Files

John Cardinal 369f180a71

2021-02-15 23:25:18 +00:00

8.9 KiB

Raw Blame History

CHANGES FROM AYANOVA VERSION 7

Overview

Starting with version 8, AyaNova was completely re-written. Our goals in this were to make AyaNova easier to use, modernize aging code, take advantage of the latest technologies and move to a modern run on any device approach.

This page documents the changes most relevant to everyday users of AyaNova however there were also many other technical changes of interest to system administrators and installers which are documented in our Technical changes from v7 page of this documentation.

User interface changes from v7

AyaNova 7 had several different user interfaces: the main interface was a Windows desktop application and as optional add-on products we had several different web browser interfaces for varying levels of devices. Each web interface had a limited sub-set of the full features in the Windows application and required separate installation and configuration procedures.

AyaNova 8 has one "progressive" web application based interface only that adapts itself automatically to the device format. Any device on any platform with a modern web browser from a smart phone to a full sized desktop computer can use all features of AyaNova equally. This means you can use AyaNova on an iPhone, Android, Windows desktop, Mac, Linux etc.

Having one web application interface means there is nothing to install or update on all user devices and ensures that we will always have all features available to all users.

In order to support the front end "client" devices using AyaNova, there is now a back end self contained AyaNova server that handles all requests and can be hosted on Linux, Windows, Mac either onsite or with a web hosting provider.

Existing feature changes

One of our main goals with AyaNova 8 was to make AyaNova easier to use and add many new features and improvements based on feedback from our customers. In order to support this some major areas of AyaNova have been changed:

Clients renamed

Clients have been renamed to Customers

Client User's and Contacts

Customers in AyaNova 8 now have unlimited Contacts as a seperate collection of User type objects so you optionally allow them to login to use the Customer interface and subscribe to Customer specific notifications etc.

Importing from AyaNova 7 will result in a Customer Contact type User being created for each v7 Customer or HeadOffice type User account and in addition a Contact will be created in v8 if the v7 Client has a name set in the "Contact" text field with the Client phone and email numbers being re-used for the contact created this way. The Contact notes text field in v7 that is intended for listing extra contacts will be imported to the v8 general Customer Notes field as there is no way to safely import that freehand text field as additional Contact type users in v8.

As with all User / Contact accounts created in v8 no login is possible by those users until the administrator allows it and assigns a password so there is no security risk of Contact users logging in that previously could not.

Purchase orders / receipts

Purchase orders and receipts have been combined in v8 and are no longer separate objects.

The various rules around Purchase order editing have been eliminated. In v8 purchase order editing ability is no longer controlled by their Status and a PO can be edited anywhere any time. Behind the scenes AyaNova will make the necessary adjustments to inventory to support any edit changes made to purchase orders if they have already affected inventory or work order item part requests. This allows for easy edits when things change post order, for example if a supplier has changed a price or an item has been replaced by another one after being ordered.

Status is still available and can be set to any value at any time as users need for displaying in lists and controlling the process. AyaNova itself will not set the PO status automatically at any time.

Part serial numbers

Serial numbers have been separated from inventory for v8.

They now reside in a collection of serials for each Part and you can select from the list or enter alternatives or none at all at any time. This supports the many cases where users requested the ability to be more free-form with their serial numbers to allow for mistakes or unique needs but still record them in the system when they are consumed on work orders for warranty purposes etc.

Importing from v7 will place any existing serials into the serial number collection automatically.

Localized text renamed

Localized text has been renamed to Translation

Security groups -> Authorization Roles

Security groups have been replaced by a role based authorization system. In v7 you would select a security group for a user to restrict their access to objects in AyaNova. In v8 a user is now assigned one or more Authorization Roles which controls their access. Roles are pre-defined and pertain to the type of user for example there are roles for Inventory, Accounting, Business administration, Technician, Subcontractor etc. Whichever roles you assign to a user give them access to those areas of AyaNova.

Importing Users from AyaNova 7 will automatically set imported Users to have no role in order to protect information security; the business administrator will need to set each user to the most appropriate new roles after import is completed. For more about importing from a business administration standpoint see the business administration import guide and for more about the techncial aspects of the import process see the technical import guide.

For details see the Authorization roles guide for more information.

Record history

In AyaNova 7 there was a Record history feature which would show who created an object and when it was created and who last edited an object and when. No intermediate changes were tracked, in other words you couldn't see any history of changes, only the most recent. In v8 we have expanded this feature into a full log and renamed it the Event log. Now, (for all major objects) AyaNova will keep a log of every time an object was created, retrieved, updated and deleted and which user did it a log format so you can see a history of who made changes and when.

Reports

todo: reports, major differences from v7 here

Wiki

The Wiki feature has been changed substantially based on user feedback.

Editor

Previously there was a hybrid Wiki system, remote users (WBI) would interact with an HTML editor and HTML representation of the wiki document and windows AyaNova users would interact with a "rich text" editor similar to Wordpad. This required behind the scenes translations between Rich text format and HTML format and the results were not always compatible. In addition, it would have been very difficult to edit Wiki pages on small screen devices.

Now, a Wiki document is edited using Markdown a simple plain text formatting language. This allows us to provide an efficient and easy to use editor for Wiki pages that will work on any AyaNova supported device.

Embedded files

Previously users were able to embed files into a Wiki document which was in turn stored directly in the AyaNova database which could cause issues and lead to longer backup and restore times. Now, we have expanded this feature into it's own separate Attachments feature

Documents / Wiki Embedded files -> Attachments

All attached and embedded file features have been consolidated in v8 into a new Attachments feature.

Attachment storage
- in v7 embedded wiki files were stored inside the database, now Attachments are stored in a special folder in the file system to avoid bloating the database.
- In v7 Documents were simply links to existing files visible to the workstations / server; file attachments are stored in a special folder managed by the AyaNova server making it easier to backup and restore and ensure all data is consolidated in one folder.
Rename - can now rename an attached file
Notes - there is now a notes field

New features in AyaNova 8.0

todo: new features here

8.9 KiB Raw Blame History