet into CSV files or tab_delimiter files.

· Select the shifts by checking the boxes to the left (check all button) and then Select an Action - Export to Excel

· You can configure exactly the fields to be exported and in the order they will appear in the spreadsheet in Global Settings under Software Configuration.

- Add Instructions to SMS messages

· On the Globals Page under SMS Configuration, it is possible to customise the SMS request message and the SMS confirm message.

· At the end of a shift, either in a Jobsheet or in the Shift Edit Page (Select shifts in Shifts Page and press the Edit Icon - the pencil - to the right of the shifts) there is a field called Instructions. Whatever is written here will appear in the SMS message, if it has been configured that way in Global Settings

· The SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, so it is advisable to make the ‘notes’ in Instructions as brief as possible.

- View Shifts as Calendar

· On the Shifts Page there is a new link located above the shifts called View Shifts as Calendar

· This opens a new window that displays the roster in a calendar view. It refreshes automatically every 1 min, so as you make changes in the shifts page, they are represented in the calendar in real time.

· The current week and next week view are displayed with the option to scroll backwards and forwards in time.

· The calendar has the following options available for selection in the Global Settings Page under Software Configuration

Show Start Time on Calendar:

Show End Time on Calendar:

Show Crew Name on Calendar:

Show Crew Mobile on Calendar:

Show crew Shift Number on Calendar:

View Calendar by Client/Site:

- Crew Photos Displayed on Crew Page

· On the Crew Page crew photos will now appear. If crew or admin upload these pics, you will be able to see them on the Crew Page.

- View Crew in order of hours worked

· On the Crew Page you will now be able to search crew in a particular date range (you can select Date >From and Date To) to display a list of all Crew that have worked in that time period. You will also be able to view them in order of who worked the most hours, through to who worked the least hours. You will be able to see how many hours each crew member worked in that period.

· You will also have the option to Save to Rankings. This will save the crew list rankings in order of the list displayed by your search. Any Crew Members that did not work in the time period searched, and whose previous ranking conflicted with a new ranking, will now be ranked one rank lower than the lowest ranked member of the search.

For example: If you searched crew that have worked in the last fortnight, and your list displayed 20 Crew Members, in order of the hours they have worked, from highest to lowest, and you saved these rankings, you would have a ranking order of this ‘active crew’ list from 1 – 20. Any crew that had a ranking between 1 and 20 already, but did not work in the previous fortnight will now have a rank of 21.

- Show Warning if Crew Member works more than X shifts/days in X weeks

· On the Shifts Page a warning will display if Crew work more than the amount of shifts/days enetered by you in Global Settings under Software Configuration

Show Warning if Crew Member has completed more than [          ]  [Hours ]  in [          ]  [weeks ] .

[ ]Tick this box if this warning is per client.

(Excerpt from email 4/3/09)

ADMINISTRATOR ACCESS:

- Total Hours

· Total hours crew worked displayed on Shifts Page

- Admin Lock

· Admin Lock found on shifts page under Select an Action will ‘lock’ shifts so that they cannot be edited by anyone with an access lower than Admin. To unlock these shifts, use ‘Unlock’ under Select an Action at the bottom of the shifts page, just under Admin Lock and exactly the same way you would normally unlock shifts.

- Activities/Rates dropdown menu on shifts

· Until now, activities were entered in by typing them in the field in the Jobsheets and Shifts Edit Page. Now there is a drop down list associated with activities, so that you select them from the list. You can no longer assign a crew member to an activity that is not selected under their Crew Member Details

· HINT:

It is now possible to assign multiple crew to an activity at the one time now. Go to Activities/Rates, Click on the Activity name (each Activity name is now a link) and this will bring up a list of all crew. Simply assign as many crew to the activity (hold ctrl and click their names) to assign groups of crew to activities.

- Ajax Members Rates/Skills

· This upgrade utilizes a new form of coding called ‘Ajax’ which ‘refreshes’ information inside a web page without having to actually refresh the whole page. So when Crew are assigned an activity, their rates and all info associated with it are changed at the same time from within the page. Ajax will be integrated across the board in the future to speed processes up.

- SMS Content Custom Edit

· It is now possible in Global Settings Page under SMS Configuration to edit the format of both the Request SMS and the Confirmed SMS allowing the Superuser to include or omit information such as Date, Time, Venue, Client etc

- SMS Request Message:
- SMS Confirm Message:

- Tip:

- Variables are available to use within the SMS text. For example, “This job starts at [TIME_ON]“.
The available Variables are [TIME_ON], [TIME_OFF], [SKILL], [VENUE], [MEETING_PLACE], [SHORT_NAME], [ONSITE_NAME], [ONSITE_NUMBER], [YES_RESPONSE], [NO_RESPONSE], [LETTER_CODES], [INSTRUCTIONS], [ACTIVITY].
Please remember to enclose the merge fields using square brackets [].

- Activity Codes

· This feature enables you to enter ‘codes’ for each activity that will be included in the request SMS and in the Confirmed SMS and on the Crew Members online page. For example for the Activity Crew Chief, we now enter the code CC which then lets the Crew member know they are to be Crew Chief on the shift.

- Custom Codes

· There are 4 Letters that can be edited and renamed to be included at the end of the Request and Confirm SMS and which also appear on the Crew Members online page.