| Looking Forward to Expandable v9.0 |
| There’s a lot to look forward to in the upcoming release of Expandable. Release 9.0 of Expandable is a “Quality Focused” release slated for mid-year 2010 that promises to hold a variety of exciting enhancements including new features, infrastructure improvements and module enhancements. |
| Here’s the list of planned enhancements being made to the system for v9.0 of Expandable: |
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Double-Byte / Unicode support |
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Many CHAR fields being converted to NVARCHAR |
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New .NET version of the Report Manager |
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New Quality module |
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New Engineering BoM sandbox |
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Integration to AssurX CATSWeb |
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BizNet – replacement for FRx |
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| The planned infrastructure features include Double-Byte/Unicode support which will help the product better meet the needs of companies operating international divisions. |
| With many data fields being converted from CHAR to NVARCHAR, Expandable customers will be able to implement longer character strings in important fields like addresses, names and part descriptions. |
| The Report Manager needed to be updated to take advantage of features in forthcoming versions of Crystal so Expandable decided to build a new version of Report Manager using its .NET framework. |
| An item added to the Expandable menu in v9.0 is the new Quality Module. Features of the Quality module will include: |
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Quality Material Processing Control |
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Quality Store Room Types |
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Quality Transactions with Reason Codes, Embedded (unchangeable) Documentation and Email Notification |
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Three Level Quality Personnel control rights by |
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- Stores Code
- Stores Type
- QA Transaction Program Code |
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Financial and Accounting visibility and control over inventory in the quality processes |
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Inventory exclusion from Production inventory and MRP |
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Quality Events & Actions Register |
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Controlled by User Rights |
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- Tracking inspectors, action assignees, disposition, etc. |
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Large Data Elements to Record |
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- Serial Number
- Notes
- Reference Designation |
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Quality Event types are still in investigation stay tuned but linkage under consideration |
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- Jobs and Work Orders
- RMA Sales Orders
- Customers for tracking customer quality issue |
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| The Expandable Sandboxes will add a new item to the Expandable menu that lets users create multiple testing environments to gauge the effects of changes before rolling them out to production. |
| Three Sandbox options will provide environments to experiment without having to involve complex IT requirements. |
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Basic Empty Sandbox |
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This sand box will only carry over User Security Rights and basic Expandable configurations that define a company's configuration |
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Allow users a complete new environment to experiment, test, train, etc. |
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Engineering Sandbox |
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Carries over User Security Rights and basic Expandable configurations |
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Brings over Parts Master and Detail, BOMs and other Engineering functions and allows an engineering sandbox to develop new Engineering BOMs for costing, BOM configuration and what if scenarios |
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Complete Expandable Sandbox |
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Carries over User Security Rights and basic Expandable configurations |
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Carries over all Expandable Data for a complete Test Environment without effecting or impacting your production environment |
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| NOTE: T hese sandboxes will require adequate SQLDB memory to support the sandbox environments but make setting up a test environment quick and easy with minimal effort. This functional module is also controlled as to specific users that can be allowed to set up or tear down these sandbox environments. |
| In addition to the Expandable enhancements, integration to new third party products will be available with release 9.0 of Expandable. Integration with the CATSWeb quality management suite from AssurX is planned as well as integration to the financial reporting tool from BizNet that will replace FRx is scheduled. |
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