Once again it is time for a long list of improvements that we have been busy making to MyWebWorkplace to ensure it's the best online absence management system on the market.

1. Better email controls.  All emails can be turned on and off as required or just the leave or sickness one independently of each other.  This is a useful feature to use while adding leave and sickness that has occurred prior to setting up your MWWP site.
2. Your managers can choose to not receive their email notifications of leave awaiting approval or sickness information and can choose a colleague to receive them instead.  If no alternative has been selected the system will hunt down the best alternative based on either the top admin user in their group, any admin in their group, any admin most closely related in the company or a specified email address.  The emails can also be CC'd to any of the above.
3. Work patterns show the employees who are associated to them and those employees (individually or in groups) can be reassigned to another work pattern in just a few clicks.
4. The reseller/partner portal has been improved with more controls and personalised sign up and login URLs.
5. Groups and Areas are now hierarchical giving better permission controls and reporting facilities.
6. More control when adding an entitlement adjustment.
7. Links from the leave approval screen to employee and group information including quick access to the employees group calendar.
8. More absence rules available to help manage leave requests.
9. Annual increments (or annual service day awards) are calculated based on days or minutes to be added and any service year and now also percentages of base entitlement to calculate the number of days to be added.
10. Draft leave requests are available to view in the Admin area.
11. Minor bug fixes and usability improvements

The future of MyWebWorkplace is exciting, moving to manage more HR and operational areas of your business with the same care and attention as you have come to expect from us.

We have been busy working on new features for MyWebWorkplace.net absence management, many of which have been suggested by our clients.

1. Postpone delivery of welcome emails to new users: Being able to delay the sending of the welcome emails enables new clients to setup their system before allowing their staff to access it.  It also allows new employees in the future to be added to the system prior to the new employees email account being setup. Admin > Settings > Delayed Emails
2. We have added more countries and their calendars to MyWebWorkplace, enabling access from 67 different countries. Admin > Settings >Lookup tables > Country codes
3. We have added controls to manage each country’s time zones. Admin > Settings >Lookup tables > Time zones
4. We have extended the life of the verification email sent to new employees from 3 to 28 days
5. We have simplified the first login process for new employees
6. We have added a new help facility directly to the system.  Once logged in, anyone can use it by going to HELP > Ask for help
7. Help can also be requested by emailing support@mywebworkplacenet.zendesk.com
8. A message can be displayed to all users as they log in by going to Admin > Settings

We will continue to strive to make MyWebWorkplace.net even better.  If you know any businesses that would benefit from MyWebWorkplace please tell them about us.

Thank you for your support and suggestions.

MyWebWorkplace.net is built with the same exacting [some might say fanatical] attention to detail as any other software we develop. 

We make no functional distinction between MyWebWorkplace.net and the software we design for a large Plc's or multi-national's.  It has always been our intention to create a high spec, low cost business process automation software for any company and now we are!

MyWebWorkplace.net - Absence Management has smashed all expectation after it was released on the 7th December 2009.  Needless to say we are extremely pleased to see it being so well received after working so hard to develop and test it over the last year.

For those of you who don't know, MyWebWorkplace is a powerful business process automation system.  Being a self service system, all your employees have permission based access to complete the many mundane and costly procedures that fill our business lives.

MyWebWorkplace will be a multi modular system, each of which will focus on a specific business area.  Right now we have developed the answer to ineffective absence management which manages all aspects of leave & sickness in your business.  In the near future we will be bringing expense, time-sheet and project management and each of these will be available separately so you can pick and choose the ones that suit you.

It's free to sign up and take a look for yourself.  You can even add up to 3 employees to test its compatibility with your own processes.  Just go to http://mwwp.me/client_new and register for your free trial.  You will get access immediately.

As a special thank you to all our current clients and any future ones that sign up before the end of March 2010 we would like to offer you 6 months free use of MyWebWorkplace - absence management.  This is a great opportunity to see for yourself what it can do for your business. Just register at htp://mwwp.me/client_new as normal and follow the guidance in the getting started guide below.  It couldn't be easier.  If you have any questions you can always contact our friendly and brilliant support team on 0844 736 1820 ext 2.

mwwp Getting Started.pdf (624.12 kb)

There's just 6 more days until we officially launch our online Business Automation software - MyWebWorkplace.net.  We are kicking things off with an incredibly powerful and adaptable absence and leave management system designed for small to medium sized businesses.

Great things are being built here and there's more to come - all designed to help your business be more productive, reduce admin, improve efficiency and promote better teamwork.

Create your MyWebWorkplace account before the 7th December and get your first year absolutely free for your whole company.  Remember to create the account and add as many licences as you need before the deadline.

MyWebWorkplace is scheduled to be generally available for December 2009.

In order to give you a better idea of its scope and direction we have a brief but informative video overview:

MyWebWorkplace Overview (5 mins)
Absence Management (7 mins)

Integrated Project Systems is about to release a new on-demand service to help organisations of all sizes manage their business procedures.

The online system, MyWebWorkplace, will ultimately be an unrivaled group of modules, each focused on one specific area of business.  The first release will incorporate Absence Management and subsequent versions will include Project Management, HR, time sheets, Expense Reporting, Document Management and personnel training to name but a few.

Each module will be a versatile, standalone product,  built to manage all aspects of the area concerned.  For instance, our absence management module will calculate annual leave entitlement, multiple calenders, leave rules, line manager approval, sickness management and much more.

Multiple modules, however will take advantage of the smart underlying data structure and module will share relevant information between them.  For instance, when requesting leave the line manager will be able to see projects that are effected, absences will be automatically recorded on the time sheets, expenses and documents can be saved against projects and training courses recorded against employees training history. 

MyWebWorkplace has been built on a strong foundation.  Security and availability have been paramount concerns during these early stages of development but we have draw from years of experience delivering many process management systems for all types of companies to bring you a system that you can rely upon.

We never release beta software to the market and consequently many companies have already showed an interest in the first release.  If you too would like to be notified when we make MyWebWorkplace available please send an email to subscribe@mywebworkplace.com

MyWebWorkplace will be available at the beginning of December 2009.  As always we'll keep you posted.

It seems that the greatest concern when implementing a web based application is the possibility of downtime and lack of availability due to the fallibility of the many systems that come together to serve a website.  Although this problem can never be entirely over come, it can be mitigated.

I can't speak for other SaaS operations, but this is how we have provided a 100% uptime service of our Programme Office Toolkit for the last few years.

Summary points are:

1. We provide Production and Failover services for both Websites and Databases.
2. The Production and Failover services are in geographically remote location and via different providers.
3. Failover web sites can also be used to access the Production database.
4. Backups
   1. Production DB backups taken daily – held locally + transferred to failover + backed up on failover (production is backed up and held in 3 formats daily and held for 2 years)
   2. Production website code is monitored daily for changes and any changes are transferred to the failover server.
5. Servers automatically monitored 24/7/365.
   1. Production - Locally via hosting provider / remote monitoring – alerts via email to 2 IPS office locations (UK/Ireland).
   2. Failover – Remote monitoring only.
   3. Both are automatically monitored every 5 minutes for memory, disk space, processing, connectivity, web response
6. All servers have Raided disk arrays so chances of losing any data is very slim (fire/theft are the only possible occurrences but all server halls have fire suppressant, cooling, UPS systems and full time, 24/7 security staff and secure access).
7. Production servers have a 1 hr replacement of key components so worst case scenario is max 1 hr downtime if not immediately failed over, if it is the website then no time is lost as the failover website is instantly available.
8. Failover servers are covered by a Dell 4 hour response contract.
9. IPS has been hosting with Rackspace (a very high quality and costly service provider) since 2003.
10. Historically never had any problems in past 5 years with POT with over 99.9% availability during client business hours.
11. Failovers procedures tested 4 times a year.
12. The platforms systems / POT3 software have been security and penetration tested by QinetiQ and passed.
13. The only thing we are not in control of is the Internet but all hosting providers have multiple redundancies on Internet connections. We also suggest our clients have redundant Internet connections from different providers.
14. IPS has a bilateral support agreement with another company (who also helped develop parts of POT3) to provide a flexible expansion in staffing capabilities during periods of high development demand should the current staff of either company need additional assistance or specialist knowledge.

We'd love to know: It's an understatement to say that there are a lot of Project Management systems currently available.  What types of projects do you manage and which software do you use to implement them successfully? What features do you particularly enjoy and what's missing?