Tip of the Month: Check out the latest software enhancements in 2021

In the last article, we looked back on some of the features from our prior software release in 2020 and took a “sneak-peek” at things to come in 2021. To get the new year kicked-off right, we’ll use this article to showcase a few of those enhancements to the now-available of System Integrator version 15!
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D-Tools SI v15

• Solutions – Designed to enhance your SI utilization with a nod to match your business model. These “Solutions” present a unique application use for our dealers who regularly quote to clients with large scale projects that have some aspect of a repetitious nature to their bill of materials or design. For example, if you are proposing a conference room video presentation solution to a client for their new high-rise headquarters and there’s going to be one of these per floor, you can now create the solution once with all necessary design items and have it be linked to all other instances of that solution present in the project. That way, when changes are made in one instance, the update will “ripple” through other similar solutions across the entire project.

These “Solutions” can also be thought of as “super packages” as they can be comprised of multiple packages already present in your Catalog.

For all our large-scale integrators out there, there is definitely a methodology to explore here in terms of how “solutions” can enhance your enterprise quoting efforts in SI. And, for those of you engaging in medium to small scale projects, you can check out how “solutions” in SI can make your life easier by combining some of your existing packages into a “Super Package”! Be on the lookout for future updates on this feature as well.

• Project Required Fields – Finally! Am I right? You now have the ability to set mandatory fields when you create a project in SI. You can access these from the settings icon in the Home Ribbon of your Project Explorer:
  
  
  When you consider the ability to access “custom fields” in this process, there are multiple fields for your team’s consideration. There are presented into four tabs for organization:

                  
Upon each tab are the available fields for you to select:

                    
This is a major enhancement for other team members that may be dependent upon some aspect of these project details to fulfill their duties. Further, this can improve your team’s overall communication as certain data fields that are eligible to be required can also be tied to our Workflow Rules/Notifications. (Just in case you weren’t aware!)

• Speaking of Custom Fields – There are now multiple options for Custom Field usage in our SI Projects. A total of 50 now, and the format for these additions are that of a “List” presentation.
  
  

This should offer a number of solutions for data insertion at the Project level where we previously lacked fields for such.

• Field Deployment Enhancements – How about something for our field engineers and technicians? We’ll start with the addition of the OFE (owner furnished equipment) and non-billable (NB) products in the Mobile Install platform. This will allow your technicians (and project managers) to easily identify these items on the SI/MI Task work orders.
  Here is the presentation at the SI Task level:
  
  
  
  And here is the presentation at the Mobile Install Task level:

     
No more populating those pesky product note fields to transfer this data from project to field! You can now do it with a simple check box designation in the project – finally!

With all of that said, there’s still plenty more in store for you with SI’s v15 product release. So for more information on v15, please click here and here!

And there you have it! A new year preview to remind you of the many recent feature additions in SI. Hopefully, these newly updated features in v15 will enable your team to get more out of D-Tools System Integrator software in 2021. Talk to you next month!

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In closing…

For more information on these and other features of SI v15, please see this link: D-Tools SI v15. You can also review our other videos and our usual support documentation.

You can also get more detailed information about v15 via our upcoming webinars or by enrolling in SI training with our PSG team.

And don’t forget, that’s why we’re here to ensure your success with our product! Be sure to check back here next month for more on v15!!!