Original publication date: February, 2009

WebCATS Build 425

This week, Softshare released build 425 of WebCATS. As you’ll read, this build has something for everyone.

For Database Administrators

Build 425 represents a significant shift for database administrators. For many years now, WinCATS’ role has been defined as a database administration application, whereas WebCATS’ role has long been defined as a data entry interface. With two very different shoes to fill, WinCATS and WebCATS have steadily diverged in function.

But with significant advances in Web application technology, OutreachSystems is seizing the opportunity to eliminate WinCATS altogether and merge all functions into WebCATS. In fact, you’ve probably already noticed that, over the last few builds of the product, more and more configuration options have been removed from WinCATS and put into WebCATS instead. This trend continues (accelerates even) for build 425, with several new administrative functions moving to WebCATS:

New worksheet capabilities. In build 424, we removed the ability to run worksheets from WinCATS, which also took away your ability to base worksheets off of client subsets. At that time, we promised that this ability would return shortly in WebCATS—and it has! In build 425, you can base any worksheet off of the most recently-displayed client subset. Guess what else you can do? You can generate a worksheet that gives a side-by-side columnar breakdown for up to 10 centers or regions at once. This worksheet is created by selecting an option from the new Special Worksheet Processing field found on the worksheet criteria page.
Chrisman reports are new and improved in WebCATS. Just in time for SBDCs to mail out their first surveys for 2009, OutreachSystems has incorporated all Chrisman report requirements into WebCATS. Available under View|Chrisman Reports, you can use this new WebCATS module to create mailing labels for in-business and pre-venture clients, as well as generate the demographic forms required. What’s improved? WebCATS now tracks Chrisman survey responses through milestone records only, allowing the system to better correlate surveys with response dates. You’ll still be able to see a client’s last survey response date from their client record, but this field now draws from the system-defined “Responded to Chrisman Survey (calendar year ####)” milestone records only.
Manage logins from WebCATS. Under Manage|Logins, administrators can now closely monitor the activities of currently logged-in users, disconnect users, and filter login data by a wide variety of criteria.
Global configurations moved to WebCATS. OutreachSystems is slowly moving WinCATS’ global configuration settings into WebCATS. If you look under the Manage menu, you’ll see that administrators can now set general, reporting, and survey configurations right from WebCATS by a system administrator. We encourage you to explore this menu to see for yourself all the new configurations you can perform in WebCATS!

For DLA-Funded Centers

Easier search profile testing. In build 425, you’re now able to test search profiles right from WebCATS by clicking the new Test button found in the Bid Match Options area of a client record. As long as your center’s OutreachSystems password is entered into the center record, you’ll breeze right by the iSearch login and profile selection pages for instantaneous testing of the profile.
DLA 1806 updates. It has recently come to OutreachSystems’ attention that DLA would like to see active client numbers for a rolling date range of 12 months, even if some of those months fall into a prior fiscal year. To accommodate this, we’ve created a second set of active client line items on the DLA 1806 worksheet. Line items 7a-7c still calculate as they used to with current and cumulative columns, but the three new line items (7d-7f) always report on active clients for the last 12 months. To accomplish this, we needed to change the default 1806 worksheet dates to the following: the current start date now represents the beginning date of the most recently closed quarter, the cumulative start date now represents the beginning date of the fiscal year of that most recently closed quarter, and the end date represents the end date of the most recently closed quarter.

For SBA-Funded Centers

WinCATS’ Economic Impact Reports now live in WebCATS. Previously only available in WinCATS, this grouping of economic impact reports now lives in WebCATS only and is available by clicking the brand new Impact Groupings button at the top of a client summary view.
New Client Merlin is smarter when it comes to pre-ventures. If you’re creating a client record for a pre-venture business, the New Client Merlin no longer asks for company-specific information such as business size, business type, organization type, and so on.

For All Users

Easy counselor inactivation and mass reassignment of primary counselor. Previously, if a counselor left a center, there was no easy way to inactivate that counselor. You first had to manually go into every client record that referenced that counselor and change its counselor to another one before you could inactivate the counselor record. In build 425, WebCATS significantly improves upon this process. Now, when you “inactivate” a counselor from the counselor record, you are prompted to update all client records that currently reference that counselor with another counselor. But what if you need to reassign those client records to several different counselors, not just one? WebCATS has that covered too! At the bottom of the client summary view, there is a new option to reassign the primary counselor for all records listed.
Bigger font size. The next time you log into WebCATS, look for the brand new Use Larger Fonts checkbox. Selecting this increases WebCATS’ standard 11pt font size to a 12pt font size which makes a significant difference in size.
Changes to the left-hand menu system. You’ll notice that there is no longer a “Tools” menu. Instead, it’s been changed to “Manage” and is devoted to managing saved resources such as subsets, custom reports, survey definitions, and attachments. In addition, the “Manage” menu also holds new administrator-only modules that manage configurations and logins. So where did the “Select Center” and “Worksheets” commands go? They now live under the “View” menu.
Ability to copy a conference or contact record and use it as a basis for a new record. When creating a new record from an open conference or contact record (using the blank piece of paper icon located next to the edit icon), WebCATS gives you the option to base the new record on the currently-opened conference or contact record. This is a great way to create multiple contacts for a single client record or post a series of similar conferences because you don’t have to rekey common data.
Survey design improvements. Of particular interest to eCenter users are two improvements made to the survey definitions area of WebCATS found under Manage|Survey Definitions. With build 425, the number of questions allowed per survey is no longer limited to 15 and three new types of questions are supported: (1) questions that have a dollar value response (currency), (2) questions that have multiple responses selected, and (3) questions that aren’t questions at all, but rather static labels that can be used to provide additional instructions.
Improvements to conference records. Conference records are even more flexible in build 425, allowing you to select multiple conference topics, while still maintaining a single primary topic for reporting purposes. In addition, two new attendee statuses have been added: “waitlisted” and “prospective.” The new waitlisted status allows you to track contacts who would like to attend if room becomes available and the new prospective status lets you track those attendees that were invited, but haven’t yet registered.
Milestone and investment records support multiple counselors. Previously, you could only select multiple counselors for counseling session and conference records, but we’ve added this capability to milestone and investment records as well.
Individual preparation and travel time calculations for counselors. For more granular tracking of counselor time, WebCATS now allows you to enter preparation and travel time on a per-counselor basis into counseling session records with multiple counselors assigned.
An empty client and contact record list when you first open the client and contact summary views. Previously, WebCATS would render all client or contact records beginning with the letter “A,” but for some centers this took a significant amount of time. And since you’re seldom looking for a company or contact whose name begins with the letter “A,” we decided that you should be allowed to choose which records are initially rendered. So these lists will now come up empty so that you can choose which record or record list subsets to display. This new feature was actually introduced in build 424, but since not all centers received this interim build, it will be new to you upon upgrading to build 425.

Odd and Ends

There’s still more to discover! Visit WebCATS build notes for a full accounting of all enhancements and fixes that went into build 425 (and 424).

To Upgrade

Contact us to schedule the upgrade within the next 30 days. We’ll help you upgrade to the latest build of WinCATS at the same time. If you’re running the eCenter Direct add-on component, you’ll also receive minor updates to this component as well because WebCATS and eCenter tightly integrate with one another.