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Product updates
2020
October 2020 Release notes
October 2020 Release notes
Patrick Gruhn avatar
Written by Patrick Gruhn
Updated over a week ago

Another month has gone by which means a lot of new features are ready for you.

This month's release notes include:

For web:

  • Improvements to Employee management

  • Support for Quick Edit > Departments, per Employee

  • Restore Departments and Restore Employee groups

  • Support for backdated Vacation requests (DK only)

  • Support for Employee data visibility restrictions, by Department

  • Support to Edit Department access within Security groups

  • Punch Clock: Health check

    (details below)

For the Planday & Kiosk app:

  • Support for Finnish

  • Support for the Punch Clock Health check

  • Updates to Messages (including the removal of Forced Read)

  • Support for Available balance in Time off.

  • Information about upcoming changes for supported devices - iOS.

    (details after the Web section)


Web

  • Improved Employee management list with more search and sorting functionality

1. In your Employee's list, from People > Employees, you can search through the list by Mobile number.
This expands the list of search options for your employee list to:
- First or Last name,
- Email address,
- Salary identifier,
- Tax ID,
- and now: Mobile number.

2. On the Employee groups page, from People > Employee groups, you can now view and sort the list by Salary code.

A Salary code column was added to the Employee groups page, to improve the visibility of Employee group details.

Similar to the other columns of the list, the Salary code column is sortable in ascending or descending order.

This also applies if your setup uses Salary code 2.

  • Added support for Quick Edit > Departments, per Employee, for users with HR Manager permissions

This means that HR managers can add or remove the employees they manage from the Departments on your portal, in the Quick edit view.

This can be useful in situations that require quick changes to your organization's structure or increased flexibility in how your staff is managed.

For a user with an HR manager permission level, this addition grants edit rights only for Department membership and only for the employees directly managed by the user in question.

This addition does not allow access to view or edit any other Employee data field.

To edit Departments, through this permission level, you'll need to navigate to People > Employees > click on the Employee entry and edit Departments from the Quick edit menu on the right-hand side of the screen.

If you'd like to use this permission level addition, please reach out to our support team (from the messaging icon, in the bottom right corner), for assistance.

  • Added the Restore Departments and Restore Employee groups

Admins and HR managers, that have access to edit Departments or Employee groups, can now also Restore deleted Departments (or Employee groups, respectively).

To restore a deleted Department, you'll need to navigate to People > Departments and find the Restore Department button, in the top right corner.

This will prompt a new window where you can select which Department you'd like to reinstate and whether or not employee memberships should be kept as they were prior to the deletion of that department.
If left in its default state, restoring a department will reinstate the memberships.

Similarly, to restore an Employee group, you'll need to find the Restore Employee Group button, under People > Employee groups.

A similar prompt will appear, giving you the option to choose which group to restore and whether or not to bring back the employee memberships to that group.

If you'd like to use this new feature, but it's not already available on your portal, please reach out to our support team for assistance.

  • Added support for backdated Vacation requests (DK only)

As part of the recent Vacation module updates, it is now possible to register backdated Vacation requests.

This could be useful if a Vacation request needs to be registered in the past or in an inactive Vacation account.

To backdate a Vacation request, simply select the (past) vacation account it should belong to, from Absence requests > Request vacation > selected Employee > Account type.

Coming soon

  • Employee data visibility restricted by Department membership

Currently, when an employee sets their contact information to be public (visible for their colleagues) it becomes visible to all other employees in the organization.

This might not be in line with their data privacy expectations and might make it difficult to browse the Employee list, for large numbers of employees.

The upcoming update will limit the visibility of their contact info to the members of the same Department(s). This means that only their colleagues will be able to see their contact info if it's set to public.

More details about employee data visibility, in this article.

  • Support to Edit Department access when adding employees to a Security group

Soon, when editing an Employee's security access (from People > Employees > Quick edit), you will need to define which Departments the access level applies to.

Adding This will give you the option to configure which Department the access rights apply to and how, for that employee.

This also allows you to set whether the access rights should be applicable to all employees or only employees with that department set as primary if you use that feature.

  • Punch Clock: Health check before starting a Shift (punch in)

In an effort to make it easier for you to stay on top of your tasks and have all the information you need to keep your staff safe, in the current fluctuating times, we're working on a feature that allows you to set up a quick Health check through Punch Clock. This feature will give your employees a quick way to inform you if they're no longer fit for work and will help you keep your staff safe, which is particularly relevant in the current COVID-19 landscape.

The COVID-19 Health check will appear as a pop-up when an employee taps "Start Shift" in their Punch Clock app, asking whether they present any symptoms or have been in contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19.

If either situation is applicable, you'll be notified right away through a Planday message and your employee will be advised to self-isolate, contact you and their health care provider for the next steps.

To use this Health check, you'll need to already be using Punch Clock on your portal and enable it from Settings > Punch Clock > Survey.

Once enabled, the quick survey will appear across all the Punch Clock platforms you might use (web, mobile app, or the Kiosk app)


Mobile

Make sure to use the latest versions available for Android (6.11.0) or iOS (6.11.0).

The 2 recent updates for the Planday app brought to you:

  • Support for the Finnish language 🇫🇮, complementing the web functionality.
    To change your Language settings, tap on your Account > Settings & Privacy > Settings > Language

  • support for the upcoming Health check before starting a Shift (punch in) in Punch Clock

  • Performance improvements, focusing on the Messages ✉️ section of the app, including improvements for sending messages (for Forward and Reply) and for reading messages (removing the Forced read functionality).

    The Forced read functionality has been removed from all Planday platforms, stems from feedback, and the number of reported issues (blocking employees from using the app as intended).

    This change kickstarts the re-design of the Message ✉️ section of the app, as the Forced Read and Forced Answer options will be reframed as a Required reply, in an upcoming app update.
    Feel free to share any feedback you might about removing this functionality, through our support team or in an app review.

  • Available balance instead of Current balance, in your Time off overview page.
    This means that the balance shown at the top of the screen now accurately represents the number of days available for you to request.
    Like that, the available balance takes into account your current balance ( to date ) and the impact on your balance of any pending or approved vacation coming up.

    When you make a new vacation request, the Available balance will update immediately, while your request is pending approval.
    If the request is denied, the Available balance will return to what it was prior to the request.

Android - version 6.11.0

  • Ensured that Punch Clock behaves as expected, without errors when approving punch clock entries for Shifts containing Breaks.

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the Employees list from being shown correctly when in a custom order

  • Ensured that data privacy settings are respected across all areas of the Planday app, including the Colleagues at work list.

  • Fixed an issue that caused an error when trying to edit & approve Punch Clock entries missing a Shift end time.

  • Improved responsiveness for the Punch clock widget

  • Began preparations to discontinue support for iOS 12 (or lower).
    It is expected that, as of 2021, Planday will no longer be supported on devices using iOS 12 or lower.


Kiosk for iPad

Make sure to use the latest version available for iPad Kiosk App (1.3.0)

This update includes:

  • support for the upcoming Health check before starting a Shift (punch in) in Punch Clock

  • a fix for an issue occurring on iPads 13.6, that prevented the Kiosk app from closing correctly ( and blocking the reopening of the app).

  • preparations for discontinuing support for iOS 12 (or lower) support.

  • minor performance and stability improvements.


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