Descartes Peoplevox 25.01-01 includes the New Features, Enhancements and Resolved Issues (bug fixes) described below. If you have questions about an item, please reference the number in parentheses, if available, when contacting Descartes Customer Support.
This is the first release of the new year and includes a number of improvements to the new put away functionality, some general web app enhancements to make the new UI more user-friendly, and a long list of bug fixes and performance improvements. Due to the large number of changes, this release will be a little longer than usual, and will be spread out across two weeks rather than the usual one.
Tip: User our Ideas Portal to submit your Enhancement ideas for Descartes Peoplevox. Click here for additional information and instructions for requesting access to the Ideas Portal.
Note: As we continue the migration of screens to the new web app styling, we will move the older version of each screen to legacy mode. The older versions will remain available for the immediate future, but you are encouraged to use the new screens wherever possible. Also, we welcome your feedback on the new screens. Your input helps us to ensure that the new screens meet your needs before the legacy screens are switched-off at a later date. The new versions of those screens include:
- Locations
- Location groups
- Removals
- Sites
- Returns
Thank you to everyone that has provided feedback on these screens so far. Please rest assured that we are reviewing all feedback, and have several enhancements planned to implement many of those changes that you have proposed.
New Features and Enhancements
🟨 We extended the "Despatched items by package (v5)" report to include some columns that were available on previous iterations of the report. These columns are listed below. (1053560)
Customer name
Sales order requested delivery date
Sales order created date
Sales order total sale
Sales order discount
Sales order tax paid
Sales order created by
Sales order carrier name
Sales order service type code
Item description
Item buy price
Item retail price
Item wholesale price
Item tags
🟨 A new feature is now available for the Put Away Rules Builder on the web app that allows you to test your rules immediately from within the rule builder page. To test a rule, you'll need to provide a location or container that holds inventory. The system will indicate whether it meets criteria and whether a location could be found for each rule step.
There are two options for testing rules. (1) The first option is to test the rule from the page that displays the list of put away rules. Testing from here will evaluate each active rule in ascending rule order sequence and present a summary of which rule (based on the condition, if any) and step matched and found a destination. (2) The second option is to test from within the rule detail page, in which case only that rule will be considered. The condition will be checked and the system will run through the steps on the rule to try to find a suggested destination. (1115590)
🟨 You now have the option to copy Put Away Rules. This allows you to quickly set up many rules that share common behaviour. Copying a rule takes a snapshot of the rule at that moment in time, and creates it as a new rule with an appropriate rule order. It does not form a lasting connection between the rules and after copying, any changes applied to the first rule will need to be manually applied to the second. The same functionality is also available for rule steps, with the exception that rule steps can only be copied within a given rule (i.e. they cannot be copied from one rule to another). (1098424, 1098425)
🟨 A new option is now available to the Put Away Rules List page to hide inactive rules. (1098430)
🟨 The new Location Groups screen now includes a new and improved tree view to help users find locations within the hierarchical location structure. This is essentially a redesign of the location group tree available on the old locations screen, but the new interface devotes an entire page to the tree, displays locations in-line within the tree (rather than alongside in a separate grid) and is generally more responsive than its predecessor. The tree is intended primarily as a navigation tool and an alternative to searching, and users can freely switch between a text-based search and tree navigation depending on the task at hand. (1036491)
🟨 You can now create sites through the new Sites page. Previously this was only available using the legacy Sites tab. (1100825)
🟨 A new "Replenishment by service type" report is now available. This was previously available for a handful of customers, but is now generally available. This report is similar to the "Replenishment by sales orders" report, but is intended to support scenarios in which particular products need to be prioritized for replenishment based on specific service or delivery SLAs. For example, to prioritize replenishing items required to satisfy a particular carrier pick-up. (1134317)
🟨 The Register functionality of the mobile app was updated to the new PVX+ application. There is no functional change to the behaviour of the workflow, but this update will allow future updates, fixes, and improvements to be rolled out more easily. (846689)
🟪 We improved the validation around the New Locations screens to better clarify when a user is able to edit the zone on a location. Specifically, updating the zone is only possible when a pick location is selected. (1151132)
🟪 A range of back-end services and database tools was upgraded to the latest versions. These should have no direct functional impact other than improved performance and reliability. These regular updates are an important part of our system maintenance schedule. (1176235)
🟪 The user experience for rearranging Put Away Rules on the web app UI was improved. IIn particular, swapping the position of two existing rules is much smoother. (1115580)
🟪 The user experience of the Put Away Rules List and Details pages has been improved by introducing the ability to delete old rules as well as simply disabling them. (1099108)
🟪 You now have the option to view the logic within Put Away Rules even if the permission to edit them is not granted. The user still needs permission to view the Rule Builder, but this will allow those users to better understand what each rule does without having to ask an administrator for help. (1098431)
🟪 We improved the way records are displayed in several grids on the new UI. Grids were previously limited to displaying a small number of records, with the option to scroll between pages. Several grids will now load and show the full list of records so that the user can scroll vertically through them. This improvement applies to the location groups page as well as the new reporting pages. (1033869, 1084863)
🟪 In addition to the above, a number of targeted performance improvements and optimizations were identified by closely monitoring the system over the peak period, particularly around the action creation process. Those improvements will be rolled out generally as part of this release, though we are also working on some larger and more fundamental improvements to the action creation process. (1176239)
Resolved Issues
🟩 An issue on the Failed Actions search page that could cause it to fail and display an error message along the lines of "String or binary data would be truncated". The underlying cause of this error was resolved and the search now works correctly. (1151350)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could prevent users from being able to edit Role/Site assignment, even if they had the appropriate permissions to do so. (1139921)
🟩 An issue on the mobile app that could cause recently deleted carriers to still be visible on some screens during the despatch workflow was resolved. (1172251)
🟩 An issue was resolved that prevented the mobile snapshot process from excluding dormant and inactive products. After fixing this issue, the snapshot process will be able to exclude products that have had no recent activity (inventory, sales order items, returns, etc.) which will help reduce the size of the snapshot that devices need to download each day. (1121722)
🟩 An issue with the new Put Away Rules engine was resolved whereby it did not respect the defined rule order, and instead prioritized rules based on the sequence in which they were created. With this release, rules will be evaluated in ascending rule order, which will allow you to properly prioritize and reorder your rules. (1125479)
🟩 An issue with the new Put Away Rules engine was resolved that caused it to ignore the inactive flag on put away rules. With this release, inactive rules will not be considered when making put away recommendations. (1149712)
🟩 An issue withFix misleading confirmation message when saving put away ru was resolved. This includes nd a small typo related to validation when saving. (1140762, 1135752)
🟩 We fixed a rare bug that could prevent the automatic allocation of new sales orders during import and when new inventory is made available. This could lead to compounding issues where subsequent lower priority orders for the item would be allocated instead. With this release, orders should be reliably allocated during the import process, and when inventory is made available through goods receipt or the register process, it will be correctly assigned to the oldest order awaiting inventory. (1072900)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could prevent RMAs being created via the web app UI. (1133711)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could cause users returning items into quarantine locations to be shown an error page after the return is complete. With this release, the return will now be completed successfully without an error being shown. (1154434)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could prevent the calendar view from being displayed when using the date filters on the new returns search page. (1133878)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could prevent users from saving changes to a site if they had previously reversed the sequence of the location groups on it. (1143113)
🟩 An issue was resolved that caused some dashboards on the new UI to be slower than expected when retrieving data. (1078501)
🟩 An issue was resolved in the mobile sync process that could cause some data to become "stuck" until a snapshot was performed, for example replenishments performed on the device being marked as complete on the mobile app but still outstanding on the web. (1131921)
🟩 An issue related to the activation process for put away was resolved that could prevent the corresponding permissions from being available to grant to users. (1136306)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could cause the service on the despatch record to be removed when tracking data is saved to one of its packages. (1126846)
🟩 An issue was resolved on the mobile app that caused some barcode scans to be less performant than expected. The underlying issue has been identified and fixed, and barcode scanning should generally be faster. (1118650)
🟩 An issue was resolved that could occasionally allow the user to provide the same barcode for both the "from" and "to" on an item movement. The mobile app will now more robustly validate that the source and destination are different when it processes the movement. (1113794)
🟩 An issue with a visual bug on the mobile app was resolved that could cause confusion when scanning a potentially ambiguous barcode. This scenario could occur when there is an overlap between the standard barcode of one product and the composite barcode of another. The mobile app will continue to match both barcodes, but the item detail view will now clearly indicate the composite barcodes associated with a given product. (1088403)
🟩 An issue was resolved the mobile despatch workflow that could cause the service type to be retained between separate shipments. The service will now correctly be reset on each subsequent package. The default behaviour remains unchanged, so if a service is defined at the order level, that service will be prepopulated on the despatch workflow as well. (1137906)
🟩 An issue was resolved on the mobile app that could incorrectly direct the user to the search locations page after cancelling out of some mobile activities. (1135422)
Descartes Zangerine and Descartes ShipRush
You can also find the latest release notes for Zangerine and ShipRush here: