Simplified travel expenses, push notifications and much more

Dear customers,

after the major expansion of our api in the last version, we are currently working on the possibility of a direct synchronization of subcontractors. The first tests by customers are currently in progress, but at the same time we have also extended and optimized many other functions.

In addition to significantly simplified and job-based travel expenses, it is now possible to receive notifications from the GigPlaner in the form of push notifications to the browser. I would like to describe these and other innovations, which are available to you as usual starting from tomorrow, in more detail in this update info.

I hope you enjoy reading this update info and wish you all the best

Sven Schlotthauer

Travelling expenses

The ability to record travel expenses in the GigPlaner is now used by many of our customers. However, the process from creating travel expenses to their approval is quite extensive, so we have always had the desire to simplify and track it faster. We have implemented this wish with this version.

Record travel expenses from a job

Every employee has the opportunity to record his travel expenses directly from the job (of course only if he is allowed to do so). In order to keep this as simple as possible, it is only possible to record the travel costs and additional receipts (parking or toll documents, taxi or hotel bills, etc.). The header data of the travel expenses such as the title, the business purpose and some other fields are automatically filled and do not need to be maintained. Once all information is collected, the travel expense can be submitted directly from the job.

Categories for receipts

Each receipt must be assigned a category in the future. For the most common types of receipts, the GigPlaner already offers a pre-selection of categories, and you can also create any other categories in the settings. Based on the categories, it will later be possible to evaluate the travel expense reports even more precisely and to group the amounts accordingly to the categories.

Push-Notifications

A major disadvantage of web applications so far is the fact that no notifications can be sent to the user if the application is not open in the browser. However, the new Internet standards will also allow such notifications in the future, and we have implemented this new browser feature as of this release. Unfortunately, browser support is still very limited, currently this feature is only fully supported in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. However, we assume that the other companies (and especially the mobile systems) will also provide support in the coming months.

Data protection / Legal notice

Through the EU GDPR the topic of data protection is now on everyone's lips. In addition to the many regulations, however, a ruling by the European Court of Justice caused a small sensation last month, which attributes a co-responsibility in the data processing to the operators of Facebook pages. For this reason, we have once again optimized the GigPlaner to this effect and offer you the opportunity to deposit your own legal notice and your own privacy policy in the GigPlaner. You will find the necessary options in the settings under the item "Legal requirements".

Subcontractor synchronization

After we have already significantly expanded the API, the first beta tests for the subcontractor synchronization are currently in progress. This feature is mostly interesting for subcontractors who also use the GigPlaner. For them it will be possible to see their clients jobs automatically in their own GigPlaner and they can process them there as well. This eliminates the parallel use of two systems and allows you to fully focus on your requests. If you are interested in participating in our beta tests, feel free to contact our support.

Further changes

If the times of a job are changed in the future, a new dialog appears asking whether the employee requests should be reset (to status ns). In this case, all employees will be requested again and have the option to re-specify their availability based on the new times.
Dashboards can now be published not only for the user or for all users, but also for entire user groups. That way, you can share dashboards even more efficiently.
A new user right has been introduced for the approval of holiday requests so that in future the permit can also be granted irrespective of whether an employee is allowed to record leave for other employees.
When copying jobs, any existing documents may also be copied.
If an employee has no access to the GigPlaner ("no access" in the employee profile), this will be marked in the request dialog. In this way, you can quickly see which employees you may need to address by phone or other means.