Snap Schedule Version History

Current Version: Snap Schedule 2010 Version 3.0.1.0

Previous Versions
Snap Schedule 2010 3.0.0.0    
Snap Schedule 2009 2.0.4.5     2.0.4.4     2.0.4.3     2.0.4.2     2.0.4.1     2.0.4     2.0.3
Snap Schedule 2008 1.5.3247     1.5.3233     1.5.3157     1.5.3135     1.0.2988

Version 3.0.1.0 published on 09/16/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • None.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug that may cause the Employee Activity Details, Employee Activity Summary, Estimated Labor Cost by Employee, and Estimated Labor Cost Summary reports to generate an exception if an employee's home location is not assigned.

Previous Versions

Version 3.0.0.0 published on 09/01/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • This software version is a major release and its database structure has been upgraded to accommodate the new features and enhancements. When opening a schedule file created by previous versions of Snap Schedule 2009, you will be asked to upgrade the schedule file before it can be used. The upgrade process is done seamlessly and should take only a moment to complete.
  • New Schedule View: Added the new Daily View by Shift option to show daily staffing for shifts. Shifts are listed vertically to the left, dates across, and each cell shows employees that are assigned to the same shift on a given date. The number of days displayed can be 1, 2, 4, or 6 weeks, selectable from a drop-down menu. You can immediately see whether any shift is not being adequately staffed for a given date range.
  • Improved Task View:
    • For better visibility, the Task view now has its own place on the ribbon bar. Previously, it was an option under the Shift view.
    • In the Task view, added the capability to display task assignments for more than one shift. All shifts that meet the criteria specified on the shift filter bar will have their task assignments displayed.
    • Added a graph to the Task view to show assigned employee count throughout the day. You can configure the graph to display the total employee count for any combination of tasks.
  • Employee Skills/Certifications Expiration: Added a new capability to monitor and report expiration status of employee skills/ certifications.
    • For each employee, you can now specify when the employee’s skills/certifications will individually expire.
    • For each skill/certification, you can now define the number of days before it expires that Snap Schedule will begin issuing warning of a pending expiration.
    • The Schedule Outlook view now includes a Skill Expiration Warnings panel to show employee skills/certifications that have expired or are about to expire.
    • A new Skill/Certification Expiration List report is now available to display expiration status and the number of days until expiration for each employee’s skills/certifications.
  • Shift Premium Calculations: Added the capability to define premium pay policy for any shift. The shift premium is added to the employee’s regular pay and may be specified as a combination of a fixed amount per shift, a fixed amount per hour worked, or an amount which is a percentage of the employee’s regular hourly rate. Shift premium can be limited to certain day of the week or to non-exempt employees. An option is also provided for including shift premiums in the employee’s overtime pay calculations.
  • On Call Pay Calculations: Added the capability to define on-call pay policy for any shift. Employees may receive on-call pay even though they do not actually work the shift. You can specify on call pay as a combination of a fixed amount per on call shift, a fixed amount per each on call hour, or an amount which is a percentage of the employee’s regular hourly rate.
  • Improved Overtime Pay Calculations: Improved employee overtime pay capability to support different work periods and overtime rate structures.
    • Added overtime calculations for work periods other than the Weekly period. Two Weeks, Four Weeks, Six Weeks, Bi-Monthly, and Monthly work periods are now supported.
    • Provided three different brackets of overtime rate multipliers based on the daily work hours. An employee can now be paid at up to three different daily overtime rates based on the number of hours worked on a given day.
    • Provided three different brackets of overtime rate multipliers based on the number of hours worked in a work period. An employee can now be paid at up to three different period overtime rates based on the number of hours worked in a given period.
    • Provided the options to include on call and/or shift premium pays in the overtime calculations. When included, the total on call and shift premium pays an employee received in a work period will be divided by the total period work hours then added to the employee’s regular hourly rate to arrive at an effective hourly rate for the purpose of overtime calculations.
    • On the Employee form, changed the Weekly Work Hours Constraints fields to Work Period Work Hours Constraints fields since a work period can now be other than a Weekly period.
    • On the Select an Employee for the Shift form, changed the grid to show Work Period Work Hours instead of Weekly Work Hours and updated data columns to reflect work hours for the applicable work period.
  • Improved Staffing Overview Graph: For the Hourly Coverage option of the Staffing Overview graph, improved the Y-axis scaling to provide a better display based on the actual maximum and minimum data values. Previously, the minimum value of the Y-axis was always set to 0.
  • Manual Resizing of rows and columns in the schedule views: For the Daily, Shift, and Task view, you can now manually resize the rows and columns of the grid to better fit the cell contents. The header column and header row can be resized independently of the content columns and content rows.
  • Generate Schedule Wizard: Added an option to the Generate Schedule wizard to skip generating shift assignments for non-working and non-visible days. When selected, you will also have the choice to skip over these days and resume the shift sequence on the following days.
  • Shift Pattern Table form, Schedule Plan form: Improved the Shift Pattern and Schedule Plan edit forms as follows.
    • Added a right-click context menu which includes the Clear, Cut, Copy, and Paste commands to facilitate cell contents editing.
    • Extended the maximum length of the Description field from 40 to 60 characters to allow a longer description for the shift pattern tables and schedule plans.
    • Provided the capability for manual resizing of the grid column widths and row heights to make the cells as big or small as you want.
  • Schedule Setup Wizard: Improved the New Schedule Setup wizard by providing a survey for your scheduling needs. Select the answers that best fit your criteria and Snap Schedule will generate the required shifts, breaks, time off reasons and employee records for your new schedule file.
  • Example Schedules: Added a new scheduling example for a fictitious security guard services company and updated existing scheduling examples to demonstrate new features in this software version.
  • Reports: Updated existing reports and added new reports to support new software capabilities.
    • For reports that include drop-down calendars, the start day of the week for each calendar will now match the First Calendar Day of the Week setting for your business.
    • Enhanced report data sorting to allow up to five sort levels from the current maximum of three sort levels.
    • Added the new Employee Skill/Certification Expiration List report to display expiration status and the number of days until expiration for each employee’s skills/certifications.
    • Added the Employee Work Hours by Location report to breakdown employee work hours for the different shift locations.
    • Updated the Employee List report to also display employee E-mail addresses.
    • Added two columns to the Daily Shift Assignments report to show the actual shift assignment start and end times for each employee.
    • Updated the Employee Activity Details report and Employee Activity Summary report to show on call shifts and on call hours for each employee.
    • Updated the Estimated Labor Cost by Employee report and Estimated Labor Cost Summary report to show shift premium and on-call pays.
  • Miscellaneous: Allowed specification of the First Calendar Day of the week for your business. The Calendar view and all calendar based reports will display the first day of the week based on this setting.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug during Excel import that caused a crash when all expected columns are not present.
  • When editing the Email template for the Email Schedule wizard, the Subject line is now limited to one single line. Previously, when more than one line of text is entered, the error “The specified string is not in the form required for a subject” may occur.
  • When customizing the Shift list or Employee list to display a Custom Date field, the field will now be displayed in date only format. The time will no longer be shown since it’s currently not possible to specify the time component for a Custom Date field.

Version 2.0.4.5 published on 08/05/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • None.
Bug fixes
  • Implemented a partial solution to work around a memeory issue caused by a 3rd party control not properly releasing memory resources. This memory issue occurs when the control is repeatedly invoked by a custom plug-in to automatically export reports, causing available memory to run out.
  • Added to the Help file a description for E-mail schedule template placeholders [SCHEDULE_NOTES], [SCHEDULE_TASKS], and [SCHEDULE_NOTES_TASKS] that were implemented in Version 2.0.4.1.

Version 2.0.4.4 published on 04/22/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added support for custom reports and upgraded the report engine to use the latest software components.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug that caused certain reports to generate an exception when the Hijri (Islamic) calendar option is selected under the Arabic System Locale in Windows XP/Vista Regional and Language Options.

Version 2.0.4.3 published on 04/04/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • If available, use default proxy server when downloading schedule plans.
  • Added capability to allow custom reports and plug-ins to silently export reports to disk files in pdf, html, excel, or rtf format.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug in the send e-mail wizard that erroneously included employees with no e-mail addresses when e-mailing individual schedules even though the employees were not selected.

Version 2.0.4.2 published on 03/05/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added support for parameters, charts, and graphs in custom reports and upgraded the report engine to use the latest software components.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug that caused a file-not-found error when sending e-mails with iCalendar option to more than one employee.
  • Fixed a bug that caused double-clicking on a row to be ignored when a grid (list) is scrolled down.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the database read-only screen to be occasionally hidden behind other windows.
  • Data fields on a property page are now properly refreshed even when the property page is already visible.

Version 2.0.4.1 published on 02/23/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added three more E-mail schedule template placeholders. They are [SCHEDULE_NOTES], [SCHEDULE_TASKS], and [SCHEDULE_NOTES_TASKS].
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug related to importing e-mailed schedules in iCalendar format into Outlook 2003. The error message is "Cannot import vCalendar file. This error can appear if you have attempted to save a recurring Lunar appointment in iCalendar format. To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar."

Version 2.0.4 published on 02/05/2009

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Enhanced the E-mail Schedule Wizard to allow sending a group schedule to employees who are not part of the group. When selecting the option to send the entire group’s schedule, users can now select additional employees who will receive the group’s schedule.
  • Added the capability to select custom fields to be displayed in the Employee list.
  • Updated the Call Center example schedule to include the assignments of tasks and breaks within each shift.
  • Added support to invoke Snap Schedule plug-ins. A plug-in is an external computer program that can be run from Snap Schedule to perform specialized and/or customized functions that are not available in Snap Schedule.
  • Changed the sort order in the Shift Assignment pane from shift start time to shift description in all groupings.
  • Updated all reports to display only active employees by default and to allow filtering based on employee active status.
  • Upgraded the report engine to use the latest software components.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug that prevented displaying a scheduling conflict alert in the Shift view when an employee is assigned overlapping shifts.
  • Fixed a bug in the overtime computation algorithm. Only straight-time hours will apply toward the computation of overtime hours worked in excess of the weekly limit. Daily overtime hours, worked in excess of the daily limit, will not be counted toward the weekly limit.
  • Fixed the Daily On-call List report to show the total daily on-call employee count for each shift.

Version 2.0.3 published on 12/17/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • This software version is a major release and its database structure has been upgraded to accommodate the new features and enhancements. When opening a schedule file created by previous versions of Snap Schedule 2008, you will be asked to upgrade the schedule file before it can be used. The upgrade process is done seamlessly and should take only a moment to complete.
  • Enhanced the Shift Coverage Planner to include coverage by skill and assignment reason.
  • Added a new feature to allow users to control what information to display on assignment blocks in the Daily, Shift, Calendar, and Task view.
  • Added a new feature to allow start and end time adjustments of any employee shift assignments. When an employee works longer than the shift, you can simply adjust the shift assignment start and end time to reflect the actual time.
  • Revised the Getting Started screen look and feel to make it easier to navigate.
  • Added an option to create a new schedule file using a wizard. The wizard will create a new schedule file then guide you through the steps to enter business information and operational settings, shift information, time off reasons, employee information, and task information as required so you can begin scheduling.
  • Added a Task Schedule Planner to the Shift view for task scheduling within a shift. In addition to shift scheduling, Snap Schedule now lets you schedule tasks within an employee's shift. You accomplish this by first assigning a shift to an employee then schedule various tasks during the shift. Tasks can be of any duration and are assigned to an employee through the same simple drag/drop operations while in the Task View.
  • Added a new form for Task definition, a new Task list, and a new Task category list.
  • Enhanced the Staffing Overview graph to add multi-level filtering by skills and assignment reasons. Use the graph to show hourly staffing profile by position, skill, and assignment reason.
  • Added three new reports related to task scheduling. The Task Assignment Details By Employee report provides you with a roster of who are working where, doing what, and when. Use the Task Hours by Employee Position report to obtain the hours planned for each job position. Use the Task Assignment Summary By Employee report to obtain the hours planned for each task, by employee, for payroll and accounting purposes.
  • Added capabilities to resize the contents of schedule views for printing. You can resize the contents to fit the width of a printed page or to fit the entire contents on one single page.
  • Added the Library and Manufacturing sample databases that include task scheduling examples.
  • Added a new feature to compact the currently used schedule file to reduce its size and to improve performance. As records are added and deleted during normal operation over a long period of time, gaps and unused space may result in the schedule file. This feature re-arranges the data records for better performance and removes any unused space to make the file smaller.
  • Allow multiple email addresses, separated by “;”, to be entered into email data fields. This will allow sending an email to multiple addresses in one operation (eg. emailing a schedule to the employee, supervisor, and HR).
  • Added a Shift Assignment Reasons tab to the Employee form to identify the assignment reasons that are applicable to the employee.
  • Added an option to the Copy/Paste Schedule Assignments form to allow copying task assignments within each shift to destinations.
  • Added right click commands to assign a shift assignment reason to any shift assignment. Right-click on a shift assignment to bring up the context menu and select the command to set shift assignment reason. Only assignment reasons applicable to the selected employee will be enabled.
  • Enhanced the weekly and monthly calendar views to display any task assignments within each shift.
  • Revised the Shift Assignment form to allow for shift start and end time adjustments, to display a summary of shift and time off hours, and to use a tab control for displaying and entering shift and time off assignments.
  • Added a new feature to import custom reports developed by BMS into the schedule file.
Bug fixes
  • None.

 

Version 1.5.3247 published on 11/21/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • None.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed the problem in the Employee Estimated Cost Report where values in the total column were not correctly computed based on assigned and paid time off values.
  • Fixed the bug in the Employee Property Page where data are not saved when the user clicked “Select All” or “Clear All” on authorized locations and skills.

 

Version 1.5.3233 published on 11/07/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Display a progress bar while saving the schedule file for visual feedback and prevent the program from exiting while the file save operation is in progress.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed the intermittent previewing and printing problem that caused some text in the Employee Weekly Calendar and Employee Monthly Calendar reports to become corrupted and unreadable.
  • No longer set the default to the last used printer to prevent Snap Schedule from crashing when the printer or its driver is removed.

Version 1.5.3157 published on 8/25/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added logic to detect overlapped shift assignments and display alerts on the daily schedule view and the Daily Assignment Validation report.
  • Added three new place holders (SHORT_SCHEDULE, MINI_SCHEDULE, MICRO_SCHEDULE) in e-mail schedule template to allow users more options when e-mailing work schedule to hand-held and mobile devices like the BlackBerry.
  • Added support for Ctrl-Arrow keys on Daily and Shift schedule views to shift the entire schedule window left or right.
  • Time values on schedule views and reports are now shown using the same time format as the Windows OS.  To display time values in military time format, simply use the Windows Control Panel to set the Regional and Language Options to display time in 24-hour format.
  • Updated the Online Help file.
Bug fixes
  • Work hours fields in Employee Work Schedule form and Business Information Settings form now accept fractional numbers.
  • The correct shift patterns are now saved in the schedule file when the number of rows in the shift pattern table is reduced.
  • The correct legs are now saved in the schedule file when the number of legs in the schedule plan is reduced.
  • Generate Schedule wizard now generates correct shift assignments when the number of legs in the schedule plan is reduced or the number of rows in the shift pattern table is changed.

Version 1.5.3135 published on 8/01/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • New Getting Started screen with capability to create a new schedule from a pre-designed schedule plan. Our web site has also been updated to include details about the pre-defined schedule plans.
  • The Weekly Assignment Calendar and Monthly Assignment Calendar reports now allow data filtering. The calendar schedules can now be filtered based on shift location, team, shift assignment reason, time off reason, employee home location, position, etc.
  • Concurrent users support: Added logic to allow multiple computers running Snap Schedule to access the same schedule file located on a network. The first computer to open the schedule file will have read/write access while other computers will only have read access and cannot save changes back to the original file.
  • When creating a new employee, Snap Schedule also populates the Position, Schedule Team, and Home location fields with default values using the first entry found on each list. Also, the new employee will be authorized to work at all locations by default.
  • The Generate Schedule Wizard is now modeled after the Create New Schedule from a Pre-designed Plan Wizard in Getting Started screen. Changes include:
    • The Wizard now shows the graphical layout of the selected schedule plan.
    • To specify the schedule period, the user will now enter the start date and the number of repeat cycles to generate.
    • The Review panel showing actual shift assignments is now replaced by a summary panel showing the number of teams, employees, schedule period, and work hours.
  • Enhanced the licensing scheme to accommodate multiple computer licenses.
  • Added logic to disable report printing, exporting and the printing of schedule views while in evaluation mode (30-day free trial).
  • Renamed Rotation Table to Schedule Plan throughout the program.
  • Added logic to check and prevent duplicate employee names.
  • Snap Schedule now runs under Vista 64-bit operating systems.
  • Updated the Online Help file.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed invalid cast exception in V1.0.2988 and earlier when business name is not defined.
  • Fixed SQL file sharing violation error when trying to E-mail schedules or to generate schedules using a schedule file located on a network.

Version 1.0.2988 published on 3/07/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added weeklly and monthly assignment reports.
Bug fixes
  • Fixed bugs in the overtime computations and cost estimate reports.

Version 1.0.2980 published on 2/29/2008

Summary of new features and enhancements
  • Added the ability to dislay multiple shift assignments on the Daily view in cascade or stacked format.
Bug fixes
  • Corrected grouping options on employee assignment pane.