What's New in MainBoss 2.7

The following lists differences between MainBoss 2.7 and the previous release.

• Menus and menu items have been completely rearranged. Most notably, the old Reports menu is gone; instead, reports are now obtained through other menus. For example, reports related to work requests and work orders are now obtained under the Work order menu.
• The old Preventive menu is also gone. Instead, use Work order -> Browse Task to deal with preventive maintenance.
• The new Units menu replaces the old Equipment menu. The Units menu deals with both equipment and spaces. In general, almost anything you can do with equipment, you can do with spaces (and vice versa). The one difference is that equipment can have capital costs, while spaces cannot.
• The old MBAdmin and MBArchive programs have been discontinued. Their operations are now incorporated into the MainBoss program itself. To perform these operations, you first specify an Administrator password using Session - > Login. For "UserName" type ADMINISTRATOR and for "Password" type your existing PIN (the password you used for accessing MBAdmin and MBArchive in previous versions of MainBoss). Once you have logged in as ADMINISTRATOR, you can use the Administration menu to do all the things you used to do with MBAdmin and MBArchive.
• The format for entering work orders has been completely revised-it now resembles the format for entering purchase orders. The new format keeps more information; in particular, it records both estimated costs (made when the work order is first created) and actual costs (made when the work order is being closed). In earlier versions of MainBoss, you had to replace original estimates with actual costs, thereby losing track of what your original estimates were.
• When you are creating a corrective work order for a particular unit, the work order window now displays any service contracts associated with that unit.
• Previous versions of MainBoss let you associate a single online drawing and/or document with an equipment or space record. Now, you can associate any number of online files with such records. These files are called attachments.
• Online help is now available by clicking the <?> in the upper right hand corner of most windows. When you click this button, MainBoss provides information about the window that is currently on display. For example, if you are in the middle of entering information about a piece of equipment, clicking the <?> displays information that describes all the fields in the Equipment editor window.
• MainBoss can now record price quotes on inventory items.
• Work orders can now record more detailed information about the time that workers spend on a particular job. Rather than simply recording the total time spent, you can report multiple starting times and ending times. For example, if a worker starts a job in the morning, takes time off for lunch, then finishes the job in the afternoon, you can record this as two separate sessions of work; you can do the same sort of thing if a particular job spreads over more than one workday. In this way, you can record exactly when the worker did the work as opposed to just the total time spent.

  Note: When MainBoss converts a MainBoss 2.6 database to the MainBoss 2.7 format, it has to convert old labor records to the new format. Since old records only recorded a single date for a work order and the time spent by each worker, the conversion process arbitrarily makes it appear that jobs started at midnight on the given date and extended for the recorded length of time.

• MainBoss 2.6 had a separate report for charge backs. You can now obtain charge back information as part of the Work Order History.
• MainBoss 2.6 had a number of separate reports for printing "Units by Location", "Units by Cost Center", and so on. All of these have been superseded by the single Units report which has options that let you control how the report is organized.
• MainBoss 2.6 had a Work Load report. In 2.7, you can obtain the same information using the Labor History report, selecting only open work orders and turning off Actual Costs.
• MainBoss 2.6 had two fields for specifying the expected lifespan of equipment. "Typical Life" specified the lifespan of a brand new piece of equipment while "Life Expectancy" specified the remaining lifespan for the equipment currently installed. In MainBoss 2.7, the "Life Expectancy" field has been eliminated; instead, you specify an expected "Scrap Date"".
• Previous versions of MainBoss had various distinctions between inventory and non-inventory items. MainBoss 2.7 now keeps exactly the same information on both types of items. The only difference is that inventory items have non-zero "Maximum On Hand" and "Minimum On Hand" values, while for non-inventory items both "Maximum On Hand" and "Minimum On Hand" are zero. Because these values are zero for non-inventory items, MainBoss will never tell you that you have to re-order the items; however, MainBoss still keeps track of item quantities if you happen to have non-inventory items in your storerooms.

  If you install MainBoss 2.7 over an older version of MainBoss, the process that converts your old database files to the MainBoss 2.7 format will automatically label all your existing items as inventory items, even if "Maximum On Hand" and "Minimum On Hand" are both zero. Otherwise, some users might be confused at the disappearance of familiar items from their existing inventory lists. However, if you create new items with zero for both "Maximum On Hand" and "Minimum On Hand", those new items will be considered non-inventory items. They will only show up on an inventory item list if you specify an appropriate option saying that the list should contain non-inventory items as well as inventory items. (This option is available on most windows that can list such items.)

• Repair history information is now maintained in the form of closed work orders.
• Task descriptions no longer have a limit of 60 lines.
• Older versions of MainBoss created a number of Windows shortcuts in the MainBoss program group. For example, there were separate shortcuts for online help, the readme file, documentation, and so on. When you install MainBoss 2.7, the installation procedure removes existing shortcuts to old software and documentation. Instead, there will only be a shortcut to the MainBoss program itself, and to any sample databases you install as part of installing version 2.7.
• If you installed sample databases using older versions of MainBoss, they will no longer work. All sample databases are considered unregistered, and MainBoss 2.7 will not convert old unregistered databases to the most up-to-date format. If you wish to be able to use sample databases for the purpose of getting to know the software, you must install new versions of the samples as part of the MainBoss 2.7 installation process.