What’s new in Zetadocs Expenses May 2019 update

Restrict expense types to specified users

This article describes the new features and other improvements in the May 2019 release of the Zetadocs Expenses service.

Changes in this update

Feature enhancements

Restrict expense types to specified users

We have added an option to limit individual expense types to specific users or user groups.  This enables the system administrator to hide an expense type from any users who are not entitled to use it, simplifying use for those users and reducing work by the finance processor to correct or reject invalid expenses. 

The feature also enables the system administrator to configure user-specific settings for expense types – eg to set higher warning limits for senior managers, or use a different set of GL codes for users based in a branch office.  You can do this by creating multiple versions of an expense type with different settings, then setting the group restrictions to specify who can use each version.

Support mobile app on non-English phones

You can now use the Zetadocs Expenses mobile app on a mobile phone which is configured for a language other than English.  Previously doing this would cause an error to be displayed by the app when contacting the service, requiring you to switch your phone back to English to use the app.

Note that the app still displays screens and messages in English.

Simplify use of text fields in NAV custom extensions

We have changed how text fields are supplied to custom extension code in NAV to make it simpler for NAV developers to use these fields.

Previously if a text field for an Expense record was empty, that field might be sent to the NAV system as a NULL (zero) value, rather than an empty zero length string.  Most NAV code does not typically use NULL values in this way, so accessing a text field from custom code needed extra care to avoid triggering an error which would then cause the export to fail.

With this update the server now supplies all text fields as standard strings, making it simpler for a NAV developer to access the field reliably and reducing the risk of export errors on systems which have been customized.

Quality and performance improvements

This update includes general quality and performance improvements, including the following:

Error when displaying system activity screen

We have corrected an issue which caused an error to be shown when displaying the system activity screen on some accounts.  The error was caused by a hidden field being set to an invalid value on occasion when editing an expense record.  This then resulted in an error when displaying the system activity screen for a period which included that record.

This update corrects the underlying issue, so that edits to records will no longer set the field to an invalid value.  We will be correcting any existing records with the issue once the update has been released.

Additional upgrade steps

Zetadocs Expenses Connector for NAV

This release is compatible with previous versions of the Zetadocs Expenses Connector (versions 3.3.18178 and later).

Versions of the Zetadocs Expenses Connector before the July 2018 release (versions before 3.3.18178) will no longer work, and must be upgraded to export data to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central / NAV.  See this article for further details.

To upgrade the connector, follow the instructions in this technote.  Please contact Equisys for further assistance if required.

Mobile apps

Installed mobile apps will be updated automatically on mobile devices where this is enabled.