8.1 Release Summary – Help for Online Advantage

The 8.1 Release of Online Advantage sees a major upgrade to the fundamental underlying Microsoft infrastructure used by Online Advantage (OA) at the server. With this version of OA we have moved from v1.1 to v3.5 of the .Net runtime Framework. As part of this move our developers now use the Visual Studio 2008 Tools – a move from the 2003 version. There are many benefits to this, mostly very technical in nature, but they will have significant impact in terms of performance and reliability. In particular we have enabled the use of Ajax in our Wizard forms throughout the system which gives the browser the ability to talk to the server and refresh details without the need to perform what is called a Post-Back. The net result of this technology is a system that is faster with less screen refreshing making for a better user experience. This is most evident when running OA over the internet. It is so quick it feels like you are in the office!

Along with the technology changes across the board, there has been a significant emphasis put on the reporting tools for OA. This is part of an ongoing effort to give users continuous enhancements to the way they can access, report on and manipulate the data held in their business systems.

This release sees a continued push to our Wizard based user interface (UI) with the rework of many more application forms into this new method of data entry and maintenance. This document contains a detailed list of the forms that have been moved into this new style for this release HERE.

Along with this there have been a number of significant enhancements to the application functionality in this release along with a continuation of the reworking of terminal emulation based functions into the new Browser-Based format. The complete list of new “minor” enhancements that that have been implemented in this version are available can be found HERE.

Below is a summary list of the highlights of the 8.1 Release: