Workation Finale - Panos Returns

UniPhi allows you to connect, communicate and implement what needs to be done to stay on track with your project or business portfolio anytime, anywhere.

Our colleague, Panos, has returned from his 5 weeks in Bali where he worked diligently for 6 hours a day in a hired workspace, typically starting from 9am. He then enjoyed the rest of his time exploring Bali. Read part 1 and part 2 of this series to see his journey.

From UniPhi's perspective, it was successful, his productivity and results were not reduced or impeded whilst away. However, we took some time to ask Panos about his experience. 

Panos back in the Sydney office

He says "It was a great experience, easy to make new friends and explore the Country. However, to the very end of my visit, I found every day life there difficult. Using public transport and the chaos of getting around day to day sometimes felt quite dangerous. I am happy to be back."

So, would he do this again? Simply put; yes! 

Panos has plans for another experience at a new destination next year. Where? Even he doesn't know yet. He likes to be spontaneous; which is something we discovered when this adventure first came about, as mentioned in the first Workation post.  

Welcome home, Panos, we are happy to have you back in the office!  

This concludes the Workation blog series. Until next time, keep with us on LinkedIn for regular news on what we get up to.

Our end of month staff lunch

UniPhi 19 Feature: Trend analysis in a live system

One of the challenges of UniPhi's live reporting framework is that trending of information as well as locking in what has been reported to external stakeholders is not possible...until UniPhi 19 that is. Now finance can control the data they've reported via month end snapshots. 

 

There's a few configuration changes that are required to get this working. The first is understanding the difference between "Period Closed" and "Reporting closed". Closing a financial period locks off that period from new invoices, timesheets and expenses being dated in that month. However, adjustments from the accounting system may be required to complete the reporting picture. By locking off the period first, making adjustments and then locking off the reporting period, finance have control over what they're reporting.

When the reporting closed option is marked as yes and saved, UniPhi 19 processes a snapshot of all the quantitative data in the system that you wish to be able to refer back to. The settings for what to snapshot are in the various modules configuration screens as per below:

Setting to snapshot all revenue and cost forecast information when reporting period is closed.

 

Once the data is captured, there's a host of ways to compare live data to previous snapshots. This short video demonstrates the outputs:

Want to know what other features UniPhi 19 has to offer? Explore the UniPhi 19 webinar or contact us to find out more.

UniPhi 19 Feature: Visually rich progress reports viewed every which way you choose

Capturing information through intuitive interfaces that quality control the data into structured database tables is infinitely better than capturing information in unstructured systems like MS Word, Excel and email. This seems obvious and is probably why many B2B web applications are now worth a mint across various industries. However, one thing these systems have always struggled with (and hence the use of unstructured systems) is the aggregation and formatting of the data captured into stylised reports.

UniPhi originally provided functionality to solve this conundrum via our unique document template system. This feature had its own upgrade in UniPhi 19 and you can read about it here. This feature enables you to produce an integrated PDF progress report in anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, rather than the half to full day that this process can take when the data source is excel, email, financial systems, photos on a fileshare, and word templates that you can never find.

However, in 2014, along came Power BI, right at the time we were completing our RESTful API. The two came together in holy matrimony and embedded charts were born. The API plus the embedded framework unlocked the value of Power BI. It made it possible to create visually appealing dashboards custom to your requirements without the need for a developer who was good with SQL. By embedding the dashboard into UniPhi, the resultant reports could be shared with any subscriber to the UniPhi platform and therefore meant no more fees, logins and management of security in Microsoft Workspaces.

However, the issue remained that it was time consuming and frustrating to share these wonderful dashboards of live data with non-licensed users of UniPhi. Along comes UniPhi 19 and thanks to an expansion of Microsoft's Power BI embedded API, we now have the new export to PowerPoint or PDF feature.

Check it out in our latest UniPhi 19 video and imagine yourself delivering this to a client each month via the click of a button.

Want to know what other features UniPhi 19 has to offer? Explore the UniPhi 19 webinar or contact us to find out more.