5.10 EvolvePlus Release Notes

Revision 5 (5.10.2501.1713)

CRE-4668 | Legal Aid > Police Station Invoice Improvement

An improvement to Legal Aid where the user creates an invoice on Police Station matters. When the user has an amount of time which exceeds the fixed fee threshold, users can now claim both the fixed fee and the profit costs from the Legal Aid Agency for that matter.

CRE-4828 | Matter Property Values > Performance improved

Improved performance of Matter financial screen through clearance of redundant data.

CRE-4846 | iManage > Integration performance improved

Performance improvement through removing all client to server calls for iManage integration.

Revision 4 (5.10.2412.1519)

CRE-4551 | Infotrack > order search sync between Infotrack and PE

Background work has been done to improve the flow between the Infotrack website and Practice Evolve.

CRE-4423 | Party exclusion in VOI on Client

The Client AML has been enhanced to ensure excluded parties are displayed as expected within the Client screen.

CRE-4762 | Record Purchase > Duplication 'Save & New'

A fix which ensures that when a user records a purchase and clicks 'Save & New', a single entry is created. These steps no longer create a duplicate entry.

CRE-4777 | Requisitions > Exception thrown on modifying requisition type of Office Expense

Some rework done to ensure that a user can generate a requisition of type 'Office Expense Payment' or 'Office Expense Purchase' and modify without any exceptions thrown.

CRE-4645 | Circular References > Client/Entity

A general rework to where client or entity has circular references, this no longer causes services to stop.

CRE-4600 | Billing Plan > Mandatory Billing Plan set

An improvement to the responsiveness of timesheets when updating the billing plan. The responsiveness is now prompt between different users on the system.

CRE-4685 | Directory Search > Searching short strings and business types

A fix which improves the efficiency of a user conducting directory searches. Short strings, business types and individuals or combined filters now returns results as expected.

CRE-4518 | Directory > Role column

An improvement to the functionality of the directory which means that the role column is now always populated where appropriate or required.

Revision 3 (5.10.2411.1011)

Revision 2 (5.10.2410.2111)

CRE-4452 | Outlook Add > in Automatic filing when PE is shut

Introduced new functionality to handle the filing of emails that have been received whilst PracticeEvolve is closed.

Note: user must have the option ‘Automatically file incoming Emails’ enabled.

CRE-4519 | Departments > Performance Reports

Resolves an issue where user could create identical department names with the use of trailing spaces. This caused an issue with Fee Earner Performance reports. Now users cannot create identical departments, or even spaces before or after department name.

CRE-4541 | Requisitions > Hold payment information

An enhancement in requisitions which enables a user to select a ‘pay to’ entity without saved payment information, and this retains any manually entered payment requisition information. Additionally, this fix also means that after a payment requisition is requested, these details are held on subsequent screens.

CRE-4570 | API > CreatedOn Date

Background work has been done to ensure that API returns correct CreatedOn dates for matters

CRE-4584 | Forms Designer > DateTime & SmallDateTime

An enhancement to forms designer. This relates to DateTime and SmallDateTime and improves the use of the allowable date range.

CRE-4679 | PracticeEvolve upgrade > To newer versions 

An improvement to Entity Framework. Now, upgrading from April R6 to 5.10 or later no longer fails and the upgrade now works.

CRE-4683 | Manage Invoices Screen

All Invoices, depending on the advanced search setting, can be viewed from Invoices tab on the matter or from Billing & Payments>Manage Invoices without pressing ‘Search’ button.

CRE-4687 | Payment Requisitions > Document Creation Improvement

Performance of looking up documents for payment requisitions has been improved. Unique ID "IX-DOCUMENT-UNIQUEID-NC-NU" is being used.

CRE-4689 | Creating/Amending requisitions > Throws error message

An improvement to system whereby user can now smoothly create or amend a requisition as expected without any error messages.

CRE-4697 | Directory > Prospect and Parties

Resolved an issue where after creating a Prospect all parties are visible in the main screen and in the involvement section within the Directory.

CRE-4705 | Legacy "Find" search options 

The main PracticeEvolve menu, accessed by clicking the PracticeEvolve icon has been updated to remove the ‘Find’ submenu, the legacy reports previously accessed by this menu are no longer accessible.

Revision 1 (5.10.2409.2913)

CRE-4176 | Login into Practice Evolve > Deleted Draft Invoices.

The warning message "Invoice ID no longer exists" that could appear in certain circumstances, has been addressed.

CRE-4434 | Forms Designer > Replacement Tags

The forms designer has been enhanced to validate the creation of tags to ensure duplicates are not created.

CRE-4591 | Performance > Opening Matters

Internal changes have been undertaken to cater for clients with redundant Matter Schema fields.

CRE-4592 | Performance > Recently used Matters / Clients functionality

Internal changes have been made to the Recently used Matters / Clients functionality to enhance performance.

CRE-4596 | Outlook / Word / Excel Integration Installers 

Internal changes to the installers have been applied in this release, and users will not experience any change in functionality.

CRE-4622 | Legal Aid > Civil / Criminal Bulk XML Upload

The Civil / Criminal Bulk upload has been reviewed to ensure that no unexpected errors are presented.

CRE-4634 | General Report Separator Upgrade

Background changes have been made to resolve a General Report separator issue.

Revision 0 (5.10.2408.1607)

Accounts 

CRE-3239 | Client to Office Transfer - Client Payment Reference Numbers

The Client / Trust reference number sequence has been enhanced on a Trust/Client to Office transfer where there is an over-allocation of funds to an invoice, or the office account role is unallocated.

CRE-4442 | Accounts Options > General > Allow Duplicates in Trust (Client) Receipt Number Sequence (UK and IE Region)

CRE-4091 | Bank Details on Payment Requisition (Free Typed)

Fixed an issue to allow a user to free-type account details in a ‘Payment Requisition. Free-typed details remain editable until approved.

NB: Users will be forced to use saved details where they exist on file against a selected entity.

CRE-4221 | Payment Requests > Entity Bank Details and Payment Methods

The ‘Payment Method’ section of a requisition has been enhanced to accommodate for saved payment methods against selected entities and editable details where the selected entity does not have a payment method. Once a payment method is applied to a requisition, it will only become editable again if the requisition is rejected.

CRE-4272 | Invoice Management – Print & Finalise selected invoices

An improvement to the invoice management screen. Users can now select individual or multiple invoices and print or finalise as required.

CRE-4330 | Submit VAT Returns > Reporting Method

In this release we have improved the panel Submit VAT Returns - Search for VAT Obligations. Reporting Method is now read only - it is set already in the Accounting Options > HMRC. The view of the panel now:

CRE-4305 | HMRC - VAT Return > VAT Reporting Method (UK)

The HMRC VAT Reporting method has been enhanced and is now defaulted from PracticeEvolve Options > HMRC.

CRE-4353 | Employee billing rates – Un-Anchored text

Improvement to the information text field in the “Manage Employees → Accounts → Billing Rates”. This is now correctly positioned and worded.

CRE-4376 | Matter-Matter Transfer window – Client/Office

An improvement to the ‘Matter-Matter Transfer’ window, which now, when undocked retains the information populated. This is retained and working for both Client and Office Matter to Matter transfers.

CRE-4382 | Bulk Permissions Menu Visibility (AU Region)

The Bulk Permissions functionality located within the Management ribbon has been extended to firms running the AU configuration.

CRE-4409 | Client/Office ledger views – General improvements

Improvement to several areas within the Client and Office ledger views. Ledger View now has the same right-click options as Transaction View. The Ledger View & Transaction View for Client & Office now both include the Cost Centre & Division as columns in the grid. The search filter for the Ledger View & Transaction View for Client & Office now affects the grid as expected.

CRE-4451 | Requisitions – Processing 

An enhancement which ensures that requisitions can be processed without fault. This was resolved by ensuring that payment requests without an associated matter are not filed.

CRE-4517 | Finalising Leave & Quick file time entries

This is a two-fold fix. Firstly, users can now finalise ‘leave’ type time entries. Additionally, time entries can now be quick filed.

CRE-4418 | InfoTrack Searches > Auto-Create Disbursements (IE UK Region)

A change has been made to bring the IE UK functionality in line with AU.   Anticipated disbursement requests with VAT are now handled in the InfoTrack integration. The response.xml for IE UK will contain <TotalFeeGST> where AU will contain <RetailerFeeGST>.

CRE-3106 | Lloyds CHAPS Payment Export – Client & Office

Introduced the Lloyds CHAPS Payment Export. This can be accessed on both Office/Client levels.

CRE-3987 | ASB Supplier Payment Export

Introduced support for the ASB Supplier Payment Export, this can be accessed on both Office and Client levels. 

The file will be produced with the following columns.

• Payment Name
• Date
• Deduction Account
• Amount
• Payee Particulars
• Payee Code
• Payee Reference
• Destination Account
• Payer Particulars
• Payer Code
• Payer Reference
• Payee Name

CRE-4122 | Manage Invoice – New field ‘Number of Invoices’

An improvement where Manage invoices now has a new search criteria called ‘Number of Invoices’ - this now includes a specific number of invoices rather than a block of just 200. This can be modified if a user requires it.

CRE-4127 | Move Matter > Matter Number Re-Referencing    

An enhancement to the ‘Move Matter’ feature has been made which allows users to choose to adopt the matter referencing from the destination matter whilst providing a full audit of any former values.

CRE-4105 |   Payment Requisition > PDF Versioning

Within this release, the payment requisition has been enhanced for PDF versioning. For every modification made to a Payment Requisition A ‘new version’ will appear in the Document History The original document information is captured in the previous version. The new document information is captured in the updated version. The document saved as the latest version will show any changes made A new action will appear in the Audit Trail with the Action name of ‘Updated’.

CRE-4098 | Approvals > New Column "Can Approve" on Manage Invoices Screen 

New column “Can Approve” has been introduced in the existing Manage Invoices screen and on Matter>Invoices to allow the users to easily filter invoices that require approval, field is available from the Column Chooser. 

The new column will:

• Be available from the Column Chooser. It will not be shown by default.
• Be possible to Group By.
• Be possible to Filter By.
• Will display one of three values:
  1. Yes - where an approval stream is active on an invoice and;
     • The Step is assigned directly to the Current User OR the step is assigned to a group that the Current User is a member of
         and 
     • Where the current user is not on the exclusion list.
  2. No - where an approval stream is active on the invoice and the criteria for ‘Yes’ are not met.
  3. Blank - where no approval stream is active on the invoice.

CRE-4279 | Approval Stream Re-Evaluation

Further changes to the approval stream which sees the re-evaluation of the invoice upon modifying the record.

CRE-4307 | Approvals > Requested By Column Improvement

Enhancement to the Approvals screen, where the Requested by field stay populated with the username of who initiated the approval, through the life of the approval.

CRE-4309 | VAT Analysis Report Time Out Configuration

Internal changes have been made to the time out configuration for the VAT Analysis Report & “Submit VAT Returns”.

CRE-4372 | IFT – Payment request

Implemented a change to the ‘Payment Request’ screen to display details for International Fund Transfers, allowing entry of the additional pre-requisite information. This can also be subsequently picked up when processing a payment request.

CRE-4468 | Internal VATReturn Tables > Entity Framework Creation

Internal changes have been applied to the UK sites VATReturn tables, this is a background change and will not affect users. The tables are:

• VATReturnHistory
• VATReturnHistoryTransaction

Restrictions

CRE-4300 | Payment Requisition > Creation Restriction 

Improvements to the Requisition creation restriction to ensure that the creation of requisitions is prevented at the earliest opportunity.  The user will be presented with the following message.

NB. Implementation of restrictions currently requires consultancy services, please speak to support to organise this.

CRE-4308 | Client – Restriction Triangle warning

Improved the visibility of the restrictions feature to display a warning triangle on Client cards where a condition has been met and restrictions are in place.

CRE-4302 | Matter Creation - Restrictions

Improved the implementation of the Matter Creation restriction such that when the restriction is in place the ‘Create Matter’ and ‘Copy Matter’ options throughout the system are disabled.

CRE-4298 | Time Entry Creation - Restrictions

Enhancements to the Time Entry Creation restriction to ensure that the restriction is applied as early and consistently as possible throughout the user experience, where the restriction is applied users will receive a warning at the earliest opportunity preventing them from creating a time entry item.

CRE-4311 | Time Entry > Restriction

Improvements have been made to the implementation of the TimeEntry.Creation restriction within the Task Tray Time App.

When the ‘TimeEntry.Creation’ restriction is in place, routes to creating time entries for affected matters will be disabled at the earliest opportunity.

NB. Implementation of matter restrictions currently requires consultancy services, please speak to support to organise this.

CRE-4299 | Matter Restrictions > Improve Disablement of Accounts Posting Routes when Transaction.Postings Restriction is in Place 

Refinements to the “Transaction.Postings” restriction, ensuring that transactions are blocked at the earliest opportunity whilst also permitting specific transactions to ensure accounts compliance . Posting Receipt will never be restricted. When the transaction posting restriction is implemented, users will receive the following message when saving an accounts transaction.

NB. Implementation of matter restrictions currently requires consultancy services, please speak to support to organise this.

Productivity 

CRE-3229 | Library > Precedent tags

Ordinal tags have been enhanced to accommodate precedent tags, where there is more than one ordinal tag, i.e. 'Plaintiff 1' and 'Plaintiff 2'; ‘Defendant 1’ and ‘Defendant 2’.

CRE-4374 | Document Explorer > List View

Document Explorer has been enhanced to improve Tools consistency between Folder tab and the List View. 

CRE-4416 | Importing files – Irregular dates

Resolves an issue encountered when importing files with abnormal dates assigned. Where creation date is ‘4000-01-01', the maximum date will default to ‘3169-11-16'. This avoids unexpected errors.

CRE-4391 | Internal > Entity Index Creation

Internal changes have been made around the handling of a full index rebuild, to cater for startup of the Practice Evolve Services with an empty index. 

CRE-4404 | Error Handling > PE Login 

Background work has been done to ensure that no error is shown on PE startup to notify that the user does not have access to one of the matters.

CRE-4435 | Matter Close Routine > Instruction Date Check 

Upon marking a Matter as Completed where the “Instruction Date” is greater than a year, some users were presented with the following warning appear "Instruction Date: Instruction Date is 12 or more months earlier from the Current date". This warning has now been addressed.

CRE-4436 | "New Matter" Workflow Activity > User Attributes

An issue has been resolved with the “New Matter” workflow activity to ensure all user fields are not set by default to the user's details, apart from those attributes where the attribute name is identical between the Matter and Prospect. 

CRE-4524 | Workflow activity 'New Time Entry' Enhancement

Workflow activity ‘New Time Entry’ has been enhanced to ensure that the rate in the new time entry is populated from the 'Rate’ field when the workflow is run.

CRE-4532 | Workflow AutoStart > After Update

Workflow AutoStart has been enhanced to ensure that the Workflow AutoStart ‘After Update' triggers whether the specific attribute is selected or not.

CRE-4360 | Workflow > Branch Deadline 

Work has been done to resolve the issue with the ‘Branch Deadline’ workflow activity, which is now triggered as expected.

CRE-4328 | Performance > Matter Estimate Notifications

Enhancements have been made around the performance of Matter Estimate Notifications.

CRE-4389 | Document Download / Upload Performance

The document download / upload process has been enhanced. With this enhancement the user will now experience increased document download / upload speeds.

CRE-4171 | Archived Matters > Outlook Search

Changes have been made to the Outlook matter search to include Archived Matters.

CRE-4203 | Practice Evolve Scan via API (PracticeEvolveScanWatcher)

The API and standalone “Scan Watcher” executable have been enhanced to allow scans to be loaded into the default user scans location, previously the feature via the API was only configured for Matter scans.  This functionality is available to all Clients utilising the API, with a focus on Practice Evolve Hosted Clients.  

If your firm would like to move over to API scanning, please contact Practice Evolve Support.

CRE-3908 | Forms Designer – Folders for Admin/Non-Admin users

A rework of the forms designer which means that only an admin user can delete folders within forms designer. A non admin user cannot delete these unless initially removed by the admin user.

CRE-4590 | Outlook Integration > .NET Framework dependences

The Outlook Addin installer has been enhanced to remove any internal dependencies to .NET framework 2 and 3.5.

CRE-3920 | Legal Aid (Police Station Matters) - DSCC of deleted matters

Rework of legal aid – Police station matters. Users will no longer be presented with a warning message on using a DSCC of a deleted matter. The warning message will only appear if using the same DSCC for an active or archived matter.

CRE-4197 | Client to Office transfer document > Regionalization

Client to Office document has been enhanced to correctly show Client/Trust in the body of the document, depending on the user region.

CRE-4087 | Library Management – System Libraries and duplicates

An improvement to Library management. User is now unable to create duplicate library names, and this is case sensitive. Additionally, user is unable to create any of the system libraries. These are as follows: WorkflowTemplates _AnswerTemplates Quick Templates _DDOverlays

CRE-4178 | Generation of Team Tasks

The Team Tasks have been enhanced and only one task per team will be created.  Users within the team will no longer have a related task for each new groups task.

CRE-4386 | WebPortal Invites – Accounting options WebPortal/API

An improvement which ensures that WebPortal invites are sent using the settings defined at Accounting Options – Messaging – WebPortal/API.

CRE-4402 | API > Get Organisation Client

The Get Organisation Client has been enhanced to check for circular references on the API call.

CRE-4482 | Web Portal Discussion Screen

Changes have been made to the Web Portal Discussion screen as in some circumstances users were unable to add or view comments in the Web Portal. In order to enable comment posting on the discussion tab the Admin user must log into the Web Portal and enable the feature 'Allow Client Comment Posting'.

CRE-4596 | Outlook / Word / Excel Integration Installers 

Internal changes to the installers have been applied in this release, and users will not experience any change in functionality.

CRE-3066 | Formatting Options – Handled tasks

New functionality has been introduced which enables the formatting of handled tasks. This can be found in Evolve Plus options – task priorities.

CRE-4219 | Azure Files Library Sync

The Azure files library sync has been enhanced to ensure that folders which only contain shortcuts are handled correctly.

CRE-3714 | User Options – Tag Templates

An improvement to the configuration of “User Options | Tag Templates” which can be configured to either display or hide within the Practice Evolve Plus options.

CRE-4101 | Document Explorer – Load more & retain position

An improvement to document explorer, whereby many documents are listed, and the user clicks load more, the current position in the list will be maintained.

CRE-4102 | Library Management – Quick Templates change

Introduced a new protection for the 'Quick Templates' system library, preventing it from being inadvertently renamed. This is now read-only.

CRE-4480 | Outlook Integration > Duplicate Email Filing

Due to recent changes within Outlook some firms may have experienced duplicate email filing when an internal email is sent to several colleagues. The Outlook Addin feature within Practice Evolve has been enhanced to cater for this scenario.

CRE-4269 | Documents > Files Without an Extension

The system has been enhanced to resolve an issue to ensure that files without a file extension are correctly opened on a matter or client.   NB: Sites integrated with iManage will be blocked from performing this action, due to iManage not supporting this functionality.

CRE-4273 | Internal changes to Entities with Recursive Parties

Internal changes have been made for enhanced handling of Contact / Organisation / Client and Matter for records that have recursive parties.

Reports

CRE-4373 | General Reports Improvement

The general reports have been enhanced where the ‘Empty’ attribute has been renamed to ‘Required’ to better reflect its purpose; when ticked, only rows where the field is populated will be returned.

CRE-4414 | General Reports - Report Column Criteria

Resolved an issue within ‘General Reports’ to ensure that columns which included a “.” within their name are correctly handled.

NB: There is a small chance that some report columns still do not show correctly. If this occurs, remove the column from the report and re-add it.

CRE-4415 | "New Matters Opened" Report > Deleted Matters

The ‘New Matters Opened’ report has been enhanced to exclude deleted matters.

CRE-3874 | Accounting Reports > Sales > Aging Analysis Cube 

The Aged analysis cube has been enhanced to handle a scenario where a user deletes a finalised time entry and associated matter.

CRE-3914 | Accounting Reports – Handling of middle names

An enhancement to reports, which now correctly reflects whether an employee does or does not have a middle name.

CRE-4111 | Accounting Reports > WIP Report

Background work has been undertaken to the ‘WIP Report’ which enhanced the filter ‘Updated between’ to show “Write Off” entries correctly.

CRE-4135 | Fees invoiced Report – Running and applying filters

A fix which ensures that the user can now appropriately run the fees invoiced report and apply the day, week or month filters.

CRE-4283 | Timesheet Report Orientation 

The Timesheet report orientation has been defaulted to landscape.

CRE-4292 | New Matters Opened report – Matter category selected

An improvement to the ‘New Matters Opened report’, which now caters for filters such as the matter category.

CRE-4341 | Fee Earner Performance report – Department filter

An improvement to the Fee Earner Performance report. Report runs as intended and respects the department filter.

CRE-4383 | Accounting Reports > Sales > Aging Analysis Cube - Aged WIP End Date

An issue has been addressed where the Aged WIP Analysis Cube in some instances would not validate the end date as expected.

Briefs/Bundling

CRE-4145 | Brief / Bundling > Table of Content

Improvements to bundling have been included in this release around the Table of Content.

• Page Numbering for Alphabetical, Section and Sections (Document Date) has been enhanced in relation to standard paper size and page orientation. 
• Page Numbering Merge Field changes have been applied to the page numbering merge field to ensure it is populating successfully, this change requirement was identified within the April release.
• Alphabetical Page Number Format has been updated to ensure the page number format is not displayed.
• Alphabetical Sequencing has also had internal changes.

CRE-4147 | Brief / Bundling > Bookmarks

Improvements have been made to ensure page numbering is consistent across the page, table of contents (TOC), bookmarks, to include the logical page numbers exposed by Acrobat Reader. Example: Bookmarks will correlate with the numbering which appears in the TOC. The logical page numbering table/mapping will be updated to show the assigned page numbering.

CRE-4363 | Brief / Bundling > Bookmark Generation warning messages

Warning messages within Brief / Bundle generation have been enhanced to inform the client if an issue has been identified with the bookmark generation.

Permissions

CRE-4331 | Role permissions – Service restart 

Roles, and in particular the documents permission in relation to AML/CDD can be changed and come into effect without the need of a service restart.  Additionally, if denied the documents permission and attempting to adjust documents in AML, user is presented with an appropriate restriction message.

CRE-4268 | User Permissions – Split services

An improvement which means that user permissions are respected and can add documents, check in/out. Yet they are unable to create users unless Admin permission is given. This is consistent between split services enabled or not.

Integrations

CRE-4379 | Deployment > Perfect Portal

Internal changes have been made around the Perfect Portal Deployment.

CRE-4167 | Internal > User Name retrieval (GetUserForImanageUser)

Refinements have been made to the iManage user mapping process to support users with special characters within their name.

CRE-4196 | Internal > Remove Unneeded Parameter 'KeepDocs'

Within the iManage UpdateMapping method changes have been made to remove “bool KeepDocs” parameter as this was not required.

CRE-4202 | Internal > iManage logging.

The iManage integration client logs have been enhanced to capture more user-friendly information.

CRE-4525 | iManage - log4net_iManage.dll

Internal changes have been undertaken to ensure that once Practice Evolve has been installed, the Client folder contains a file called log4net_iManage.dll.

CRE-4526 | iManage > Exceptions

Resolved several exceptions that were occurring with the iManage integration, including:

• Duplication of email folder ID.
• An issue with the calculation of the 'DocumaticsId' field.
• Exception if "iManage ID" doesn't exist on the Document Schema.
• Getting captions of two existing PE fields, lastmodifiedby and documentid.

CRE-4274 | Outlook - PE Synchronisation 

Background work has been done to resolve an issue with Outlook - Practice Evolve synchronisation. Time zones are now correctly compared and changes in PE are updated in Outlook.