Enhancements coming to entity import and export

We are always looking to add new features or enhancements to existing features in easyFBT - plus we always love to hear from our users about their product usage, some of their pain points and how we might be able to improve their workflow.

This user is our biggest in terms of number of sites, entities, vehicles and most likely overall total benefits.  For a large organisation with a centralised management process they prepare entities for the new FBT year by rolling-over from the prior year and exporting entities to individual sites.  Once each site has completed their data entry, the entities are then returned to head office, re-imported, reviewed and consolidated as required for final lodgement.

Pain points

easyFBT currently provides 2 usage pain points for our user:

• Exporting - each individual site must be exported separately rather than in one process taking a couple of hours to track and manage.
• Importing - whilst entities many be returned ad-hoc from sites, each requires importing individually, again potentially taking a couple of hours to track and manage.

What can we do?

What we need to add is more options to both the export and import process to facilitate multiple files rather than just the single file option that we currently have within the program. We also want the process fit within our existing workflow (where possible) and to be reasonably straight forward and automated.

Considerations

When making changes to any feature you need to consider the following:

• How will it fit within the existing feature workflow
• How will the changes be implemented? simple vs flexible - simple is easy to use but doesn't allow flexibility whilst flexibility can be great but introduces complexity.

As we use wizards for each of these features, keeping the workflow simple is the over-riding factor.  Wizards allow you to chunk down a workflow into a step-by-step and simple to understand process that shouldn't require in-depth training or guides to use.

Next steps

[Update] These development changes are available now in our October 2015 release.  Read about the changes here:

Part 1: Export Entity Wizard changes
Part 2: Import Entity Wizard changes