BriefingEdge Version 13 Features and Descriptions Note: Version 13.4 was been posted to all BUG member web sites in June, 2010

The BriefingEdge Users Group (the BUG) is the official organization of active BriefingEdge Users whose goal is to exchange best BriefingEdge practices, to funnel requests for new or enhanced features and to identify ways in which new technologies can improve your briefing program.  Information about the past and current BUG meetings can be found here in the BUG report. 

	Account profiles can now be uploaded and viewed in additional formats.  An account profile can be uploaded and linked to a customer / visit in any one of these formats: Doc, Docx, Xls, Xlsx, PDF.  For detailed instructions on using Account Profiles, click here.
	Attendees. BriefingEdge has significantly enhanced the ease and accuracy involved when adding attendees.  A new auto complete feature has been added to the attendee screen making data entry easier while increasing the accuracy of both customer and internal attendees.    There is now a way to track business partners by recording individual partner attendees and their company name, on the internal attendee screen.
	Evaluations can be more professionally prepared using the new export evaluations to Word feature.  Although you can still email evaluations directly, you can now precisely control the formatting by exporting the evaluation to Word.  Complementing this feature is a new report allowing you to fill out an evaluation on screen and link it to an attendee.
	Outbound briefings. BriefingEdge now supports Outbound (also called Off-site) briefings by recording the city, state and/or country in which a briefing occurs.  Outbound briefings do not use a room in your briefing center but all other features including agenda and meal planning and speaker selection, are still supported.
	Shared Rooms. You can now define one or more rooms at various centers as being shared.  A shared room can be scheduled by another briefing center and would be used for video or telepresence meetings, those requiring multiple rooms in difference locations concurrently.  All conflict checking features apply to shared rooms, just like any other room under the control of BriefingEdge.
	Topics and Agendas.  There are quite a few improvements to the agenda development process.  You can now rearrange topics using a drag-and-drop interface.  You can also indicate, on an individual basis, whether a particular speaker should be included in the evaluation process.  You can now remove either day of a 2-day visit while in tentative or confirmed status.  A new comment field has been added to the Topics and Meals screen to match the expanded field on the agenda screen.  Like other text boxes in BriefingEdge, this one can be labeled anyway you want and can even include a little help box. There is also a new attendee administration feature designed to standardize attendee names, titles and email addresses.
	Reporting has been expanded and simplified.  There are now new administration reports to make it easier to manage categories, topics and meals.  For those briefing programs with multiple sites, the user interface when selecting sites has been improved.  The Won/Loss report now lets you compare the revenue potential with the actual revenue won or lost. Emailing reports has been greatly simplified by using the same auto completion feature we introduced for attendees. The Detailed Briefing Package report contains all of the details captured for this visit.  It is the report displayed when an invitation is sent to a speaker and is typically the report displayed when you click on the visit # from any of the summary reports.
	Personal Calendar Integration. One of the biggest series of enhancements introduced with version 13 involves personal calendar integration, integrating speakers and attendees personal calendars with BriefingEdge.  These features are compatible with Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.  New features include tentative acceptance in addition to accept and decline.  BriefingEdge now can read the speaker's response and display that text on the agenda screen.  It also maintains a history of every speaker invited for each agenda item.
	New Scheduling Enhancements.  Extended Length Visits has arrived.  Visits can be scheduled from 1 to 5 days in length and you can drag and drop topics within and between days.  You can expand a visit up to 5 days in length (if you've allowed 5-day visits) and you can also shrink visits from 5 to 4, from 4 to 3, from 3 to 2 or from 2 to 1 day.  BriefingEdge will now display the reason why a date is unavailable as a rollover.  See demonstration here.
	New Administrator Features.  New screens have been developed that enable the administrator to customize their briefing program even more.  One new administrative feature allows you to define the specific reason for briefing questions on a site-by-site basis.  Typically, the briefing request form contains from 4 to 10 questions designed to record the reason for this briefing, customer background, issues, etc.  Now, an administrator can define each question, its order and whether it is required or optional. There are now new tools to copy and move visits that are reserved for administrators only.  These tools differ from the normal reschedule function in that they automatically override all scheduling rules developed for your site and they don't generate automatic emails.
	New Site Configuration Parameters.  New parameters have been added to the site administration screen allowing you to customize the operation of your site even more.  You can set the default visit starting and ending times and define minimum and maximum briefing lengths.  These new site administration parameters are discussed in detail here.
	New Security Features and Reduced User Administration.  Version 13 introduces new security features allowing you to grant important business partners with limited and controlled access to BriefingEdge.  After 10 years of mapping user capabilities to specific access levels, BriefingEdge has started the process of being able to grant new capabilities to existing user accounts without having to create additional accounts for those new capabilities.  This process will require the conversion of existing accounts to the new functional capabilities model.  This process started over a year ago and culminates in the elimination of Site Administrators as a separate access level.  The new security structure allows you to assign Site configuration privileges to existing coordinator accounts allowing them to maintain their own site parameters.  It also allows you to assign one or more coordinator or administrator accounts to the BriefingEdge Request Acknowledgment Inbox meaning they'll receive copies of incoming requests for that site.