A Closer Look at Costpoint 8.2 User Experience Enhancements

Having a positive user experience with new software results in quicker onboarding, greater adoption, and more efficiency in everyday tasks. These outcomes benefit businesses by increasing return on investment (ROI) and speeding up time to value for software implementations. With a challenging economic environment where every penny spent counts, it’s no surprise that businesses consider user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) as one of their top evaluation criteria for new software and tools.

So, what does a “good” UX look like, especially for something as complicated as financial accounting for government contracts? Is it possible to balance compliance with accessibility and ease of use? This is a question Deltek has been iterating on for over 40 years. From the beginning, Deltek has been committed to balancing the rigor required to maintain compliance with easing the load on financial teams.

With the release of Deltek Costpoint 8.2 earlier this month, Deltek continues this commitment by incorporating exciting new UX/UI features and enhancements that will delight current users and drive quicker onboarding and adoption for new Costpoint users. These new features and improvements result in an optimized experience, so users can quickly navigate to where they need to go and, once there, complete processes across fewer screens with fewer clicks. To better support new Costpoint users, the latest release provides in-app learning guides and additional pre-configured user profiles, role-based dashboards, and out-of-the-box reports.

Personalizing Your Costpoint User Interface

Costpoint is designed to optimize the way government contractors work. Taking advantage of the newly released interface customizations and those available in earlier versions ensures that the functions you use most are just one click away.

Upon entering Costpoint 8.2 for the first time, users immediately see the new welcome screen and a refreshed left-hand navigation menu. The new navigation and welcome screen are created to provide multiple ways to access Costpoint applications— whether you’re just opening Costpoint or need to move from one application domain to another quickly.

The Costpoint left navigation bar can be pinned or hidden to maximize screen real estate. By popular request, applications like Business Intelligence can now be opened directly from the second level menu instead of drilling down to additional levels. From the left navigation, applications can be quickly added to “My Menu” by clicking the star icon beside the application.

The Costpoint home screen, by default, shows your Recent Activity and My Menu quick-access tiles. If you have not setup up your My Menu, you’ll see a tile with a plus sign to add commonly used applications. These enhancements collectively improve the overall user experience, with a focus on seamless navigating throughout Costpoint. Our Product Management team shared that this was a strategic addition to the roadmap they are excited to continue building upon.

“Navigation is more than just a menu; it is a strategy that provides users with options on how to move through the applications.” relays Ashley Olson, Costpoint Product Manager. “Our goal with enhancing Costpoint navigation was to modernize and highlight current Navigation and My Menu functionality by making it more intuitive to use and set up.”

If you hadn’t been introduced to User Interface (UI) Profiles in an earlier release of Costpoint, now is an excellent time to start using them to streamline workflows. UI Profiles can be assigned to users or user groups and offer the ability to easily switch between applications specific to certain jobs, processes, or functions. The newest release of Costpoint provides new, pre-configured profiles for organizational and project managers.

Deltek released UI Profiles with navigation banners for the Accounting, Projects, People, and Materials domains in Costpoint 8.0, and with Costpoint 8.2, we’ve added the Costpoint Planning module to that list. If you’re late to the game on navigation banners, you’re missing out on functionality that makes remembering and navigating complex processes and workflows easier. Navigation banners, which display at the top of an application screen, are made of application links displayed in the order of a process flow so you can ensure you’re following all steps for a particular process.

Custom Navigation banners that suit your business processes can be set up through My Menu, and pre-built navigation banners can be linked to users by assigning the domain specific UI Profiles to those users.

We’re also thrilled to share that Costpoint now supports Dark Mode, which helps to reduce eyestrain in low-light environments. This feature can be enabled in a user’s profile settings.

Making Daily Recording of Time More Accessible

Deltek Costpoint Time & Expense (T&E) has over 2 million users across the globe, and for most users outside of the accounting discipline, it’s what they think of when they hear “Costpoint.” Given the importance of time-tracking compliance within government regulations, using Costpoint is often one of the first things a new employee at a government contracting firm learns how to do. Recording time can also be a source of stress if there are hiccups in submitting or remembering this task. Although Deltek can’t change the requirements for daily time entry or documentation of time-card changes, we are making strides to make the process easier and more accessible to everyday users.

One of the most impactful upgrades in Costpoint 8.2 is the reimagining of the time entry experience. Through daily interactions with Costpoint T&E, we understand that users want to get in and out of the application quickly when recording their time. With this release, the time entry process is quicker and more intuitive, and users can record time without having to open Costpoint!

 

 

Deltek has approached this upgraded Time experience from multiple angles, including making the user interface more visually appealing and intuitive, reducing the number of clicks for common functions and providing more avenues to enter time. Upon opening a timesheet, you’ll see the header area has been streamlined, and detailed information is hidden and accessible by hovering over a field to display an info card instead of clicking through multiple applications. Action buttons, like “Add Line to Favorites,” are more prominent and grouped in a way that makes them easier to see and access. To help reduce the need for scrolling, timesheet lines are now dynamic, allowing lines to shrink so more fit on a screen. Continuing with the theme of maximizing screen real estate, while in the timesheet view, you can now access the function to request or submit leave without having to navigate to separate screens.

One of the most exciting features in Costpoint 8.2 is the launch of interactive emails for time entry. Deltek is now one of the first to offer the option to send automatic email reminders to employees, where time can be entered right into the email, without needing to open Costpoint. When you factor in recent enhancements that were made to Costpoint T&E Mobile App that garnered it 4.5 stars in the App store, Costpoint has more ways to enter and access time than ever before. So, no more excuses for missing or late timesheets!

Learning Guides for Both Seasoned and New Costpoint Users

Costpoint 8.2 also brings new learning tools like In-App Learning Guides, powered by Gainsight PX, that provide targeted and relevant product information to users to enable them to adopt new features and learn Costpoint quicker than ever before. Users will see prompt windows with key announcements about new functionality, saving them from searching through release notes or the help section to learn what’s new. Utilizing Gainsight PX also allows Deltek to study user patterns and tendencies in Costpoint to shape future UX improvements.

A Look Towards Future Costpoint User Experience Enhancements

Costpoint 8.2 is already receiving praise from early adopters, with one saying, “the whole thing just got about 1000% more user-friendly. You all hit this one out of the park.” With even more purposeful UX enhancements in Costpoint’s future, we need your help and feedback to ensure these improvements are addressing your key concerns. If you would like to have a say in the future of Costpoint we encourage you to participate in focus groups and early adopter programs, as well as year-round research efforts such as the virtual UX Lab where you can opt-in to be notified of new opportunities. One of the best ways to engage with the Costpoint Product Team is through the Deltek Ideas Portal, which provides greater visibility and discussion around user requested enhancements. An important aspect of the Idea Portals is that users can discuss ideas with peers and vote on other ideas submitted through the tool.

Adding Up the Ways Deltek Is Improving the User’s Experience >>

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