COMOPS EvENTS

SEPTEMBER 2015

GREETINGS FROM THE CEO Welcome to Issue 13 of The ComOps Bulletin. The last few months have been very busy and have seen us welcome new clients; Palazzo Versace and Max Fashion, and new team members; Barry Laws, Support Desk Manager, Bree Suters, Consultant, and Ily Dean, Sales Executive to the ComOps family. Our long term commitment to the ports and logistics market was demonstrated when ComOps exhibited Microster at the 2015 TOC Container Supply Chain Asia event in Singapore. ComOps was also an exhibitor at the AHRI National Convention & Exhibition in Melbourne as a leading provider in the Workforce management software industry. At both events, we were able to present our ComOps’ solutions and demonstrate how we are able to improve productivity, reduce labour costs and ensure compliance while driving down the cost for our customers. Coming up on September 17 - 18, we will be at the TAPS Workplace Review 2015 in Sydney. Continuing on with the implementation of our enhanced customer communication plan that was announced in the previous issue, our first round of Customer Forums for E-tivity and Microster clients were recently held in Melbourne and Sydney. The forums are designed to keep our clients better informed of all things to do with ComOps, provide updates on the products and the company. They also provided me with the perfect opportunity to introduce myself and become more familiar with our clients and their needs. Stay tuned as we will be holding another round of industry based customer forums later this year. We have introduced a new section to the newsletter for E-tivity and Microster tips to help assist our clients, which forms another part of our enhanced communication plan. The product tips section will be a constant in our upcoming newsletters. If you have some tips you would like to share, please send them through to your account manager for consideration in the next Issue. In the last issue, we introduced the next generation of E-tivity 5.0, a 100% web based solution built with state of the art web technology, HTML5/CSS3 standard. I am pleased to announce that the project is going well with the first phase of BETA testing completed in May and phase 2 and 3 in June and July. We are now entering our final phase of Beta Testing with 5.3 which was released on 9th September. This final phase will run until Christmas and then we are expecting to commence staged client rollouts (with selected clients initially) commencing at the end of January. If you would like to be part of the next Phase of BETA testing please contact your account manager to express your interest. These are exciting times for ComOps and I look forward to sharing new company updates, initiatives and client stories in the next issue.

Gerry Williams CEO, ComOps

PRODUCT UPDATES ComOps Microster Blueprint Using Microsoft’s advancements in server side web technology, and partnering that with Google’s latest user interface technology, Blueprint is taking advantage of the features provided to offer customers a much richer experieince, and combining simple design techniques, with highly extensible software architecture.

MICROSTER Compatibility As with all web applications, browser compatibility is an absolute necessity. In the past, developers have had to resort to a cavalcade of clunky, poorly performing checks, while asking the browser what version it is. Rather than use this outdated approach to web development, we’ve introduced feature detection. Feature detection allows anybody to very quickly get a summary on how well their browser will do running the application. Rather than ask the browser what version it is, we run tests, to see what it can do. From there, we can make intelligent decisions on how to display an alternative. For example, if your browser fails the “Touch” feature test (see right) – then we will make sure all “Touch” functionality is replaced with mouse support.

MICROSTER User Authentication With web applications becoming standard practice for everything from daily deals to internet banking, it’s not surprising that people are starting to suffer from “too-many-accounts-andpasswords” syndrome. With Blueprint, we want users to be able to sign up or sign in with any of the existing accounts they have, but still be supported in the ComOps product family. To resolve this, we’ve designed an authentication mechanism, which allows us to add more types of logins than ever before. At the moment, we support 35 account types. Account types include; Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PayPal, Salesforce, Windows, and many more. Ask us for the full list. If your users have any one of these accounts, we can support them!

MICROSTER Dashboards With the latest in charting technology at your fingertips, the new dashboard functionality in Blueprint will allow you to get spanning overviews, or up to the minute detail about your workforce.

ETivity HTML5 The Next Phase The E-tivity 5.0 HTML5 project is going well with the first 3 phases completed and the final phase commencing now until Christmas. Phase 1 of our new Dashboards module has been implemented in HTML5 and were well received at our recent Industry Dashboard Sessions. In the next phase of the Dashboards, we will be introducing a ‘drill down’ functionality to provide users the ability to go deeper into the underlying data and add some additional dashboards. We are then taking the feedback from our industry specific sessions into phase 3 of our Dashboards that we are hoping to deliver mid 2016. These will also include some HR dashboards and absenteeism trends. If you are interested to know more about this new module, please contact your account manager.

ETivity EZI time device trade in As per our recent correspondence, ComOps are offering an EZI time device trade in for devices that are no longer supported due to unavailability of parts and service. Please request further information from your account manager if interested.

COMPANY UPDATES ON THE MOVE In March this year, Barry Laws joined the ComOps team as the new Manager of the Support Desk. During his initial analysis of the support team he found that it was under resourced and we were inadequately addressing the backlog of support calls, putting undue pressure on the team, across the business, and impacting customer satisfaction. It was clear that this was where increased focus and attention were required to improve customer satisfaction. As a result of these findings, three new Support Analysts were employed in mid-April to assist with the open support tickets. The combined effort of the new team has driven down the number of open tickets quite dramatically. The first stages of the alignment of the Microster and E-tivity support teams has now taken place with the E-tivity support team and one analyst for the Newcastle Microster support team now working out of the North Sydney office. The other two members of Microster support team will remain in Newcastle for the foreseeable future. The combined team of 9 now represent the ComOps support desk. Next stages of the alignment and rebranding of the support team are well under way. There were many touch points for the team and a single IVR has now been implemented covering all three products – Microster, E-tivity and Salvus. We are also reviewing our internal processes and documentation. Subsequently the new ComOps Support & Maintenance Policy document is almost complete and will be used to on-board new customers. The document covers how to contact ComOps support, the role of the support desk, ticket logging, escalation, account management and professional services. Please reach out to your account manager to discuss receiving a copy for existing customers. The priority and ticket classification including target restoration is in the final stages of approval and will be rolled out in the coming weeks and aligned to the support desk ticketing system Kayako. Lastly, the support desk has taken on the coordination of the ongoing deployment of new versions of software to our customers and look to bedding down the process over the coming weeks for E-tivity. Microster will be included in the process in the near future.

ComOps welcomes newest members to the team ComOps is delighted to welcome new members to our Consulting and Sales & Marketing team; Bree Suters, Consultant and Ily Dean, Sales Executive.

Bree Suters - Consultant Bree Suters has joined the ComOps team as a Consultant and brings a wealth of knowledge to her new role. Her breadth of knowledge and customer centric consulting style supports a long collaborative relationship with clients. Bree has over 13 years of consulting experience across the Payroll, Human Resources and Recruitment industries. Including extensive experience in software system implementation, business process design and optimisation, training and change management, across Asia Pacific region.

Ily Dean – Sales Executive Ily has joined ComOps as a Sales Executive and is responsible for account management as well as to acquire new business throughout the Australia & New Zealand Region. He has over 20 years’ experience in Client Management and multi-vendor implementations of POS, ERP and WFM solutions, Solutions Hardware, Application Software and Implementation Services plus multi-year Break-fix Maintenance and Help Desk Service contracts. Prior to joining ComOps, Ily has held Senior Sales and Account Management positions with Workplace Systems, Fujitsu and NCR. Ily has also worked in Sales Management roles with TEC Australia and Daltron Electronics in Port Moresby, PNG. Ily has a passion for ensuring that customers receive a valued solution which provides a positive outcome to their businesses.

COMOPS CONSULTING TEAM ComOps continues to invest in the professional services/consulting team. This has included the addition of new consultants in both our Sydney and Melbourne offices. ComOps can now draw on the experience and knowledge of specialised consultants across our product range, with several consultants having extensive experience within the workforce management industry, as well as enhanced skill sets including project management, business analysis, and functional analysis. The team has been working closely with the account managers to re-engage with many of our customers, providing customer status reports, health checks, training, and product/feature reviews. The team have worked with a number of customers to improve the way in which they use ComOps software, as well as developing a future roadmap for solution utilisation and providing ongoing and incremental business improvement.

COMOPS EVENTS TOC Container Supply Chain Asia Our long term commitment to the port and logistics market was demonstrated when ComOps exhibited Microster at the 2015 TOC Container Supply Chain Asia event in Singapore. The event proved to be a great opportunity to meet and network with key stakeholders in the ports and stevedoring industry. ComOps’ solutions help our port customers to improve productivity, optimise labour costs and ensure legislative compliance while driving down your cost per TEU.

AHRI National Convention & Exhibition 2015 ComOps attended the annual AHRI National Convention & Exhibition in Melbourne as a leading provider in the Workforce management software industry. The event proved to be a great opportunity to meet and network with key HR and Payroll stakeholders within the industry. While the topics this year were focussed around diversity, inclusion, and leadership there were also interesting insights into the cultural / change issues in rolling out new systems.

The Payroll Specialists - Workplace Review 2015 ComOps will be exhibiting at Australia’s biggest and longest running payroll conference, TAPS Workplace Review 2015, in Sydney on 17 - 18 September. The two day event offers an agenda that covers some pertinent issues for the WFM sector, including: backpays and overpayments, WFM privacy information issues, should the calculating of labour costs to include super, and WFM history and audit compliance rules. We would love you to drop by the stand and say hello.

cLICK HERE TO find out more about our COMOPS eventS ON OUR WEBSITE

CUSTOMER HIGHLIGHTS comops customer forums ComOps held the first round of Customer forums for E-tivity and Microster clients in Melbourne and Sydney in May. The forums are designed to provide clients with updates about E-tivity, Microster, ComOps as a company and the opportunity to meet ComOps CEO, Gerry Williams. The overall response and feedback from the events was very positive. Clients were pleased to receive updates on the products, the company, to meet Gerry and find out what’s in store for the future. It was a great opportunity for clients to provide feedback, ask questions, and network with other clients.

Stay tuned as we will be holding another round of industry based customer forums later this year.

Customer Referral Program Introducing ComOps NEW Customer Referral Program. For every active referral you send to ComOps, that results in a new E-tivity or Microster client, you will receive a hamper (RRP $100.00) as a thank you for your support.

REFERRAL THANK YOU

Referrals can be sent through to your account manager or [email protected].

TIPS MICROSTER TIPS Roster Workbench - Moving Cells Drag and Drop Within the roster workbench it is possible to drag and drop a cell (shift) from one personnel and day to another personnel and/or day. This will remove the cell from its original spot and insert it into the new one. If a cell already exists in the new spot then you will be prompted to either override the existing or add as an additional cell for that day and personnel. The drag and drop method is a short cut that can be used to bypass the right click menu. Instead of right clicking copy and paste, you can drag and drop and reduce load time, saving you time when working on the roster.

MICROSTER TIPS Swap Shift Mode This feature can be turned on via the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+S. This is displayed at the bottom of the window while the mode is active. To exit Swap Shift Mode press the Esc key. With Swap Shift Mode enabled the drag and drop function will now swap the spots of two cells rather than just move one.

ETivity TIPS Clearing the E-tivity cache Similar to Microster, in E-tivity HTML5 and also your current Windows version, shifts can easily be dragged and dropped from one day to another, or, from one person to another. The shifts will automatically be validated against the relevant scheduling rules and re-costed.

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Feel free to request topics of interest you’d like to hear about in our next newsletter or monthly blog and provide us with your feedback. All suggestions and feedback can be sent to [email protected]

Level 16, 132 Arthur Street, North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Ph: 02 9923 8000 | [email protected] www.comops.com.au ComOps Workforce Management Solutions

www.etivitysolutions.com.au | www.microster.com.au | www.salvus.com.au