Automation Centre - Press Release

October 2016

Experience complete front end business process solutions for your organization with Web based solutions for Projects, Purchasing, Time Reporting, Help Desk and HR with Tracker Suite Version 5.0. Tracker Suite offers secure, scalable, easy to use, integrated solutions, with configurable workflows, complete reporting, and real time data for an effortless end user experience.

Automation Centre is pleased to announce the release of Tracker Suite 5.0, the latest version of its web based enterprise productivity solution suite. Tracker Suite Version 5.0 continues to build upon its core themes, which has resulted in successful customer implementations for more than 20 years: Visibility, Collaboration, Communication, and Integration.

“Tracker Suite 5.0 is a landmark release,” said Steven Birchfield of Automation Centre. “It has significant performance improvements- it’s faster than previous versions, in many cases an order of magnitude faster, and there is a new security model as well as productivity features. But the greatest achievement of this release is the power it places in the hands of individual users and the organizations that use it.”

“With Tracker Suite 5.0, users can easily shape their own experience, how data is presented to them, and how they work with it. Organizations can customize security, forms, menu choices, and workflow to wrap around their existing processes. All of this happens without anyone having to touch a line of code. Our innovative release process of defining release themes, platform changes, and feature targets has once again produced a product that is second to none.”

Tracker Suite 5.0 Release Themes:

With Tracker Suite Version 5.0, there is a complete technology upgrade and overhaul which creates a faster, more scalable, and more compatible Tracker Suite.

• Latest browser support for Chrome, IE, Firefox and Safari.
• Everything is faster and manages memory better and scales to larger data sets.
• Better security, including the removal of Adobe Flash,
• Localization improvements to better handle multi-national organizations including: time zones, foreign language, and multi-currency transactions.

Improved Visualizations:

• Ability to split large horizontal views to manage horizontal data.
• Visual resource scheduling options with drag and drop across projects.
• Improved drag and drop assignment boards.
• New charts, including Tree Graph.
• Better reporting, with multiple pivots and percentage options.
• Visually organized Folder Views for Programs, Projects, and Customers.

Version 5.0 Platform Changes Include:

• Application Architecture: Tracker Suite is now compatible with the latest versions of all commonly used browsers: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
• Back-end Architecture: Tracker Suite now uses the latest version of the underlying architecture of Ext JS 5.1, resulting in improved:
  • View Performance
  • Rendering of Forms and Views
  • Memory management is better which makes the application run faster
• Localization changes: More support for different locale formats so that the application can be used seamlessly between different date and number formats supported in different countries.
• Folder Views: Folder Views are incorporated into different areas of the application, allowing for easy access to all data with the support of right click context menus to Add/Edit/Delete records.
• Widget technology is enhanced, and the new technology now allows using any view or form as a widget within Tracker Suite.
• Integration with QuickBooks Desktop is now available, in addition to integration to integration with QuickBooks Online which continues to be an option with Tracker Suite.
• New Custom Keyword Function, allows you to create your own set of keywords and securely delegate who updates the keywords. 

Enhanced Program and Project Management Capabilities:

• A new dynamic organizing layer has been added called PBS (Program Breakdown Structure) that allows users to define multiple levels of a business hierarchy to group and manage programs, people, and finances.
• System wide Gantt chart for Projects in a Program
• Searchable Project Folders is an area from which you can manage all of the Projects very easily, Group them in different view, navigate and manage all of the child documents such as tasks, issues, risks, tickets, status reports, documents etc. in a very friendly environment with support of right click context menus to Add/Edit/Delete records.
• Task and Project Schedulers are added in the system that allows better management of tasks and projects with ability to filter data on the basis of various fields and it provides many different layouts in which the data can be presented.
• Task and Project Management boards are added that allows users to drag and drop tasks and projects between various statuses. Employee and Manager weekly task boards are also added for better management, scheduling, and planning of tasks.
• Many other new features such as a Map Graph, Resource Gantt, and Export to Excel option for Gantt (with and without the Gantt bars) have been added.

Customer Support/IT Help Desk:

• Ticket Assignment Board has been added to allow allocation of support tickets from unassigned pool to resources or move tickets between resources with drag & drop capability for very easy management of support tickets.
• Weekly Ticket Board has been added allowing users to better plan their support tickets, moving them between weeks and also mark them complete with drag and drop.
• A better, more customizable user interface is included with Version 5.0. This allows clients to configure and move fields between different sections to design a form that best fits their needs.

Time Management

• The new interface provides mobile support. A dialog is opened for time entry for each row on mobile to make it more usable on hand held devices.
• Added Document and field level security
• Ability to surface Project and Task Codes
• Drill down ability added on Time Sheet compliance to link to Time Summary Report by Person/Projects/Date Range

Purchasing, Expenses and Job Costing

• A complete new Request for Quotation process is added in Purchase Tracker with its own set of roles, statuses, views, and email notifications.
• The option to move items from one purchase request to another existing one or a new request so items for a vendor can be grouped together and requested under a single request.
• Addition of Email Threading on Purchase Request.
• Expense report now supports adding/retrieving data from multiple locales which allows users to submit expense reports from different parts of the world in their own regional settings.
• Option to submit expense reports for my staff is added. Inbox and Outbox views are added for Managers and Supervisors to view/approve expense reports of their staff.

Personnel/Resource Management

• Multiple Active Directories can be linked with Personnel Tracker now, and it can pull data from all of the configured ADs that are active.
• Better logging mechanism added for bulk changes and role assignments. Logs for setup form changes have also been added to ensure accountability.
• Company Calendar control has been re-written in the latest version of Ext JS version to support all of the latest browser technology and improve the rendering performance.
• Custom Tags have been added to the Personnel Tracker Module so that an end user can use these fields in email templates to send template based notifications to people where custom tags will be replaced with the actual values.

Customer Management

• Company Folders, an area from which you can manage all of the customers, their contracts, opportunities, contracts, documents, project, tickets etc. in a very friendly environment with support of right click context menus to Add/Edit/Delete records.
• Data export and print options added on Customer and Contract areas that are customizable using Word templates.
• The ability to convert opportunities to projects that inherit the initial opportunity information.
• Mass email options added on Company and Contacts view that can be sent on the basis of predefined notification templates.

Improved Reporting

• New Tree Graph with Drill Down and Drill Up capabilities.
• Double Pivot Table Technology has been added to the reporting framework. This feature allows users to create new data dimensions. Values for this distribution column can then be pivoted on any report on any field that is available on that particular report.
• Pivot report framework now supports adding same summary column multiple times, which means that column A can be displayed twice on a report: once with “Sum” option and second time with “Percent” option.
• Pivot reports framework is changed to support context pre-filters, such as pre-populating a manager filter so that the manager can see a report for their staff only.

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