29 Nov 2014 and back

View Current release notes.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.51 release.

Date: 29 November 2014
Functional changes

Addition of agency/consultant portal. A customer using the applicant tracking portal can share the job with an agency and they can add the resumes for the job.
Added an exclude employee feature in group. This will help in excluding specific employees from access by HR managers and is useful if you don’t want management data access (say payroll or benefits) by all HR Managers.
Improvements in appraisal module. Customers can setup a rating with rating only, comment only or both rating and comment option. This allows for capture of comments where required.
Multi-language support added to appraisal and 360 attributes. Now the same appraisal plan can contain attributes in different languages – as specified by users.
Exited employees did not show up in processed / calculated payroll earlier and this created issues in reporting and analytics. This has been fixed. Now all employees whose payrolls are calculated, submitted for approval, approved, finalized or disbursed will show up in the payroll irrespective of their status.
Added an option for customized dates in My leave records. This way employees can view their records for next year as well.
Added configuration option for leave that will allow customer to setup hourly leave for leave records.
Options to allow global settings for appraisal form save instead of setting this for each form.
Internal job posting enabled. Jobs which have the Internal job posting flag will be visible to employees as well.
Cancel workflow implemented for Compensatory off leave.
Linkage between appraisal, goalsheet, 360 modules and the employee communication link. HR Manager can select employees (with relevant status) and send them a reminder message directly through the portal. Earlier they had to explicitly enter the employee names on the employee communication functionality.
Manager name included in appraisal reports.
Filters setup for appraisals and 360 feedback. The filters will help in easily differentiation between different appraisals for the same plan.
Option added to publish and cancel published letter as also print multiple published letters in one go.
Training management allows the employees and managers to suggest new training courses that will be added to the database post approval of HR. Since training courses could be added only by HR managers earlier, this functionality will help HR to collect information on courses more easily.
Implementation for multiple pay period types (weekly, bi-monthly) added to payroll and pay periods can be generated for each. One company could have multiple types of payroll run based on this functionality.

Technical Changes

All messages are completely encrypted. Empxtrack will not show any kind of IDs in messages or URLs making it completely secure and encrypted.
Fixes to Stripe – update card functionality
Insertion of attributes for promotion recommendation form.
Fixes in statutory reports
Added attributes for HTML mobile view to the application. This is getting ready for beta release by the next build and will be selectively enabled for customers.
Multi-language support for messages in Javascript files.
Recruitment configuration tabs will show up on single button instead of tab since this was flowing into multiple lines.
Bug fixes in attendance page where manager could not apply for leave.
Bug fixes in timesheet timeperiod generation where timeperiods were automatically generated for the default time period instead of the selected timeperiod.
Custom report issues related to generation of PDF have been fixed.
Implementation of scroll bar for candidate questionnaire during application process. When the number of questions was large, the candidates were finding it very difficult to fill in the answers.
Bug fixes in audit trail on scheduler invoked jobs (such as leave credit and lapse)
First time monthly processing of payroll sheet was not working correctly. Has been fixed.
Payroll processing rule engine divided into 9 distinct templates to allow changes to specific templates only (during customization) and not the entire payroll engine.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.50 release.

Date: 13 November 2014
Functional changes

Improvements in display of on-boarding forms and a more standardized and usability oriented user interface.
I-9 Form has been divided into section 1 and section 2 as per the applicable standards and upload options provided in On-boarding such that I-9 can be directly moved to the database
Fields visibility rules and validations of on-boarding forms(Address,qualification,dependents,confidential Ids,Experience) linked to HRIS fields configuration. Fields visibility rules removed from onboarding configuration of corresponding forms.
Employee custom fields in to three sections (employee basic details, employment details and other details) and “add new custom field” option has been removed. This is consistent with the option of all other custom fields.
Custom fields visibility for Address, qualification, dependents, confidential Ids, Experience has been implemented in reports. Now we have two reports for qualification (qualification details and certification details) and three reports for address(current address details, permanent address details, Emergency contact details).
Training calendar Reschedule/Cancellation implemented.
Payroll data reports now working on all employees who were disbursed a payroll. It was ignoring exited employees.
Competencies form in appraisal will allow options for rating and comments for each competency. The default option picks the choice for the rating assigned to the competency form.
Competency form will group competencies by Group name. This will allow the competency form to display a header for groups such as Leadership competencies, Behavioral competencies and so on. Ref property: view.attributeCategoryGrouping.InCompetencyForm=no|yes
Goal sheet form will also allow groping by categories. Ref property: view.kraCategoryGrouping.InGoalSheetForm=no|yes
Deletion of records allowed for HRIS records through an audit trail mechanism. An employee (or HR) can mark the record inactive and execute the workflow to allow deletion. This has been enabled for the following: Address, Confidential IDs, Qualifications, Certifications, Job history, Paper & publications
Clean up on mark-exit process. If a customer does not have the Exit module, exit (and current) can be marked by HR from the Edit employee records section. If exit module is purchased, the exit will follow the workflow setup during configuration and rejoin will allow the employee to be marked current.

Technical Changes

Subject line of messages made configurable and module specific messages show up. The implementation is still a WIP.
Fixes to handle the errors when on-boarding descriptions were getting lost.
Fixes to job responsiblity masters to show up in the master setup page
Synchronized on-boarding URL with the server URL
Fixes to recruitment tab visibility for HOD.
Fixes to email setting when user select the option I want to use Empxtrack as Sender.
Bug fixes in activity calendar.
a) This week filter for inter month records.
b) Week and month days not calculated properly.
c) Event on last day of month was not captured.
ESIC report page error fixed.
Updating employee no was not working. Resolved
Bug in setup menu access, non visible tabs for a particular role also being shown in page to manage the visibility.
Login user password will not be stored on the object any longer. Security fix
Duplicate day of leave applied issue resolved when leave is already applied from attendance regularization
Added header and footer for PDF reports when data is downloaded in PDF format. Page numbering being displayed too.
Appraisal tag issue on new enrollments has been fixed.
Caching in messages for higher performance.
Improvements in dao base class for allowing/disallowing update of null values to the tables.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.48 release.

Date: 29 October 2014
Functional changes

Tagging introduced in appraisal while initiating an appraisal. This will help in separating different date based appraisals from each other.
Moved manpower planning to a separate module
In self appraisal form given an option to edit comment in plain/rich text mode.
Reordering of forms based on the appraisal plan
Copy of an exiting feedback plan option has been added.
Payroll : Display of TDS advice to exited employees
HRIS : Configuration options added for HRIS sections of Address, Qualification, Certifications, Dependents.
HRIS: Added options for visibility of HRIS fields with respect to user based groups
Clearing of company directory from cache when an exit, new joining or employee data update happens
Capture of additional fields in new employee addition in HRIS (mother name, father name, marital status). These were only available when the record had been added.
Fixes in validation rules when a leave could be applied from both attendance and leave record at the same time.
Updates to training management module based on client feedback. New workflows, reports, screen changes.
Default permission set (visibility, edit) for miscellaneous records set to HR Manager. HR Manager can setup different kinds of records for employees based on their specific organization needs.

Technical Changes

Encryption applied on plain url text to hide all ids that were showing up.
Company directory data storage moved from session to cache for optimization
Improvements in running java classes from calc engine by support of multiple creation mechanisms.
Support help desk has been introduced for technical support team.
Fixes to organization chart module when SBU was selected as a unit type.
Updates to appraisal header template where redundant elements don’t show up any more.
Issues in upload/download fixed that were showing up in legacy application.
Improvements in dynamic redirection based on the login users tenant for dynamic load balancing
Attendance issue fixes (that were reported by clients)
Field visibility rules in HRIS are now based on a common template for code optimization and centralization.
Quick links and news events will now provide scrolling options in case the number of links increases.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.47 release.

Date: 10 October 2014
Technical Changes

In leave validation, if leave was applied through attendance, there were validation errors that have been addressed.
Mail settings can now be done from front end. This will allow users to enable / disable email as also setup custom headers, subject line and footers.
Automatic server redirection added to the product to allow tomcat stickiness. Now, based on the users company, the user will be redirected to a predefined URL. This allows us to isolate problems in specific tenants.
Fixes in Professional Tax calculations during payroll processing.
Upgrade of product to map to Struts 1.3 and associated upgrade of all the libraries and dependencies.
Fixes in auto-save for Appraisal and 360 module. This will remove the redundant auto-save calls that were being seen.
On-boarding properties were not being mapped correctly to the HRIS (especially custom fields). This has been corrected.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.46 release.

Date: 26 September 2014
Functional Changes

An option to print employee goal sheet by employees and their managers is added.
An option to calculate payment outside the payroll amount with respect to actual and declared investments declarations is added.
An option to capture employee Miscellaneous information is added. A new section “Miscellaneous information details” is now visible to HR manager in view edit employee profile.
The introduction of proxy manager in leave approval workflow is added. When a proxy manager relationship is enabled for a leave type then managers can specify the name of the proxy manager who would be responsible to approve leave of the subordinates in managers’ absence.
Following new reports added to training module:
- Training completion detail
- Training nomination and allocation
- Training feedback details.

Technical Changes

The Organization chart functionality link is moved from Settings >> Employee management to HR Manager Services page.
A property is added to provide an option to construct manpower org structure on the basis of unit/job position.
Security is added on URLs. The URLs now display values in encrypted text instead of plain text.
An option to apply duplicate validation on employees custom fields is added.
The save report bug fixed for column order change on saving reports.
Fixes in Employee wise Monthly Report to display complete data range.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.43 release.

Date: 5 September 2014
Functional Changes

An option to search employees by their date of joining is added to the advanced search functionality.
An option to capture multiple sub-companies information under a company can now be captured on Company setting for payroll page. This information would allow various statutory reports to be generated for multiple sub companies for a company.
An option to store more information about the confidential IDs, while adding the confidential id to the system is added.
A fully configurable questionnaire form is added to the recruitment module. The questionnaire form, if enabled would be available on the candidate portal for the candidates to fill, while they apply for a job. This would help HR Managers to shortlist candidates more easily.
Capability to integrate payroll module with external payroll system is added. Now the externally processed payroll can be displayed in Empxtrack. Further monthly sheet processing can be enabled with purchase of payroll module to allow it to become input for external payroll providers.
A setting to show/hide the Encash button to employees for an encashable leave type is added. If a leave type is made encashable then Encash button would be made visible to employees in My leave section for that leave type.
The Job description gap analysis functionality is added. The functionality allows viewing the employees for a JD and then find out the gap in the skills of employees with respect to that JD.
A functionality to add a check list for each employee is added. The HR manager can create a check list for employees, which can be sent to the authorised persons of different departments for the allotment of various things to the employee, such as I-card, computer, laptop etc.
Employee Skill Sheet functionality added. Employees/managers can add the skills on career profile page through approval workflow after the skill sheet functionality is enabled through Employee data view and update rules page.
A new appraisal form called Skill sheet is added to the appraisal module. The form allows employee/manager to add and/update skills and skills ratings.

Technical Changes

Year wise tax slab management of TDS and Professional tax (PT ) is implemented in payroll module. Earlier, the TDS advise and PT were calculated on the basis of current year tax slab, even for the previous years.
The gratuity amount calculation at the time of F&F calculation for an employee using a template is implemented. The calculation would be based on the standard formula for the calculation of gratuity.
Bug fixes in exit module for investment declaration proof submissions.
The F&F clearance form will now show the last working day of the exiting employee.
Changes made to generate position based hierarchy in organizational chart.
Bug fixes in training module for the:
- Message sent to the concerned HR manager for the initiation of self-nomination process for an employee in case multiple HRs exist.
- Addition of new training programs by HR after the self-nomination approval of an employee.
- Disallow employees to submit the nomination for the same course twice for the same time period.
- Validation of maximum participants in a training program.
- Rescheduling of training calendar.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.42 release.

Date: 19 August 2014
Functional Changes

Advanced search functionality is improved with options to carry out exact search on fields such as employee number and employee name.
An option to view employee printable appraisal from employee side is added.
An option to mark an exited employee as current employee is added for HR managers. This is especially useful for clients who have not purchased the EXIT module.
An option to edit and delete notes by users is added.
A functionality for employee configurable salary structure is introduced. This functionality allows HR Manager to set dependent heads for a salary variable, which may be modified by the employees also through the approval process. The employees in such a case will see their salary structure in My salary details tab with all variables and dependent variable and have the option to edit the dependent variable according to their needs. This is especially useful for tax saving.

Technical Changes

Properties added to set the search pattern options to allow exact search on fields such as employee number and employee name are added.
Fixes done to goalsheet module to show only the non-archived goalsheet for employees on My performance page for a given time period. Also, when a goalsheet is initiated only existing goalsheets in the selected timeperiod will be archived now. Earlier multiple goalsheets were showing up for a given timeperiod and any one of the goalsheet (archived or non-archived) was being displayed randomly.
Changes to My Approvers on employee portal page to display/ hide approver(s) and to show some specific text to the employees.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.41 release.

Date: 4 August 2014
Functional Changes

Time period and data table filters are added to the manage processes page of appraisal, goalsheet, and tracking sheet.
A download option is added to configurable Saved reports in Reports >> My custom reports section.
Rejoin functionality is added to the Full and Final functionality of Employee Exit module.
Employee hierarchy is visually improved to show employee images and information.
Improvements in organization chart where the structure is now being displayed like a tree. Options to traverse the tree, setup multiple job positions per unit, assign employees, budgets and vacant positions are added.
An option to add comments in plain or rich text format is added to competency and goal sheet forms in Appraisal module.

Technical Changes

A property to update employee relationships at any stage of employee appraisal is added. The relationships were frozen in an appraisal post initiation. It led to problems if the manager exited or a relationship changed. This has been fixed and it can now be configured when the appraisal relationships will be finalized. Note, this can happen even at sign-off or acceptance stages although default is still initiation stage.
A property to configure languages known to employees is added.
The Setup monthly sheet process is merged with Run payroll process. The Back to run payroll button and upload / download monthly sheet data button are now available in Not calculated mode.
Fixes done to show only the valid state employees as managers. Earlier, the employees could apply to the manager, who were marked exited from the system.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.40 release.

Date: 22 July 2014
Functional Changes

Graphical representation of Dashboard reports. The Dashboard reports can now also be seen as graphs.
A functionality to allow Manager/HR manager to create a Loan request for their subordinates is added.
The managers can capture notes for their subordinates and can control the visibility of the notes. Various categories for different notes types can be managed through masters.

Technical Changes

Fixes made to potential graph. The potential graph is fixed to show both the x axis and y axis values in increasing order with the lowest value indicated in the bottom left corner. Earlier the x axis values were in increasing order and y axis values were in decreasing order.
The Loans and advances user interface changed with added functionality of role span changes.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.39 release.

Date: 11 July 2014
Functional Changes

Release of Training module.
A new appraisal form called TNI (Training need identification) is added to the Appraisal module.
Each dynamic reports and custom report will now show [Generated by <name of person> at dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm] line at the bottom.
Fixed date formatted values of payroll report corrected in tenant format and excel download.
Send reminder functionality for payroll run is now working.
Employee based reminder functionality is added to Manage >> HR manager services >> Manage reminder.
Employee hierarchy is visually improved.

Technical Changes

Default browser spell check is enabled in CK Editor.
Fixes made in Attendance module to improve performance while processing attendance data.
A workflow method is enhanced to allow submitting of an attached file without saving it first.
Fixes made in Loan and Advances module to improve performance while viewing loan request of team members by HR manager.
The Update employee data for multiple employees link is moved from Employee record settings page to HR Manager Services page.
The Upload job descriptions goals link is moved from Employee record settings page to Setup Masters >> Setup Job description page.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.38 release.

Date: 26 June 2014
Functional Changes

New messages show up in bold style in Activities list >> Received tab of a user to show unread messages. On clicking View button, the message will be marked read (non-bold). The message can be marked as new again on clicking Mark new button.
An option is provided in the Appraisal plan setting on the Competency form to create JD based competency attributes in the Appraisal module.
Custom reports created for clients can be downloaded in CSV, PDF, and MS Excel formats.
Fixes done to Payroll module to identify the valid salary structure for employees to process their payroll.

Technical Changes

Fixes made in Payroll module to show Gratuity variable as a salary variable.
Addition of a function to mark messages read.
Addition of a method to support report generation in browser, CSV, PDF, and MS Excel file formats.
Changes made to top menu to improve the visibility in mobile and tab devices. The auto URL movement is removed from the top menus to avoid landing on specific page. The View Help and Explore menus are excluded from this change. Now a menu would open up on clicking top menu on mobile devices. The desired options can be selected from the menu that appears to move to specific pages.
CK Editor upgraded to the latest version.
Fixes made to correct the special character occurrence in CK Editor on pressing Enter key.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.37 release.

Date: 12 June 2014
Functional Changes

The extra payroll preferences variables can now be added to the payroll module, as per client requirements.
The cyclic employee relationships can be created for employees for 360 feedback. An employee can now be a reviewer for another employee and also input the other employees’ feedback. This cyclic relationship was earlier disallowed in Empxtrack.
Integration of messaging with calendar applications. Feature available in outlook and other email clients where calendar is supported.
The functionality to import job description goals in appraisal forms is added to the Appraisal module.
The functionality to update employee data for multiple employees is added to the system.
Activity window will now allow multiple messages to be hidden in one go. This is especially useful for HR Managers who get lots of notifications and need to clear the messages.

Technical Changes

Addition of property that allows/disallows module wise cyclic relationships.
Spell checking options have been enabled in rich text editor available in Empxtrack with both checking as you type and pop-up spell checker.
The employee payslip and form 16 can now be downloaded in PDF and zip formats.
The following links are moved from Payroll settings page to Manage payroll page. This would allow HR Managers to manage the processes and Settings will remain with a restricted set of employees only (typically Administrators):
- Setup salary structures
- Initiate investment declarations
- Payroll preferences

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.36 release.

Date: 2 June 2014
Functional Changes

Login of external users is made possible in Empxtrack application.
Functionality added to allow employees to provide their other income declarations.
An option to set default theme for all the employees of a company is added.
Employee search wizard added to Employee TDS advice and Form 16 statutory reports to allow individual records filtering for employees.
Three optional sections: Birthdays, Doj anniversary, and News and events added to the Activities list tab on the home page.
The ability to re-order the Activities list sections on the home page is added.

Technical Changes

ClearCacheValue bug fixed. The cache was not getting cleared for individual objects.
The super tenant file can now be processed as required, even when overridden.
Major performance improvement while reading employee relationship via worklfows. Now only the required relationship data that needs to be shown to the user can be picked up from the database instead of all the relationship data.
Fixes related to the assignment of a new salary structure to newly added employees from View/ Edit Employee data page done.
Issues in Exit details report fixed to display retired and absconding employees, which were not appearing in the report earlier.
Fixes in payroll rule engine to ignore Monthly Sheet values while running TDS advice for employees.
Fixes done to Form16 to show TDS details properly.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.35 release.

Date: 16 May 2014
Functional Changes

The functionality to send pay slips to employees through email is added to the payroll module.
PT Challan report is added to payroll module.
An option to add/update employee monthly sheet is added to the Full and Final functionality of Employee Exit module.
Manage Company Goals functionality is moved from Goal sheet settings page to Performance management>> Manage processes page.
A new functionality to capture payment details on approved expense request by HR managers is added to the Travel and Expenses module.

Technical Changes

Form 24 processing improved to support any new format changes to the form by the Indian government that occurs almost every quarter. The following changes have been made:
- Mapping of the file to the excel file shared by the government on every update.
- Fixes related to the handling of Section 16 deductions (PT).
- Proper handling of surcharge in case of very high salary.
While setting up monthly sheet variables in payroll module, the extra parameters that are not a part of CTC can now be captured and managed.
The design and position of the action button is changed for the full and final page.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.34 release.

Date: 2 May 2014
Functional Changes

New functionality to capture payments outside payroll (such as rewards, bonus, commissions) added to calculate accurate taxes for employees.
‘Input employee 12 B’ functionality is moved from Payroll settings section to Manage payroll section.
The salutations of employees are now captured with their names on View / Edit employee and My personal profile pages.
All Payroll reports are now downloadable in excel format.
The payroll reports are now visible on the locked payroll time periods also.
The managers can now view all the appraisals in the selected time period or the most current appraisal in the selected time period on the Manage Appraisals page. Earlier the managers could view only the most current appraisals of the team members.
The option to view tracking sheets (associated with Goalsheet) moved from Goalsheet page to Manage goalsheet page. This will help the manager to quickly view tracking sheets associated with a goal sheet.

Technical Changes

Cache object get was returning original object in some specific cases. Fixed
Fixes to Attendance module to:
- Capture the correct status of leave days while approving a leave request.
- Apply leave at the time of attendance regularization.
Download leave transaction functionality issues resolved.
Address Details Report to display contact details even if all the three types of address are not available for employees.
Appraisal module to display employee appraisals to managers for the selected time period. Earlier only the appraisals for the current time period were being displayed.
Conversion of all charts and dashboards to Google charts (from JFreeChart)
Download of payroll reports in Excel (instead of CSV) – integration with POI.
Issue related to saving expense sheet created by HR manager in Travel & Expense module resolved.
Blank page issue on saving reasons for exit types in exit type master resolved.
Wrong data issue and UI validations fixed in Download Leave details functionality.
Notification messages issue fixed in Time period settings.
Employee profile pages displaying a foreign character on user interface in IE browser resolved.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.33 release.

Date: 18 April 2014
Functional Changes

The Tracking Sheet functionality is added to the Goalsheet module to capture the goal achievements for the employees.
A new report on the investment declaration for employees is added to the payroll module. The report is visible through Manage >> Manage payroll >> View statutory reports.
Employee communication functionality is added under the HR manager services group to allow HR managers to send passwords and emails to employee(s).
A functionality to view the Job description for an employee in printable view format is added. The job description for an employee can be seen through My profile and My career profile pages.
A functionality to capture the overall comments by the employee /manager to the Submit form of the employee appraisal is added in the Appraisal module.
The Employment Details Full data report can now be downloaded in Excel format.

Technical Changes

Bug fixed in payroll module for the wrong calculation of salary heads while assigning a salary structure to an employee.
Bug fixed in payroll module for editing salary structure with new active heads. Earlier the active heads added through ‘Variables for payroll run’ functionality were not shown.
Email ids of exited employees modified with ‘-exited’ phrase so that the email ids can be reused. The email id of the exited employee ‘abc’ would be modified from ‘abc@companyname.com’ to ‘abc-exited@companyname.com’.
The pay periods in the payroll module can now be edited.
Bug fixed in the Employee Investment Declaration functionality in payroll module. Earlier the actual amounts and proof submitted fields were also getting copied when previous year’s declarations were copied by employees. Now only the amounts greater than zero are copied to the current financial year.
Bugs fixed and additions made in Exit module:
- Clearance status counter added for separating employees seeking clearance from different departments.
- F & F Report exception bug fixed.
- Saving Investment declaration authorization error fixed.
- Wrong calculation of final payout amount bug fixed.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.32_2 release.

Date: 03 April 2014
Functional Changes

The Employee Active/Inactive salary structure report improved to display active, inactive and all the employees.
A new module called Ticket Help desk added to the application to handle employee complaints.
A new Payment option called Stop Payment is introduced while saving payment mode in Payroll module to stop the salary payment of the employees, if required. The employees for whom stop payment option is selected will not appear in Bank report.
Bugs fixed in employee letter generation functionality. The letters generated can be published when desired.
Functionality added to manage post task completion activities in the system.
New modules Claims and Loans & Advances added to the application to handle employees’ claims and loans and advances through workflow.

Technical Changes

Tenant creation code optimized with the removal of countrystatemapping at the time of new tenant creation.
Bugs fixed in payroll initialization. Now the company name allocated to an employee can be retrieved to handle the employee’s statutory requirements (Form 16, Form 24), if the tenant used by the employee consists of multiple companies.
Claim variables reserved for claim accruals handling. Now the claim value can be accrued for the employees to the next months for payroll purpose.
Code optimized for wage variables handling for payroll calculations. The redundant value – ‘Yearly’ stored for the overtime wage variable is removed.
Payroll rule engine bug fixed with the removal and movement of some pre tax benefit deduction variables.
Code optimized with the removal of history taxable allowance variables from the default variable mapping, which were being calculated unnecessary.
A property variable added to payroll module to handle payroll adjustments at the desired stage of payroll process.
Fixed an issue in the Calc Engine code processor which occurred when a non-matching Else was found inside the comment and the comment was in an If block.
During multi-language property reading, if a property value in a specific language is not available, the equivalent English value was not being displayed and a null value was being shown. This has been taken care of.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.32_1 release.

Date: 20 March 2014
Functional Changes

Leave encashment functionality added to the leave module of the application. A complete configurable workflow is available to allow employees to encash leaves and this can be setup during the setup of the leave type.
Search functionality added to Help. On clicking Search, a search box shows up that allows you to type in your help query. As you are typing, all related pages show up and you can select them to jump to the help. This can help users to quickly find details on any feature.
Direct help linkage of application with empxtrack.com/help/ using embedded views.
Significant improvements in the initial enrollment process to make the process easier for new enrollees.
Post purchase setup process simplified to allow clearing of trial transactions and employees very-very simple. The initial setup of HR Manager also improved.
Fixes to attendance to not allow any changes (Start, Resume, Break) when the end time is specified during regularization.
Cancellation of interviews and tests allotted to candidates being allowed now.
Fixed the problem of incorrect recruiters showing up. Now all HR Managers with Applicant Tracking functionality will be treated as recruiters.

Technical Changes

Email templates and the login page improved to display the employee no automatically when a person clicks on the ‘click here’ link on their email.
Added skill and competency masters to allow the development of a common skill bank.
Fixes to shift display issues during shift setup.
All message text moved to common database. Now messages can support multiple languages too.
Upgrade of FCKEditor to CKEditor to allow a better user experience while capture of formatted text (office documents).

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.32 release.

Date: 11 March 2014
Functional Changes

The help section on the application pages is improved with the addition of slideshare presentations. The help section on each page now contains a slideshare presentations link along with the FAQs and a detailed help link.
Setup of customer company name as a part of try.empxtrack.com and live.empxtrack.com.
Global Groups UI changed. Steps to create a global group added and label changes made for clarity.
Capability to import goalsheet goals in the variable pay plan with options for customizations.
Setup of I-9 form in US compliance section. Employees would be able to capture the I-9 functionality besides already capturing the W-4 functionality. This is applicable to the US based customers.
Updates to the setup process post purchase to make it very simple and single click based.
Beta release of Customer management module to allow invoicing and payments to be managed by Saigun accounts teams with Notifications, payment capture etc.
Improvements in identification of duplicate candidate profile. Algorithm developed to identify candidates not only on Email basis (but additional fields such as location, past educational qualifications, past experience and score rating mechanism).
Fixes to Job Descriptions to allow multiple deletions (if required).

Technical Changes

The search group creation limit increased. The user group limit is increased from 3 to 10 and the global groups limit is increased from 10 to 50.
Capability to add 4 custom tabs (in case required as a customization) for each of the following sections My Profile, Manage, Settings and Reports. This will allow custom report creation and custom functionality creation for our legacy customers.
Fixes in recruitment to correctly identify recruiters for job allocation.
Attachment uploading issues in IE have been fixed.
Redirection of help to the correct page within the application in the FAQ section.
Consistency improvement in User Interface. All buttons and tables now follow a common stylesheet.
Collapsible My Profile, View Career and View employee profile pages with improvements in User Interface.
Sandwich style option button introduced on all pages.
Mobile compatibility and style sheet improvements such that menus work on mobile devices.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.29 release.

Date: 22 February 2014
Functional Changes

Addition of thoughts for all the tenants.
Appraisal UI improved:
- The appraisal header appears for the selected employee on clicking on the header icon that appears on My appraisal and My Team appraisal sections, when All attributes for an employee mode is selected (if applicable).
- A scrollable horizontal list of all the selected employees appears with images to a manager. The appraisal of the employee can be viewed by clicking on the employee’s image.
Ticket functionality is introduced. The users can now login issues related to the product through the system itself.
Ability to configure the Pre-payroll run report has been added.
The activity page changed to allow the merging of quick links and messages. Also the quick link can be dismissed if not required.
Searching and sorting capability on appraisal in the manager mode. This allows you to search for employees with specific statuses. Applicable to other roles such as HR Manager, HOD and CEO.

Technical Changes

The mechanism to manage roles and permissions in Recruitment module is improved. The recruitment management can be assigned to all the managers including HOD and CEO and can also be assigned to a group of employees, who do not possess any role.
Dynamic report generation is now possible with different employee authorization sets that include: current, all, and valid employees.
A provision to mark employee attendance as soon as an employee logs in to the system is introduced.
Fixes of issues in appraisal where all attribute options were not available for all employees.
Removal of role from an employee when their assignment is removed from a specific role. This was leading to incorrect roles being displayed for employees.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.25 release.

Date: 04 February 2014
Functional Changes

MyProfile report optimized to include valid employees only (Current, Resigned, on F & F). Earlier the report included exited employees also.
Display and usability of buttons improved in Payroll module. The reports and buttons that used to come on the left hand side at the time of processing payroll are now placed in a much more usable fashion. Report pop-up indicates the reports available for a specific payroll tab and buttons come at the top and are always visible.
Release of variable pay module.
Option for allocation of modules to HR Managers (such that we can have separate HR Managers for payroll processing, leave, performance management, recruitment, travel and expense and so on)
Release of ticketing system.

Technical Changes

Completely new User Interface with restructuring of menus for better space optimization, help tips, FAQs, and bread crumbs consistency.
Company PF deduction rule corrected for override values. The changes can be made by going to Settings >> Payroll Settings >> Payroll Preferences. The settings can be made at the company level and also at an individual employee level.
Super tenant upgraded to run some template code. This would help in support activities and would make changes or corrections faster for clients.
Attributes can be added on default feedback form of appraisal for multiple clients.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.24 release.

Date: 23 January 2014

Functional Changes

Reports view and management improved.
- Reports can be viewed in multiple pages. Maximum 2000 records can be viewed in a browser
- You can see the selected number of records on a page
- Records can be searched on keywords at the time of viewing a report.

Technical Changes

Optimized HOD and other employee roles according to employee mapping.
Improved group handling by separating spans and filters.
Reports can be sorted in ascending or descending order on each field as well as combined with other fields at the time of viewing a report.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.23 release.

Date: 10 January 2014
Functional Changes

Attendance dashboard improved. The attendance dashboard now displays the monthly attendance of all the team members to the managers.
Timesheet workflow enabled. The employees can now fill their timesheets and submit them to their managers. The managers can now approve the timesheets of the subordinates.
Bug fixed for photograph upload. The employee/ HR manager can now successfully change the uploaded photograph. Initially, if an HR manager or an employee was changing the photograph, the page was not displaying the updated photograph of the employee.
Home page improved for quick links management. The HR manager, manager and the employees can now manage their quick links. More than 30 quick link icons are now available for the quick links setup and selection.
The Thought for the day, Today’s Poll, and Quick links and documents links now appear on the Quick links tab of the home page.
Onboarding module improved with new forms and document attachment provision and inclusions of USA based compliance requirements. The W4 Form and I-9 Information forms are added to On-boarding module to cater to the needs of US based clients. In addition, the related documents can be attached to various on-boarding forms.

Technical Changes

Calc Engine Functions corrected. The parameters of all the calc engine functions are corrected for standardized calling convention.
Modularization of filters. All the filters are now combined together to allow a common filter setup.
Updates in default variable mapping of payroll variables. All the payroll variable labels are now picked up from the database. This ensures the synchronization of variables names among HRIS, Self Services, and Payroll (including salary structures) modules and the elimination of the need to rename the payroll variables among these modules.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.21 release.

Date: 19 December 2013
Functional Changes

Payslip view available in two different formats. The payslips can now be viewed in either Legacy or Lite application format.
Use of scheduler for attendance uploads. The attendance can be uploaded and processed through the scheduler in the Attendance module.
Use of different fields as an employee identifier. A number of different fields can now be used as an employee identifier instead of just two fields: empNo or email, used previously
Home page customization improved. The ‘Thought for the day’ and ‘Quick Links and Documents’ sections can now be shown or hidden on the home page.
Added option in Appraisal for HR Managers and Managers to print a specific form or the entire appraisal for one or more employees. This will help the managers to selectively choose forms for printing. For instance HR managers can print final scores or training needs only for a group of employees.

Technical Changes

Solved synchronization issue, which was causing blank page to appear arbitrarily anywhere in the Empxtrack application.
Improved operator handling in Attendance module.
Search process improved. The custom employee filters are no more associated with roles. They can be independently created and can be used in conjunction with any selected role.
Fixed font for Help tips. A separate font was not matching with the rest of the application.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.19 release.

Date: 29 November 2013
Functional Changes

Option to avoid employee view and selection added in payroll. If this option is enabled, all employees that are the part of the group are automatically included in payroll run and reports. This helps while processing payroll for large employee sets.
Option to hide and display side menu bar and tips on each page.
Tips added on all pages of the product for self-training.
On-boarding allows the addition of documents for each item in the on-boarding request. For instance a candidate can now add a document against each dependent (say birth certificate) or a document against each confidential ID (eg. visa, passport, driving license, …)
Setup of variables for capture of 12B returns. Applicable to India payroll
Option to print multiple Payslips.
Updates to recruitment to allow candidates to submit profile without full registration. This should assist candidates to quickly complete the application process and also submit the resume. In addition, added feature to hide the Saigun copyright in footer when the job portal is displayed on customer career site.
Addition of group-wise weekends in Attendance. For customers who do not use Shift Patterns but have weekends setup for Employee Groups, this option will easily help the definition of weekends and accurate calculation of leave days.

Technical Changes

Optimizations in data upload.
Inclusion of bread-crumbs on all Settings pages for easy navigation. Bread-crumbs added for many user pages too.
Label changes allowed tenant wise. A specific label can be changed for a specific customer.
Addition of calc engine functions for reading excel files. This will allow Empxtrack to import data directly from Excel instead of CSV. Although this feature has been tested for 2 customers, it is still being considered in beta and will be officially released in a few weeks.
Setup of descriptions for all on-boarding forms. This will be applicable to new tenants only.
Bug fixes in employee selection, multi-page navigation, assign employee in salary structure, financial time period generation, on-boarding, user Interface and icon improvements across the site and adding consistency in fonts across the application.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.18 release.

Date: 20 November 2013
Functional Changes

Employee exit without F&F. Now the employee can be exited from the system without performing his/her F& F to calculate the final payments. This functionality is required in cases where we don’t want to process the final payroll. For example we do not want to process F&F in absconding employees cases and in a case where the customer has not acquired the payroll module.

Technical Changes

Improved employee name display. Now the employee name can be displayed in any format, such as: First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name or Last Name, Middle Name, First Name, or Last name, First name etc.
Synchronization of Employee updates with Primary Organization Structure in Manpower Planning module. When fields of an employee are updated in HRIS, the employee details are automatically updated in the organization structure. This allows the employee to automatically become a part of a new unit in the organization structure.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.15 release.

Date: 12 October 2013
Functional Changes

Display of label on axis is controlled for dashboard graphs. The display of X axis or Y axis labels can be removed, if required.
Two graphs in Bell curve. The Bell curve graph that is used in Performance management module to show the performance of employees can now show two graphs. One for the expected performance of the employees and other for the actual company’s performance. This allows you to see a clear difference between the actual and the expected performance of employees.
Correct calculations of employee salary structures even when salary heads have cyclic-dependencies.

Technical Changes

Improved data upload mechanism. The data uploads are made faster by making use of a temporary storage space instead of using a data table, before uploading the data into the database.
A number of performance and memory improvements for faster caching, clearing and finding.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.12 release.

Date: 13 September 2013
Functional Changes

The customized reports created by the users can be saved now. This will help HR and all other senior level employees pick and choose the appropriate fields in specific reports (Dashboards or detailed data) and save them with a new name. The reports will show up in My Custom Reports section.
The centralization of text complete for My Profile, Leave, Attendance and some parts of Manage and Settings. This will help in the multi-language support.

Technical Changes

Improved caching. The cache need not be cleared every time there is a change implemented for a customer. This will lead to significant performance improvements in comparison to earlier version where the entire cache had to be rebuilt post a change – sometimes for all customers.
Complete removal of support for Struts string handling. There were a number of duplicate strings that had come up in the product . Change to these was difficult since different modules handled these. By moving all text to database we now have capabilities to support multiple languages (9 + English) as also have a more centralized mechanism to store string data.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.11 release.

Date: 7 September 2013
Functional Changes

The Employee status handling is improved. The ‘report to’ and ‘reportee’ relationships of an employee can be made inactive whenever the status of the employee is changed.
The payroll management is improved. The payroll preferences for a company and its employees and can be defined as follows:
- A company can define whether the employees of the company are eligible for ESI and PF.
- A company can define the maximum PF deduction amount for the company.
- A company can define the maximum PF contribution amount of the company.
- A company can define whether the investments of its employee should be considered for tax calculations or not.
- A company can define taxable and non -taxable payout rules.
- Whether the investments of an employee should be considered for tax calculations or not can be defined.
- Whether an employee is eligible for ESI and PF or not can be defined.
- The mode of house rent exemption can be defined for an employee.
- The maximum amount for employee PF deduction and maximum amount for company’s PF contribution can be defined for an employee.
- The taxable and non -taxable payout rules can be defined for an employee.

Technical Changes

The time capture/ display accuracy is improved. The time is now captured and stored in milliseconds and this will help in audit trails of any data changes.

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.10 release.

Date: 23 August 2013
Functional Changes

The visibility of records on a page is improved. The number of records visible on a page can now be defined in the system.
The visibility of records in a report can be defined. The default visibility of records in a report is 500. The value can be increased or decreased.
The HR Admin and HR Manager roles are separated and can be distinctly defined in the system. The HR Admin can now see all the functionality tabs and make selected tabs visible to HR Manager.

Technical Changes

Improved query creation while creating global and local groups.
Saigun API is improved for:
- encrypted strings creation
- returned function values
- reading of mass workflows

Technical and functional changes included in the Empxtrack build 5.9 release.

Date :19 August 2013
Functional Changes

Users can now try the selected modules during user enrollment. Earlier the users were not allowed to select the desired modules.
New API objects are developed for the following modules:
- WS_Employee_Travel for Travel module
- WS_Employee_Expense for Expense module
- WS_Employee_SalaryStructure for Salary Structure module in payroll
- WS_Employee_PayrollHeads for payroll
Added functionality to allow download of employees’ salary break up.
Path: Payroll Setting >> Upload Salary Breakup for Employees
The date of birth of employees can now be displayed selectively.
The employee number can be automatically generated by the system using template mechanism.
HR Manager can see the hierarchy of employees in the company.
Filters are improved to allow:
- Filtering of data on sub groups.
- Single and multiple employee search.
- Managers to find their subordinates.

Technical Changes

Improved workflow management. Multiple workflows can be managed easily by the application.
Iterator is modified to make the processing of statements faster. This will result in performance improvement.
Data security is improved to allow return of only required data by the queries.
Improved message update. Latest and updated messages will be picked by the application.