In this latest release we have added a new date column to the documents grid called “Upload Date”. This will display the date and time the file was uploaded into agile. We are also providing you with the ability to group uploaded documents by the various column headings. For example you can now group documents so they are displayed according to who they were uploaded by.
We have deployed an updated version of the Returns application that does not require flywheelsites.com to be in Compatibility View in order to enter a return. If you do not have it in compatibility view, you will continue to see Xs in the headers under the View Returns tab, but this will not impact you from viewing the status of a return request.
In addition to removing the need for compatibility view, we have made a few enhancements when entering a return from scratch.
In an effort to reduce future quality defects and the back-and-forth associated with certain claim types, we are making a change to the claim process. On Monday, October 5th, the Agile Claim Request application will include additional questions to be answered by the agent as part of their claim request submittal. The responses to these questions will help to determine the root cause of quality deficiencies for the following reason codes: Product Performance and Lighting Fixture Option Not Working Properly. Initially, providing answers to the questions will be optional. However, on Monday, November 2nd, answers to some of the questions will be required in order to submit a claim request.
We deployed a new version of Documents on Tuesday in an effort to increase performance; particularly around projects with hundreds of documents. The Documents tab will now load in a matter of seconds. As part of this increased performance Documents will now have paging at the bottom of the screen. The default number of items displayed is…
In this latest release we are introducing:
If you missed our previous training sessions, and have some questions as a result of our install this week, we have a solution for you! Please click on the link below for the Makeup Submittal Generator training session: Monday, August 17, 2015 4:00pm EST
Have you ever had a day where you felt the need to express yourself with a passion that would make a sailor blush? It may be descriptive, but it won’t make it through to Acuity with our email filter settings.
We use filter logic that scans for choice word and, if contained, the filter will block the emails from getting to your intended recipient. This would also include an email containing a fan company with an unfortunate name!
As you may have heard, Microsoft is releasing their new operating software, Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. Corporately, we have been testing agile applications with pre-release versions of Windows 10, as well as some agencies have been beta users for Microsoft.
We are pleased to report that we have not experienced any problems or had any agency feedback of issues using Windows 10 with agile. We plan to continue our testing when the final release is made available on July 29th.
The New Submittal Generator Unveiled The Submittal Generator has a new look and is loaded with new enhancements. After months of beta testing by our pilot agencies and their helpful suggestions, we are excited and ready to deploy the new and improved Submittal Generator to the rest of the world! Training We’ll be conducting three…
Microsoft is deploying two new features to Outlook in June 2015.
Lync is changing to Skype for Business and Clutter will be added to your email.
Clutter is actually a process that uses machine learning to move lower priority messages out of your inbox to a new CLUTTER folder. The goal is to remove distractions and allow you to focus on important emails.
Effective Wednesday, April 29th, the Agile Claim Request application will include functionality to provide agents claim status details from Post Sales. This functionality is expected to deliver agents additional visibility of their claims as they are being processed.
A few new pieces of functionality are now available in the RFDs created on a quote and in the RFD tool: Sharing / Hiding Documents As an agent, when you upload documents to an RFD, your documents will be shared with Acuity by default. If you want to hide certain documents that might be for…
A few new pieces of functionality are now available in the RFD tool and for RFDs created on a quote: Sharing / Hiding Documents As a corporate user, when you upload documents to an agent’s RFD, your documents are not shared with the agency by default. If you want to share certain documents with the…
Have you ever wanted to view a company record in contact management and see all activity with that account? Or open a project container and quickly view all tasks that have been completed for a given project? The new “Activities” tab is here to help you better manage these daily agile tasks and events. In conjunction with the Activities tab we are also introducing agile Calendar, agile Tasks, and improvements to the Notes tab.
As we announced last week, agile will have an extended outage this weekend as we upgrade our systems.
agile applications will be down Saturday April 11 and Sunday April 12, 2015.
All agile applications will be available Monday morning, April 13, 2015.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, we are making some internal upgrades to the systems that support agile. In order to do this we will have an extended agile outage to include Saturday April 11, 2015. During that weekend, all agile applications will be unavailable.
All agile applications will be available Monday morning, April 13, 2015.
In the past two days we have had several agents reporting they have received emails that look like they are from a credible sender but it is a virus. The subject can vary from “Electronic”, “Quote” or “Document” but the attachment is Invoice32.zip. If you get this email, DO NOT open it and permanently delete…
As the year begins, we wanted to make you aware of some projects and improvements for your agency. ABL Secure Tunnel Over the last year, as we have moved product information to AcuityBrands.com and deployed Zendesk, our web-based support system, we have reduced the need for a secure tunnel between ABL and your agency. With…
The Agile Claim Request application now includes a new search feature. This functionality is easy to use and will assist agents in locating previously submitted claim requests on their dashboards.
The new Schedule Builder is an application that allows you to create fixture schedules in agile during the Design Development phase of a project. Schedules can be exported to Excel or PDF and shared with specifiers for collaboration on projects. The process for creating a schedule begins in Project Container on the Schedule tab and…
Effective Monday, March 2, the Agile Claim Request application will now include the Controls Specialty Product Families: LC&D, SSI, NLight, and Synergy. This feature is expected to provide faster visibility of required information to process your claim.
The NEW My Catalog on Acuity Distributor Center (ADC) has officially launched! My Catalog is an electronic catalog of products built specifically for the distributor based on an Agency standing quote. Distributors will now have a better user experience when they build their customer catalog, which includes better product categorization and more product images. Additional features include:
We are excited to announce several major enhancements to Submittal Generator. These enhancements will be available on Wednesday, 02/25/2015. More details will be available in the upcoming webinars mentioned below, but we wanted to give you time to preview the updates and prepare for the change. There are four updates we’re featuring in this release:…
We have added several new features to the Stock Pricing Tool to make managing your customer price lists easier. These enhancements will help you with editing existing lists and creating new lists in anticipation of our upcoming Acuity Distributor Center – My Catalog release. The new Stock Price Tool features include:
Vertical construction categories in agile will be improved on February 2, 2015. Categories have been changed to be more intuitive for agile users as well as more closely align with the market categories that 3rd party providers like MHC-Dodge use for construction outlook and reporting. agile Order Management Enhancements All Flow orders, including ones generated…
Effective Monday, November 24th, the Agile Claim Request application will include the following Specialty Product Families: Healthcare, Hydrel and Peerless in addition to the current regional support structure. This enhancement is expected to provide faster visibility of required information to process your claim.
Beginning November 10, 2014 we will change our phone support hours to 8:30 – 5:30 p.m. EST. We are also upgrading our systems and implementing a new web-based support ticketing system, which you can use anytime. As soon as you have access, we encourage you to begin using the new ticketing system. This will also…
A new quote preference has been created called “ABL Product Validation Exception”. This new feature is designed to help inform the user why an Acuity Brands product is not validating (a product that has UNK product approval). How does it work? With the preference turned on, simply key in your Acuity Brands Division, product, and…
As of 7/15/2014 the “Produce and Ship Complete” instruction will no longer be automatically applied to lump method CIP orders. If your order requires this instruction it can be added manually to the hold order prior to order placement.
Quickly pull up any account in agile and see all of the projects/Quotes/Orders that account has been associated with. A new tab called Account Overview has been added to most company types in Contact Management. With the addition of this new tab you can review a company’s most recent project/quote and order activity. Simply open…
A new application has been implemented in Agile called Claim Request or Request for Claim (RFC) to improve the speed and accuracy of information required to open a claim and identify the problem sufficiently to implement a solution for the customer.
Need a tool to help you get those renovation audits done quicker and more efficiently? Want something that can be used on both a tablet and a desktop? Well, we have the tool for you! Introducing the new Audit Tool… What is the Audit Tool, you ask? The Audit Tool provides the ability to conduct…
In response to your feedback, we have completed several new enhancements to Order Management! Keep reading for further information on the latest changes. Enhancements to Groups Tab: The layout option is now available on the Groups Tab. Layouts allows for you to customize which columns are displayed and the order in which they are…
Accessing important Corporate Account information has never been easier! Leverage national and local strengths by collaborating with the Corporate Accounts sales team, C&I Regional sales teams, and agencies using the new Corporate Accounts application. You are no more than a couple clicks away from finding out the account owner, specifying agent, all specification and purchasing…
We are continuing to receive calls regarding the CryptoLocker and other viruses infecting agencies workstations. While it is important to have the latest version of Trend installed on your workstation and server, you still need to be careful about the attachments you open. Trend can block obvious attacks but some of these viruses are more…
Has there ever been a time when you needed to issue a quote but weren’t quite ready to disclose the Acuity Brands Divisions in the quote print document for fear of making it easier for competitors to cross the bill of material? We now have a new print option designed specifically for situations like this!…
Over the past month, many agents reported that they were affected by a variety of viruses or malware that severely impacted their machines. While working through these issues, it was discovered that several of the affected machines did not have anti-virus software installed or it was an outdated version.
We’ve deployed another report: the Customer Briefing Book (CBB). This report is located in the Reports Executive Folder and available to anyone who has access to that folder. The CBB starts with a summary page that highlights the top and bottom overall customers, top stock customers, and the largest contributors to agency commissions. The detail…
As you might have noticed, the agile menu and home page have been given a facelift. There are a number of new features available that we can’t wait to share with you. Some of these include:
We have been busy at work modifying the Acuity Distributor Center to meet the needs of our Holophane users. On 3/31/14, users logging into MyHolophane.com will be rerouted to the Acuity Distributor Center!
Starting March 12th, Acuity Distributor Center account management will be handled by your agency. Hopefully you had a chance to sit in on one of the training sessions. If not, please take a few minutes to review the video which can be found in this blog and on the agile Help tab under Agency Administration.
During the week of March 10, 2014, we will be putting Acuity Distributor Center account management into the hands of the agency. With this change comes the following enhancements:
Microsoft will end all support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014 and it is recommended these machines are upgraded to Windows 7 or Windows 8. While they have stated that Office 365 will not block connectivity from fully patched Windows XP computers after April 8, connectivity to the server will be at risk and limit…
A few weeks ago we deployed an updated Agency Administration application with improved functionality to assign and manage agile access within your agency. We are offering two 30 minute online training sessions to review the application enhancements: Tuesday November 19, 2013 at 4 p.m. Thursday November 21, 2013 at 9 a.m. If you are interested…
Attention OM users! Ever forget to add the National Account (Corporate Account) to your orders? Well, we are going to take care of that for you! To ensure that your national account order gets the proper attention and service, we have enhanced OM to determine if a National Account needs to be applied. When you create an order…
We are pleased to announce an enhanced Agency Administration application that provides better user management and improved visibility. New functionality includes the ability to:
Stay tuned for training webcasts to be announced this week and next week.
Two new fields will now require your input on the RFD Architectural Outdoor and Functional Outdoor Pole forms. You will now be required to fill in the Existing Anchor Bolts field and the Top Mounting Requirement field. This is required information by our Pole vendors and will save RFD processing time by not having to go back to the…
A few more reporting updates to help you manage your business!!
We have created a new Orders by Employee Credit report to take advantage of the improved Employee Credit functionality as well as improved the Orders Entered and Sales Goals – Non ABL report to provide more detail
The new agile integrated Envision configurator eases doing business with ASL by providing: Electronic assistance for ASL catalog numbers Instant wind-load validation Customized 2D & 3D product model files Customized pictures for site specific project proposals Customized specification sheets with orientation drawings We conducted a series of webinars this summer, but if you missed the chance to join…
During the week of March 10, 2014, we will be putting Acuity Distributor Center account management into the hands of the agency. With this change comes the following enhancements:
We are pleased to announce the introduction of a new report as well as additional functionality to a few existing reports that will provide enhanced detail with less reports to run! By updating the reports, we are able to remove some of reports from the list, making your selection easier to navigate. New Report Yearly Order…
You may have noticed by now that agile Product Search looks a little different. In addition to updating the look of Product Search we introduced some significant performance improvements as well as some new functionality like: Visibility of product details, pricing, availability, lead times, and specification sheets on a single product details page Master Line…
Are you and your distributors ready? On 9/24/13, the new Acuity Distributor Center (ADC) will replace the Lithonia Distributor Center (LDC). Hopefully you had a chance to participate in one of the agency training webinars and review the September 5th blog post containing the details of the coming changes. If you have not, please take a moment…
The existing Employee Credit process has been improved for easier rep association and maintenance to projects and orders. You now also have access to improved employee credit reporting! Some of the changes include: The ability to manage employee percentages on one screen in Contact Management The ability to see and maintenance Employee Credit assignments on…
WHAT’S NEW A New Website The ADC website will have a new URL: www.acuitydistributorcenter.com.LDC.flywheelsites.com will continue to work but will re-route the users to the new site. No need to worry about popup blockers since the users have already enabled the new website with the last release. Minimum Browser Requirement It is important to note…
Previously, if you had Hidden (HDN) lines on a quote, when you converted to a hold order those lines were automatically changed to Regular (REG) product lines. For those HDN lines that contained overage, if your agency did not edit or remove the lines or update the line categories to Overage (OVG) prior to final…
It has been a year since the new process for registering projects for specification credit has been in place and it’s time to put STAR to bed. We will be decommissioning STAR on May 31, 2013. As of May 31st, you will no longer see STAR as an available application in the agile suite or…
We have added some great integration features to agile Quotes including the ability to:
Based on your feedback we have deployed some new reports to help you manage your business!
In a continued effort to expand the non-ABL capability so that agile becomes your enterprise system, we have added the ability for you to enter annual/monthly sales goals for your non-ABL manufacturers and track progress via a report …
A new version of agile Quotes is now available with some new features!
Please welcome our newest addition to agile…..Request for Warranty Deviation (RFWD)! Starting today all requests for warranty deviations can be entered and managed through the new RFWD application. This new application will allow you to request changes to a product’s warranty straight from the quote line and send it to the Product Value Stream for…
Do you have groups of distributors or other customers that you always quote? Rather then add each company onto the project, you now have the ability to set up contact groups and associate the entire group to a project. Learn how to use this new functionality …
We continue to make enhancements to Acuity Distributor Center based on customer feedback. Here are some recent changes you may want to pass along to your customers.
We recently provided you with the following additional Project Container enhancements and minor bug fixes to the Follow-up application …
We have more enhancements to agile quotes to tell you about!
We hope your customers are becoming more comfortable with the functionality of the new Acuity Distributor Center Order Status and E-Solutions. We have listened to our distributor’s feedback and continue to adjust the system to provide an optimum experience.
Here are some of the changes that have already been made and/or will be available next week.
Our March enhancements to agile Quotes are once again based on feedback we have received from our users. Keep the ideas coming. Here is what’s new:
Pacific Coast Distribution Center (PDC), which is located in Ontario, California, has over $17 Million of inventory, including product such as Acculamp. agile Product Search now provides visibility of this inventory, and will help you better serve your customers. PDC items display with a Location # of 86. PDC inventory sources from key Asian partners…
We have been busy enhancing OM to be more streamlined and flexible. Here are the enhancements ready for your use!
We’re excited to announce that over the next few months, we will begin phasing in Acuity Distributor Center (ADC) to replace our current Lithonia Distributor Center (LDC) portal. We’re updating key functionality over the course of the next 6 months to make this portal even more user-friendly and faster than ever before. We’re beginning the…
Today we have deployed three new reports:
We continue to address your enhancement requests….keep them coming! A new Quote release is now available and contains the following enhancements:
A new version of agile Documents is now available in Project Container and throughout agile where documents can be uploaded.
A new version of agile Rep is available for download and includes a couple of maintenance items to provide a better experience. Here are the details:
New Reports are available!!
We have developed some new reports to help with agency management:
…and made some improvement to existing reports! …
A new version of agile Quotes is available this morning. It includes two nice enhancements:
We continue to focus on enhancements that provide efficiency within agile Quotes!
A new version of agile Rep is available for download and contains some great enhancements many of you have asked for!
A new version of agile quotes is now available! Here are some of the highlights…
We have developed a new add-in for Outlook that will allow you to upload emails directly to and from agile!
The enhancements just keep on coming! Today’s enhancement….Project Container. Check it out.
Don’t miss this blog otherwise you may be in for a surprise when you go to the Contacts Tab of a Project or Order! We are excited to provide a new and much improved way to add companies and contacts to your projects, mark the specifier and customer who won the job and manage relationships…
We are pleased to provide some new features to the Submittals functionality of agile including the ability to:
As October comes to a close we have another round of agile Quotes treats for you including…
Want to be able to customize the order status and view it from the dashboard? Or maybe you want to create an automatic follow-up on your Non-ABL orders? Or perhaps you want to attach hold order documents when printing an order confirmation? Now you can! These are just a few of the exciting additions we’ve made to the agile Order Management application in this latest release …
A recent deployment of agile Order Management now includes improvements to the entry of commission splits for Non-ABL orders. You now have the ability to
Based on agency feedback, we recently updated several reports to allow for filter of National Accounts business and Acuity value stream commissions, and created a new report to assist with commission reconciliation! …
We have made another round of agile Quote enhancements based on your feedback. You can now take advantage of the following new features:
We’ve listened to your feedback on how you would like for the Alt Ship To, Ship To, and Sold To addresses to work for your Non-ABL orders. With the latest release, we’ve addressed your wishes! We’ve also tackled an improvement to the multiple line edit feature that we think you’ll appreciate. Here is a breakdown of the latest enhancements:
We have made some enhancements to Bid Board and Project Container that will improve your agile experience! These enhancements include:
The Commission Incentive Program has been expanded to include Healthcare Lighting®. This enhancement provides you more profit opportunities for your selling efforts, and makes the CIP process much easier for your agency.
CIP continues to pay an attractive 90/10 split. This change is now operational in agile.
We continue to dedicate time and effort into improving agile Quotes. You will be pleased to know we have made enhancements in the following areas:
Date: August 13, 2012
TO: U.S. and Canada C&I Principals and Associates
P&I 710
We recently implemented new processes within agile related to spec registration….
A new version of Order Management has been deployed to production.
The major changes in this version include:
You asked for it, and we delivered! Check out the new enhancements to Bid Board that you requested!
Check out the new enhancements to Bid Board! Print History: A new icon will display on calendar views when a quote has print history Layout Manager: Implemented Layout Manger for Bid Board Print History In the calendar views, an icon will display next to the Job Name when a quote has been printed or emailed….
We have improved the agile Payment application so you are now able to create a new non-ABL payment directly from an open payment record. After you created a non-ABL payment or have reviewed an existing record, you can click the New button and it will launch a new payment record. This feature will keep you…
More enhancements have been added to further improve your Project Container and Spec Registration experience.
Have you ever wanted to group a set of Quote lines together as an assembly? And then decide how to expose the products and pricing that make up that assembly? Well this functionality is now available in agile Quotes. Check out this quick 5 minute training video below to learn how to use the new…