.NET Framework
Clients not hosted by Equus are required to be running .NET Framework Version 4.6 or above on the web server hosting AssignmentPro prior to upgrading to this version (Version 17.3.) This upgrade has already been applied for hosted clients and no further action is necessary.
Assignment Packages
A few corrections have been made to Assignment Packages.
Previously, when reviewing a package requested through an authorization that included custom prompts, rather than seeing the display value the requester selected for the custom prompt, the user would see the phrase “[object Object]”. This has been corrected.
Previously, Cost Estimates and Compensation Calculations created through Assignment Packages would pull the base salary amount from the Assignment Compensation screen without first checking to see if the currency of the salary on the Assignment Compensation screen matched the Data-Entry Currency of the Cost Estimate / Compensation Calculation. This has been corrected. If the currencies don’t match, the salary will not be pulled and will remain blank.
Assessment, Orientation, and Training
The Assessment, Orientation, and Training Permission Set has been updated to push only one employee mailing address, e-mail, and phone number to vendors via Vendor Integration. Vendors can continue to query for additional contact information by making JSON calls against the appropriate permission set.
Compensation Accumulator
The Compensation Accumulator has been enhanced to support the ability to import line items by wage code. This enhancement will assist in allowing non-primary payrolls to be imported and then reported into a primary payroll account.
A new company level import called ‘Comp Accumulator Import by Wage Code (by Pay Source)’ has been added to support line items that can be imported into the compensation accumulator. This import allows for line items from payroll systems to be imported by wage code. Wage codes imported will then be translated into account codes based on whether the payroll system that is being imported is the host or home country payroll system for each assignment/relocation.
For company payroll systems, an additional column titled ‘Wage Code When Shadow Primary’ has been added when configuring payrolls for a company. This will show on wage codes tab and allow for wage codes to be added for shadow payroll reporting from a non-primary payroll to a primary payroll system. The column titled ‘Wage Code When Shadow’ has been renamed to ‘Wage Code When Shadow Secondary’ and will function with the existing behavior of using wage codes entered when shadow reporting to a secondary (non-primary) payroll.
The ‘Wage Code and Pay Register Import’ has now been updated and enhanced to support wage codes being imported by company into the Wage Code When Shadow Primary and Secondary columns.
Compensation Calculations
Previously, a condition existed where running a Compensation Calculation batch could cause more than one Compensation Calculation to be marked as primary for the same assignment. This has been corrected so that if a Compensation Calculation batch has been marked to set the newly-created record as primary, and the basis Compensation Calculation is no longer marked as Primary, the batch process will still create the Compensation Calculation, but not mark it as Primary while providing the user error information as to why.
Compensation Worksheets
Additional exchange rate options have been added to company- and assignment- level templates in order to be able to calculate Compensation Worksheets from previously calculated Compensation Calculations. <Compensation Calculation – Primary> and <Compensation Calculation – By Effective Date> have now been added as dropdown list options, and if selected, will use the same exchange rate in the Compensation Worksheet as was used in the Compensation Calculation for the assignment.
Cost Estimates
This release contains two changes to Cost Estimates:
Previously, a condition existed where running a Cost Estimate batch would cause more than one Cost Estimate to be marked as primary for the same assignment. This has been corrected so that if a Cost Estimate batch has been marked to set the newly-created record as primary, and the basis Cost Estimate is no longer marked as primary, the batch process will still create the Cost Estimate, but not mark it as primary, while providing the user error information as to why.
Previously, the Assignment: Project and Employee: System Number fields were not available to be used in the header for the Cost Estimate (Years 1-6) production report. These fields have been added to the list of available fields, and can now be included in the header of the Cost Estimate (Years 1-6) production report.
Document Types
Document Types configured to show on specific screens in AssignmentPro were not available for selection in the document uploader that launched from a Note/Communication on those screens. This has been corrected so that if a Note/Communication document uploader is launched from a screen that has a Document Type configured, the type appears in the dropdown list.
Internet Browser Support
Internet Explorer versions 9 and 10 are no longer supported. Internet Explorer 11, as well as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari continue to be supported.
Most Recently Used (MRU)
The Most Recently Used dropdown was enhanced to show the user a visual indicator when the Most Recently Used list is loading.
Move Management
This release continues to expand Move Management service capabilities in the area of vendor integration.
Added a “Container Size” field on both the Move Management Service Request and Details screens to reduce the need to communicate this information verbally or via e-mail. By identifying a Container Size on the Service Request, mobility users can communicate to their moving vendors what size of container is authorized for the move. Vendors also have the opportunity to provide this information back to the client as part of the Details record (either via vendor integration or the vendor portal), which facilitates capturing what really happened during the move.
After the 17.2 upgrade, custom fields on the Move Management Details screen only showed when the HHG check box was selected. Now, these fields show regardless if that check box is selected.
Provided support to hide the Move Management Service Request Summary section on the Move Management Summary screen, to allow clients who don’t order services from the Move Management Summary screen to make it fully disappear. This can be done by removing the “View” Screen Section Right in Security Role Maintenance for “Move Management - Service Request Summary Grid”.
The Move Management permission set has been updated to push only one employee mailing address, e-mail, and phone number to vendors via Vendor Integration. Vendors can continue to query for additional contact information by making JSON calls against the appropriate permission set.
When attempting to delete an Insurance Claim that has a Document associated with it, the user would receive the error “This record cannot be deleted because it is referenced by another record” and the user would have to delete the Document before deleting the Insurance Claim. Now, the Insurance Claim can be deleted without having to delete the document first; the document and the claim will be deleted simultaneously.
The Equus-delivered document types for Move Management can now be inactivated and have their Screen Availability updated on the Document Types configuration screen. This applies to the standard document types released in 17.2 except for Moving Insurance Claim. This provides administrators more governance over which document types display on which screens.
Added a new view entitled "Move Management User Report (view)" that allows user reports to access all data associated with a Move Management entry's Household Goods Vehicles (up to 5), Non-Household Goods Vehicles (up to 5), and Pet shipments (up to 5).
Quick Workflow
Sometimes, if a Quick Workflow was configured to send an email when a date passed condition had been met, it would flood the Quick Workflow tables and send emails over and over. Upon flooding, the Quick Workflow processes would have to be shut down and the transaction logs cleared. This has been corrected so that a check is performed making sure that previously-sent emails won’t be sent again, reducing the possibility of flooding.
Report Scheduler
Occasionally if two or more scheduled reports were configured to run at the same time, they would fail to run and not be delivered to recipients. This also sometimes caused errors to appear elsewhere in the system, around Merge Documents. This has been corrected.
Security Updates
As a standard process, Equus fixes vulnerabilities found through testing and analysis. For this release, a few enhancements have been made to address findings.
Service Orders
Previously, when Service Orders were set-up to allow for the entry of an estimate amount, the user was only able to choose from a pre-defined list of up to three currency types. This has been updated to allow for estimate amounts to be entered in any currency the system supports.
Tax
The suite of new Tax screens that was released in 17.2 now fully replace the Home and Host Country Tax Screens.
This new set of screens better support the workflow and data entry of mobility teams, as well as provide a full view of the data as the services are being performed. Being able to have access to the right information at the right time helps users be more efficient in their work and provide accurate information to their assignees. Also, additional countries are supported, to allow the full tax picture of an assignee to be captured in AssignmentPro.
For additional details, please see the Tax Service User Manual.
The Tax Service Request screen allows users who work directly with a tax vendor to capture only the data that is needed to request services from a vendor. This screen captures fields previously on the Home and Host Country Tax screens and now supports tracking other countries in addition to the home and host countries.
A Service Order can be sent from this screen; Service Types that were mapped to the Home and Host Country Tax screens have been associated with the Service Request
Provided support to hide the Tax Service Request Summary section to allow clients who don’t order services from the Tax Summary screen to make it fully disappear. This can be done by removing the “View” Screen Section Right in Security Role Maintenance for “Tax - Service Request Summary Grid”.
The Tax Details screen captures the details about the service. A Service Order can be associated with this screen to allow it to be linked back to a Service Request.
Includes support for several standard document types. These will allow clients and vendors to use a standard type to identify their tax documentation, which is useful for locating documents as well as sharing documents with their stakeholders.
Provided support to hide the Federal Tax Information and State/Provincial Tax Information sections, to allow clients who don’t use these sections to make them fully disappear. This can be done by removing the “View” Screen Section Right in Security Role Maintenance for “Tax Details - Federal and State/Provincial Tax Information”.
The Tax Briefing Details screen captures Briefing information. Included is the ability to capture an unlimited number of briefings, as well as track comments and documents related to briefings.
The Tax Return Details screen captures Tax Return information, including the ability to track a status of the return as well as important milestone dates associated with the return. As part of this work:
Expanded the Refund Payment History section on the former Home and Host Tax Return screens to Payment History and added the following fields to the grid: “Due From”, “Due To”, “Paid Y/N”, and “Comment”. Also, renamed the “Date Received” field to “Paid Date”.
Renamed the “Refund Amount” field to “Amount”, and the “Refund Belongs To” field to “Amount Belongs To”. Also, the choice list used for “Amount Belongs To” now uses the same choice list as the “Due From” and “Due To” fields.
These changes allow users to track not just employees’ payments of refunds back to the Company, but also track other payments, such as employee to Tax Authorities. It also enables clients to track payments that are split between stakeholders.
The Tax Return Eligibility screen allows users to manage assignees’ eligibility for tax returns in a single screen. Now, users do not have to switch between two screens to make changes to eligibility.
On the Tax Return Details and Tax Equalization Annual Hypothetical True-Up screens:
Added “Other” to the Return Type choice list, and added a field to capture a description for Other. For example, “Other” can be used to capture non-standard returns such as FBAR, Wealth, or Part XIII (Canada).
As part of this work, relabeled the following choice list values: “Federal” is now “National/Federal”; “State/Provincial” is now “State/Province”; “Combined Federal and State” is now “Combined National/Federal and State/Province”.
On the Social Insurance screen:
Replaced the “Add Service Order” button with a choice list of Service Orders to allow the Social Insurance record to be associated with a Service Order, regardless from where the Service Order was initiated (i.e. the Tax Service Request screen, generic Service Order screen). This also allows one Service Order to address multiple tax services. This eliminates the need to capture redundant authorization information, as well as allows sending only authorization and request initiation information to the Social Insurance vendor.
As a result of this change, a Tax Service Request was created for and associated with each Social Insurance Service Order.
Included “Partial” as an option (in addition to the Yes and No options) to the following two fields:
“Home Country Contributions During Assignment”. This allows for scenarios where the employee is provided some contributions, but not all.
“Treaty Exempts Assignee from Host Country Payments”. This allows for scenarios where the certificate of coverage doesn’t exempt the employee from all payments.
On the Tax Equalization screens:
On the Tax Equalization Annual Hypothetical True-Up screen, added a text field for “Local Authority”, which captures a description for “Local” when it is selected in the Return Type choice list.
Replaced the “Add Service Order” button with a choice list of Service Orders to allow the Tax Equalization Annual Hypothetical True-Up and Tax Equalization Final Grossup screens records to be associated with a Service Order, regardless from where the Service Order was initiated (i.e. the Tax Service Request screen, generic Service Order screen). This also allows one Service Order to address multiple tax services. This eliminates the need to capture redundant authorization information, as well as allows sending only authorization and request initiation information to the Tax Equalization vendor.
As a result of this change, a Tax Service Request was created for and associated with each Tax Equalization Service Order.
Provided support for displaying Tax Years in fiscal year format, which allows clients improved tracking and reporting of tax information. This change included the following:
Added USES_FISCAL_TAX_YEAR field to the COUNTRY table to identify whether a country relies on a fiscal tax year, and shipped with the correct values for each country.
Added the Tax Years (Fiscal) choice list in Lookup Maintenance to track the base list of Fiscal Years for use in the screens.
The following Tax Year fields on the following screens now rely on this value based on the selected country:
Tax Return Details
Tax Return Eligibility
Tax Equalization Annual Hypothetical True-Up
Tax Equalization Final Grossup
Provided support for using the following tables in Quick Workflows and Checklists: Tax Equalization Final Grossup, Tax Equalization Final Grossup Note, Tax Equalization Refund Payment, and Tax Equalization Detail Note. This allows for functionality that is consistent with the rest of the Tax screens.
Added a new view entitled "Tax Equalization Refund Payment (view)" that allows user reports to access all data associated with an Annual Hypothetical True-Up entry's Refund Payment History table (up to 10 payments).
Added a new view entitled "Tax Detail Briefing and Return (view)" that allows user reports to access all data associated with a Tax Detail entry's Briefings (up to 5) and Tax Returns (up to 5).
The Tax Permission Set includes the following updates:
It includes all new fields introduced into the tax screens.
It pushes only one employee mailing address, e-mail, and phone contact to vendors via Vendor Integration. Vendors can continue to query for additional contact information by making JSON calls against the appropriate permission set.
Several fields that were missing from the following tables were added: Tax Equalization Final Grossup, Tax Equalization Final Grossup Note, Tax Equalization Refund Payment, and Tax Equalization Detail Note. This allows vendors to exchange data from the complete set of Tax Equalization tables.
The following tables were removed: DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_NOTE_ COMMUNICATION, NOTE_COMMUNICATION, and NOTE_COMM_SERVICE_ ORDER. These already exist in the Generic permission set, and removing them makes it simpler for vendors to utilize the Tax permission set.
Important Note for Self-Hosted Clients: This release includes changes to the following tables:
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_ELIGIBILITY
|
DOCUMENT_HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION_CF
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_ELIGIBILITY
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION_CF
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_NOTE
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN
|
DOCUMENT_HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_NOTE
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_NOTE
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_PAYMENT_HISTORY
|
DOCUMENT_HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_NOTE
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_CF
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_PAYMENT_HISTORY
|
TAX_EQUALIZATION_DETAIL
|
HOME_COUNTRY_TAX_RETURN_CF
|
TAX_EQUALIZATION_FINAL_GROSSUP
|
HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION
|
TAX_ELIGIBILITY_YEAR (introduced in 17.2)
|
DOCUMENT_HOST_COUNTRY_TAX_ADMINISTRATION
|
TAX_RETURN_DETAIL (introduced in 17.2)
|
Custom logic that references these tables might break or cause the update to fail. A script has been provided prior to the release which will find and list any such references. Run this script and address any references found prior to applying this update.
Temporary Living
This release expands the Temporary Living service capabilities to support integration with vendors who don’t use AssignmentPro.
A Service Order can now be sent from the Needs Assessment screen, which allows mobility users to send only authorization and request initiation information to the Temporary Living vendor. As part of this:
Support has been provided for associating a Service Order with one or many Temporary Living Detail records on the Temporary Living Details screen, eliminating the need to capture redundant authorization information.
The “Associated Needs Assessment” field was removed from the Temporary Living Details screen and updated to calculate its value based on the associated Service Order that is selected on the Temporary Living Details This addresses backward compatibility for vendor integration with clients who don’t upgrade at the same time that AssignmentPro is released.
Important note: If a Temporary Living Details record had an “Associated Needs Assessment” selected, but did not have a Service Order, the “Associated Needs Assessment” value will be updated to be blank after the 17.3 upgrade. In 17.4, the “Associated Needs Assessment” field will be deleted.
The Temporary Living permission set has been updated to push only Temporary Living Needs Assessment records to vendors via Vendor Integration. Additionally it now pushes only one employee mailing address, e-mail, and phone contact to vendors via Vendor Integration. Vendors can continue to query for additional contact information by making JSON calls against the appropriate permission set.
Provided support to hide the Temporary Living Needs Assessment Summary section on the Temporary Living Summary screen, to allow clients who don’t order services from the Temporary Living Summary screen to make it fully disappear. This can be done by removing the “View” Screen Section Right in Security Role Maintenance for “Temporary Living - Needs Assessment Summary Grid”.
Vendor Integration
This release contains small adjustments to permission sets to make it easier for vendors to implement Vendor Integration.
The Generic Services permission set has been updated to push only one employee mailing address, e-mail, and phone contact to vendors via Vendor Integration. Vendors can continue to query for additional contact information by making JSON calls against the appropriate permission set.
Updated Vendor Integration to ignore extra white spaces in WHERE clauses. This will reduce the number of errors vendors experience, since now it will allow Vendors to include extra spaces when querying AssignmentPro tables.
Visa & Work Permits
This release expands the Visa & Work Permits (a.k.a. Immigration) service capabilities to support integration with vendors who don’t use AssignmentPro.
A Service Order can now be sent from a new Visa & Work Permits Service Request screen, which allows mobility users to send only authorization and request initiation information to the Immigration vendor.
As part of this, support has been provided for associating a Service Order with one or many Visa & Work Permit records on the Visa & Work Permits Details screen, eliminating the need to enter information that may not be known before sending the Service Order to the vendor.
Increased the length of the Document Status field to 100 characters, to improve the storage of vendor milestones/statuses. This allows AssignmentPro to more accurately reflect the status of the document(s) being processed by immigration vendors.
Added the following standard Document Types to the Visa & Work Permit Details screen: Work Authorization and Immigration Authorization. These can be used to ensure these types of documents are identified correctly in AssignmentPro.
Provided the ability to delete a Visa & Work Permits Details record when one or more documents have been uploaded to the record. This allows users to delete the record without having to delete each document individually.
Provided support to hide the Visa & Work Permits Service Request Summary section on the Visa & Work Permits Summary screen, to allow clients who don’t order services from the Visa & Work Summary screen to make it fully disappear. This can be done by removing the “View” Screen Section Right in Security Role Maintenance for “Visas and Work Permits - Service Request Summary Grid”.
User Reports
This release contains several improvements to User Reports:
Two new functions were added that can be used in User Reports. These functions are:
EQ_STD_USER_FIRST_LAST_GET() and
EQ_STD_USER_EMAIL_GET_BY_LOGIN().
The functions can accept any field that has a user_id contained in it. For example: dbo.EQ_STD_USER_FIRST_LAST_GET([Assignment: Create By])
The Tax Calc Payroll Details (View) has been modified to now also include manual tax assistance and withholding adjustments.
Previously, when a User Report Filter's Comparison Value referenced a field that was not part of a data source in its associated User Report Type, AssignmentPro marked that field as "auto-delete" and the filter row was hidden on the screen. When users saved the User Report, the filter row was deleted. Now, the un-referenced Comparison Value will simply be annotated with a red exclamation mark. This gives users more control over how to correct errors on their User Reports, and allows for a consistent experience when working with User Reports.
An addition to the existing view “Assignment Dependents (view)” was made and the view now includes the Dependent ID for each of the Child1-Child10 entries.