Releases/Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 update (v14.0.0) was released on March 29, 2021.

• Release preview Blog
• Resco Spring Update: The highlights from our first release of 2021 Blog
• Update webinar Webinar

Resco Inspections

Client portal

Woodford administrators can now design client portals. The portal is a webpage that serves the customers of a company that uses Resco Inspections or Resco Field Service.

1. Woodford administrators can create portals as app projects and publish them.
2. Additionally, an admin must grant contacts the right to access the portal.
3. The user receives an email and can log in to the portal.

See client portal for more information.

Cloud storage for images

Images in the questionnaires can now be stored in various cloud document storage solutions such as SharePoint or Google Drive, rather than in the CRM database. This applies both to the static images (such as questionnaire logo) or images that inspectors take when answering image-type questions. Storing images outside of the database can be important from a cost perspective.

External document storage must be enabled and properly configured in Woodford.

1. Edit an app project.
2. Select Settings > Documents from the Project menu, check Enable Documents and optionally Enable SharePoint, then click Save.
3. Select Settings > Configuration from the Project menu, go to the Integrations tab, enter the root folder for your images, then click Save.
4. Publish the app project.

Questionnaire reports: custom layout of questions in a group

Our recent update introduced the option of customizing reports for questionnaires directly in the Questionnaire Designer. With this release, we are adding the option to fully customize the layout of question groups on a report. This function is not available with the Salesforce backend.

1. Edit a questionnaire.
2. Select a question group and on the Properties pane, set Questions Layout to Custom, then click Edit.
   
3. Configure how the questions should be arranged. First, add more columns or rows as needed. Then select a question in the left pane and use the central pane to drag it to a new location and the right pane configure additional properties, such as row span or cell border.
   

Innovations

Houston: Full availability on Android

With this release, Houston AR video calls are now available on Android in full capability – with the AR annotations as well.

Houston: pre-defined arrows

What we also enabled is the ability to use pre-defined arrows during the visual navigation by an expert. He can choose either drawing the instructions or for more precise navigation – pre-defined arrows by tapping on the screen and adjust the direction and size of the arrow with simple tap-and-drag functionality. This way, it is easier for workers to align the highlights precisely where intended.

Houston: new UI

A new movable navigation panel in the web app further improves tool selection and visibility into the shared scene for experts.

Platform

Capsules (preview)

Woodford and other Resco designer tools support the concept of importing and exporting portions of the designed solutions. For example, it is possible to transfer questionnaires, individual forms and views, or even entire app projects, and much more. However, sometimes a particular solution requires different components, for example, minor metadata update that adds a field, a few questionnaires and reports, etc. Exporting and importing these one by one can be tiresome and it's easy to forget a vital step.

For these cases, you can now design capsules, fill them with various Resco components, and easily deploy them to different organizations. This functionality is now available in preview quality for Resco Cloud backends. The following building blocks can be transferred:

• App projects
• Questionnaires (only versioned)
• Reports
• Metadata (entities and fields)

You can try these functions from the Resco Cloud landing page.

• Use Designer to create new capsules from the source organization.
• Use Manager to upload and install capsules to a destination organization.

To design a new capsule, first enter a few general information about the capsule, such as name and description, then select which building blocks to include. Save and publish (download) the capsule.

To install a capsule in a different organization, import the published capsule file, review its content, and then install it.

Nicer editable fields

Using styles, Woodford administrators can set various properties of editable fields, such as those on forms or when answering questionnaires. With this release, our style editor gained additional options to better distinguish between the label and the value, so that app users know where to tap to enter a value. You can now also configure corner radius (just like CSS rounded corners).

This function is not available on the Windows 7 version of the app.

Additional image formatting options

With this release, we bring a better experience for users while working with images. Woodford administrators gain the option to change how images stretch and make their corners rounded.

Before:

After:

Finer control over font size

Font sizes can now be adjusted in 0.1 size increments.

Mobile reports: Justify as new cell horizontal alignment

You can now use the Justify option for a cell's horizontal alignment.

Mobile reports: Keep grid together on one page

You can now configure a new property for grids in Report Designer: Keep Together. Enable this option to ensure that the report generator adds a page break before the grid if it cannot fully fit on the current page of the report. This function is implemented for PDF reports.

Mobile reports: Configure the Run Report command

Using the On Execute rule, it is now possible to modify the behavior of the Run Report command. For example, you can set what report format are allowed, what actions are allowed for completed reports, and much more.

See Configure Run Report command for more information.

Mobile reports: Warn when signatures are missing

Users of the mobile app are now warned when they try to save a report but the signatures are not submitted. This can help field users remember to ask for signatures from the clients before leaving their site. The warning can be dismissed.

DocuSign offline for iOS

In a previous release, we have introduced the option to create legally binding signatures using DocuSign in the offline mode for Android devices. With this release, the same function is also available on iOS.

Route planner: users can set custom address of a visit/appointment

Users of route planner are now able to change addresses of their appointments using one of the following ways:

• Type the location that you need to add (autocomplete will help you with that)
• Select a location on the map

Route planner: flexible start location

Users can define 10 custom start and end locations.

1. Tap the plus button to add a new custom location.
   
2. Select the location, enter a name, then tap Save.
   

Those locations are stored in the user settings entity on the server. (Until a Woodford administrator republishes the app project in Woodford, the locations are stored only on a given device.)

Route planner: opening hours

To avoid planning of visits outside opening hours, the optimization process will take opening hours into consideration.

Opening hours can be configured in two ways:

• Woodford administrators can configure default opening hours for an entity using Woodford.
• App users can set different opening hours for each entity record in the app.

Route planner: fixed appointments

Route planner offers the function to automatically schedule appointments. However, some appointments are not flexible; the time of the planned visit cannot change. To ensure this, users of Route planner can mark appointment time as fixed. Such appointments are recognized by the optimization process; they remain at their original date and time and all other appointments are reshuffled to optimize route.

Schedule Board: new On Change rule

Use the new On Change rule in the Schedule Board to trigger automatic actions or validations when a task is rescheduled. The event is triggered when you drag a task to a different time/resource, when you modify the time or resource on the task properties, or even when you use the auto-scheduling function.

Dynamics: authentication changes

Microsoft is deprecating older authentication methods. This affects Resco mobile apps and Resco CRM Sync with Dynamics. OAuth becomes the default authentication mode Dynamics 365 organizations. External projects and location tracking cannot support multi-factor authentication and there change to a different authentication method.

See OAuth2 authentication for more information.