Open Budget, Open Expenditures, And Open Payroll Release Notes: 11/25

As part of our commitment to continually updating and improving the tools we offer to our partners, today we released a new set of features and updates for each of the Socrata for Finance tools.

Admin Experience

We released version 2.0 of Bellerophon, the Socrata for Finance admin panel. This new update comes with a variety of improvements, including:

• The ability to manage staging and live versions of applications from a single location
• More intuitive layout and management options for users with multiple apps
• New, updated look and feel

Old:

New:

All

Beginning today, the Socrata for Finance tools can access and explore private datasets. This unlocks a new world of possibilities, including maintaining separate internal and public-facing versions of applications, testing a new application on a private dataset before launch, and internal-only applications.

For security reasons, applications can only access private datasets if the dataset owner gives their explicit permission. In order to do this, the dataset owner must give appsteam@socrata.com Viewer access to the private dataset - that's it!

More to come as we continue to expand our support for private and internal-facing tools.

Open Budget

As a note, these updates do not apply to the pre-April 2015 version of Open Budget, only to the version announced here.

• Added the ability to sort the bars in the Explorer view ascending or descending.
• Wherever there is pagination - including the Explorer view - users will now see the total number of items available in the list, in addition to the number of currently visualized items.
• The Operating Budget and Revenue modules can now show up to 5 different amounts for comparison, up from three.
• Added the ability to show comparison amounts on Capital Budget, just like Operating Budget and Revenue.
• Small tweaks and bug fixes.

Open Expenditures

Mapping Enhancements

The Socrata for Finance team is working closely with the Treasury to support the implementation of the DATA Act, and rolled out new features today designed for federal partners, but available to anyone.

• The Map option on the homepage has been enhanced with a tooltip that shows what the vendor or grantee received money for. The example below shows the two different Small Business Administration awards offered to Boise State University in 2014.

• The pin on the map now also shows the number of different programs, projects or awards associated with a specific vendor. In technical terms, it shows the number of distinct values in the bottom level of the hierarchy. The example below shows the number of different City programs that purchased goods from a vendor in Las Vegas.

• Added the ability to see a map at every level of the hierarchy - now, users can see which vendors worked on a given project or program, and where those vendors are located around the world.

Other Enhancements

• Added the ability to sort the bars in the Explorer view ascending or descending.
• Added the ability to "drill down" from a Vendor or Expense Category page.
• Wherever there is pagination - including the Explorer view - users will now see the total number of items available in the list, in addition to the number of currently visualized items.
• The default sort for the Checkbook view can now be set to any column, not just amount.
• Administrators can now chose a default axis for the Over Time view, such as Fiscal Quarter or Month, instead of automatically defaulting to Fiscal Period.
• Small tweaks and bug fixes.

Open Payroll

• Small tweaks and bug fixes.

Happy Holidays from the Socrata for Finance team!