News and Blog
July 2008
New Haven Goes Live
Dateline: Roseville - July 28 - Ramona Marshall
Well, as you can tell this has been a very eventful summer. As we are addressing performance enhancements for our existing customers, we’ve also been busy bringing on some new customers.
A pleasant surprise was Alameda County Fiscal Implementation Team's endeavor to bring New Haven, a K-12 district, onto the county Escape Online 5 system. The team’s awesome effort made the July conversion practically flawless. The district was eager and excited during testing and data entry. Our own Kathy Carlson and Jennifer Kenney worked closely with county and district staff to convert, train and implement.
Last week they ran their first payroll and AP check run including New Haven. We’re happy to report that both the AP check run and the payroll went off without a hitch!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Escape County Credential Module Enhancement
Dateline: Roseville - July 25 - Bob Towery
People evaluating Escape Technology's systems often ask what is included in our annual maintenance payment? They are concerned about changes that are demanded by various agencies including federal, state, county and other.
In this news item, we are going to cover changes required by new file structures provided by CTC (Commission on Teacher Credentialing). They produce files containing credential information for various purposes, the most common is a weekly update of credentials of interest for each county.
Our system imports these credentials and updates existing credential holder records, and we even create new credential holder records as required.
This PDF details a series of changes put forth by CTC.
What CTC just did was include a major new ID field - CALTIDES (to begin getting away from SSN). They also increased the number of renewal description codes from 4 to 10, and did the same for authorizations. And, they introduced fields for Staff Recommendation and Condition Waiver.
Their changes resulted in the following changes to our system:
- We added a number of columns to our credential table.
- We changed the credential holder search capability to utilize the CALTIDES number.
- We changed the credential holder form, and credential form, appropriately.
- We changed our import software to accommodate the new file, and populate our tables correctly.
- We changed our extract task to include the new fields.
- We are in the process of changing our reports to display the new fields as well. We have nine reports just for credentials, not to mention the many employee reports that include credential information.
Here you can see the new CTC ID field, in the credential holder form (blurred for privacy).
All of these changes were made per our annual software maintenance plan; there were no other charges to any customers. These changes are available in the next release (except for reports, we will be including those changes as quickly as possible). As new procedures come along from any source, IRS, PERS, STRS, CTC, GASB etc, we make the changes necessary for our customers to comply.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Going Live - Placer COE & Districts
Dateline: Roseville - July 18 - Ramona Marshall
As regular followers of Escape News know, Placer COE and districts had previously gone live on the HR (5/07) and Payroll (2/09) modules. All this Spring, conversions, setup and training have been leading up to going live on the Finance module across the entire county. I'm happy to report that live operations did begin on July 1. I'd like to congratulate everyone involved, including the staff at Placer COE and each district, along with our own Kathy Carlson, Project Manager, for this achievement.
Another first! This final phase of going live represents another important milestone for Escape Technology. This is the first implementation of all four modules (Finance/HR/Payroll/County) across an entire county - including all of the districts. While we have several other counties with live customers, this is the first with every single district.
And we have our first quote from an end user, which I'd like to share:
"I love this software! We are fully live and I am so excited to get proficient with it! It will eliminate many of my duplicated tasks, streamline and organize my workload. Looking forward to experimenting with the paperless system. Escape has been responsive to our concerns which is refreshing customer service."
Shelly Saunders
District Business Manager
Ackerman School District
As with other countywide transitions, there is so much change involved that it will take a while for things to "smooth out." We plan to continue to work closely with both the excellent COE staff and the district users to make that happen. Thank you to everyone for your efforts thus far, and we are there for you for the duration!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Going Live - Shasta UHSD
Dateline: Redding - July 11 - Ramona Marshall
This is my first July at Escape Technology, it's quite a busy time! We have nearly 30 districts going live on one or more modules. Today's report is about Shasta UHSD in Redding, which converted from Escape Classic to Escape Online 5 on July 1. This particular implementation is notable in that it is the very first "stand alone" Escape district to go live on the Finance / HR / Payroll modules of Online 5, i.e. they are not part of an Escape COE implementation.
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Darlene, Vanessa, Jane, Lisa and Jennifer from the Business Office
Heidi (payroll supervisor), Lisa (AP) and CBO Art Schmitt
Julie and David from Payroll
Let's hear from several of the participants..
Gayle Lucas, Escape Technology:
I’ve spent the entire week on site with the Shasta High School staff as they went live on Online 5 and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed working with this group of people. I could see that they were swamped after being down for a few days, but every one of them was enthusiastic about getting into Online 5. This positive energy was pervasive throughout all of the entire district.
I was really impressed with their knowledge and thoroughness. The IT staff has built a rocket network and the business office has been fine tuning their work flow to work more efficiently with the new software.
The only down side of the whole week was the terrible fires and air quality in the area. I was sharing a parking area with evacuees from the surrounding area. Makes you appreciate the more important things in life.
Art Schmitt, CBO:
As of today, we have been on the new Escape Online 5 system for a little over a week. The conversion went quite smooth, we were down for less than one day on July 1. In the morning of July 1, my staff was asking me how soon they could begin in the new system! Since then we have done a payroll run, several ap runs, and are now beginning budget revisions. All of the reports are showing the kinds of numbers we are expecting. We are really moving along. Our Escape representative is Gayle Lucas, the same person that implemented our Classic system five years ago. She did a great job then, but I have to say she did a fantastic job this time. She is a big reason that our users are so happy. Speaking of which, although change is difficult, the users are already finding shortcuts and ways that the new system gets work done more quickly than the Escape Classic system.
Heidi, Payroll/Benefits Supervisor:
I greatly enjoy being able to see much more data on my screen in OL5 than in Classic. I also really enjoy the History tabs where you are able to view who changed what, and when they changed it. Everything about OL5 just makes much more sense to me. The reports are so professional in appearance and easy to read. Exporting to Excel is a click of a button away...literally. Gayle has been absolutely tremendous throughout this process. Her knowledge about this product is unsurpassed.
Another great long time customer has made the transition to Escape Online 5. Congratulations to everyone and thanks for the hard work both at Shasta UHSD and here at Escape.
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Implementation Update: Sonoma COE
Dateline: Roseville - July 10 - Carole Williams
Hot on the heels of the announcment below, I'm happy to report that the implemenation is already underway.
Kimberly, Tina and Rosalie -all three are great to work with.
This week, we started core training with the support staff at Sonoma COE. Tina Rodriquez, Rosalie Sulgit-Shay, and Kimberly Williams all made the trip to Roseville for 2 days of training. The project includes phasing in the Sonoma County districts over 4 phases, with the first phase going live in January 09. This group is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the “three musketeers,” and look forward to a long and satisfying relationship!
Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
New Customer Announcement
Dateline: Roseville - July 8 - Bob Towery
At the beginning of the fiscal year, I’m really excited to announce that the Escape Family is growing, with a great COE being the newest member. Sonoma COE and 56 of their districts have selected Escape Online 5 as the replacement for their legacy system. They produced the most extensive RFP we have ever seen, with over 600 feature requirements. At the time of our response in Spring 2006, there were about 65 items in their RFP that we had to answer “future development.” By Spring 2008 when we signed the contract, the list was now down to about 22 items, which we plan to complete during 2008/09.
It has been particularly enjoyable to get to know the Sonoma COE staff. They are a dedicated and talented group, very thoughtful in their deliberations and planning. We have also done several demos with over 100 people from the districts, who as a group are also very enthusiastic. These large implementations are hard work, to be sure, but we know with this group there is going to be some fun as well.
Let’s hear from Daniel Bienkowski, Director, Information Technology, Sonoma COE:
Initially Escape was not one of the top finalists from our Financial System RFP, but as we witnessed their accelerated product development and process improvement pattern over the past year, they became our first choice for the new financial system in our county. The system itself seemed clean, intuitive and more closely matched our county’s financial system requirements than other products we had seen. Upon deeper review we became impressed with the entire staff’s knowledge of their product and the company’s willingness to expand their project management office to better meet the expanding needs of their company and clients. We are looking forward to working with the Escape team to bring their system to our county.
So I’m very proud that the system all of us at Escape have produced has been selected in a fair and rigorous RFP process, by excellent staff. And I want to acknowledge each of our other COE customers in helping us get where we are. Surely without their continuing contributions, input and patience I wouldn’t be in the position to deliver this news. The lessons learned in our other two large implementations at Ventura and Placer COE’s have been very helpful in the implementation planning for the Sonoma COE project. As always, the support of our customers is very much appreciated by all of us.
Thumbs up! One of our demos early this year at Sonoma COE.
This is about 2/3rds of the room, we would need an even wider angle lens to get all the attendees!
| Welcome Sonoma County Office of Education and Districts! |
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Comments are appreciated! Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Performance Watch
Over the last few months, we have written several articles about our efforts to improve the performance of Escape Online 5. Bob Towery tells it like it is in this series, describing what we have done and what we are planning to do in the near future. Ramona Marshall gives you updates from a business perspective. Stephanie Fury provides the detail from the QA side.
For your convenience, we placed abstracts of each article on a Performance Watch page. Check it out!
Happy new fiscal year. With year end and arrears payroll processing, we set this release to focus on making your life easier.
Performance
As we promised, you will see performance enhancements with every release. This release includes five changes that specifically address performance.
- We reviewed and revamped the budget entry, journal entry and health and welfare journal entry activities. By adjusting internal procedures and the way lists are displayed, we expect you to realize a two to four times speed improvement!
- Then, we turned our eye to reports. After careful consideration, we were able to speed up seven crucial reports:
- PERS Preliminary (Retire11)
- County PERS Preliminary (Retire97)
- Budget Salary Projections by Employee (Budget06)
- Comparative Account Summary by Object (Fiscal04)
- JE Fund/Object Summary (Ledger04)
- Customer Invoice (ARInvoice)
- Leave Transactions (Leave01)
Happy New Year!
It is that time again, and we have been improving how Escape Online handles multi-year and year end processing:
- Improved account handling when the account does not exist in the new year.
- Revamped the vendor record, including half a dozen new search fields and independent contractor reporting.
Happy Budgeting
Every day is a good day for budgeting. As mentioned above, we expect you to find budget entry must faster. We also added search criteria and a new report.
For those working on multi-year budgeting, the new Multi-year Budget Model (Budget10) report will be very useful. It is very similar to the Comparative Account Summary by Object (Fiscal04) report, except it includes many new fields for
multi-year budgets, including a parameter for model and model amount columns are specific to a model, and for change level.
HR/Payroll Processing
Thirty-one of the changes were to the HR/Payroll module. Almost all of them were minor fixes and enhancements designed to make your life easier. Things like showing the vendor name after the vendor code in deductions, searching for employees by leave group, date logic for adding assignments, exporting the Monthly Employment Development Department (Employee06) report as an Excel file. We also updated eight retirement reports with enhancements and fixes.
Please Join Us
We are having two webinars this month:
- Year End Processing at 9am on July 8
- Release Review at 9am on July 10
We invite you to join us for one or both! Contact Escape Customer Care to get your invitation.
Comments? Send us an email and let us know what you think.
Questions and Answers about Release v08.06
Dateline: Roseville - July 2008 - Leslie Bailey
We are very excited about how popular and effective the release reviews are becoming. Nearly 50 people registered for this month's webinar, and that doesn't include all of the people that watched the review in groups. Actual attendance was almost 80%.
Terri demonstrated 18 CRs, plus two bonus CRs. She carefully walked through each of the CRs, explaining the change and what it means to you, the user.
Of course, we cannot cover everything, so there were a few questions submitted via the Chat box:
Q: I see that six CRs are still in a status of testing. Have any of them passed?
A: ALL of the CRs in the release notes have now passed testing!
Q: I don’t see an Export button on my list. Why not?
A: You will only see an Export button on your list if Microsoft Excel is installed on your work station.
Q: How do I export a report to Excel?
A: As stated above, when you are on a list, there is an Export button that looks like an Excel spreadsheet. If you click this button, Escape Online automatically launches Microsoft Excel with the exported data.
It works a little different for a report, however. In the report viewer, you use the Export button that looks like an envelope. This opens a dialog box where you can choose the file type (i.e., Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and Rich Text Format). You can save this file anywhere on your hard drive or the network. Then, you can open the file using the associated program.
Q: What version(s) of Crystal Reports are compatible with Escape Online 5?
A: You only need to purchase Crystal Reports if you plan to develop custom reports on your own. Otherwise, the correct version of the Crystal Reports Viewer is automatically installed when you install Escape Online 5.
Having said that, we use Crystal Reports Professional version 9 to develop reports and the Crystal Reports Viewer .Net version 1.1 to view them. For more information about Escape Online and Crystal Reports, please see the FYI on our web site.
Q: How do I enter a vendor credit?
A: You can enter negative amounts in the Amount field on the Enter Payments activity to create a “credit memo” (a negative invoice) for vendor requisitions in the Printed, Ready for Payment, Check Pending and Complete statuses.
Q: Concerning zero dollar amounts in budgets, if I don’t enter any amount for an account will the search list the account?
A: You will only see accounts where you have manually entered zero or set the amount to zero using the task in the Budget Management activity.
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If you missed this last release review, take heart. We are working on the recording we made of the session. We are hoping to post a link in a comment to this blog very soon!
Please join us for the next Release Review. They are held every second Thursday of the month. If you would like an invitation or if you have any trouble registering please contact Terri:
How many software releases?
Dateline: Roseville - July 2008 - Barry Collins
If you follow our many blog entries describing the array of implementation projects, or attend the Escape Online 5 Release Review webinars, you may have noticed that we have a lot of software updates for Escape Online 5. Actually, we have a release every month. And each release has somewhere between 50 and 100 modifications to the product. How can so many changes be necessary? Good question. Escape Online 5 is still a “young” product with a list of features to be added. Each implementation project adds to the list, as does feedback from live customers. We constantly work to make performance enhancements.
As the product matures and we have more customers live on the software, the number of releases will surely be reduced - probably to semi-annual updates. For now, however, this release cycle requires the efforts of much of the Escape team. Our support staff and project managers document the requirements. All of our developers work on enhancements. Our QA Coordinator, Stephanie Fury, does her best to make sure the product is good to go. Our technical writer, Leslie Bailey, has to document all the changes. Our Training Coordinator, Terri Hammond, manages our Release Review webinars. And our IT Manager, Mike Long, packages the releases and works with customers to get the software installed.
Most importantly, our customers take the time to share the ideas that will make Escape Online 5 the best product possible for years (and customers) to come. Thank you and keep the feedback coming!
First Ever Year End Webinar
Dateline: Roseville - July 2008 - Leslie Bailey
On Tuesday, we had a first ever Year End Webinar. Of course, we have been holding Release Review sessions over the web for a couple of months, but this was the first time that we had a training. It went very smoothly. Considering the specificity of the topic and summer vacation schedules, it was well attended.
Participants were from across the spectrum of our customer base, including departmental customers, customers who have just converted to Escape Online 5 and those who are about to.
Our very own Terri Hammond ran the webinar with grace and expertise. The hour-long session covered the entire Finance side of year end processing. But, of course, there were questions at the end of the session. We only had time to answer one, so here are all of the questions submitted and the answers.
Q: Is there a way to automate the running of financial statements for all districts within a county?
A: Yes! Escape Online has the ability to set up distribution groups that take a user's permissions into consideration.
For a county to distribute reports to multiple organizations, you would want to set up a System Report Distribution group. This automatically filters the report parameters for each user, in the distribution group, based on the organization(s) to which they have access.
For example, you could create a CBO Distribution Group that included the Escape user id of each CBO at each district and then run the Financial Statement-Fiscal13 (or even the Fiscal Year End Checklist- Fiscal15) report for that distribution group. Each user would get the report for their organization only delivered directly to their My Reports activity.
You (as the requestor) would receive a report that listed each user and the status of their report. So, if one of the reports had an error, you would know. You could also add yourself to the distribution group and then you would get a county-level report, with a page break for each organization.
To create a system distribution group, you would use the System - Reports - System Distribution Groups activity. To specify the group for a report, you would use the lookup for the Distribution Group field in the report parameters form.
Q: As a departmental only district do we need to create the closing JE before closing the fiscal year? Do we need to create the starting balance JE and post it?
A: No, at this time Escape Departmental users cannot close their fiscal year without help from Escape Customer Care. So, contact us and we will enter the close dates for you. Our plan (we created a change request - CR 7290) is to create a Close Fiscal Year task for departmental users.
Q: Where do I set the year end processing dates for requisitions?
A: For vendor requisitions, department requisitions, stores requisitions, invoices and work orders, you would set the dates in the department record (Finance - Setup - Department - Departments activity). Remember, you only have to do this once. It does not have to be changed every year!
For AP payments, direct payments and employee payments, you would set the dates in the organization record (System - Setup - Organizations activity).
Q: You mentioned accruing an invoice that has already been accrued could have problems. Can you explain that again?
A: Unfortunately, AR invoices that have been accrued from prior fiscal years cannot be accrued again. You have to close the invoice from the AR-Invoices activity. Then, you need to copy the closed-out invoice to the current year. Finally, you can carry over the "new" invoice to the next year from the Requisition Year End Closing list. (We created CR 7184 to address this and other year end issues.)
Q: What are the other known issues?
A: Here is a list of the issues that CR 7184 will address:
- June Close Date. Fiscal Year Status record for year that is being closed CANNOT have a date in the June Close field. If there is a date in this field, journals for this year will be created but not posted.
- Use the Enter key on the Requisition Year End Closing list. Using the tab key in this list doesn’t always update the defaults properly. The Enter key works better.
- Multiple Expense Accounts from Prior Accruals. Vendor requisitions that have multiple expense accounts and have been accrued from a prior year (i.e., accrued in 2007 and now again in 2008) and are then paid for less than the full amount will have the liability cleared and the remaining liability amount will be evenly distributed to the expense account regardless of their original distribution. If this is not correct, the user will need to manually fix the distribution.
- Comments on Accrual JEs. The accrual JEs are not getting a Comment. This is only happening on journals that are “clearing” a liability.
And, that's it. If you have any other questions, please post a comment to this blog or contact Escape Customer Care.
Don't forget to sign up for Release Reviews, every second Thursday of the month. If you have a suggestion for a topic-related webinar, please feel free to contact your Escape Customer Care representative.
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