Relevance: All users
Version release: Aluminium 4.00 (including 3.5 to 3.26)
Release to staging: 01/08/2023
Release to production: 09/08/2023

 

Summary of functionality

A nice little release if I may say so myself. Great additions to the penalty and auto-allowance condition triggers, new reports, lots of tidying up, and let’s not forget, custom widgets and deduct breaks directly from timecards.

 

New auto-allowance trigger to apply to excess hours adjacent (or not) to ordinary hours

This is useful for adding to your condition builder when a trigger for an allowance is not just excess-time, but only excess-time that is worked adjacent to ordinary hours (two hours, midweek, and then a meal allowance). Nailed it.

 

New penalty triggers and conditions

Sometimes it is fun just to automate things, so this release introduces a bunch of new conditions and triggers for penalties including:

  • The ability to add to the condition builder excess-time types:
    • Include in your conditions the ability to trigger a penalty based on a type of excess-time (additional hours, anyone?).
    • Include in your conditions the ability to trigger a penalty based on the name of an excess-time rule (a midweek callout, perhaps?).
    • Include in your conditions the ability to trigger a penalty based on plant items used.
    • Include in your conditions the ability to set a maximum hour cap (a penalty will not be applied for hours exceeding the cap).

This also involved fixing the ability to apply pay type changes to penalties when they are assigned to individuals (the pay type change was not applied consistently in all integration methods).

 

Minimum hours warning setting

You can now set minimum hours for ordinary hours warnings. This is not for excess-time which has allowed minimum hours to be set forever, but for when staff record ordinary hours. It kinda makes sense – say you have casuals and they have auto-align switched on so their hours are always ordinary, but they should get a minimum of two hours. This allows your manager (and payroll) to be alerted so you can make the adjustment (and also empower the manager to ensure they get staff in to work two hours if they are getting paid for it anyway).

 

Ability to view, edit, delete, and add breaks into timecards

Users on work-orders can now adjust breaks directly in their timecards. Rather than altering the schedule or creating separate time blocks, users can now just alter the break within their timecard. Nice, right?

For more information

 

Custom widgets

Aluminium 4.00 custom widgets

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All the other awesome things (big and small)

 

General

[FIX] Fix caching error on notification types. There was an issue when multiple notifications were triggered at once some types were cached, meaning the content was not dynamic. No one wants static content so we sorted that.

[FIX] Fix issue where the duties list is missing under Staff management > Timesheet Options > General > Duties. Turns out that being able to see what higher duties are linked to a user is pretty important.

[FIX] Fix issue where making a work-order activity inactive doesn’t stop the ability to record time against it.

[FIX] Fix issue on work-orders activity form when adding a new activity, adding it to a group doesn’t work as expected.

[FIX] Fix issue where making changes to activity groups doesn’t affect the associated work-orders automatically.

[FIX] Force day record ID to be updated in case the schedule and time recorded don’t match when saving a new time record.

[FIX] Fix issues where terminated employees were still being displayed in the staff hierarchy if the users were removed from departments prior to termination.

[FIX] Fix error when filtering projects when the project code mask doesn’t have both project code and activity code in it.

[FIX] Fix issue with recording plant when hours is set as OFF but required hours flag is ON. Turns out that removing a field but also requiring the field you just removed to be shown is a little silly so we fixed that.

[FIX] Fix URL params for specific content into modals – timecards, plant cards, leave requests, scheduled days, and duty requests.

[FIX] Fix the My other requests page as it only shows an error and no longer works. We fixed this and then promptly broke it, so we fixed it again.

[FIX] Work-order name masking does not apply to nonstandard work-orders.

[FIX] Fix error when accessing the other task page from the manager’s dashboard opens the old page.

[PERF] Fix performance issues on loading timecard panel when the user has a lot of work orders available.

[FIX] Fix work-order relationship issue with deleted departments.

[FIX] Update the content of reset password messages. The content was kinda rubbish really so we fixed it (and didn’t even need ChatGPT to write it for us).

[FIX] Fix ordinary hours value on payment view when there is amended excess-time. The excess-time is being double deducted from the hours recorded.

[CHORE] Add higher duties label to the new default view of timesheets on the My teams > My teams timesheets page.

[FIX] Fix the link to the Manage shifts page from the main Settings page.

[FIX] Alter the functionality of the My timesheet and My team > My teams timesheets pages so the pages behave independently. Filters applied on one page do not apply to the other page when navigating between them.

 

Allowances

[FIX] Fix issue with calculating allowances triggered by excess-time type.

 

Reporting

[FIX] Fix caching error for getting reports individually. This affected only the detailed check file when running from the timesheets list page but even so, it was a little annoying.

[FEAT] Create new report “Total costing report by day for all users”.

[CHORE] Replace dollar value of allowances with quantity of allowance on detailed checklist download report.

[FIX] Fix report where option exists to run for all staff, through not selecting a department but instead, when not selecting a department the report just does not generate.

[FIX] Fix issue with reports page generate report buttons being available without options selected if you refresh the page.

[FEAT] Create two new report versions allowing reports to run via department:

  • Name the report “Hours by time type by user over time” (which is the existing report name) and add a filter to the new report that allows the selection of all active users in the system. Selecting a user will generate the report with the same data but just for the user selected for the time period selected.
  • Name the report “Hours by employee by role by department” and add filter to the report options showing all active departments, where selecting a department will show the same data as the existing report for the date range selected but just for the department selected. Do not include child department data.

 

Excess-time

[FIX] Fix excess-time calculations error for duration-only glide period shifts. There was an error in some unique setup combinations where the excess-time for duration-only recording was not triggering automatically.

[FIX] Fix excess-time calculation error for when calculating excess-time only – it was skipping the first levels. We fixed the issue above and created this one that slipped through testing, so we fixed this and the one below as well. You know what they say – you break it, you code the fix.

[FIX] Fix excess-time calculation error for duration-only on glide shifts with zero scheduled hours on period.

[FIX] Fix issue where when adding a comment against an excess-time from an issue, it doesn’t automatically update the submit/approve page.

[FIX] Fix massive performance issue on excess-time list when the approved flag was set as ON, on other requests page.

[FIX] Reinstate link in excess-time panel block to open relevant timecard. The link was broken and now it is fixed, so when on the excess-time block you can select the code and it will return you to the daily timecard that triggered that excess-time. Note: This is not available on period excess-time.

[FIX] Fix error on auto-allowance based on excess-time rules and types where if excess-time was amended to a type that doesn’t trigger allowances, the allowances were not removed.

[FIX] Fix error on auto-allowance based on excess-time types when excess-time rule had split types, it was not triggering if the sub-item matched the trigger.

 

Leave

[FIX] Fix issue with leave balances calculations for when there are too many terminated users in the system. We found a bug where if the number of terminated users is greater than the number of active users, the calculations stopped working.

[CHORE] Hide leave type names from the bank name when the leave type is inactive.

[CHORE] Show unapproved leave hours as part of the total hours recorded total.

 

Integrations and API

[CHORE] Add more context to API call error when integrating with Authority. We tried to add some of our own data to the errors based on our experience to make the error messages more helpful for the end user.

[CHORE] Add ability to deduct RDO earnt hours from rows on data-source `PayRunDetails`.

[CHORE] Changes to key pay extract report allowing for new integration rules to be applied as a class:

  • Pass actual hours with minimum applied instead of adjusted hours for excess-time
  • Remove any number roundings – pass all values as absolute
  • Remove all accrued RDO from the ordinary hours

[CHORE] Update integration rule that passes accrued hours with negative row to allow overriding cost account on negative lines

[FEAT] API – Create API v3 for new app, so changes on API won’t affect current app.

[FIX] API – Fix multiple roles on dashboard service.

[FIX] API – Fix missing response on documentation for API v2.

[FIX] API – Fix swagger documentation for all `time-card` services where the day ID was not accepting `”current”` as value.

[CHORE] API – Add timezone info to tenant service.

[CHORE] API – Add documentation for service to save time record.

[CHORE] API – If time is recorded via real-time recorder then breaks should not be deducted automatically.

[CHORE] API – Add missing information needed to populate apps dashboard.

[CHORE] API – Add missing info needed to populate leave page in the app.

[CHORE] API – Add scheduled hours info on API to be shown beside role name on the app when recording time.

[CHORE] API – Remove project activities from `time-card/config` service from users with work-orders.

[CHORE] API – Add missing plant and allowances info into config service.

[CHORE] API – Fix error message when user logged is locked.

[FEAT] API – Create new API services to show leave balances and forecast on the app.

[FIX] Fix issue with recording time using API v3.

[CHORE] Add custom contents to plant items and allowance types to be used on time recorder

[FIX] Fix error with user image on mobile apps API.

[FIX] Fix error on API that populates timesheet that broke with a change made to add unapproved leave to total value calculation functionality.