This month we have gone live with 2 new simple portals. These were both written to solve very niche problems that two of our customers were having, and have enabled non-regular engineers to have limited access to MARKUS from any device. They join our existing simple stock take portal, a quick timesheet portal, and a manager review portal that we have previously released to customers who wanted something not-quite-MARKUS-mobile for some of their teams.
The first of these is a new “apprentice portal”. This is a very simple app that allows apprentices to see their workload for the week ahead, who they are working with, and what the jobs are. There are only two screens – a nice calendar view of their work, and a list of their jobs on the selected day. We expect to grow additional functionality over the next few releases as the contractor gets a better handle on what information they want to surface to apprentices, and what information they might want back from them.
The second new portal is to record stock movements. Again, this is intended for use by engineers who are unable to access MARKUS Mobile during their normal working day, but still need to send stock updates to their central stores, and record costs against jobs. Once again, this is a simple app with just 3 screens to pick the job, show some very simple job details, and allow a part to be recorded against the job. This will update the job costs and also generate an appropriate restock request – and the subsequent PO will update the stock levels for the engineer.
Both these portals sync with the existing MARKUS Mobile data, so should you want to migrate on to the full mobile app then it’s as simple as installing the app and all the same jobs and parts will be visible to the engineer within the full app. If you think either of these would be useful to you then please give us a call – or if you have an idea for a similar portal then get in touch, both these were completed in a single sprint cycle.
New Features
- Added a permission to control who can see all audit trail information, not just restricted to their activity
- Added support for the filename for PDF packs that are generated by users to contain a space
- Hid all the details about a subcontractor that are not set in the issue job to subcontractor screen
- Added a method for (job) details to be auto-calculated based on the value of 2 other (job) details
- Updated the bulk change spreadsheet importer to have a required client reference field to improve the matching of client reference numbers that are not unique across different clients
- Changed the bonus process to allow for bonuses to be generated at a different stage in the job lifecycle – previously this only allowed subbie bonus to be generated once a job reached “Ready to charge”, but now can be triggered from other statuses
- Added support for increased precision of sales rates on the jobsheet
- Added the ability to edit attachments on surveys, and view the photos taken whilst editing surveys
- Added the “visible to….” checkboxes to the asset notes setup screen
- Improved the display of Site Jobs -v- PPM Tasks on MARKUS Mobile (for assets) application to work better when blank PPM jobs are sent to the engineer for them to create tasks as they move around site
- Altered the database structure to support supplier names up to 255 characters long so that supplier names in MARKUS can match those in accounts systems with longer names
- Changed the standard survey PDF to ignore blank photos so the layout flows better
Changes For a Single Contractor
- Updated how locks are handled in the purchase invoice API to make concurrent requests smoother
- Updated the eque2 purchase exports for certain kinds of jobs to have custom formatted ticket numbers
- Continued Sicon purchase and sales export integration – changes to VAT Code and Nominal Cost Centre; changes to reporting to show success/failure differently; handle duplicate VAT descriptions; reverse VAT Tax Code; job ticket number formatting changes; handle CIS query and update to secondary system
- Changed the timber door survey PDF to page break after each action of a survey
- PDO changes affecting integrations: tweaked the rounding in the Onward/Orchard interface to handle the different data type; updated the Wolseley purchase integration
- Tweaked the Tier export to send supplier codes for purchase invoices, and select the best client code for sales invoices; multiple changes to both sales and purchase invoice exporters to split multi-contractor data between Sage and Tier correctly; added Tier codes to the Contract Hours report
- Added more columns to the client BCC job report
- New customer mobile app builds
- Removed a section of the fire alarm survey print
- New work order scripts for the Verisae export
- Secondary build location to support alternative Mobile App system options for different engineer types
- New Purchase Order print with custom terms
- Added the name of the operative an apprentice is working with to the new Apprentice Portal so apprentices could see who would pick them up each day, or where they needed to travel to; improved the display of the appointment details
- Added support for new conditions an engineer needs to satisfy to complete a visit on MARKUS Mobile (for assets): now includes a requirement for 3 photos; non-PPM jobs need a specific mandatory survey to be completed; non-PPM jobs need a specific set of SOR codes recording; all job types need manual notes; PPM jobs need all undelivered SORs updating
- New LGSR layout for a very very old customer still using a 2007 version of the PDF (which had all the right data, just looking a little like the year 2000 wanted its layout back)
Platform Improvements
- Improvements to mobile app release automation
- Improvements to monitoring and orchestration portal
- Continued roll-out of PDO support – now includes full patching capability; more detailed error messages and logging; improved handling of nested transactions; changes to transaction isolation level to match ADODB
- Updated storage permission handling to prepare for Android 17 and keep backward compatibility to Android 10; fixed edge-to-edge layout problem for versions greater than Android 16
Bug Fixes
- Reverted changes to MARKUS AI Agent for invoice validation where quantities do not match the total
- Fixed the status filters on the job cost report passing through to the detailed report
- Stopped PO status getting overriden by job status in the order report
- Fixed a survey focus problem in the new android version 17 causing the screen to jump to the top when a button is clicked
- Fixed SQL error when editing stock
- Fixed deprecated parameter sequence for imploding CSV lines when importing contract prices
- Fixed a bug with PDO automatically progressing the Find Job report for a single result
- Fixed a 404 when exporting empty Sage files
- Fixed editing general job details to make the job description field use the job description caption
- Removed the “Show Issued” filter from Items Requiring Action, as this was confusing users by showing visits rather than jobs
- Fixed a PDO error when editing client attachments
- Moved where we save the initial device information logging on MARKUS Mobile to prevent race-condition with background dials
- Fixed importing of multiple choice survey questions with single letter answers
