DealTrack is fully reliant on the data that gets imported. With this in mind, December's update showcases some valuable improvements made to the data reconciliation reports available. Alongside this, there are several new feature enhancements and performance updates that have been made throughout the system to enhance DealTracks functionality.

When is the update deployed?

Our latest update was deployed to your UAT environment on 14^th December 2018 and is now available for testing. This UAT environment is separate to your Live environment and provides a suitable testing platform without any risk to the integrity of your live data.

The UAT process will last for approximately 9 weeks. During this time you will be able to try out the new features and give us your feedback. The update will be deployed to your Live DealTrack environment on 19^th February 2019.

What’s new?

Reconciliation report enhancement

Currently, a user can see a report after turnover lines have been reconciled. This report presents a long list of suppliers that often report zero values. To enhance the user experience, the panel presented to the right of such reports has been redesigned to offer additional functionality.

The right panel allows a user to order the report by any of the displayed columns. By default, the report is ordered to show suppliers with any non-zero values in their respective row above those that display a zero value in every column. Within this categorisation, suppliers are sorted in ascending alphabetical order.

The right panel allows a user to search for a particular supplier to view that supplier’s reconciliation details. The user will be shown a row count next to the option to download a report file, with this count being the number of rows the file contains.

Forecasting

As part of this update we have continued to develop DealTrack’s Forecasting functionality, which we aim to make available in the new year. When configured, the Forecasting module will provide an area within DealTrack for a user to view and edit the forecasts on a per deal basis. The forecasting output from this module will always be a forecast for a single deal’s period or for a set “forecast period”.

This update also includes new reporting functionality for forecast earnings

Help content on dimension configuration page

The help content displayed on the dimension configuration pages, under Config > Structure, has been updated. Displayed help content now contains deep links to relevant pages from https://help.deal-track.com, improving the user experience. We intend to roll out similar improvements to help content throughout other areas of DealTrack in future product updates.

Revised weekly baseline earnings calculations

The way that weekly recalculation of baseline earnings are triggered for deals has changed. A deal’s baseline earnings will now be recalculated when one of the below statements is true:

• The deal latest transaction date is prior to when the weekly process last ran;
• The deal latest transaction date has never been set, in addition to the baseline period end date being after the date that the weekly process last ran.

Deal level navigation

A new sub-menu is now be visible in the breadcrumbs when viewing a deal. This sub menu will include navigation to the Deal earnings page, which was previously only accessible through the scheme level Analysis page, and the Deal forecast page (if the Forecasting module has been configured). Users will also have access to the Deal edit page through this navigation.

DealTrack API

Enable has begun to invest in some early-stage engineering work on a DealTrack API, which will facilitate both the ongoing development of DealTrack itself as well as the development of future products, both first party and potentially by third parties.

Title casing of supplier name

The supplier name displayed on the DealTrack dashboard and the supplier listing pages will now be converted to title casing.

Indicator of scheme state

The user will now be presented with a visual indication of the state of a scheme (i.e. active, read-only, editable, locked) in the area to the right of the breadcrumbs. Clicking this button will display pertinent information in a hover panel and, in some areas, display additional actions.

Penetration testing

The security of DealTrack data is a critical commitment for Enable and as part of this commitment, we regularly evaluate the security of DealTrack. Enable have engaged an external security company to perform penetration testing of DealTrack. This will provide an independent assessment of the security of the DealTrack application. The results of this assessment will be available to DealTrack clients upon request.

Automatic scaling of resources

DealTrack experiences varying and often unpredictable usage demands. In order to effectively meet this demand, automatic scaling of database resources have been introduced. DealTrack is now able to respond to periods of higher demand by provisioning additional database resources, leading to improved performance when it’s most required.

Source code deposit and validation

After each Build phase, all of the DealTrack source code is packaged up and deposited in escrow. This ensures that the latest features and changes are available at all times in escrow. The benefit of this is that should code ever be released from escrow that it will be the latest live version and there is no risk of DealTrack subscribers losing a particular feature they may have come to rely on.

As part of this update, the source code deposited in escrow has undergone independent validation to confirm that it can be successfully re-built from escrow.

What’s coming up?

Overview

In line with Enable’s commitment to release a DealTrack update every six weeks, our next update will be deployed for testing within your UAT environment in February, with deployment to your Live environment to take place in April.

What we’ve got planned

As part of our February update, we will be making further performance optimisations and platform enhancements. Alongside this, we will be introducing a series of new functionality, as well as enhancing existing DealTrack features. Further details of our next update will be provided as part of the February ’19 DealTrack update.

If you have any questions regarding our current or upcoming DealTrack updates, please contact your Client Services team at projects@enable.com.