Newton 6.1 Release Notes

Owned by Robin Rodrigue
Last updated: Nov 15, 2024 by Nora Kinal

Included in Newton 6.1 Release Notes are versions 6.1.0-6.1.3. Some releases are private Betas.

Newton 6.1.3

New Features

Enhancements

  • NEWTON-11716 - Plugin & Custom Table Schema Support - Added the ability to disable individual custom table schemas, as well as command line switches to disable all custom table schemas or disable all external plugins.
  • NEWTON-12081 - Added “balance” column to the Student Search screen. (The balance is the sum of unallocated balance and reimbursable only balance.) Added “account statement” button that will print the account statement for the highlighted student.
  • NEWTON-12084 - Update to Student Deletion - Added a setting to prevent automatic deletion of students with balances.
  • NEWTON-12259 - Updated Cafeteria Maintenance & School Maintenance screens to sort their grids according to the System Setting for school sort field.
  • NEWTON-12312 - At Cost Adult Meal Key
  • NEWTON-12336 - Serving Line Key Update - Updated the Serving Line function screen to include “Key”, i.e. CTRL, ALT, SHIFT etc.
  • NEWTON-12343 - Permissions List grouping
  • NEWTON-12429 - Added the ability to reorder the columns on database & cafeteria permission screens and Save Layout and an option under My Profile to Reset Local Settings.
  • NEWTON-12438 - Changed the behavior of the POS button for Payment Only to deselect the Giving Change button allowing the user to apply funds without making a sale or giving change.
  • NEWTON-12971 - Increased Max Quantity Sale to 1000
  • NEWTON-12914 - Ability to clear principal account - Added an option to clear a selected principal account for a site.
  • NEWTON-12991 - Second Meal Restriction - This setting will prevent all customers from buying a second meal, unless it’s a special customer marked Multi-Reimbursable.
  • NEWTON-13020 - Automatic touchscreen image selection when editing menus.  Most commonly used image will be added to the item button when adding new touchscreen buttons.
  • NEWTON-13027 - Clear Touchscreen Buttons - Dragging a touchscreen button away from the menu will clear the button.
  • NEWTON-13134 - Added the ability to save Report Layout Customizations as a .repx file that can be shared with other users.
  • NEWTON-13138 - Added a new cafeteria permission for “Double Card Usage: Fix All” that allows districts to disable the Fix All button.
  • NEWTON-13193 - Added the ability to include User Defined Reports in the Checklist setup options. (Expand Add Item)
  • NEWTON-13157/13158 - Sales Screen Update - Added Item Count to the sales screen.  When selling multiples of the same item, the items will be grouped into a single row.  Updated the amount due field to shrink the font when the balance goes above $100.00.
  • NEWTON-13205 - User Action Logging - Added User Action Logging for packing and recovering the local database for support & development incident research.
  • NEWTON-13206 - Scheduled Job Log
  • NEWTON-13523 - Added Supper data to the Daily Recap report
  • NEWTON-13528 - Account Statement update - Moved the principal account subreport on the account statement to the top of the report. Added POS ID to the Account Statement – if a student has multiple POS IDs, all will be listed.

Fixes

  • NEWTON-9005 - Fixed a bug in the Account Statement report and the Principal Account Transfer report that was causing incorrect values to be calculated for the amount owed to the principal.
  • NEWTON-9271 - Fixed a bug that caused an error when building POS Customers for a cafeteria whose Principal account POS customer had been deleted.
  • NEWTON-9524 - Fixed a bug in the double card utility fix-all that made it possible in certain situations to convert all reimbursable to at-cost.
  • NEWTON-9616 - Fixed a defect that was requiring selecting a customer when adding a report menu configuration for the account statement report, or any report with a single select customer criteria filter.
Newton 6.1.1

Enhancements

Fixes

  • NEWTON-9205 - POS Dallas Cash Drawer Communication Error
Newton 6.1.0

New Features

  • NEWTON-12737 - Availability Group Support - Added support for Districts using Availability Groups. Part of that support includes the ability to end all active user sessions and SQL Server Connections when attempting to establish Single-User Mode or Database Upgrades.
 Availability Group Support details

In order for the program to support availability groups, all active user sessions will need to be ended upon upgrade and program relaunch.

Ending Active Sessions

Ending sessions will disconnect anyone who is currently logged in to the program and the user will receive an error message when attempting to reestablish a connection with the database. The user will need to close the program and log back in.

Active Session Log

You may see a number of active sessions in your list. Active sessions may appear for the following reasons:

  • User is currently logged into the system (actively or passively)
  • User may have had equipment failure and was not properly logged out
  • User may have lost network connectivity

Step A: Upon opening the program after upgrading, the Users Session Monitor screen will appear. Review all users and logged sessions. Next, click in the checkbox at the top of the screen to select all users or in individual checkboxes to select users individually. Then, click End Session.

Click the Refresh button once you have contacted users to log out of the program to ensure they no longer appear in the list.

Session Termination

Terminating a session will cause the user to lose any unsaved work. It is recommended that you run the upgrade at a time when the least number of users are logged in to the program. You will not be able to login to the system until all active sessions are ended. You may contact the users to log out of the program manually or select to end their session and terminate their database connection.

Step B: A warning message will appear before active sessions are terminated. Read the warning. If you wish to continue, click Yes.

Step C: All active sessions are terminated. Click Continue to complete system upgrade and login.


Enhancements

  • NEWTON-12176 -  A checkbox to run report for each school in now available in the following After Posting Reports, Sales & Revenue, Customer Info Reports, and Central Office Reports.

  • NEWTON-12129 - Cash Drawers - POS support for APG Cash Drawer

    APG Cash Drawer

    Requires version 1.1.0 of the device driver, obtainable from the manufacturer at www.cashdrawers.com.

  • NEWTON-12257 - Special Milk Program - In order for the Special Milk Program to work properly, you must first setup "Program Participation" in Price Categories. Secondly, SMP is checked off in Item Category maintenance. Next, a price override is applied to "Milk" in Items. Then, Price Category Mapping must be established. Finally, Price Category Mapping is applied at the Cafeteria level. Reimbursement Rates must be established in Claims to appear on claim reports. The claim process has also been updated include SMP Standard and SMP Free claim counts along with total milk purchased and total milk purchased cost.

  • NEWTON-12260 - CEP Label Update - Updated the labels on Manual Meal Count fields from PV2 to CEP.
  • NEWTON-12439 - Offer vs. Serve Configurations - In order for Offer-vs-Serve to work properly, you must first setup OVS Requirements and OVS Mapping. Next, OVS is applied at the Item level. Once OVS has been established at the Item level, it must then be established at the Menu level. Finally, OVS is applied to Cafeterias.
  • NEWTON-12546 - Menu Shortcuts - Updated Menu Maintenance to ignore duplicate item on page shortcuts.
  • NEWTON-12578 - MSB Payment Polling - 10 minute safety polling implemented in MSB real-time agent.
  • NEWTON-12414 - Split charges and pre-paids on Line Details (After-Posting) report

Fixes

  • Newton-9191 - Fixed a bug that was causing the real time server log to not show events in most cases.