Key Features
Other Features
Key Features
Release 17.5 includes several enhancements that enable greater customization, flexibility, and increase performance of the Mobile Employee Experience and AssignmentPro for mobile employees, mobility professionals, and vendors.
Support for Mobile Employees and Mobility Professionals
Additional assignment detail fields for Employee Details, Children and Other Dependent Details, and Spouse/Domestic Partner Details were added to the Mobile Employee Experience, enabling mobile employees to store more pertinent move information. Mobility professionals now have the data they need to provide more complete information in reports for visa and work permit applications. Additionally, customization to assignment detail fields allow mobility professionals to view only assignment records they are coordinating.
Significant performance improvements were made on the load time of the Mobile Employee Experience, so the Mobile Employee Experience can better support mobile employees with slow internet connectivity.
Vendor Integration
The Equus Ecosystem is a powerful platform that connects service providers, partners and key stakeholders to provide clients one set of data, one set of documents, and one place to manage their entire global mobility program. Clients looking to integrate directly with the Equus Ecosystem will gain end-to-end visibility, streamlined processes and an improved employee experience by connecting directly with their extended global mobility value chain.
Several enhancements were made to vendor integration to give clients more control over the data they share with their vendors, as well as when that data is sent.
AssignmentPro now detects which vendors are integrated with AssignmentPro and sends data to the vendor, regardless of the Type of Note/ Communication that was selected, eliminating the need for users to select vendors and send data manually.
Other Features
Authorizations
Previously, Assignments inactivated when an Authorization was cancelled would not decrement a peak usage license count. This has been corrected. Note this functionality only applies when the “Inactivate Assignment when authorization is cancelled (ASCXONAUCX)” system preference is set to true.
Companies
Increased the Company Segment Level Caption text field length to 255 characters to allow for Segment Level names that exceed 50 characters. Now, users do not have to get creative about truncating their organizations’ division names in AssignmentPro.
Compensation Accumulation
The “Comp Accum Import by Wage Code (by Pay Source)” import now supports Payment Date and Description fields for each imported record. If present, the Payment Date is used to lookup the exchange rate.
Compensation Calculations
Occasionally, Compensation Calculations within a Compensation Calculation Batch would fail with an “Execution Timeout Expired” error message. This was due to the copy process taking longer than allowed. To address this, a configuration setting was added to Grow Services to allow administrators to extend the timeout period.
Compensation Worksheets
The following improvements were made:
Corrected sluggish performance on the Compensation Control Panel when using Internet Explorer 11 and having a very large number of records displayed.
The Comp Worksheet and Comp Worksheet Recalculation batches have been enhanced to automatically resume their work if services are interrupted. For example, if a large batch is running and the server is restarted for any reason, the batch will now pick up where it left off and continue doing its work. In the past, it would have given up and gone into failed status.
Cost Estimates
A few enhancements were made to Cost Estimates:
Occasionally, Cost Estimates within a Cost Estimate Batch would fail with an “Execution Timeout Expired” error message. This was due to the copy Cost Estimate process taking longer than allowed. To address this, a configuration setting was added to Grow Services to allow administrators to extend the timeout period.
Previously, manually setting the value for a First Year Only line item would cause a subsequent First Year Only calculated line item to generate an error if it was getting the amount from the prior line item cascaded into it. This has been corrected.
Previously, calculations of cascading line items were not calculating first and last-year only line items because the inputs could not be found. This has been fixed.
Fixed an issue where assumptions were not displaying correctly for the “Standard Cost Estimate Gross To Net” report. Assumptions now correctly show per line item, below total costs or can be hidden.
Enhanced Tax Estimator Calculation Details (View) to include additional Employer Hypo Tax fields. These include Home Hypo Social Tax – Employer, Home Hypo Payroll Tax, Home Hypo Fringe Benefits Tax, Host Hypo Social Tax – Employer, Host Hypo Payroll Tax and Host Hypo Fringe Benefits Tax.
The Estimate vs Actuals and Estimate vs Actuals (Pay Register/Comp Accum) production reports have been enhanced to support our custom header functionality. Please contact you Client Solutions Manager to have a custom header added to your Estimate vs Actuals and/or Estimate vs Actuals (Pay Register/Comp Accum) reports.
Updated the Cost Estimate Calculation Detail report to support the inclusion of the Home and/or Host Country Hypo Compensation Details Report section for the United Kingdom based on the value selected in the Tax Calculation Method field. Now, this report section only displays when it is applicable.
Employee Details
The Expiration Date on the Employee Details screen was not always saving in the correct cultural format. This has been resolved.
Expenses
Previously the cost amount for a voucher expense was calculated only at the time of the first expense amount entry. This has been corrected to now continually update the cost amount to match any modified expense amount.
Import Data
The following improvements were made to Imports:
Previously, imports were intermittently transforming date formats into an incorrect format. This has been corrected.
Fixed an issue where high use of imports would lead to an inevitable high import ID which would cause an unrecoverable out of bounds error due to a Windows event log limitation.
Merge Documents
Fixed an issue in the sub-totaling feature within excel merge documents that could sometimes cause a duplicate sub-total row to appear. For example, an excel merge document was being used to generate a compensation worksheet report that had separate sections for paid in home amounts and paid in host amounts. In the case where there was nothing paid in host, the paid in host section hid itself as expected, but a duplicate paid in home subtotal caption appeared. This has been resolved.
Mobile Employee Experience
The following improvements were made to the Mobile Employee Experience:
Provided ability to capture the following information in to the Employee Profile, Dependent, and Spouse Passport screens: Issue Date, First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name. These fields can be used to provide more complete information in reports that serve as visa and work permit application forms.
Improved performance when logging into the Mobile Employee Experience.
Improved performance when loading All Documents in Internet Explorer 11.
Previously, background images would move around as users navigated throughout the application, causing distracting animation. This has been resolved.
Previously, the Country Flag would overlap the Country Name text on the Learn About card at certain narrow resolutions. This is fixed.
Passport Details
Added the ability to capture the following passport information on the Employee, Children and Other Dependent, and Spouse/Domestic Partner Passport screens: Issue Date, First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name. Also updated vwEQ_PASSPORT_VISA_INFORMATION_ALL with the same set of fields. These fields can be used to provide more complete information in reports that serve as visa and work permit application forms.
User Reports
This release contains two improvements to User Reports:
General performance improvements were made to opening, saving, and running user reports.
A new function has been added that allows for the Currency Name to reported, rather than the three character Currency Code. For example “Japanese Yen” can appear, rather than “JPY”.
Function Name: dbo.EQ_STD_CURRENCY_NAME_FROM_CODE
This function can convert any field that has the three character currency code into the currency name. For example, an assignment from Japan would have “JPY” in the Assignment: From Currency field, but dbo.EQ_STD_CURRENCY_NAME_FROM_CODE([Assignment: From Currency]) used in a Custom SQL Field will return “Japanese Yen”.
User Security
The ability to restrict users to see only the assignments they are supposed to see has been enhanced. On the User Maintenance screen, when the Restrict Coordinators to Own Assignments check box is selected for External Client or Internal users, those users can only view employee, authorization, and assignment records for which they are a coordinator. They are considered to be a coordinator if they are assigned as the HR Contact, Authorization Coordinator, Relocation Coordinator, Accounting Coordinator, or Assignment Additional Resource 1-10.
Vendor Integration
Several enhancements were made to vendor integration to give clients more control over the data they share with their vendors, as well as when that data is sent.
Provided ability to create rules and data sets that govern when and what information is sent to vendors. These rules can be based on Service Type, Vendor, and Company, and can be linked to custom data sets, which can include custom fields. This allows clients to set up vendor integration to mirror their business processes with their vendors, which results in improved vendor performance.
As part of improving the functionality of sending vendors data, the Service Order Note/Communication now detects whether a vendor is one that is integrated with AssignmentPro and automatically sends the data to the vendor, regardless of the Type of Note/ Communication that was selected. As a result, end-users don’t have to think about the correct way to send the Note/Communication; now AssignmentPro does it for them!
To improve the usability of the vendor integration options, the existing AssignmentPro to AssignmentPro screens have been combined into a single screen. This may be found under the Configuration tab, Integration menu group, APro to APro menu item.
Added support for vendors providing a status for the work they perform in response to service orders, which allows clients to have insight into the progress of the vendor’s work in AssignmentPro. History is also tracked for changes to that status, which allows clients to understand historical performance of vendors. This new Vendor Status field was added to the Service Order screen as a read-only field. There is a new Show Vendor Status field on the Service Order Settings page to turn it on.
In the Vendor Integration Immigration Provider push scripts and permission sets, added the Issue Date, First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name fields to tables EMPLOYEE_PASSPORT, SPOUSE_DOMESTIC_PARTNER_PASSPORT, and ASSIGNMENT_DEPENDENT_PASSPORT. With this more complete information about employees and their dependents, Vendors will be able to provide services more efficiently.
Changed the User ID field on the APro to APro Integration Connection Details screen to accept a hand-entered username. This allows users to quickly enter the username instead of scrolling through hundreds of user records.
What-If Cost Estimates
What-If Cost Estimates have been enhanced.
What-If Cost Estimates that have been configured to not have an End Date now properly display a blank End Date value on the final report.
The “Net Incremental Costs” section of the What-If Cost Estimate report now subtotals if Show Summary Only? is set to “Yes”. Previously, line item details were displayed. Users now have control over the level of detail that displays for the Net Incremental Costs section.
Widgets/Dashboards
Quick link widget created – User report types
Provides a name of the user report and the user report type
Provides a link and opens the user report type in a new tab
Will ship on a dashboard that is set as the default layout for both the ‘System User Report’ screen and ‘Company User Report’
Quick link widget created – Spreadsheet calculation report links
Provides the User Report Id, User Report Name
Provides links to View/Edit the report, run the report in excel and run the report in HTML
Displays a message if no reports are used for the calculation
Will ship on a dashboard that is set as the default layout for the ‘Company Calculations’ screen
Quick link widget created – Dashboard layout widget and report links
Provides the list of Widgets on the dashboard along with the corresponding user reports
Provides links to View/Edit the Header, Data and Footer reports
Will ship on a dashboard that is set as the default layout for the ‘Dashboard Layouts’ screen