The Winter 2011 version of Workbooks was released on 3rd February 2011.

Contract Management

A new module, this allows customers to maintain and manage customer contracts within Workbooks. A customer contract is a new type of Transaction Document which allows customers to track the start and end dates of contracts, as well as, for example, the revenue and profitability of contracts at a line item level.

Because they are core objects within Workbooks there is integration throughout the product, for example this can be used to provide visibility of valid support contracts when raising a case.

Learn more about Contracts here.

The Contract Management Module requires an additional chargeable licence.

User Interface (UI) Improvements

A number of productivity features have been added including click-to-dial functionality; click-to-email; and a ‘New’ split-button on the Main and Summary tabs which speeds the creation of items related to the currently-viewed record.

The loading of the rich-text editor is now significantly faster in all web browsers.

Custom Fields

Two new custom field types – IFrame and URL – have been added.  The IFrame is useful for viewing information held in other web-based systems alongside the record being shown.  A neat example to demonstrate this is to use an IFrame to show links to Google Maps based on the Postcode and Country fields in a record.  The URL field holds a link to an external system. Both fields can be configured so the link which is used relates to fields within the current record.

The text within custom fields can now be searched using the ‘Search’ dialog and taskbar search – just tick the new ‘Searchable’ checkbox when you create the custom field.

PDF Templates

There is a new and flexible configuration system for generating PDF output documents – such as Quotations, Invoices, and Credit Notes. Customers can configure document colours, texts, and boilerplate text such as their Terms and Conditions; there is also the option to configure custom templates.

Other Enhancements

Many parts of the service have seen incremental improvement, often as a result of customer feedback. Where we have addressed specific customer requests our customer support team will be in touch.

As ever, please continue to help drive our roadmap by contributing your suggestions on our Ideas community site.

Download the Winter 2011 Release Newsroom today