Aluminium 10.00

Relevance: All users
Version release: Aluminium 10.00 – including releases from 9.05
Proposed release to staging: 22/07/2024
Proposed release to production: 25/07/2024 – Actual release 25/07/2024

 

What’s included?

Remember this is a holding version while waiting for the full release of Silicon. Hopefully, you find something you like 🙂

So so many little tweaks but also a couple of bigger more awesome things. Note: Leave action groups and Other action groups which have also been pulled from Silicon have been moved to Aluminium 11.00 which will be launched after this version.

Changes to the leave details pages

We have created a new leave instances table to increase transparency with leave and support the new leave action groups. This allows managers and payroll to view leave instances based on duration filters. The leave balance table options and functionality will stay as is. But the table now only shows balance totals for Available/Committed/Accrued. It no longer shows columns for Used this year, instances, or attachments as these display in the new table.

This table allows the viewer to apply a duration filter to the data set and displays the ‘leave taken’ hours for the selected period, the number of instances of leave taken in the period, the average number of hours per instance within the period, and the number of leave instanaces that have also had an attachment added.

 

Navigate from payrun to payrun within plantsheets

If you were looking at an individual plantsheet to navigate to another payrun, you needed to first go to the overall listing of plantsheets, shift to the payrun, and reopen the plant sheet. This was so annoying. So now you can navigate direct within the plantsheets themselves. #STOPPINGANNOYINGTHINGS

 

Changes to complete missing hours on timesheets

The complete missing hours function can be super handy to quickly apply for leave for any gaps in a record of work. What makes it even more handy is you can now set what leave types a user can select from when using complete missing hours and hide the rest. Note: Accured hours will always be the default.

 

Changes to timesheet recall request process

A user can request a recall for timesheets once they have submitted their timesheet, however, the timesheet had to be returned by a manager or payroll officer even if the manager or payroll officer hadn’t yet looked at it. Now we have altered this process so if a user requests a recall of their timesheet after submitting it then, provided it has not been approved or altered by anyone else, it will return automatically. Note: This also involves changes to notifications.

 

SSO loop fix

That annoying bug that was totally inconsistent when sometimes when using SSO you would have to log in twice. We’re pretty sure we found that rock.

 

Changes to workflows and notifications page

Previously workflows and notifications are on the same page. We have a number of new workflow/condition builders to be added and will also be expanding the notifications management. As such we have now split this page into two pages:

  • Notifications and reminders
  • Workflows and conditions

 

Workflow changes to timesheet approvals

Regardless of the workflow setup and conditional logic rules, if a timesheet has the status of not submitted then a manager must select skip submit on the workflow before they can approve the timesheet. This ensures all processes and checks triggered by the submit process are triggered, but also that managers do not accidently approve a timesheet that is not submitted even if the minimum requirements for the timesheet are met. Where a manager is using quick approvals, they will still be forced to ‘skip submit’.

Before this, a payroll officer could also skip all steps on a workflow including the final step, resulting in the timesheet auto-approving even if issues need to be resolved including unapproved leave, excess time without comments, missing work records, etc. The last step of any workflow can now no longer be skipped. It must be resolved or reassigned and resolved.

 

Workflows

New workflow conditions have been added for timesheets to allow using additional hours as a condition. Before this, we had rules to trigger and determine workflow exceptions for timesheets that are based on excess-time records. We had one that triggers if there is excess-time of any type, one for paid excess-time, another for accrued hours, and even for unpaid excess-time but we could not trigger any workflow based on just additional hours.

 

Dynamic controller for auto-submit/approve timesheets day

If a council had auto-submit and auto-complete timesheets then the day/time of triggering this behaviour was always the last day of the payrun period. Councils can now select when they would like any timesheets set to auto-submit/approve to do so.

 

Create new report to list exceptions by payrun

This report shows only the non-ordinary things listed in an employee’s record of work each payrun. The data only displays for the payrun selected and includes all timesheets for the payrun period where the timesheet status is not excluded. The report can be generated regardless of the status of the payrun.

This includes:

  • All allowances
  • All Penalties
  • All excess time
  • All leave
  • All public holidays

It does not include any hours where hours are ordinary

 

Changes to Business Intelligence access

BI users can now select any department when generating reports based on departments not just those they are linked to. BI users can now also view the full organisation reporting hierarchy and any department dashboards.

 

Plant – Show and hide plant option from non-standard plant lists

You can currently give users the ability to select from non standard plant (as in for all active plant items even if that user does not have that plant item assigned to them). This functionality provides the ability to ‘hide’ plant from the non standard plant list.

 

Plant – You can now split ext ref and plant number into separate fields for plant items

This is an interesting one, but let’s say you had a plant item you wanted to link to a particular user and when they use it they have to enter KM. But then you wanted to link the same plant to another user but when they use it they need to record cartage and hours of use as well as display alternative cost centres and custom content. Well, this does that. Just create duplicates and away you go.

Note: When plant is imported it will update based on ext ref records, so you can create custom requirements for duplicate items without worrying about them getting wiped by plant updates.

 

All the small but still awesome tweaks, fixes, bits and bobs

Settings and configuration

[FIX] Fix issue with dashboard where the dashboard broke if the users is an external user and has no direct reports. Turns out elementTIME literally had no idea what to do so did the virtual equilivant of curling into a ball and crying.

[CHORE] Stop terminated users from being able to log in into elementTIME – Yep, I think that just about covers it.

[FIX] Fix “Error 614: invalid Parameter” when trying to make manual excess time rule inactive – ahhh the joy of getting good ole 614 errors. You couldn’t make manual excess time rules inactive even though you should be able to, so now you can as you should. And those pesky 614 errors? Well, they should be banished like that dude in Lord of the Rings.

[FIX] Fix error on filtering work-order group assignment rules that was searching for a field that doesn’t exist. It is bad enough looking for things that do exist. Things that don’t exist? Who needs that stress? PS. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop helping my seven year old look for unicorns and dragons just on the off chance.

[CHORE] Remove link to view manager profile on user view profile page. Turns out some managers would rather limit the ability for people to click their way up the org chart. So limit enabled.

[CHORE] Remove eNPS setting on/off options from view profile page if logged user is not payroll officer so only payroll can opt users in or out.

[CHORE] Update work-orders so classifications may be added/removed to existing and used records. Generally, we hold the WBS as sacrosanct but sometimes you just need to play with classifications. So now you can. Just remember if they are synced with your actual WBS any changes you make will be replaced unless you manually create alternative work-orders.

[FIX] Fix issue where some work-orders displays as not being linked to a group even though they are. This didn’t impact functionality but was misleading. Like the time I told my parents my sister ate the chocolate. Actually, that might have been a lie rather than misleading. The line is thin on the difference when you are six I think.

[FIX] Fix issue on work-order groups listing that was very slow for items with many work-orders related. Slow food is a thing, Slow living is on trend, Slow loading of workorders not so good. So tweaked.

[FIX] Fix issue with work-orders caching when listing them into timecards. A cache is only as good as… umm your last cache. So we have added a 15 minutes cache on work-orders availability listing per user/role with the option to refresh at any time.

[CHORE] Temporarily hide work order groups from work orders table – with the delay to silicon we hid this. It is hid.

[CHORE] Stop Managers from applying for own duty requests if flag is not true. Managers had access to apply for duties through their team and it also allowed managers to apply for their own requests even if their own flag is set as OFF.

[FIX] Fix label for new field for auto submit/approve timesheets under payrun settings. It was spelled wrong and now it is spelled correctly. Goldstars all round.

[CHORE] Remove fields with errors on Payrun > Payrun processing page. On the payrun > payrun processing page the due date and processing date fields default to the current date which is of course incorrect. So, vamoosh.

[FIX] If plant field is disabled but the plant field has flag of required then plant costing will not save. When a plant item has a capture field that is flagged as required but then the field is disabled, the plant item still requires the field to have a value when costed against in a users timesheet. I.e. if I enable the cartage field for a plant item and make the field required and then enable the hour field all is good, but then if i disable the cartage field without changing the status of the required flag, I am unable to cost to the plant item. I can select it and add hours but it will not let me save and not provide any reason why. So now, if a plant item field has a required status of true and then the field is disabled the required requirement is ignored or the flag changed to a status of false.

 

Penalties

[FIX] Fix issue with calculating penalties based on rule that checks if hours are continuous when there is a break it in some cases ignores the break and [FIX] Fix issue with calculating penalties when time-block has breaks and it ends at midnight – it duplicates the penalty hours. Both of these are pretty edge use case bugs but as bugs they exist and therefore must be squashed. So squash them we did. (Just for the record though we are massive fans of actual real live bugs. It is just the system ones that annoy us. Oh, and flies).

 

Higher duties

[FIX] Fix issue on higher duties – dates went missing when editing requests if certain fields were missed in the original request. As any parent knows we all spend heaps of time looking for things as it is (“I need Fluffy Bunny now.”), so it wasn’t great to learn we were adding in more things going missing. So now they aren’t. You can spend that time looking for Fluffy Bunny instead (hint: check the drawer in the bathroom).

 

Leave

[FIX] Fix issue with applying for leave to solve missing hours on timecard. If a user was using the auto-complete missing hours on timesheet option and on a daily glide shift. Well, let’s just say the auto-complete part of this option wasn’t living up to its name. Now it is.

[FIX] Fix issue on rule that applies split on leave at half pay to balance values when sum does not match the total recorded on leave due to rounding issues. Aha we talk about this somewhere else, when you round is just as important as what you round and then what you do with the rounding after you round… and around and around we go.

[CHORE] Change the way leave accruals are calculated when staff is not full-time. This one was super annoying. In some cases, if a user was part-time but working additional hours as excess-time and the leave was set to not accrue on excess-time hours, it would ignore the additional hours when accruing. We changed it so even if ignore excess-time is on, if the employee type status type IS NOT full-time, then the calculation will always be based on scheduled hours + additional hours. Note: All FTE caps still apply.

[CHORE] Remove notifications section from leave types, and [CHORE] Remove existing ‘Require attachment to support request’ fields from leave types. These have been replaced by the leave actions groups. So farewell fields – it was great.

[CHORE] Update balances shown on leave types when completing missing hours in a timesheet. The balance shown when a user is using the complete missing hours option and selecting a type should be the available balance the user has for the leave type selected (or available plus pro-rata if that option is true). Prior to this it was the sum of the balance and the maximum negative allowed for that type – this was not helpful.

[CHORE] Hide inactive leave assignments from users dashboard. If a user had a leave type and that leave type can display on the dashboard but then the leave type is removed from the user it should also no longer display on the dashboard and this is now a run-on sentence but needless to say the leave type no longer shows if it is no longer active for the user.

Workflow

[FIX] Fix issue where department managers of old roles remain in workflow when role is ended. When a department manager is no longer a department manager but a workflow is set to include department managers it really should only include the current department manager. So ummmm now it does :).

[FIX] Fix issue where submit and skip submit do not re-trigger workflow on some occasions. A lot of users have some pretty developed conditional logic on timesheet approvals so they want to make sure it works. It does.

CHORE] Force managers to re-calculate auto allowances when they are approving a timesheet if changes have been made after submission. Turns out relying on someone to know to recalculate auto allowances when they make chanegs to a timesheet after it is submitted is not the best idea. So now we encourage (aka force) it.

[FIX] Fix issue where recalculating timesheet returns workflow for period excess-time. Doing the same thing over and over…kinda annoying so we stopped the need. I think they made a movie about this once. Groundexcesstimeapprovaltask day or something.

[CHORE] Remove ‘Approve all waiting’ button from my teams timesheets page if payrun is finished – On the My Team > My teams timesheets page if a payrun was closed you could still view the Approve all waiting button. Really, there is nothing to approve after a payrun is closed so this button is kinda silly at that point.

 

Plant

[FIX] Fix issue with plant items when made inactive are still available for users – Well this one shouldn’t have been rocket science. When you make a plant item inactive you shouldn’t be able to still select it and cost to it. I mean really, you wouldn’t anyway, right? No one ever costs anything to something they didn’t actually use and if plant no longer exists then you can’t use it. So now you can’t.

 

Timecards and timesheets

[CHORE] Automatically select the work-order group in timecard when recording time and user has only one group available because like we need more choices in our lives. You have only one group of work-orders, you don’t really need to choose that do you?

[FIX] Fix issue with changes to breaks not saving to time blocks and resetting to scheduled breaks if the day also has leave. This was so annoying. If you removed a scheduled break and then applied for leave and the duration of the leave was over your normally scheduled break, your scheduled break got added back to the leave, so you took less leave and got more break. I mean, not the end of the world but still annoying so we sorted it.

[FIX] Fix issue on timecard when editing work-order. It was not keeping the selection if you had already saved time against a work-order and then decided to change the time against the work-order. Change can be great, however things that stop change when you want change to happen is just frustrating. So, done.

[CHORE] Add field to allowance records to track where it was recorded (web or mobile app). Sometimes knowing how something was recorded can help understand why it was recorded. Allowances added via mobile app now show the mobile symbol on core.

[FIX] Fix navigation errors between teams timesheets page and users timesheets list page. Wow, this was a weird one. If a user had been imported from an employee master record and a value in the database was missed, elementTIME wouldn’t establish a link allowing navigation between the timesheet and the user profile. We added validation to avoid missing the data and also changed the route on creating the link. TL: DR – we fixed it.

[FIX] Fix issue with incorrect end date for allowances on ‘info notes’ under submit timesheet page. What truly ends? Where does an allowance go when you are no longer entitled to it? In the case of payroll, who really cares as long as the date someone doesn’t get paid something is right. Now it is.

[FIX] Fix “Not found ID” error on timecard when editing role/project/time-type of existing record if it had ad hoc allowances related. There was no reason for this really, like at 1 am when ten planes land at the same time and they only have one line open at customs. We know the planes are coming so we should really organise things better. So we do.

[FIX] Fix rounding issue when checking missing hours in a timesheet with tolerance applied. People love timesheet tolerances but, like many things we love, that love only stretches so far… the tolerance for incorrect tolerances was low. We fixed it and now love is again truly all around.

 

Excess-time

[FIX] Fix issue with calculating excess-time when manually amending period excess-time and changing costing to work-orders. We allow users to reassign period excess time to alternative work-orders. Well, that’s the intent, but it wasn’t working in all use cases. Now it is.

[FIX] Fix flag that allows toggling primary/secondary rules for excess-time records. AND [FIX] Fix some issues with switching records back from secondary to primary. The good ole primary secondary switch is so awesome but we really need to ensure all people have access to awesomeness equally. There were certain setups that conflicted with some excess-time switch rules. So we sat down, looked deep into the eyes of the code, burnt some sage and now… awesomeness is equal again.

[FIX] Fix rounding problem on period excess-time calculation when the difference was exactly where the value ended at the 5th decimal place. 2 decimal places, 3 or 4, 5 or 6 or even more. We don’t judge your decimal place settings so we shouldn’t break rounding if you select 5.

[FIX] Fix error when calculating excess-time where hours were not coded correctly when multiple blocks on the same day were recorded on different work-orders. I have nothing more to add to this one.

[FIX] Fix error on costing excess time, when one block of time has two triggers for excess-time. We removed the clash so the excess time applies as it should, the triggers hold hands and take a long walk down the beach, the sun sets and dolphins leap through the waves. Or I think that is what happened.

[FIX] Fix excess-time that is allowing to cost against public holiday hours. When amending a period excess-time, the public holiday hours are allowed to be selected to cost that excess-time to, but this causes issues in the reports and integrations. So we have removed the public holiday cost centres from the list of allowed cost centres when amending an excess-time.

 

Reports

[FIX] Add work-order name to the daily costing report. only the number was there. The name was not there. Now it is there (and the number as well).

[CHORE] Add leave cap value (how much leave should be the most leave a user should have before getting flagged as having heaps of leave) to indicative leave report. What was not, now is. Cap values are now displayed in the report.

[FEAT] Create new report called “Predicative leave balances”. This report shows current balances (day report is run) plus the predicted balances of all leave types by user at the date of a selected end payrun. Also shows committed leave amounts between the date the report is run and the selected end payrun. This can be used for working out current liabilities and leave balances as at current and future date.

[FIX] Fix reporting hierarchy. Where councils had changed the top level of their organisation (aka a new CEO), the reporting hierarchy broke. Now it is fixed.

[FIX] Fix the login method field into staff summary report. The report now shows if users are using SSO or native log in as it should. Because it should.

[CHORE] Make change to the daily costing report to show name of work-order details and task details.

 

API and integrations

[CHORE] Update leave import tool to accept external IDs for leave types and RDO types.

[FEAT] Create ad hoc allowances API for timesheets includes new services for: List available. Types with their limitations and setup. List allowances entries by day. Details for allowance entry. Save allowance record.

[CHORE] Update ad hoc allowance API services for managing fixed allowance with quantity instead of multiple records.

[FEAT] Add mobile API service to delete an ad hoc allowance entry.

[FIX] Fix API issue with listing ad hoc allowances on config service where items that should not be used against master were showing.

[FIX] Fix API issue with saving allowance with start/end times, where the end time is not saving but repeating start time.

[FEAT] Create new services for excess-time on mobile API.

[CHORE] Update URLs for department listing and department leave calendars services.

[CHORE] Update timesheet service to return issues flags on days only if the day has daily requirements.

[FIX] Fix issue where SSO on API v3 was returning using deprecated API v2, causing a 500 error.

[FIX] Fix issue with ad hoc allowances when added via API directly to timecard they don’t calculate values.

[FEAT] #API Create api services to control leave calendars on manager mode.

[FEAT] Create API service to get general data for managers dashboard.

[FEAT] #API Create new API services to manage leave requests on manager mode.

[CHORE] Update module that runs work-order integrations for users of Authority 7.1+ to run for 7.0.40+

[CHORE] #API Add public holidays to API service that returns leave info for a department and a given period.

[FIX] Fix issues with calculating leave hours on data sources when summing individual days after rounding which was providing a different value at the end of the request period (basically if you round every day value and then sum the total and round, you get a different value than just summing the total and then rounding). Yes, it might just be a couple of seconds but… well, maths am I right? (This was affecting integrations and timesheet summaries).

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