This weekend the Dutch financial newspaper ‘Het Financieele Dagblad’ ranked the Exact Synergy App as #1 Business App. A great achievement and big thanks to you for the trust in our product.

We are currently working on new version of our Apps which hopefully have us in a firm #1 position again next year!

 Thanks! 

Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 251 and Exact Globe Next product update 406 are now in controlled release. That means that these updates are available for resellers as well as all controlled release customers. After a successful controlled release period, we will make these updates generally available for all customers; planned for the end of May.

Wholesale
With our wholesale customers’ needs in mind, we have introduced a basic warehouse management solution: WMS Lite. Moreover, Exact has signed an agreement with partner Optimizers and as a result the Optimizers EDI Gateway is available worldwide via Exact.

Professional Services
To further extend the value proposition for our professional services customers, we offer now an estimate to complete feature in WBS. Additionally, in this product update we have enhanced the hour and approval screen and improved the plan board. Read this article for more details.

Manufacturing
To facilitate the needs of manufacturing companies we have improved usability of Visual Scheduler and added new entity services. As of this product update the Shop Floor Control solution is in controlled release.

Other
New technologies such as MS Office 2013 are now also supported, as well as MS Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Internet Explorer 10. We have also enhanced Exact Synergy Enterprise Configurator and Exact Integration.

Exact Globe Next product update 406 includes numerous changes in regional legislation and business standards that support our customers’ operations and facilitate their business. A number of changes have been implemented for bank formats. Additionally, we have implemented changes for SEPA functionality.

The Exact Synergy app is now available for iPhone 5. This app allows you to take your workflow, schedule, contacts and colleagues with you, wherever you go. The app makes it possible to directly send emails, call customers and colleagues with a single finger tap while being on the go. Moreover, you can manage your schedule, but also view planning of your colleagues. Enter expense claims or book your time from any location. Check the App Store to read more and view the screenshots; more important download it now if you aren’t using it yet.

Do not hesitate to leave a reply when you have any questions, remarks or feedback.

Hi all,

It has been a while since my last post on exact integration, so what have we been up to all this time?

Besides having done a lot of improvements on the system and services layer of Exact Globe Next and Exact Synergy Enterprise we have also been adjusting the current product and thinking in a larger scope on all of our products that use some form of integration.

On the Exact Interation product we are still ,and will continue to, expanding the repair/migration tools.  For the coming release we have added the following entities to the tool:

• Bankaccounts
• General Ledger accounts
• Item account

Also we have added synchronization of sectors and subsectors into the Exact Integration solution. They will now be synchronized when you create new entries of these or update these entities on either side.

On the topic of services we have created Financial Header and Financial Lines services and we have built a Quotation service, now ready to use to retrieve and create data externally.  You can view the technical reference for Exact Synergy Enterprise webservices here and the Exact Globe Next entity services you can view here.

A different solution, but closely related, is our Central Master Data Mangement solution. In this release we have changed the behaviour of the Parent-Child synchronization between Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe. The link between parent and child is no longer mandatory to also exist in the division. Functionally this means you can have a parent in a different division than your child. When changing the parent from division to division this link will be restored.

As a last related topic I would like to inform you that our Synergy Office Integration solution now supports Office 2013 both 32 and 64 bits. Also the Office 2010 64 bit version is now supported.

Should you have any questions about these solutions, do not hesitate to contact me at ruud.aalders@exact.com or add comments to this post.

Hi all,

Information is key within a company. But information means nothing when you can’t or don’t share it.

In release 250 for the Exact configurator we release the possibility to influence the actors in the workflow based on company logic. You can read all about workflow validation and people allocation here.

A small example of influencing the allocation of actors in workflow would be an expense claim. You can now actually configure your flow in such an order that when the amount is (for example) € 100.00, the approval of the expense claim can be done by the assistant of the manager of that person.

Eventhough this is nice and takes away work from the manager, there can be cases where he would still like to be informed, for example all expenses made on a certain project.

For reasons like this we have implemented in release 251 that you can remark people based on business logic. This would mean that the actor would still be the assistant, but the manager and/or the account manager or even a finance employee can be remarked.

And since we are on the topic of sharing information, in the coming release we have implemented that when you create an entity that inherits from projects, you now also have the availability of adding members to that inherited entity. Which means you can provide extra security on your entity.

Exact Synergy Enterprise is the software in which you share information with your colleagues.

Should you have any questions about this solution, do not hesitate to contact me at ruud.aalders@exact.com or add comments to this post.

As you might know Exact is further developing its project management solution (Exact professional Services Automation) and since we are nearing the start of controlled release for product update 251, I would like to inform you on the improvements and additions that are made for the Exact Synergy Enterprise Professional Services Automation solution (Exact PSA).

Deliverables and WBS

We have introduced statuses on deliverables indicating they are new, in progress or completed. This gives you the possibility to open and close the deliverable for the project. A gauge has been added to the WBS lines, indicating the completion of the line and the estimated to complete which you can now enter to the line.

Project Planning

We added a bucket list which displays the WBS lines which can be planned. The bucket allows an easy drag and drop way of planning from WBS by just dropping it on a date and person.

Activities

PSA hour items have extra item attributes now to help out on reporting; billable / non-billable and productive / non-productive can be used to indicate if the activity (item) is billable or not and productive or not.

Hour & Expense

Significant improvement of the loading and submitting of the hour entry screen; this will help you specially when working with large number of different projects and hours.

Timesheet

You can now control via a setting if it’s allowed to enter the current week while older week timesheets are still open. Furthermore travel and expenses are linked to the timesheet entry.

Approval

The approval screen has been greatly improved. Approval now follows the request logic and it is possible to use both the person and project view, with additional filter options.

Invoicing

Progress has been made in the loading of the invoice proposal screen with a high volume of billable lines. You can now remove lines realised that you do not want to invoice. These will be process with a non-billable proposal request giving a full traceability.

Work in progress

Expenses are now handled the same way financially as hour request for the work in progress method ’to be invoiced’ for Exact PSA.

Search

In the workflow search you can now filter on deliverables and find the requests attached to the deliverables easily.

Enjoy!

The Exact Synergy apps are available since 2011. There is an App for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android and Windows Phone. Since the introduction a lot of improvements are made to the apps; some visible, a lot not visible.

This year we will continue to improve our Mobile App offering to better serve the persons using the Apps.

So, if you are one of the thousands of user of our Apps, let us know what improvements you would like to see. What do you like to see in our new Apps?

Leave a reply on this blogpost and tell us!

It’s been a while since we have published an article dedicated to enhancements on Service Management. In this blog I would like to inform you about some highlights that you can expect in the next Exact Synergy Enterprise release, product update 251, which is expected in the second quarter of this year.

• The display of information and change of planning on the Dispatch board are much faster. The database has been optimized which has resulted in an improvement of the overall performance for Service Management;
• Several changes have been made on the Customize page of the Dispatch board. Options are added to requests (for instance project, early invoicing, serial number and item), to Service activities (such as various descriptions, and problem code) and to Service lines (engineer, planned hours, etcetera);
• Changes have been made to the indexation, prolongation, and invoicing of Service contracts;
• Various report templates are supported for contract documents, Service slips, and Service activities;
• We enhanced the Service request. Serial numbers in Service activity are hyperlinked, contract type has been added for Service configurations, resource or material lines can be canceled in edit mode and some more things we will update you about later in the product update 251 summary, which becomes available to all customers;
• Also on Exact Globe Next side, in product update 406, significant improvements have been made to further enhance the logic behind the implementation of Service configuration in sales orders.

For the exact release date of the Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 251, please keep a close eye on this blog.

Image by supakitmod on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why force someone to read tedious text when the picture of a crossed-out cigarette will do? In the real world, icons are always telling us what to do. No smoking on the airplane. Beware of the road crew ahead. Go to the restroom here if you’re a man, and there if you’re a woman. These icons, for the most part, tell us these things without so much as a word. They’re achievements of human efficiency.

The digital world, however, is a different story. In business software, warnings and directions are often much more complex. How can an icon summarize, for instance, whether you are customizing or repairing information? Which icon is the best representation, so that it tells us what can be done? Is it the cog-wheel or screwdriver & wrench icon?

To answer these questions we have a dedicated UX team which focusses on this challenge. Their main focus is the interactions between the user and different devices, where our business software runs on. In Exact Synergy Enterprise Product Update 251 we have updated the existing icons so that they have a modern look & feel and are consistent all over the software.

In the below screenshot you can see some of the improvements:

Before:

After:

Exact Synergy Enterprise Product Update 251 is expected to be generally available in Q2 2013.
Please let me know what you think about the new icons, when you have a chance to view them.

Credits: Lydia Depillis (text) &  Tim Smith (picture)

Nowadays the speed of new technologies becoming available for us is tremendously high. Together with this rapidity new functionalities and possibilities are being introduced. It’s quite an effort to catch up and follow in the same pace as these new products are being launched. To give our (early adopter) customers a peek inside, I have listed the new products from the Microsoft “train” which we will be supporting.

Exact is currently working on making our products Exact Globe Next (‘with extended functionality’) and Exact Synergy Enterprise ready to support the newest Microsoft platforms: Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10 and Office 2013.

Below you see the list of new technologies which will be supported in each product:

Exact Globe Next

• Windows Server 2012
• Windows 8
• Internet Explorer 10 (only for Exact Globe Next ‘with extended functionality’)
• Office 2013

Exact Synergy Enterprise

• Windows Server 2012
• Internet Explorer 10
• Office 2013 (Synergy Office Integration & New Word Merge)

Somewhere next half year we expect to support all the above technologies in the specific product. For the exact release dates please keep a close eye on this blog.

As of today our new Service Management solution is generally available for 1:1 scenarios. This solution enables manufacturers and wholesale companies to streamline their complete service management process.

After many days of interviewing, visiting, developing, testing we reached a phase were we release the first part of functionality from the service management solution.

The solution supports the handling of:

• corrective service activities
• preventive service activities
• contract management
• dispatching / planning
• material requirement planning
• field service
• registration of time and materials
• contract and activity invoicing
• 1 Exact Synergy Enterprise with one Exact Globe Next service administration

Benefits

• Stay ahead of the competition
• Achieve rapid response times
• Enjoy profitable service contracts
• Assign the right engineer for the job
• Have all spare parts and materials on hand
• Enable service engineers to do a great job, the first time
• Become proactive instead of reactive

Thanks to all our customers and partners that have participated in establishing the functionality for this version!