Updates to Optional Modules

Portal Catalogs

You can now create catalogs for displaying items on the Customer and Reseller portals, and assign the catalogs to specific customers. This allows you to display selected sets of items to the customers of your choice. For this feature, these forms have been added:

  • Portal Catalogs
  • Portal Catalog Workbench
  • Portal Catalog Build Utility

These forms have been updated:

  • Customers
  • Customer Types
  • Portal Parameters

Multi-Currency Support in Portals

With the addition of the ability to maintain multiple currencies for customers in CloudSuite Industrial, a Currency column has been added to pages in the Customer and Reseller portals, so portal users can see the currency used for each of their transactions. The portal Account Balance, Order Status, Estimates, Returns, and Invoices pages have the new Currency column.

Enhanced Portal Item Pricing

A Pricing Rules tab has been added to the Portal Parameters form, where you can specify how to calculate and display item prices on the Customer and Reseller portals. The new tab provides options designed for customers with very large numbers of items to price and display on the portal.

Portal Item Display Option

An option has been added to the Customer and Reseller portals Products page, which allows portal users to switch between list and grid views.

Portal Development Features

New paging, filter, and alert features have been added to the Infor Portal Foundation (IPF), to give developers more choices when creating customized content for the portals.

Paging enhancements include Extend, Auto Extend, and Custom Load. Auto Extend is also provided for drop-down lists. These features allow you to control how records are fetched for display on the portal based on settings you specify in the FDF Editor.

Interactive filters allow you to provide automatic filtering as the user types in a filter field. The user does not have to click anything to invoke the filter event.

Scope alert APIs introduce a new way to pass messages from one part of the user interface to another. A scope is a named entity to which listeners can be attached to receive alerts. Unlike the other portal alert APIs, scope APIs separate the alert sender from the alert receiver(s). This is much easier to set up when passing an alert to multiple components that are not readily accessible, such as nested grids through peer and parent grids.

Open Authentication Features for Portals

Open Authentication (OAuth) has been implemented for connecting CloudSuite Industrial to the Customer, Reseller, and Vendor Portals when sending portal event e-mail. New OAUTH Consumer Key and OAUTH Consumer Secret fields for each portal have been added on the Portal Parameters form to authorize CloudSuite Industrial to connect to the portals. The fields can be populated automatically or manually using new options on the External Interface tab in the Portal Manager.

Because Open Authentication is now used for cross-server communication, Windows domains are no longer required when using multi-server farms or to authenticate incoming communication from CloudSuite Industrial.

Quality Control Solution (QCS)

Quality Control Solution functionality has been brought into the base product as an optional module. This functionality previously required four licenses but now requires just one.

Service Mobile

We added 22 Mobile forms for Service to our CloudSuite Industrial Mobile module to support a repetitive service call where an engagement is scheduled for a remote partner who needs to report material, labor, and miscellaneous expenses associated with a service order. We have also added forms to authorize a credit card while in the field.

Use the new forms as described here:

  • Home Page - Service: Use this form as the starting point for mobile service.
  • User Information: Use this form to change your password and email address directly in the mobile application.
  • Work Queue – Service: This form lists all open assignments for the current partner.
  • Calendar – Service: This form shows appointments in a calendar view.
  • Appointment Detail – Service: Use this form to view detailed information about an appointment. This is the primary form to use when working on-site.
  • SRO Labor Entry – Service: Use this form to enter labor transactions.
  • SRO Material Entry – Service: Use this form to enter material transactions.
  • SRO Miscellaneous Entry – Service: Use this form to enter miscellaneous expenses.
  • Customer Detail – Service: This form displays customer and ship to information.
  • Unit Detail – Service: This form displays unit information.
  • SRO Reason/Resolution – Service: Use this form to log reason and resolution notes for a SRO.
  • Incident Reason/Resolution – Service: Use this form to log reason and resolution notes for an incident.
  • Browse Units – Service: Use this form when selecting a unit to which to apply a transaction.
  • Work Order – Service: This form lists transactions for a SRO. You can also use this form to capture a customer signature.
  • New Appointment – Service: Use this form to create a new appointment while in the field.
  • New Incident – Service: Use this form to create a new incident while in the field.
  • Credit Card Authorization: Use this form to authorize a credit card.
  • Credit Card Web Payment: Use this form with the CenPOS credit card gateway.
  • Mobile Notes – Service: This form displays notes about a SRO or incident related to an appointment.
  • Inbox – Service: This form lists all messages in a partner's inbox.
  • Send Message – Service: Use this form to send a message.

Service MapPoint Replacement

Because Microsoft has discontinued support of the MapPoint application, we have replaced that functionality with an embedded Map form that uses Bing maps. The Map form will continue to support the existing route import and export functionality, display a partner's last known location, and list turn-by-turn directions with the ability to optimize the route. The use of Bing maps also includes the built-in features of displaying traffic and searching for nearby businesses. Use of this new form reduces the need for installing and configuring a separate application. Instead, after purchasing and entering an API key from Microsoft, the functionality is available by opening the Map form directly.

Service Scheduling

We enhanced the scheduling functionality by replacing the calendar control, used to display appointments, with a more modern version. This new version supports the ability to run in both the Smart Client and Web Client. We did this by dividing the Service Schedules form into two new forms:

  • Use the Calendar Scheduling form to view scheduled appointments in a date/time arrangement using day, week, or month views. Any buttons that previously opened the Service Schedules form now open the Calendar Scheduling form.
  • Use the Queue Scheduling form to view appointments in a queue, allowing the dispatcher to arrange appointments in the order they should be performed. This form replaces the Daily Partner Queue and Open Partner Queue views that were previously available on the Service Schedules form.

Both forms still use the Scheduling board and contain the same functionality with regard to selecting multiple views, profiles, color coding options, and the partner and task selection. We updated the date selection process on the Scheduling board. Click on the calendar image to select a single date or a range of dates to view on the Scheduling board.

We also simplified the color coding process. Click Change on the Service Schedule Profiles form to open the new Color Picker form, where you can easily select colors.

Service Outlook Add-in

We enhanced the Outlook Add-in to convert incoming and outgoing email messages into incidents and events in CloudSuite Industrial. In Outlook, you can use the new Infor CloudSuite Interaction area of a message to create a new incident or event related to the message. You can also use new buttons on the Add-in menu to create an incident, event, or note.

Service Payroll Generation of Service Hours

System payroll routines count hours worked for each employee, but we have now extended that functionality to include, if you choose, hours logged by partners in the Service optional module. This feature can be enabled or disabled on the Generate Payroll form. Because not all partners are employees (some are customers or vendors), only service hours logged by partners who are also employees will be included in the payroll generation.

Service Orders on Salespersons Form

We have added an SRO tab on the Salesperson form, where you can view service orders. You can also filter those orders by Past Due, Open, and Credit Hold. Previously, to view or maintain the SROs, you had to use the Service Order forms.

Vertex Indirect Tax Series O Interface

We added integration with the Vertex O Series tax application. The options for setting up this interface have been added to the Tax Interface Parameters form.

Application Debug Listing

We added a new method for collecting and viewing application debugging information. Currently, the Credit Card Interface and Tax System Interface modules use this feature. When the debug option is selected on parameters forms for these modules, debugging data is collected in a new database table and can be viewed using a new Application Debug Log Listing form.

Automotive Industry Pack

The Automotive Industry Service Pack is now part of the base product, and is available as a separately licensed optional module.

Parent topic: What's New in This Version