Product Updates: May 9 - 15

And just like that - we’re halfway through May! This past week was a big one, and we’ve got some exciting things with JIRA and geofencing on mobile that you’ll get to see later this week - keep an eye on the blog and our social channels for more info. With that, here’s a short breakdown of improvements & tweaks that went live:

Shuttering our Saasu integration: We’ll be shutting off our Saasu integration at the end of 2017 in-line with Saasu turning off support for the older version of their API which Accelo relies upon. At this stage we don't have plans to migrate our integration to use their new API. If you’re a current Saasu user and have questions, email our Support team. 

Ticket due date and time: Yep, we've caved in to the demands of a big handful of customers who have been wanting to also track the time that a ticket or issue was due - not merely the date. You'll now find a time selector as part of the date editing piece across the various screens where a ticket's due date can be edited.

Billing for work that is partially within a retainer: This improvement relates to the Company Billing tool when you're searching for projects or tickets to invoice. Previously, if one of these was linked to a retainer then it wouldn't appear for invoicing on it's own even if there was some time on the issue or job which had become unlinked from the retainer. Now the bulk billing tool is smart enough to identify this un-allocated work and can help you invoice for it (or get it linked up to the retainer if necessary).

Visibility settings for meetings & reports: Our team spotted a quirk with adjusting the privacy/visibility of meeting activity in that the reports under the meeting were unaffected. We decided it makes more sense for the reports to automatically be updated as Confidential (or Private) as per the change to the meeting.

Widescreen monitors - better viewing experience: Back in the day, when widescreen / high-res monitors were relatively rare, our team opted to put a MaxWidth setting on most screens to limit the horizontal display of Accelo content to 1920 pixels (Full HD). However, it's become apparent that users with widescreens are happy to see their schedules, gantt charts, timesheets etc. running across the full width of the page, so we've lifted to maxwidth limit across most of the application.

Replacing old Rich-Text Editors: When editing your email signature - whether the admin configured default template, a division signature or customizing a personal one - the text editor was a bit out-dated. We'd already started using a new rich-text editor in other parts of Accelo, so we've rolled this out to those signature editor places too for consistency and ease-of-use (plus more text editing functionality!)

Fixed-price budget settings when using templates: This change ensures that the "Fixed price" settings are passed through when a template is added to a quote estimate or a project plan. Previously, the "include materials" or "include expenses" options were ignored from the template, whereas now Accelo will pass these into the new quote or project along with all the template milestones, tasks and materials.

Overriding retainer period start date: Creating a new retainer period includes setting a start and end date for the period, and the start is automatically determined based on the end of the current/previous period, since Accelo recommends not leaving any gaps between periods. If you did want to leave a gap, it was possible to edit the start date while setting up the new period, but after saving, the system had switched back to the automatically calculated start date. This over-zealous functionality has been relaxed, so your customized start date will be respected.