Introducing Eclipse 2.2

NEW FEATURES

General

1. Smart Searching for Customers.

Every drop down control which used to display a list of customers for you to select from has been replaced with a popup smart search form. It works just like the Popstock window in the equipment list editor in that you can type a chunk of text, hit the space bar, and the list of customers is narrowed down to all those clients with that bit of text in the name. Type some more and the list gets narrowed further. It doesn't matter what order you type the text it, the search routine will get you where you want to be, so the chances of adding the same customer in the address book over and over again because you can't find the name that somebody else added is greatly reduced. We have tried to make this control as keyboard friendly as possible. So if you have tabbed to the customer search field then simply typing will open up the Smart Search form and your typed text will already be in the edit box. If you want to move to the grid to start scrolling just hit the "Down Arrow" cursor key. To pick an entry hit "Enter", to cancel searching hit "Esc"

If you have rights to the Address Book then you can still add new customers on the fly. If you have rights to the Accounts Book you can add their Acc Ref too.

2. Component / Data Inspector

From the Help menu you can now choose "Component Info.." which will bring up a floating form which displays key information about any control your mouse is over. If you ever need to know what table and what field a control is displaying the data for, particularly if you are working on a report, you can easily get access to the information in a few seconds

Job Book

3. Contacts. - These are now split into the "Main Contact" and "Extra Contacts", as you can see in the image above. The functionality has changed significantly here so it is worth reading on. 

Next to the Main Contact field is a button with a + symbol. If this is black then there are no associated contacts for this customer so you can just type in a new name. When you do this and exit the field, the symbol becomes red + indicating that the contact is not associated with the company; if you want to add it just click the button, which will then become green, +  which indicated that the contact displayed is a member of the contacts list for this company. Finally, if before you type a contact name in you see that the symbol is blue +  then this indicates that there are contacts already associated with this company. If you click the button a pop up form will appear listing all the contacts for the company. Simply select on to add this to the Main Contact box. Of course when you do this the symbol will turn green again, because the contact was picked from a known list.

The Extra Contacts button encapsulates the functionality that the old Contacts button in Eclipse used to have, invoking the familiar Contacts popup form which lists all the additional contacts you have associated with this job. To assist you knowing whether Extra Contacts have been added a green light appears around the box if there are any.

4. Scrolling to Previous or Next jobs - Forward and backwards scroll buttons have been added to the tool bar in between the Job Searcher (Navigator Window) and the New Job button - see image above. 

5. Auto Status promote - If a an equipment list's status is promoted to being higher than the job's status then the job status is automatically updated

6. The Equipment Lists page is now coloured coded in accordance with the standard colour coding for statuses in Eclipse : Grey, Green, Blue , Red = Quote, Provisional, Confirmed, Active

7. Equipment List Total and Invoice Total is now displayed in the grid on the Equipment Lists page

8. Equipment Lists, Crew and Transport Pages have had powerful sorting facilities added. If a column header button has a "sort" icon in it then clicking on that column header button, e.g. Status, will sort the records by that column. To return to the default sort order (entry order) click the button at the extreme left of the title buttons. The button which controls the active sort order will have a red arrow in the sort order icon.

9. Transport requests can now be cloned, just like Crew requests. The same icons on the Toolbar are used.

10.Transport allocations are now possible directly in the Job Book. The functionality and interface is very similar to allocating Crew in the Job Book.

11. The Crew Allocator in the Job Book now displays the person telephone number, making it easier to contact them to check availability.

12. Job Types,  Job Book - now sort alphabetically and the drop down control opens and searches immediately when you start typing.

13. Job Book Totals on Notes Page - The Grand Total now only adds the Crew and Transport to the Equipment list Total whose status matches that of the overall Job Status. The Grand Total label which matches the Job Status is indicated by being in red.

14. Job Searching (Navigator) Window. This now opens on the current job and its form position is remembered when you close it. More importantly, invoiced jobs  that are not Confirmed have are indicated by a pink background, and invoiced jobs which are Confirmed or Active have a grey background. This colouring is mimicked on the Jobs tab of the Accounts book

15.  Multiple Lists Status Changer. This now has a checkbox selector to make multi-selecting easier. More importantly it has been redesigned to give a dramatically better performance. If you have not used this feature before, try right clicking on the equipment list grid in the Job Book, or just change the status of the job.

16. The Over Movements in the Equipment List has been revised. Its width and column widths are now saved, so the double row height has been reduced to a single row allow more conflicts to be viewed without too much scrolling

Purchase Orders

Many new features have been added to POs:

17. The creator of a new order is stored and displayed in the caption bar

18. The creation date of a new order is stored and displayed in the caption bar

An "Additional" tab is now available in the form header to allow you to

19. Enter a Main Contact for your supplier

20. Enter a Delivery contact name

21. Enter a Delivery address. If you right click on the View/Edit button your address as set up in the Configuration Book will be added; if you double click you can free type; if you click the Search box the Smart Address Searcher window will appear and selecting an entry here will paste the address in automatically. If there is an address assigned then a green light will appear around the button.

22. Enter a Collection Contact Name

23. Enter a Collection Address. ( see above)

24. You can now discount Purchase Orders by fractions of a percent

25. In the Accounts Book you can set an Authorised flag against an Order. An extra tab on the Purchase Orders Page displays all Unauthorized Orders. There is a function to automatically authorize orders below a certain value, and this value is remembered by the system. The user logged in who does the authorisation is recorded and displayed on the main tab for Purchase Orders. To help the person authorising the order to see the contents of an order a lower grid displays the order lines.

To take advantage of this facility you will need to modify your Purchase Order report. You can either set it to print nothing at all if the order is unauthorised or you can get it to print a special message. A knowledgebase article will be made available on www.clubnavigator.co.uk explaining how to do this, along with how to add the additional table which carries the extra fields listed above.

Note: To prevent users who need to access the Purchase Orders page from accessing the Unauthorised tab a new security flag has been added to the Configuration Book.

26. Open Job from Accounts Book | Unauthorised page. If you want to inspect the job more closely before authorising an order raised on it then just double-click the order line in the Unauthorised tab's upper grid.

Equipment List Editor

27. The Deliver To label has been replaced with a button which opens the Venue information form

28. Popstock now displays both the Availability and the Daily Rate column. If you don't want the Popstock window that wide then you can toggle between the two views (Availability or Daily Rate) by clicking on the column header.

29. Barcode Searcher. Some of our users prefer to type in a barcode rather than scanning it out, for example when the prep sheet is returned to the office with the barcodes dispatched handwritten on it. To help you verify that the barcodes you enter really match the type of equipment booked you can right click in the barcode edit box to invoke the Barcode Searcher form.

When you hit return or click OK the barcode is copied to the barcode edit box and scanned out

30. Case allocation. You can now assign case numbers to multiple lines (Select All from menu or right click to pick individual lines). Then from the menu select  "Set Selected Cases" to invoke an entry form for your case number (4 chars max)

31. Send Select Out - now sets equipment list to Active automatically

32. No Daily Rate freeze and alerts. If an item has no daily rate assigned Eclipse has always allowed you to just type in a price in the Equipment List editor. However, this price has always been vulnerable to being reset back to zero if the hire period, discount, quantity etc is changed. Now, we detect these items and freeze the manual price regardless of equipment list changes. Moreover, if you do change anything on the equipment list which should have an impact on any manually priced lines (e.g. quantity change, hire period change) then any manually priced lines that this could affect are highlighted in pale blue. Re-editing the price for the line or closing the list clears this highlighting

33. Advanced Price Locking. Often you might have cause to thaw an equipment list that has been Price Locked so that you can add more chargeable items. Until now this would have the effect of recalculating the whole list again which may affect previously locked lines. Moreover you may wish to substitute previously price locked lines without affecting the line price. Now you can do this. Unlocking a list now brings up a prompt asking you if you wish to keep previously locked lines still locked. Agreeing to this highlights these lines in pale pink allowing you to substitute them, change quantities or add more chargeable kit.

34. Popstock Window Hide / Show Rental and Sales. You can now set Popstock to hide or show Rental or Sales items. The profile is saved after being changed

35. Reserved Barcodes Popup - when you try to reserve barcodes on an equipment list line, any items which are also "bound" to a barcoded composite are highlighted with a pink background, warning you that reserving this item could violate the integrity of a specific equipment package

36. Extra fields have been added: "Palm Ref" for users who need this information with portable barcode readers; "Telephone" & "Fax", which pick up the default entries for the selected venue, but can be overwritten thereafter. In additional the screen layout has been tidied up and made slightly more intuitive

Invoicing

37. Invoice Terms - when you raise an invoice the Best Terms assigned to a client in the Accounts Book  are assigned.

38. Equipment List Status is now displayed in the Invoice Wizard form, allowing you to avoid charging for inappropriate equipment lists

Equipment Book

39. Extra Daily Rates (Price Modes)- some users have requested extra daily rates for equipment type so that they can charge according to the type of work they are doing. For example you may want different daily rates for a microphone for Conferences, Hotels Hire, Concerts, etc. Until now some users have had no need to trade in different currencies have used the four currency rates (all the same currency) to achieve this, but often four daily rates per type has not been enough; and if you need to work in different currencies then this has been option. Now you can assign as many extra Daily Rates as you need to each currency. Here's how it works.

Next the Daily Rate entry boxes for each currency there is a button with a +. Click this to bring up and Extra Daily Rates form for this currency.

 At first you probably will not have any additional price modes entered so you will need to go to the Price Modes tab to create them

You can either Save the Extra Price Modes you create for current currency or the "Save All" button allows you to save a new (or existing entries) for all your other currencies as well.

Then, when you toggle to the Extra Rates tab you will see that there are a matching number of records for you to enter you extra daily rates into:

The Popup form is designed to float on top of the Equipment Book meaning that you can just scroll down your list of Equipment Types and the extra rates will automatically be created for that type. All you need to do is enter the actual rates.

The extra price schemes are available when you are working both in the Equipment List and when you are in the Scrap Book. 

The prefix A indicates that all price modes belong to currency A. Selecting the first entry would use the main Daily Rate that you have entered for currency A in the Equipment Book. Selecting either of the other two entries would mean that Eclipse would price using one of the extra rates that you have set against an equipment type. If you haven't assigned any extra rates against a type then Eclipse will fall back to the main Daily Rate for the currency you are working in. In fact to assist you in seeing if Eclipse is using a fall back figure for the daily rate, Popstock will display the price with an underline.

40. More Markup schemes - If you want to charge a mark-up such as insurance on the List Price (as opposed to Discounted), but only want to do so if you are charging at all, i.e. you don't want to charge a markup if you have discounted the item by 100% then this is now possible with two more mark-up options:

• % charge on list price if charge (inc. consumables)
• % charge on list price if charge (ex. consumables)

41. Type Code checking - The Type Code label is now a button, clicking it will confirm that the Type Code is not already in use by either another Type Code or a barcode.

42. Smart Equipment Search - All alphabetic search controls for equipment Types in the Equipment Book have been replaced with a "Smart Search" style popup form, which works just like the Customer Smart search form..

43. Filtered Category Sorting -  When you wish to sort your Category orders you can now specify a MasterCategory first. This makes the ordering process easier, more logical and it helps you see which categories have which assigned to a particular MasterCategory.

44. Key Picker for Multi-Site - Key Picker will now only display equipment assigned to it on a site by site basis, giving you more control over each sites preferences

45. Items Filtering - the checkbox to filter barocdes by Type is a 3-way checkbox, meaning that it has an additional state where the check mark appears as greyed out. In this state it filters on "soft-deleted" barcodes.

Address Book

46. You can now delete People from the Address Book. The process works exactly the same as deleting Companies, moving them to the Deleted tab so that you can restore them if required

47. Searching for Companies and People has been updated with a Smart Search Form

Accounts Book

48. Opening Jobs - you can now open a Job by double - clicking on a record in the grid on the Jobs tab. As mentioned above you can also do this on the Un-Authorized Orders tab

49. Searching for Companies and People has been updated with a Smart Search Form

HireBook

50. Late Returns - There is now a search facility to help find Types of overdue equipment. The F3 key can be used to find search again for the same Type

51. Equipment Lists Sorting - by request, Date Out is now the default sort order

52. Shortfall page - Barchart stack order and colouring. The  drill-down barchart view which shows you which equipment lists are using the kit now sorts orders equipment lists with conflicts in order 
of ther hire period. This should significantly assist picking the optimum list to subhire against, since in most situations you would want to subhire against lists with the shortest hire periods. So you begin at the top and work your way down.  To enhance the above even more, the Drill-down barchart colouring is based upon a running total for a speculated availability which is determined by assuming that a subhire is raised against the first list, then the next list, etc until the availability is 0 or higher. In other words lists which you probably need to subhire against are in red and those that will be ok if you subhire against all the red lists are in blue. The images below should illustrate this more clearly:

Old View of a -1 Availability

New View of a .-1 Availability

53. The Zoom button / icon no longer maximises window (which users can do anyway). Instead there are now Zoom in and Zoom out buttons which halve / double column widths when in the Bar 
Chart view, enabling a "bigger picture" perspective

Planner

54. The Schedule page has been re-layed out slightly to improve useability. 

55. The  "Quick Scheduler" Popup on Crew page has also tidied up and its performance has been significantly enhanced. A  hint / tooltip has been  added to let users know about this useful feature. If you have no used it before then here it is:

56. Crew Page - Crew now sort by first name, just like the Schedule Page

57. Jobs Page - Active jobs are now coloured in Blue

Diary

58. Setup and De-rig Events are now displayed in the Diary

Reporting and Emailing Reports

59. Crystal 8.5 runtime is now fully supported and is included as part of the new Eclipse installation script. This version of the Crystal Reports Engine supports exporting to PDF format, which aside from being read only, produces a very high quality output. If you want to upgrade to Crystal 8.5 runtime then you should be aware that it is not supported by the internal word processor in Eclipse so you will need Microsoft Word with Eclipse for your quotations. Many users will already use Word with Eclipse but we would like to draw you attention to Eclipse's ability to work even more intimately with Microsoft Word, now that you can configure Eclipse to use a specific Word template for your quotes and to use Crystal's powerful Word format when a report is imported into your Word document. For more information visit the Knowledgebase on www.clubnavigator.co.uk

60. Emailing now has more user control. Instead of sending your email in 3 formats (text, html and rtf) you get to pick the single format you want your customer to receive the attachment in. This is saved (on a user by user basis) so you don't have to keep re-setting it each time. If you choose the PDF format your customers will get a very attractive attachment that they will not be able to edit.

Multi-Site

61. Loans In and Loans Out forms now have a "refresh" button which allows you to retrieve up to date information on request statuses

62. Job Transfers  - you can now print out what  is displayed in the grid. The output is not generated by a report so cannot be modified

63. Job Transfers -  you can now filter the transfers on "Confirmed Hires Only"

64. Job Transfers - you can now hide the components in composites to reduce the amount of information displayed

65. Tax Codes - you can now assign tax codes  on a site by site basis. So Tax Code "S" for Site 1 could have a rate of 17.5% and Tax Code "S" for Site 2 could have a rate of 20%

66. Administrator Site Toggle - there is now a "This Site" menu option available to multi-site users with access to All Sites. This allows you to switch your site tag while Eclipse is still open, so if you need to run Eclipse as Site 3, then you simply pick this from the menu rather than having to close Eclipse and fire up from a different shortcut.

Sales Book

67. What's now in stock?  You can now check for orders that you were unable to dispatch due to being out of stock but which have now come in so are ready to go

68. Your customer's VAT number and email address are now displayed on the main screen

69. You can now Delete Orders which have not been confirmed.

Miscellaneous

70. Pre-Report Procedures - now works with emailing reports. This little known function allows you to run programmes to carry out specific tasks before running a report. It will now work with emailing reports if configured to work with printing reports. For more information on Pre-Report Procedures see  the "Advanced Techniques" forum on www.clubnavigator.co.uk

71. Inserting RTF files into Word from the HireTrack menu now uses a new technique (paste from clipboard rather than insert file). This gives a much improved layout if you need to bring header and footer across with your report export.

72. The Eclipse Menus now auto-drop down when you hover your mouse over them. They have a slight transparency and improved icon display. On long menus which used to take up the more than the length of the entire screen (Address Book Filters for example) you now have a scroll bar.