We are very happy to release our Service Pack 2 for version 6.6 of farmerswife!
This Service Pack is addressing issues around PDF printing and font support that were especially affecting Windows users, but it also includes some nice new features that are worth checking out!
Read about our improvements, new features and most important changes below.
You'll be delighted to hear that when using the Dispatch module you can now access and use the iOS camera to scan items. When adding new items you will find the camera icon in the top right corner. Just tap on it to start scanning barcodes of items in your farmerswife database. (Don't forget to allow the iOS fw app to access to your device's camera!)
A new little feature was added to the Custom Fields on Tasks and Bookings. With the new "Confidential User" setup, you can grant certain users access to read and edit the field, but "block" others from viewing it. This can be useful if you book for example management meetings and wish to enter some confidential notes into a special "Internal Note" Text field. Read more.
When creating Custom fields with the type Entry Widget or Text Widget, you can combine it with the option "Finder (Entry/Text Only)". When you start to type a name in the field, farmerswife will look for a matching contact. In previous versions you only had the option to search the whole contact database, but now you can differentiate whether it should look only within Global Contact Names or Companies, Resource Contact Names or Companies or User Names (Full Name) or Company IDs. Read more.
In some workflows you may use a lot of Extras, added either through "Predefined Extras" or by the Artist to the Time Report. In a case where you want to reuse the extras and quickly copy them from one Booking Time Report to another, you can now easily do this by clicking on the Object Icon menu > "Copy". This requires less steps and copies the same price and note.
To paste the selected Extra into another Booking, click on the menu icon of the Booking to which you wish to copy the extras, and select "Paste Copied Extras (x)". Read more.
Weβve made some additions to the Object Import/Export feature for quick updates on rates - including Day based Activities! This is especially useful in Rental environments. Read more.
Now you can create predefined names and colors for Media Order Jobs. This helps you in those situations where you need more visual information about a Media Order Job than was possible with the Statuses (Not Done/In Progress/Done).
You can then view the individual Media Order Jobs in the Module bar > Projects (a.k.a. "Advanced Project Search") > Filter From: "Media Orders". When adding the "Media Order/Job Name" column to the view, farmerswife automatically displays the search results as a list of Media Order jobs, rather than the Media Order as a whole. If you have a Media Order with 3 Media Order Jobs, the search results will show 3 lines, i.e. one for each Media Order Job. Read more.
With the EMT option you can organise the setup of your equipment with a main object and accessories. Read more on this concept here. In this Service Pack we've added options to the Project and Dispatch report designer to be able to better distinguish what is a "main" object and what is an "accessory". This is useful to create really nice looking checklists and reports for clients. Read more and download a ready-to-use template!
It's been a feature request for a long time, and we are happy to announce that it is now finally possible to invoice future bookings! We are thrilled this is available for all of you who really needed this. Sounds amazing? It is! π
First, you need to enable this in the Server Setup > Financial Tab > Allow Invoicing Future Bookings = Yes. Next, you need to decide WHAT can still be changed on the booking AFTER it has been invoiced: Change Status, Object, Time Report, Booking Time, Dates, Number of Days of the Booking.
These changes can be applied to invoiced Bookings on Active Projects (known as part-invoiced), and also to invoiced Bookings on Closed (Invoiced) Projects. But in this case, you need to re-activate the Project first, and once the changes are applied you can deactivate (close) the Project again. Read more.
With the 64bit app support for MacOS Catalina, we entered a journey deep into PDF printing and font support. This continued after the SP1 release as we still had to respond to new challenges that especially some windows users faced, where the printed PDF would be without content. We hope that we now have been able to cover all the variations. Remember to always first scan fonts if you encounter any PDF related issue. For this Service Pack we also added some "caching" that should speed up the printing process.
SP2 does not yet include "direct" printing to your paper/label devices, but we have it close on the radar! Read more on PDF printing.
We've also re-introduced the nice "multiple selection" in the Print Designer. Now you can multi-select Elements with the "lasso" functionality and by using "cmd+click" on Mac or "ctrl+click" on Windows. This is great when you want to move around multiple elements at the same time on your report.
Our API got some attention too. See below a summary of changes and improvements.
If a Dispatch only contained Virtual Objects and this was checked back in, the Check Out status would still show status Dispatched instead of Returned. This happened in the scenario when
- using "Check In From Selected"
- the Check Out was not linked to any project or client
- the Check Out only included Virtual Objects with setting expected to be returned
Now the original Check Out status is set to Returned. β¬οΈ
...should not be unmentioned. You know you can always read about all the nice stuff we added (including all nice bug fixes) in our Release Notes... but here are a few small highlights:
For the full list of changes in this version take a look at the Release Notes.
We at the farmerswife support team are happy to help you with any questions you might have. We are just an email or a phone call away! Weβre also always interested in feedback, so let us know your thoughts
Want to learn more about farmerswife? Check out our upcoming Webinars!