2017-01 Excalibur Release Notes

Overview

Please note: The help system link has changed to the following location: http://help.precisiontele.com as of January 30th 2017. Please be sure to update bookmarks appropriately as the legacy url will expire in 30 days.

We understand that as your business grows, tasks and processes must be managed effectively. Over the past year, the PTT team has been diligently working on a new underlying infrastructure for the core components of the TBS system, namely, Agent Quote Requests, Trouble Tickets and Orders. As many of you that use the system know, these modules are crucial in daily operations and provisioning workflow. We have reached out to many of you to ask for feedback, features and input regarding what items within these modules work well, need improvement or aren't used at all. We have compiled all of this feedback and after much review and analysis, we have discovered that these items (tickets, orders, requests) all tend to require a similar set of underlying support tools and features (i.e., workflows, assignment groups, priorities, etc.).

To facilitate better request management, Precision is working to create an all-in-one multifaceted Tasks module that can be configured to support practically any type of issue, request or process your company performs. Quote Requests, Order Management, Provisioning Projects, Trouble Resolution, and Collections activity are a few examples of Task Types used by our clients. Our goal is to enable efficient request processing and information tracking for every department.

This system is quite ready to roll out to all clients as of yet, but we do have some users beta testing a Quote Request system and are rolling out the new Trouble Ticket Tasks to Alpha testers with this release. So, while the release notes below may look a little sparse, please feel free to hop on over to the new Tasks Management System Overview to learn more about our progress and what new items to look forward to in upcoming releases!

*Alpha and Beta Task users, please see a new Tasks - Enhancements & Bug Fixes section below

 

General TBS - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

97911 - CC/ACH Decline Notification & Payment Confirmation Emails

Existing Credit Card and ACH payment email notifications have been upgraded. Previously, the system only sent payment confirmations for successful ACH or CC payments once these were posted to the account.

With this release, TBS now supports three types of email notifications regarding payments:

  1. Successful Payment Confirmations - will be sent immediately, regardless of posting, to the payment confirmation email on the account for any successful real time Credit Card or ACH payment. This requires a new flag to be set on the Base record to send for one time and / or recurring payments.
  2. Declined Payment Notifications - will be sent immediately, regardless of posting, to the payment confirmation email on the account for any Declined real time Credit Card or ACH payment.
  3. Refunded Payment Confirmations - will be sent immediately, regardless of posting, to the payment confirmation email on the account for any successful real time refund of a Credit Card or ACH payment.

 

Verbiage for these emails will now be maintained in the Notifications-->Email Templates maintenance tool. Any existing payment confirmation email verbiage will automatically be migrated with the Excalibur release. If these didn't exist previously, a default message for each type will be added. These can be customized by Base by attaching the proper Email Template to the base record.

The template types are Credit Card Payment Confirmation, Credit Card Payment Failure, Credit Card Refund Confirmation, Bank Account Payment Confirmation, Bank Account Payment Failure, and Bank Account Refund Confirmation.

Please note: Sample refund confirmation and payment failure email templates have been added to the system but not tied to any Bases. Clients will need to add these or work with your Client Solutions Expert if you desire to use the new refund / payment failure notices.

101539 - Flex Reports: Increase Limitation on number of viewable records

The number of records in the grid for Flex Reports has been increased from 1,000 to 10,000. The Export All Records to CSV feature will now zip the CSV if it is over 500 Kb in size

101528 - Add Description Field to File Transfer Credentials Development

A description field has been added to File Transfer Credentials to allow for easier identification when hosts are duplicated or hard to discern.

104174 - Bug Fix: Viewing product level unbilled usage

The following CDR viewer bugs have been fixed:

  • Unbilled Viewer at the Product Level:
    • -- If the line is disconnected it shows all unbilled for all lines on the account
    • -- Download spreadsheet button throws an error regardless of size
  • Unbilled Viewer at Account Level
    • -- Summary table is not correct. It is only showing the amount for the 250 products being shown. This should be for the entire account.
    • -- Download spreadsheet throws an error regardless of size of results or after filtering.
  • Billed Viewer at Account Level
    • -- Download only gives you the 250 products, not the entire account.
    • -- Summary table is not correct. It is only showing the amount for the 250 products being shown.

 

Interface change: For accounts with over 250 ProductIDs in the filter, if all 250 productIDs are checked, all products (not just the 250 in the filter) are displayed in the grid.

Traditional Products - Enhancements & Bug fixes

99165 - Update Check Rates for Traditional Clients

The Traditional Product Check Rates process has been enhanced to allow for rate lookup using either LD RBOC or Local RBOC for a NPANXX. This is accomplished via a Client Managed NPANXXOverrides table.

The functional change has been made, however the administrative tools will be deployed in an upcoming release.

Tasks - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

 

Tasks: Migrate V11 coded TT Notifications

All Task email notifications can now be managed via Email Templates combined with Metric Actions. Please work with your Client Solutions Expert for more information on how to make changes to existing templates and triggers.

Tasks: Create Header for Customer Associated Tasks

For Tasks that are tied to Customers, a Customer Information bar will appear across the top showing main contact/status information. Additional Task information will be shown on the right side of the header as well. This allows for users to see more detailed information while inside a Task.Ticket or Task.Order.

Tasks: Add Products and Locations to Customer Tasks

Tasks can now be configured that if they are attached to Customers, they can also be tied to Customer Locations or Customer Products. There will be a separate Locations and Products tab showing the ties to these items.

Tasks: Show/hide/require Task fields

A new underlying configuration table now exists to allow fields within the Tasks module to be turned on / off as well as determine if it is required. The maintenance screen for this new tool will e available in an upcoming release.

Tasks: Quick Product Add on Task Screen

When adding a new Customer Task type that has Enable Product Association turned on, a which add dropdown box will be available on New Task entry (only). This provides a quick nd easy way to start typing a product ID, find it and select it to be associated with the Task. Once saved, these Products will appear on the Products tab of the Task. Additional products can then be added from this Products tab.

Tasks: Do not allow Workflow Actions until Task is saved

When a Task is in Edit mode, Workflow Actions cannot be accessed. This prevents users from losing data while in Edit mode.

Tasks.Menu - Expand Task types to Main Menu

The Main menu has been expanded to now include all Task Types setup in the system. Previously these were all grouped under a Tasks menu. This will happen dynamically.

Tasks: Workflow Action can drive Assignment and/or Notes

Using the Setup-->Tasks-->Status & Workflow Actions maintenance tool, clients can figure individual actions to require, not require or optionally require whether a person can be Assigned to a Task and also whether a Note can be added to a Task.

Tasks: Update Home Widgets to report on Tasks

Home screen widgets have been updated to show Assigned to Tasks.

Tasks: Add option to remove products after they are added to a Customer task

Products can now be removed from a Customer Task via the Products tab under a Task.

Tasks: Add CommitDateTime

A new field has been added called Commit Date Time. This is a date time textbox that can be used for reporting.

Tasks: Add AlternateID to the filter fields

Fields for external or alternate IDs has been added. These can be used to capture legacy conversion information or external IDs that have relevance to the Task.

Tasks: Add New Modem Fields to Aux Table and Origin Field to Tasks Table

There are now auxiliary product fields that can be added to a Task to capture information regarding Modem/Internet information. This can be configured to be turned on/off.

Tasks: Add Description, AssignedTo to the Inventory Grid

Description and Assigned To have been added to the Tasks Inventory Grid. The description will show approximately 500 characters before being cutoff.

Tasks: Allow user assignment when adding new

User Assignment is now available on the Tasks Add New process

Tasks: User Assignment Sorting by last assigned item

The Assignment dropdown is sorted based on the last user that was assigned an item descending. This allows better resource handling and assignments.

 

Release Database Changes

Database Changes

These are the differences that will be made to your existing database when upgrading to version 33.00.

TBS Database

 

The following fields will be dropped:

  • FileMonitorLogs.TimesUnacknowledged
  • ProductsView.CarrierNames

 

The following fields will be altered:

  • -- FileMonitorPaths.JobName DataType (nvarchar -> int), CharacterMaximumLength (50 -> ), NumericPrecision ( -> 10), NumericScale ( -> 0)
  • -- FileMonitorPaths.FolderPath IsNullable (False -> True)
  • -- tmpTransactions.BillHistoryVersion IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- Transactions.BillHistoryVersion IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- TransactionsView.BillHistoryVersion IsNullable (True -> False)

 

The following tables will be added:

  • CustomersToBillingDefinition
  • DataIssues
  • DataIssuesView
  • FileMonitorLogsView
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides

 

The following fields will be added:

  • AgentsView.AgentDisplayID
  • CommissionsPlanSelectors.TierType
  • CustomerInformation.lkCommissionsKey
  • CustomersToBillingDefinition.CustomersKey
  • CustomersToBillingDefinition.BillingDefinitionKey
  • DataIssues.DataIssuesKey
  • DataIssues.IssueArea
  • DataIssues.IssueLevel
  • DataIssues.Message
  • DataIssues.CustomersKey
  • DataIssues.ProductsKey
  • DataIssues.DetailsKey
  • DataIssues.LocationsKey
  • DataIssuesView.DataIssuesKey
  • DataIssuesView.IssueArea
  • DataIssuesView.IssueLevel
  • DataIssuesView.Message
  • DataIssuesView.CustomersKey
  • DataIssuesView.ProductsKey
  • DataIssuesView.DetailsKey
  • DataIssuesView.LocationsKey
  • DataIssuesView.IssueAreaDescription
  • DataIssuesView.IssueLevelDescription
  • DataIssuesView.CustomerAccountNumber
  • DataIssuesView.ProductID
  • DataIssuesView.DetailID
  • DataIssuesView.LocationDescription
  • EmailQueue.Status
  • FileMonitorDetails.Note
  • FileMonitorLogsView.FileMonitorLogsKey
  • FileMonitorLogsView.JobName
  • FileMonitorLogsView.FolderPath
  • FileMonitorLogsView.RelativeFolder
  • FileMonitorLogsView.ErrorLevel
  • FileMonitorLogsView.ErrorLevelDescription
  • FileMonitorLogsView.ErrorCode
  • FileMonitorLogsView.Message
  • FileMonitorLogsView.Acknowledged
  • FileMonitorLogsView.JobNameDescription
  • FileTransferCredentials.Description
  • FileTransferCredentialsView.Description
  • FileTransferGroupJobsView.CredentialDescription
  • FileTransferJobsView.CredentialDescription
  • lkBaseInfo.LateNoticeMinimumBalance
  • lkBaseInfo.Invoice_MinimumBillingAmount
  • lkBaseInfo.SendRecurringPaymentConfirmationEmail
  • lkBaseInfo.SendNonRecurringPaymentConfirmationEmail
  • lkNPANXXOverrides.lkNPANXXOverridesKey
  • LkStatusGroupItemActions.UserMustAssignUsers
  • LkStatusGroupItemActionsView.UserMustAssignUsers
  • Notes.ParentNotesKey
  • Notes.Source
  • ProductsView.ActiveCarrierNames
  • ProductsView.InactiveCarrierNames
  • T4CompanyMaster.PostMarkUserId
  • T4CompanyMaster.PostMarkPassword
  • T4CompanyMaster.SMTPSendSynchronously
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.T4ValidationPermOverridesKey
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.TableName
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.FieldName
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.Editable
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.Visible
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.Required
  • T4ValidationPermOverrides.TaskTypesKey
  • Tasks.CommitDate
  • Tasks.Origin
  • TasksAux_Troubles.EthernetLight
  • TasksAux_Troubles.LineLight
  • TasksAux_Troubles.PowerLight
  • TasksAux_Troubles.ModemReset
  • TasksView.AssociatedTable
  • TasksView.CommitDate
  • TasksView.BriefDescription
  • TasksView.agentDisplayID
  • TasksView.CustomerAccountNumber
  • TasksView.AssignedUsers
  • TasksView.Origin
  • TasksView.ClosedDate