TransLution V4.5, which was released on 24 Apr 2018, has a host of new features and upgrades. These include: enhanced Syspro posting, a new way to manage failed posts, improvements to the general grid and other small fixes and enhancements.

Enhanced Syspro Posting

We have made significant enhancements to how we post data to Syspro. On a failed post from the scanner, we present users with a detailed message and they can now choose to retry failed posts or buffer them. Retrying is ideal for when for example the message is something like – Customer on Hold. The issue can be dealt with in Syspro and the post retried whereupon it will generally succeed straight away.

This option is also very useful if network connectivity is generally very good and there is a very rare communication failure. A retry can deal with that nicely.

The other new option is Buffering. This allows the user to select to buffer a post to be tried independently of the scanner job. It is possible to select to buffer every post or to allow users to select to buffer a post. These options are all described in detail below.

When defining a post step, these options are now available

Live Post will post directly to Syspro with no way of handling errors.

Live Post with Retry will allow the users to attempt to retry a post from the scanner directly as shown below

Note how the error message is very detailed and there is now a retry button available to retry the post.

Say for example though that the error is not one you are likely to be able to deal with immediately. In this case the feature Live Post with Buffer or Retry may be a better option. The user still sees details about the error but they can select either to retry or to buffer. So, if after a second or third attempt the post still doesn’t go through, the user can select to buffer the post as shown below.

The posting service runs in the background and picks up app buffered posts. Dealing failures at this point is covered in the next section.

The final option is Buffered Post. This option has no user interface and all posts are directly logged to the posting table where they will be processed in sequence. This option is useful if connectivity is particularly bad or in cases where there are times during the month or week when no posting will be done at all. Permanent buffering is the solution in a case like that.

Dealing with Failed Posts

When posts are buffered, there is of course still a chance that they may fail. We have built a new Overlay form called Buffered Post deal with that. This form has been built as an overlay so that non Admin users can run TransLution EazyTouch to manage failed posts.

The form shows only Error posts (Red) or Cancelled Posts (Yellow) by default. It is possible to select to view posts that have not yet been processed (Orange) and successfully processed posts (Green).

It is not possible for users to act in any way on processed rows. Even if they are visible, they cannot be selected. Any other rows can however be cancelled or retried. Selecting Retry will return the rows to a process status of 5 and they will be processed the next time the service runs. This is useful when errors can be fixed in Syspro to allow the post to succeed. If the transaction was dealt with directly in Syspro then of course you would not want to re-try the row and it should be cancelled.

The rows can be filtered and sorted to that you can look only at one specific function area or scanner job.

General Grid

The General Grid has been further enhanced in TransLution 4.5. We are using a new grid structure which will be rolled out to all the functions in the next few release cycles. Some key usability features are as follows:

• Users can now select to modify any columns, not just a specific number from the RHS of the grid
• The views can now be more flexible and do not need link on a column called Document Number as in the past.
• It is now possible to select to filter the data shown by the ID of the active user which means users can be limited to seeing only data that is relevant to them
• There are now two refresh buttons allowing you to refresh the header and detail grids separately.
• The new grid supports advanced filtering options
• Column sequence can be changed on the grids
• All of these changes on the lower grid are saved when the user clicks on the refresh button.

An example of the new form is shown below.

Fixes and Enhancements:

• When EazyTouch is close the user will be logged off. This will make it easier to manage licences.
• The maximum timer value allowed for unattended functions was 100 minutes. This has been extended to 720 minutes (24hours)
• The Progress grid on EazyTouch now allows columns to be grouped.
• TL Selector Android functionality is extended and supports using a camera to scan barcodes.