New Features in G5, version 22.4
Here's a summary of the major new features in version 22.4 of MONITOR G5, broken down by our teams that specialize in developing each area of the system. We hope you'll find this useful. For more information on all new development and changes in this version, read the Changelog at monitorerp.com/changelogs. There you also can watch a video rundown of the major new features in this version.
During this sprint we’ve been able to deliver some small but useful development. Our larger projects are still under development and will hopefully be delivered in the next version of G5.
A list type Tools has been created to replace the G4 list type for Tools. Here you can filter out operations with tools assigned and set their "ready to go" status according to tools.
If you use Max quantity for a part, or Coordinated processing, the manufacturing order will have many parallel top nodes. These can now be more easily replanned individually in Register manufacturing order.
A new basic data table has been added in General registers, called Material and densities. In this table you can add different materials and their densities. Some data for common materials is included by default. This data can then be used in the BOM and routing procedure, in the weight calculation on the material rows. The weight calculation is updated with the possibility to select materials and geometrical shapes.
The team has resolved 46 issues, of which 30 were reported by customers.
In the next sprint we'll be finalizing support for selecting sites to attendance records in the Recording terminal. Sites are, e.g. "Office", "Home" etc.
During this sprint we’ve been focusing mainly on Customer order transfer (COT) with configuration, and finishing up variable receiving inspection.
We still have some finishing touches to apply to the variable receiving inspection, although we've decided to release most of this functionality in 22.4.
It's now possible to create and add Inspection templates to a part or a supplier. The templates for parts are configured in Basic data – Part, while templates for suppliers are set up in Basic data – SRM.
The templates are applied under Inspection settings either in the Supplier register or the Part register, under the Purchase tab.
Under Inspection settings it's possible to view current information about the inspection template, like how many completed inspections that have been carried out for the part/supplier.
We currently support the following nonconformities:
We've added a dialog in Delivery planning that will appear if the user has forgotten to approve/reject the printout.
In the Delivery planning procedure, list type Pick list by order, you can select if the customer order should be updated with the status Picking in progress. Before this change, only the customer order header changed status as selected, causing the customer order row to have the wrong status in the Planning window.
We've now made changes so that if the user selects the Update the customer order status to “Picking in progress” setting, we also update the customer order row, showing the correct status in the Planning window.
We've added a new column in Register customer order where the user now can view the status of the customer order row. When adding this, we also renamed Row status to Type of requirement.
In the Order types procedure we've added two new settings that can be used to set specific settings for Planned invoice date, and how the Register customer agreement procedure should select Valid from when order type is selected.
The user can now select if the suggested Valid from should be today's date, or if the field is left empty. This is useful if you register a lot of customer agreements that don’t usually have today's date as Valid from.
Planned invoice date in Register customer agreement was released in version 22.3, but we've now made it possible for the user to have separate settings depending on the order type.
Delivery planning and Pack for delivery now support the new print dialog.
Important to note is that we've now adjusted the print sort order for the Transport label – package structure; the transport labels are now printed node by node. Should you have selected to print multiple copies of one or more labels, all copies of the same label will be printed in sequence. So if I've have selected to print 5 copies of the label for package 14 (see below), the print sequence will be:
1. Package 18 (Pallet)
2. Package 14 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19).
3. Package 14 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19), copy 2.
4. Package 14 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19), copy 3.
5. Package 14 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19), copy 4.
6. Package 14 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19), copy 5.
7. Package 15 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19)
8. Package 17 (Carton, belongs to pallet 19)
9. Package 19 (Pallet)
10. Package 20 (Pallet)
We've also added a document setting for specifying the Default number of copies, both for the Packing list and Transport label – Package structure.
Using a toolbar button under the Documents tab in Report delivery, you can now open Register shipment with the selected orders/pick lists loaded as information sources.
It's now possible to use so-called consolidated shipments. In brief, this means shipments in MONITOR can be accumulated in a single shipment in nShift Delivery or Logtrade.
Related to this, there's a new System setting for suggesting the default consolidation key value. See below:
Finally, the new UI for remote configuration is in Master.
The purpose of this step is to make things easier for users in two cases.
If you simply navigate between sections in the UI, everything is as before. But if you use the new buttons – Next/Previous – or select an option list in the Navigation tree, the UI changes to show all valid options for the active option list.
In this new UI it's easier to make multiple selections, and you have direct access to the autocomplete to search for options that are defined as a selection, not as a fixed option list.
If you have long option lists, activating Find is a good idea.
A sales company is only allowed to make automatic changes on a transferred order if the status of that order in the remote production company is less than an agreed status. (Transfer setting).
We've now implemented a new validation of this status in Register customer order.
As we work with linked purchase orders to the customer order row in the sales company, we thought it made sense to use that purchase order to save the status information from production. We added a field in the header of Register Purchase order: “Supplier’s order status".
This status is updated from the remote company when the status changes on the corresponding customer order.
The new status on the purchase order is then used to provide information on the customer order rows in the sales company.
Maybe in the future we can create a feature to share the order status between all companies using MONITOR.
If you've set a default transfer profile on a part or an order type for customer order, it is now used also in Register quote.
The team has resolved 71 issues, of which 47 were reported by customers.
This sprint will be the last with a dedicated COT focus. After this sprint the developers who were concentrating on COT will be involved in other development as well.
Beside this we'll focus on:
We've managed to close 36 issues (47 support cases in total linked to issues and user stories) in this April sprint. Our developers have been working very hard, and we've managed to close a lot of development features. We've now released the new Price development procedure, and you'll find many new useful functions in version 22.4.
The new Price development procedure can be used to view the development of prices trending over a selected period.
A comparison can be made to see if a price increased or decreased by an actual amount of sold/purchased parts.
We took this procedure a step further (compared to G4) and introduced a chart to support the list, which displays trends for sales, purchase prices, and total sold amount.
Many of our customers have requested this development, whereby you can now pre-select a user-defined variant for different manufacturing order printouts. (We'll continue to add the same support for purchase and sales documents too.)
There is now support to add multiple parts/serial numbers/batch numbers to one case. It is possible to set one part as "default", and this is the part that will be presented in the case list right now. We didn’t finalize all functionality during the sprint, so this development will continue in version 22.5, to include the other parts in case list, etc.
Rows with errors are highlighted, and the checkbox, Include, will not be checked for those rows. There are also additional columns for Supplier, Currency, Discount, and Prices. Support for Discount categories based on part categories has been implemented.
In total, we closed 39 development items during the sprint, which are a mix of country specific developments as well as standard functionality and UI/UX improvements.
When functionality for Invoicing plans was developed for G5, the invoicing plan was locked after a delivery was made on a customer order, to prevent differences on the account for settlements. This has now been developed further, and we've been able to make it possible to edit the invoicing plan even after partial delivery on customer order has been made. Read more in the changelog for version 22.4.
Support for payment terms with calculation of the due date by using the End of Month (EOM) method has been implemented. This method is similar to Free delivery month, with the difference that the credit time (45 days, for example) will be calculated directly based on the invoice date, and the rest of the days of the month are then added, up until the due date.
It is now possible to create accruals on posting rows in Authorize supplier invoice. Previously, it was only possible to create accruals when the invoice was final recorded.
Working with EIM, it's possible to change the supplier on the invoice basis when adding or editing the order number in the header on supplier invoices when registering a supplier invoice. This functionality has now been added even when working with workflow.
We've made some user interface improvements and added fields in, for example, the Print invoice and Review/Approve invoice procedures.
During this sprint we've closed 81 issues, of which 19 were patched and 51 were linked to support cases.
During the next sprint we'll be focusing on following developments:
We've worked on a wide variety of areas during this sprint, including everything from UI changes to reducing database sizes. But we've focused mainly on resolving problems reported by our customers. As usual, support for Microsoft SQL server continues to increase as more and more customers choose this solution. The new print dialog has now implemented in the Pack for delivery procedure and Delivery planning.
It will be possible to move BLOB data in form of e-mails and attachments to further reduce the database size. We'll also work on adding extra fields for operations rows and making it possible to use Find & Replace for extra fields in general. The Find & replace function itself will also gain additional functionality.
The MSSQL train continues to roll, and keeps accelerating and gaining traction as our customer base grows.