What's new in AyaNova 6

We are very proud to present AyaNova 6 that continues our tradition of task oriented design which keeps the end user in mind at all times enabling them to accomplish their daily service management tasks quickly, efficiently and in a way that just makes sense.

There are many improvements to existing features as well as some key new features that have been requested.

Developers with C# experience can now access additional data fields when report template designing. We will be providing some examples on the AyaNova Support Forum for those that would like to work with this. Custom design for a fee will also be available.

For example, with this you will now be able to pull data from Custom fields from the client entry screen to show on a service workorder report.

Requested By field in new Customer Service Request now auto populated with first and last name as entered in the user entry screen of the client logged in via WBI

The existing ImportExport.csv utility for importing/exporting clients, parts and/or units has been expanded for licensed users to include the ability to update existing AyaNova records.

For example, if your parts price and cost are updated on a regular basis from an outside source file, you can use the licensed importexport.csv utility to automatically update the existing AyaNova part records as well as import new records.

With AyaScript, you can quickly create useful utilities or add-on's without having to build a full AyaNova plugin or stand alone application and your end users can execute the script from within the AyaNova program without any programming knowledge.

OLI runs from Outlook itself, providing the ability to import AyaNova clients, vendors and head offices into Outlook as contacts; export Outlook contacts into AyaNova as either clients or head offices or vendors; import your AyaNova scheduled items into an Outlook calendar; and generate service workorders from emails including setting numerous workorder fields all from Outlook itself.

The OutlookSchedule plug-in exports the scheduled items for the logged in user into an Outlook calendar

The Quick Notification plug-in allows any AyaNova user to send a quick message to a subscribed AyaNova user. How the message is sent (via AyaNova memo, via AyaNova popup, via SMS, via email) is dependant on what delivery method the recipient user has set up for this subscription. A Quick Notification license is required to use this plug-in

This Export to XLS plug-in provides the ability to export main grid's column data to an xls file for further data analysis. An Export to XLS license is required to use this plug-in

Many areas in AyaNova 6 have been improved for better performance and efficiency; particularly if using Microsoft SQL Server (Express or full Server version).

While performance has always been good in AyaNova, it had room for improvement under certain circumstances and we focused specifically on situations where the database contains an extremely large amount of data, far more than our average customers current size. This is to ensure that as your business grows AyaNova continues to scale well with you.

This release marks the first release where we've been able to make performance changes specific to Firebird and Microsoft SQL independently to take advantage of techniques specific to each platform.

Note that we were able to do far more with Microsoft SQL server in terms of performance as it supports more features for high end performance (such as index clustering) however both platforms have benefited, most noticeably in cases where the database is very large.

While Firebird is more than adequate with smaller databases our exhaustive testing while improving performance has shown that when you start to get into medium to large size MSSQL is much faster with AyaNova.

We've made a lot of changes in this release to squeeze the most out of Firebird and MSSQL. Further performance improvements can be gained by switching platforms (FireBird to MSSQL) or with hardware improvements.

Remember, AyaNova is designed to be hardware scaleable. This means that improvements to hardware found to be inadequate will always be taken advantage of by AyaNova fully.

Numerous changes were made in many areas of the database schema to improve performance, some of the key ones:

•	Searching, as well as saving an object that has a lot of text entered (i.e. many characters entered in Service Details).

•	Service workorders items and its subsection grids (i.e. Labor, Parts, etc) are now cluster indexed by creation date to improve retrieving current data.

Performance modification to load parts list only when have selected the Parts subsection of a workorder entry screen. This helps performance for those AyaNova users that have imported 1000's of parts, but do not necessarily select parts on every workorder.

Each user can now be set with an Override TimeZone in the event their location is in a different time zone than where the AyaNova database and remote access server's (Data Portal, WBI, or MBI) reside.

This provides the ability for the user to see times in AyaNova in relation to whatever time they actually work with, and will greatly facilitate those companies that have AyaNova users in many different time zones.

It is also useful for dispatchers that may be in one time zone, but are scheduling for service in another (i.e. dispatcher is on the west coast, receives called from east coast customers, and schedules east coast techs).

When an AyaNova user is logged in via the AyaNova program, they can see at a glance what "their" time is in the bottom right hand corner - as it will show in BOLD if it is an override, or regular font if not overridden.

Contract name and expiry date field added to all levels of workorder service grids and in detailed service workorder report dataset. These two combined provides the useful ability for user to filter by Contract and include Contract of the client and its Expiry Date in reports.

If security group object set to Forbidden, that object column will no longer display on grids. (i.e. if have set Object.User to Forbidden, will not see the User column in the Scheduled Users grid in the Service navigation pane)

Performance improvement with display of Clients grid and Head Office grid if Banked Service related columns are displayed if your company has a lot of clients or head offices (i.e. 5000+) It is still recommended for full performance that if you do not use Banked Service to remove these columns from displaying if not needed. This is irrelevant if you have a small number of clients.

Performance improvement with display of Units grid if Banked Service related columns and/or Meter Reading column is displayed if your company has a lot of units (i.e. 5000+) It is still recommended for full performance that if you do not use Banked Service and/or Meter Reading to remove these columns from displaying if not needed. This is irrelevant if you have a small number of units.

Performance modification to load parts list only when have selected the Parts subsection of a workorder entry screen. This helps performance for those AyaNova users that have imported 10's of 1000's of parts, but do not necessarily select parts on every workorder.

Delete button in data entry grids: Usability improvement that subgrids (workorder item records, labor records, Dispatch Zone records etc) have a Delete record option for each individual record, making it easier to delete the specific subgrid record. (Similar to how WBI works for deleting grid records.)

Easily check to see if you are using the latest version of AyaNova by selecting the Help -> Check for updates menu option. This will now check our website automatically and direct you to the update instructions specific to the version you are running.

The following feature improvements enhances user's efficiency in the workorder entry screen and ensures correct reported On Order inventory amounts.

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When a purchase order receipt for part requests is now saved it will automatically update the workorder creating a workorder item part based on the part request and also select the serial number correctly if applicable. Also removes the empty record in the workorder item parts originally made during the original request (if part request made since using AyaNova 6). The user no longer needs to take the manual steps of deleting the 0 quantity, nor remove the part request except set the part record to used in service

•	If PO manually set to Closed, the parts not received will now be removed from the PO, the parts On Order will be updated to that revised amount on order, and quantity of parts ordered will reflect those actually received.

•	The On Order quantity for a part showing in Part Inventory grid will be updated as no longer on order

•	Any Part Requests ordered that were not received will revert back to not on order (i.e. in the workorder's Part requests subsection, will no longer show On Order so that you can delete if needed)

•	If PO is manually set to "Closed - partially received" with receiving only part of the quantity of the ordered items

•	The PO Items quantity are automatically edited to that actually received (i.e. if 4 were on order, received 3, and then manually set the PO to "Closed - partially received", the Qty Ordered in the PO will be automatically edited to 3 instead of 4)

•	PO Items that have 0 received are removed in their entirety from the PO (i.e. if 0 received for any parts, those ordered parts will be automatically removed from the PO Items list)

•	Any Part Requests ordered that were not received will revert back to not on order (i.e. in the workorder's Part requests subsection, will no longer show On Order so that you can delete if needed)

Unusable sub-datasets in Detailed type report templates now no longer show in the Fields tab in the report template designer, so no longer any confusion on which datafields to drag over to use in a report template.

The Unit's Text1, Text2, Text3 and Text4 fields are now available in a Preventive Maintenance detailed report template for the Preventive Maintenance grid; as they are for the Service Workorder detailed report template.

Can now print from Client Notes and also can select specific note(s) to print by clicking on the row indicator.

Performance modification to load parts list only when user selects the Parts subsection of a workorder entry screen. This helps performance for those AyaNova users that have imported 10's of 1000's of parts, but do not necessarily select parts on every workorder.

When a purchase order receipt for part requests is now saved it will automatically update the workorder creating a workorder item part based on the part request and also select the serial number correctly if applicable. Also removes the empty record in the workorder item parts originally made during the original request (if part request made since using AyaNova 6). Basically the user doesn't have to delete the 0 quantity, nor remove the part request except set the part record to used in service

Grid column selector form now available for the workorder items grid in a service workorder entry screen so that now you can right-click on a column in the workorder items grid, and select/deselect which columns to show or not to show.

Global Settings for Notification now include the setting for the Encryption method to use with your SMTP server. Valid values are TLS, SSL or empty for no encryption. This means you can use SMTP server's that require these settings such as gmail's SMTP server etc.

Notification generation now includes the new feature that when processing notifications, checks to see if there are *any* SMTP delivery method ones, if so then before any delivery attempts the Generator probes SMTP server by attempting a connection first.

If this fails then logs it through the Administration navigation pane's Notification Deliveries (last 7 days) log if in generator service and skip all SMTP type notifications but continue to process others that *can* be delivered (i.e. internal memo and/or popups).

This way the AyaNova Administrator can easily see by the error in the Administration navigation pane's Notification Deliveries (last 7 days) grid that SMTP is down which is why no one is receiving their email or SMS notifications.

And Global Settings for SMTP notifications now includes a setting SMTP Retry Deliveries to keep notification events until able to connect to SMTP. Normally the default that if SMTP is not available, the notification event is deleted after attempt to send, whether successful or not - to prevent build up of error messages in the Notification Delivery Log

This setting is useful if the SMTP server is not always available (i.e. AyaNova is on a notebook computer that is not always able to connect to the mail server). Or any situation where admin wants to keep notifications until SMTP server is available.

Due to changes to improve performance in the Schedule control the display of bolded dates will no longer show on the left navigation calendar. Previously a bolded date would indicate *something* was set for that date - whether an object was a Schedule Marker that could be stating "day off" or a scheduled workorder; and the user would still have to select the date to see what was on that date in the right side schedule display. The date navigation control on the left side is for selecting what to display on the right side only.

If Schedule screen calendar is showing 10 or more schedulable users, a navigation control will appear at the bottom right corner to bring other schedulable users into view. This ensures that the width of each schedulable user is no less than shown. Do note that it is still recommended to utilize Schedulable User Groups to manage your schedulable users.

Schedule screen will now show on login the date(s) last viewed on exit. For example, if you were last viewing the 5 days of November 9th through 13th and then exited, when you next log in, the Schedule screen will show those same 5 days again.

Schedule screen will now show on login the view you were last viewing on exit. For example, if you were last viewing the Time Line view on exit, that is what will display on log in.

Graphical printing of the Schedule screen will now default to printing for the schedulable users showing. It's no longer required to make a selection of resources just to filter out users not displayed. For example, although you may have five schedulable users, if you are viewing a Schedulable User Group showing only two of those schedulable users, than your Print Preview for a graphical printout will show only those two users. You can still of course select different in the Resources tab of the Page Setup for graphical printing.

Graphical printing of the Schedule screen will now display Schedule Markers with a frame around them as in the schedule form itself