New Features

Platforms

• This release unifies the work done in our previous, targeted 2.4.x releases to support

  • the Nextworld ERP platform

  • Epicor Cloud platforms

  with our traditional Epicor and SAP Business One on-premise platforms.

  Customers using these products can report over them in real-time seeing up to the second data, without the need for a VPN or the use of costly replication databases.

User Experience

• FastClose now includes context sensitive help. The user can get guidance wherever they are in the product by pressing the F1 key. This opens the relevant help page in a browser, with translation if English is not the user's native language.

• The Designer and Reader applications have received a 'makeover' to the User Interface, bringing them more in to line with recent versions of Microsoft Office.

• As part of the makeover, to reduce visual clutter, filter buttons are only displayed when the mouse moves over the filter.

• The Formatting and Display ribbon tabs have been combined into a single tab.

New and Improved Features

On the Designer Main Screen

• The user may select a range of cells in the results grid

  • When doing so, the sum and count of the numbers selected is displayed in the status bar. If you select just two number cells, the difference is also displayed.

  • The content of the range can be copied to the clipboard using the Ctrl-C keyboard shortcut, for pasting into Excel or elsewhere.

  • Date filters now have their own specialized selection dialog which lets the user easily choose a fixed date, a date range, or today's date

Excel

• The Excel Add-In now includes a new "Linked Filters" feature which synchronizes filters across multiple worksheets in a workbook. This allows the user to change the Fiscal Period selection in one worksheet, for example, and all the linked worksheets will update as well.

• Progress is reported while loading reports after a workbook has been opened.

• The Diagnostics dialog has been renamed Workbook Options, and now lets the user:

  • include or exclude individual worksheets from the 'Run All Reports' command

  • break the link between FastClose and individual worksheets, or the whole workbook, which is useful if they never need to be refreshed again.

• For customers using Windows Authentication, opening a workbook would always automatically connect to FastClose so you would have to wait until all reports were loaded before you could interact with the workbook, which can take a long time. Now there is an option, saved within the workbook, to prevent the automatic log in to FastClose when you open that workbook.

Dialogs

• The calculation dialog has received a makeover to:

  • make the purpose of the dimension & member selection pane clearer

  • only offer dimensions currently in the rows and columns of the report as items to work with

  • allow calculation order to be controlled by specifying which calculations must be evaluated before or after the one you are editing.

• The Row Subtotal and Column Subtotal features have been separated in the ribbon, making it possible to use column subtotals at the same time as a hierarchy is displayed in the rows.

• Formatting:

  • Much improved colour pickers throughout the product.

  • It is now possible to copy and paste column formats.

Other

• When defining a drill through to a report, you can now pass the selections in a dimension even if that dimension doesn't have a filter present for it in the target report.

• Exporting report results or statistics to Excel no longer requires a filename to be specified in advance.

• When you configure a scheduled workflow to publish a report to an endpoint, the Edit Workflow page now tells you what the URL of the output will be.

• The 'not equal to' state for filters is now displayed using the official symbol instead of the more esoteric '!='.

• The Edit User page in the admin web app explains that licenses are assigned automatically to new users when they login.

Platforms

Epicor

• Margins Cube: Now takes Labour Costs into account as well as materials

• Purchase Order Processing:

  • Container shipping cubes added. These display goods being imported by sea, estimated arrival times etc...

  • Brand new Purchase Order Release cube and template to relate released goods, to those receipted and tie up with invoicing.

  • Invoice header information (inc: Invoiced!) now available

• Sales Order Processing:

  • The Quotes cube now includes a reason dimension describing whether the quote was taken forward and if not, the reason.

  • Invoice header information (inc: Invoiced!) now available

• AP Invoice Detail Cube extended to show when invoiced goods were receipted.

• Manufacturing:

  • Bill Of Material revisited. Accurately displays aggregated material costs for an assembly taking into account scrap etc...

  • Bill of Material also now supported for Epicor Cloud

  • Job Assemblies Cube: Provides many more measures than previously

  • Last Part Vendor dimension added to many cubes (also in Inventory) - displays the most recent supplier of a particular part

• National Account better supported

• Improved Customer hierarchy importer for Epicor

• Project Phase Cube updated to use measures as named in Kinetic by default

SAP

• Both AR and AP Statements and Aging were largely rewritten during the lifetime of 2.3.x and now accurately reconcile to the statements produced by SAP B1 even capturing the impact of exchange rate fluctuations. Now in this release, they can also be run "As Of" a particular date in the past.

• Journals can now be linked to Deliveries, Returns, Quotations and Goods Receipted

• Sales Quotations cubes added

• Delivery cubes added

• "User" dimension added across the GL modules

• Tax extension added to many cubes.

• Customer and Supplier Groups added including for parent companies

• Added link to the GL Account dimension to many "detail" cubes - making it possible to see how a subledger impacts the GL

• Add Employee "owner" to many cubes

• Added Territory dimension wherever the Customer dimension is used

Nextworld

• List lookup columns such as Transaction Type are now properly supported, so all defined values are now recognized in the filter and displayed in the member selection dialog, along with their captions. The member selection dialog no longer queries the fact table to list all the values used, which often resulted in the 'inefficient query was cancelled' error message.