We've put a miniature version of Microsoft Word in the Performance Report editor! You can now apply some basic formatting to the text in the "Notes" section of the performance report. Bold, underline, italicize, unordered list, ordered list, etc. You can even add links that will be clickable when you copy and paste the report into an email!

You can now edit the content of the In/Out or Performance Report before printing it or saving it as a PDF.

To do this, when you are looking at the Preview, just click on any text and you can edit or delete it.

Please note that any changes you make this way are entirely temporary and are not saved in any way - if you reload the page, they'll be lost. For this reason, if there is a consistent problem with your In/Out or Performance Report template, let us know and we'll fix it permanently, so you don't have to keep redoing it.

The most likely use case here is if you need to change how a certain actor's name or a role is displayed in the In/Out or report in a way that is a one-off. See the below YouTube link for a quick demo.

You can now also effectively categorize a profile among four options: Active/Full Time, Vacation/Sub, Alumni, and Incoming.

Profiles marked Active/Full Time and Vacation/Sub will appear as suggestions in the In/Out (and other places, like Personnel, Lateness, Illness/Injury, etc dropdown) and profiles marked Alumni and Incoming will not appear as suggestions.

Rest assured, given a situation where, for example, a stage manager leaves a show after a year, and you mark them as "Alumni", they do not disappear from all the performance reports they were marked In/Out for. They just won't appear as a suggested profile the next time you create a report.

The most likely use case here is if you have a large cast changeover coming up - you can put all the new profiles in ahead of time, mark them as "Incoming" so they don't clutter up your workflow when making a performance report, and then mark them as "Active/Full Time" as they join the company.

Remember the custom report template feature that we rolled out in September, but was limited to the "Outs by Actor" report only, well that custom report functionality is now available for all three payroll assist reports.

A refresher on the functionality:

How does it work?
1. First, go to the report you'd like to modify (In/Out by Department, In by Role, Out by Actor) and find the (Actor/Role/Department) and date range that has data to display. This new feature is only triggered if there is data to display.

2. We've also upgraded the capabilities of the data tables! For example, you can now drag the column headers to re-order them, drag the little bars to re-size them, pin them to the left or to the right, and hide/show them (as before).

3. Once you've customed the colums as you like, give the template a name and click "Save Format". Everything you've adjusted about the columns will be saved (order, sizing, hide/show, pinning, etc). Note that you can re-order rows, but this will not be saved, and will only affect the order of the rows if you Export as CSV.

4. The next time you come back to this page, find that template name in the drop down and click "Load Template". You'll also find one called "Default", and loading that is the equivalent of resetting the columns. Note that you cannot edit the "Default" template.

5. You can delete templates that you created and also mark them as default, so it'll be loaded automatically next time.

Example Use Cases
Say you are a Broadway show, not a tour. By default, the "City" and "Venue" columns display, which never change for you. So, you might hide those two columns and then save a new template. Then, find that new template in the drop down, load it, and then "Set as Default" so it'll be automatically loaded next time.

A Quick Note
I want to be explicit that in order to update a template, delete a template, or mark it as default (including immediately after saving a new template), you need to make sure it is selected in the drop down and you've pressed "Load Template". I know this seems a bit contrived, but its an intentional design choice to make sure the user knows exactly which template is being operated on and that we've gotten the latest version from the database.

You can now view the details of all of the times a profile has been Late and/or Injured. To access these two tables, navigate to a specific profile via the "Manage Profiles" link and look underneath the "Covers" section.

If any private (non-report) notes have been entered, those will be displayed under the "Notes" column. If no private notes have been saved, and only the public report notes are available, then that is what will be shown.

One of the benefits of using Places is that the software is being continuously developed and improved. We've added a number of new features (sorting and locking In/Out items to name a few) over the summer, and the pace of development is not slowing down! Rather than flood your inbox with lengthy emails every time something new comes out, we've decided to use this Changelog to keep you updated on what has been released.

Stay Updated

We're looking forward to talking about all our changes, updates and improvements to our service as we move forward. We hope you'll keep an eye on our progress and let us know what you think!