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Changelog

Electrical Bid Manager™

Changelog for Electrical Contractor Software

We continually improve Electrical Bid Manager through customer feedback and internal ideas. The Extended Service Plan (ESP) or Subscription for your Electrical Bid Manager™ (EBM) includes all upgrades we release. Learn more about ESP or Learn more about Subscription.

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Upcoming Releases

  • Improved Pricing Updates: We are researching better ways of updating EBM with EPIC Pricing.
  • New Items & Assemblies: Quarterly enhancements to item/assembly database.
  • User Interface Updates: Adding look & feel improvements. Adding "tool tips" hint bubbles to more modules to guide users.
  • Speed and Stability: We continue to work on adding speed and stability enhancements to EBM.
  • Email us at support@visioninfosoft.com with any improvement suggestions. Or use our support webform here.

New Feature Highlights

  • NECA Manual of Labor Units MLU 2023-2024: Labor updates to items in the EBM database.
  • New License Manager: No more annual unlock codes! And, a few other nice benefits.
  • Added: New items added to the EBM Database.
  • Added: Speed improvements to editing items in the Audit Trail.
  • Added: Manual Backups now run 10x faster for larger databases.
  • Added: Official support for Microsoft SQL Server 2019
  • Added: Report added to Motor Control Centers Takeoff
  • Added: The number of possible Bid Summaries increased to 100
  • Added: The "Editing item" view offers a new "Assemblies" tab. This tab displays a list of Assemblies the item is a member of.
  • Added: New Excel XLSX report export format for all reports

The changelog below includes new features and bug fixes for Electrical Bid Manager v26.0. We have rolled in the updates from 25.3 and 25.4 that did not get a wide release.

Added Features

  • In the Quick Branch takeoff module, we added help videos and instructional text to point out how to edit the Saved Assemblies that appear in these windows.
    • The Quick Branch takeoff module uses Saved Assemblies from the Cable takeoff module and the Branch Circuits takeoff module. You need to edit the saved assemblies from those two takeoff modules. This wasn't very clear. We have added the text guidance and help videos. BZ173320
  • On the Job Extension Report, improved how the breakout filtering checkboxes behave when you do additional Takeoff.
    • New default behavior: If you create Bid Summaries in the Job Extension where you have unchecked specific breakouts (breakdowns/phases/sections/etc), and you do additional takeoff, the unchecked boxes on all your bid Summaries will remain unchanged. If your new takeoff is in previously unused breakouts, the new breakouts will automatically be checked and part of all your Bid Summaries.
    • In Program Settings, Job Settings tab | General tab, if you turn off "Add all takeoff entries to existing Bid Summaries," the new takeoff breakouts will be unchecked in all your existing Bid Summaries. We added a tooltip to this setting to clarify it. BZ173285
  • Added "Export Report" button to Job Extension Menu.
    • This replaces the old "Export Data" button and combines the functions of Export Report and Export Data. BZ170273
  • Cost Report updated to reflect the Quantity Multipliers from Job Extension Bid Summary
    • When running a Job Extension Report, you are asked to create a Bid Summary to save the settings. If you set Quantity Multipliers (e.g. hotel rooms), the Cost Report did not include the calculated totals from the active Bid Summary's Multiplier settings. BZ173228
  • The "Add Item from EPIC" button always triggers the add dialog.
    • When we initially added this feature/button in v25.2, it would only trigger the add dialog once. If the Add Item window is open, the button in the left-panel wouldn't retrigger an add. You would need to use the Add button from the window. The left-panel button now always retriggers the add dialog. BZ172871
  • The Job Extension report now includes the ability to export UPC.
    • A customer requested that we add a report that includes UPC. See the new Export report "Plain with UPC" BZ169270
  • In the Edit/View/Print Database window, a "Select All" option has been added to the right-click menu.
    • A specific use case for this was to quickly select and delete all items in the Recycled folder. However, this can be used in any folder. BZ172099
  • Enhancements to the Labor Rates window.
    • A couple of "quality of life" enhancements have been added. First, the active Labor Rate name appears in the header bar. Second, when choosing to "Select Another Set of Rates", the list defaults to the current active Labor Rate from the list. BZ170093
  • Improved EBM's stability and speed.
    • We refactored and improved EBM's code to simplify a few complex functions, speed up data processing, and improve EBM's stability. BZ170081
  • All takeoff modules with a Designation field now set it as the active field in two situations.
    • When first launching the takeoff module
    • After user clicks F2 Takeoff (or the F2 key), completes the takeoff, the module refreshes and should make the Designation field active. BZ171131
  • EBM warns users if the database is nearing maximum storage capacity.
    • SQL Server Express has a 10GB maximum limit. It takes most users years to grow their EBM database to this size. EBM now alerts the user when they are within 0.5GB of hitting the max. We recommend contacting Vision Support. However, you can delete old jobs and run the Rebuild and Reorganize features in EBM's database menu. BZ170095
  • Enhanced the "Logged Users" tool for network installations.
    • We enhanced EBM's detection and reporting of active users. All users listed in the "Logged Users" tool should now be more accurate. This also eliminated the "Did EBM Crash" prompt experienced after a crash. BZ169446
  • EBMUTIL updated and cleaned up.
    • The admin and support application has been updated. BZ168547

Fixed

  • Open items with no price/labor sometimes wouldn't save and would reprompt for price/labor.
    • When running a Job Extension or Job Totals report, EBM will prompt the user to enter a price and labor value for the item. In some situations, EBM was not saving these values and would reprompt the user. Closing the job or closing EBM was the workaround, as the values would save properly. BZ140059
  • Item Database improvements.
    • UPC updates to ensure price updates from EPIC work as expected. BZ169331, BZ168922
  • EPIC updates to the EBM database sometimes changed the Unit of Measure (UoM) of Pull Line
    • We updated the UPC for the affected item(s) and made code changes to prevent this from happening in the future. BZ148115
  • Improved how EBM handles the "Connection failure" or "Connection Lost" errors.
    • Certain Sleep/Resume and Power mode changes affected EBM's SQL connection. We have improved EBM's handling of SQL connections and its reconnection to SQL Server after a Power mode change. BZ168501
  • Editing Audit Trail produces error "Invalid class typecast" in 25.x
    • In the Settings menu, when Program Setting | Takeoff | "enable manual refresh in Audit Trail" is enabled, this can cause this error for some customers. We fixed the bug that created this error. BZ172159
  • Fixed an Access Violation in takeoff modules when the user tried to use a deleted Designation.
    • Updated the code to prevent the user from selecting a Designation that is "null" (does not exist in Audit Trail, existing takeoff).
      Two causes of the error:

      • User deletes a Fixture from the Audit Trail that was the only or last fixture for a specific Designation. (e.g. F5)
      • If the user edit-to-source on a Fixture (e.g. F1) and changes Designation to F5, EBM would crash with access violation. BZ170604
  • Small speed improvement to closing EBM at the username login dialog.
    • After launching EBM, if you choose to cancel and close EBM at the time of logging in, EBM will close immediately instead of semi-launching and then closing. BZ169617
  • Manual fixtures takeoffs correctly default to Phase 08.
    • In the Fixtures takeoff module, if you takeoff while manually filling the fields instead of using a Saved Assembly, EBM would default to Phase 04. The correct default phase is now set (08 Lighting). BZ169988
  • Removed deprecated, unsupported envelope button.
    • This button used to trigger sending an email. We have removed the button due to security changes. The user can save the report to PDF/XLSX/CSV and manually email as needed. BZ170373
  • In EBM Standard, the "Change Order" button in the Jobs Open window was malfunctioning.
    • We made corrections to the code to ensure the button behaved as expected. BZ172098
  • Jobs with more than 32 Bid Summaries was causing an error "Field 'Section_Multiplier33' not found." in the Job Extension report.
    • We improved the code to handle as many Bid Summaries as needed for job. EBM dynamically adds needed fields on a job to expand to match the number of Bid Summaries. BZ171981

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