ConSol Release Notes
DevOps Changes:
DevOps improvements to underlying ConSol processes will necessitate all users to reset their passwords as part of this release.
ALL users will need to define a new password that meets the following requirements:
- Password must have at least 8 characters
- Password must contain both upper and lower case letters
- Password must contain at least 1 digit
- Password must contain at least 1 special character
To create a new password, users must enter their valid ConSol User Id and click on the ‘forgot your password’ link on the ConSol login screen. A verification code will be sent to the email that is associated to the User Id in ConSol. Ensuring each user’s email address is valid and unique to that user prior to the release is critical.
Users will be taken to a new ‘Change Password’ screen where they will need to input the verification code that was emailed to them and their new password and then click on the ‘Change Password’ button. They will then be returned to the login screen where you just need to click on the Login button to get into ConSol. Users are required to reset their passwords every 90 days.
Reporting Changes:
An update has been applied to the reporting portal in ConSol – the changes are primarily to the User Interface (layout) without significant change to functionality. There will be no impact on any existing reports or report schedules.
The changes that users may experience are:
- Updated presentation of the home page
- The Ad Hoc visualisation selector now lets you choose crosstab or table and the chart selection includes a sidebar for chart categories.
- Users can select colours in ad hoc charts and Ad hoc and dashboard designers have a new colour picker interface
- A new ‘distinct value’ selector in Ad Hoc designer hides duplicate rows, making tables shorter and easier to read
- Dashboards contain some new navigation and dashlet options
- Pagination is now available in input controls which assists performance and management of large lists
- Users can now schedule a report directly from the Report Viewer
- Hyperlink settings have been added for Crosstab and Table Ad Hoc view dashlets in Dashboards
All reporting guides in the Help Centre have been updated to reflect these changes.
Document Management Changes (Suppliers)
Supplier users who have been configured to have ‘junior’ level operation access will no longer be able to adjust authorisation settings on documents or manage/delete documents owned by other users in their resource groups.
MyWork Changes:
The following improvements have been made to the MyWork to facilitate searching for project views /orders that require your attention:
- The attribute fields in the Project View filter criteria section of MyWork are now populating correctly for suppliers enabling suppliers to select from a list of any attributes that may have been defined for use on Project Views, either by their customers or by themselves. The attributes displayed in the list identify the customer and whether the attribute is still in use.
- For the ‘Activity’ entity in Mywork, users now have the ability to filter by Project View Status and Order Status to enable results to be limited to active project views or orders, if required. These two status fields will now also display in the results for Activity searches.
Project View Ownership Changes:
When manually creating a new Project View in ConSol, by default the PV Manager role was assigned to the user creating the PV and ownership could only change if another user with the PV Manager role and supervisor access ‘took over’ the PV.
After this release, users will have the ability to allocate the PV to another user with the PV Manager role. The new PV Owner selector field will be displayed under the Invoiced Entity field allowing the Work Required For and Invoiced Entity selections to limit options displayed in the PV Owner dropdown - Only active users with the PV Owner role who are members of the selected Work Required for workgroup stream and who are associated to the selected Invoiced Entity are presented for selection. If a new PV Owner is selected. a history note will be written to record the change.
If ownership is reassigned, the previous owner will only be able to view the PV and will no longer be able to update the PV details.
On-forwarding Changes
The on-forward process in ConSol enables an order that has been issued to a supplier to be duplicated so that the duplicate (on-forwarded) order can be managed by the supplier company and issued to a sub-contractor. In this process, some details from the original project view and order are used to populate the duplicate entities and these details are presented on the ‘Forward Order’ screen so the user can adjust, if necessary.
- The ‘On-Forward’ screen has been enhanced to include Project Estimate and Purchase Order fields from the original project view and any project view attributes that may be relevant to the on-forwarded project view – previously only mandatory attributes fields on the original project view were presented. This enhancement will also enable the Estimate, Purchase Order and attribute values from the original project view to be copied to the new project view, by default. Users can adjust or remove these values if required.
- On the Suborders tab of the View Order screen for supplier orders that have been on-forwarded, we display a list of the sub-orders and the value of the items on the parent order as well as the summed value of the sub-orders. The summed sub-order value incorrectly includes the value for cancelled sub-orders. After this release, the cancelled sub-orders will continue to be displayed in the list but their value to NOT be included in the total
Data Auditing
- When new attributes are added to ConSol, they are made available on new Orders / PVs created after they were added but the fields are not available on existing orders and PVs. To assist with troubleshooting attribute issues, a create date has been added to the Attribute table to identify when it came into being.
- All changes to a user’s profile or their permissions are now fully detailed on the history tab of that user. The History tab is now accessed via a link on the Edit User and Edit User Profile screens.
Virtual Customer Persona (Suppliers)
Supplier companies wishing to use ConSol’s Virtual Customer functionality, to record and manage orders that they receive from clients outside of ConSol, are now able to carry out more management and configuration options within ConSol to better align with the client’s workflow.
Supplier Contract Managers (only available to users licenced for Virtual Customer access) are able to ‘switch persona’ to act on behalf of their clients. Under their original secure supplier log-in, they can switch across to each of their Virtual Customer environments to manually create new orders, to unblock stuck orders, or to create attributes or milestones for workflow management.
Please reach out to our Customer Support team if you require more information on this feature.
User Guide Changes
The ConSol Help Centre is a useful source of information if you have any uncertainty about how things work in ConSol. The following improvements have been made:
- New text is now displayed at the bottom of the User Guides and Report Guides screens (accessed from the Library menu) advising users how to find the ConSol help guides. A link in the message opens the ConSol Help Centre.
- When accessing the ConSol Help Centre, the Help Centre will now open full-screen in a new tab enabling users to easily switch between ConSol and the help articles they are viewing.
General Support Changes
Improvements
- The text in the email sent to users who are resetting their passwords has been updated to request that users check their Junk, Spam or Deleted folders if the email was not received in their inbox.
- The batch processor that automatically sends out on-site notifications has been adjusted to only send out one notification per user per device every hour between 8 am and 8 pm instead of the previous schedule (every 10 minutes, 24/7 for all users).
- For users receiving push notifications about order changes, if the user end points were disabled or not active, the resulting notification error was not displayed in a very informative way. This has been improved.
- Additional validation has been added to the user creation screen and user import processes to stop invalid characters from being included in the User Id. These invalid characters were causing unexpected and undesirable outcomes such as blocking certain popups.
- When using text attributes to search for PVs or Orders, users are now able to undertake partial text searches. This means that if the user is searching for a PV or Order by a text attribute field, they can enter any part of the value that they are confident about, and the search will retrieve all results that contain that text. The search is also no longer case-specific.
- The existing constraint to only allow reinstatement orders to be managed by reinstatement workgroups has been relaxed to enable reinstatements to be handled by normal operational workgroups. This fix is now permanent and no longer requires manual adjustment after each release
Resolved Issues
- A small correction has been applied to the Verification code email that was sent to users who clicked on the ‘forgot your password link’. All users will now receive an email advising that the password will expire in one hour instead of 24 hours, as previously displayed.
- The issue that was stopping un-transmitted Engagement orders from being cancelled if all Deliverables had already been cancelled has now been resolved.
- Next SLA dates are now correctly being updated if a variation request from the supplier has been recalled and cancelled. Previously the variation approval SLA date was not being cleared – it is now being correctly replaced with the order end date which is the next target SLA for Work in Progress orders.
- Supplier users are unable to perform any operational actions on an order if they do not have a skill level assigned. This field will now be mandatory on the new user creation screen for Supplier users.
- For contracts handling ‘Design to Construct’ workflows that were not configured to include required Item level attributes, ConSol was unable to populate necessary accounting codes on claim submission. This resulted in a general failure that did not provide the user with sufficient information to determine the next steps. This error will now advise the user that there was a contract configuration issue which requires contact with the Contract Manager.
- The Consol footer displaying version number was not being shown on the home screen for supplier users which was Inconsistent with all other supplier screens. This issue has now been resolved.