What's new in MERL 4.2
Contract Grouping
Contract grouping is another way to organize your MERL Contracts. For example, you may want to keep your Local jobs separate from your Federal Aid jobs. With the Contract Group field, you can tag certain Contracts as LOCAL and others as FED:
Contract Group field in Contract Info
When you use the Open dialog to select a Contract, you will be able to filter the Contracts by these tags:
Saved Contract Dialog with Groups
top
CSV File Import
Users can now import any text file, whether it is a csv (comma-separated values) or a tab-delimited text file. The only requirement is that it have a pay item code column. When importing a text file, the user will determine how it is delimited and select the column mapping so the right fields in the text file are used for the right columns:
Import Text File dialog
After mapping the columns, you can designate Contract and Project information:
Save Imported File to Contract
top
Merge 2 Estimates
Users can use the Copy function to combine 2 separate Estimates in to a new Estimate. Items that are duplicated between Estimates (Category, Pay Item, Supplemental Description, and Breakdown ID are the same) will be combined.
Copy Contract dialog
After selecting the two Estimates to be merged, the Merge Estimates dialog will show the pertinent information for each Estimate. The Merged Categories information allows the user to remove duplicate Categories.
Merge Estimates Dialog
top
Supplemental Description Cleanup
As more Estimates are entered into the MERL Database, more variants of Supplemental Descriptions for Pay Items will be saved. The Supplemental Description Cleanup tool allows the MERL Administrator to replace all the variants (i.e. '- Modified', ', Modified', '(Modified)' with a single description:
Supplemental Description Cleanup
Once the descriptions are combined, when users enter Pay Items for new Estimates, they will only see the 'official' Supplemental Description for that Pay Item.
Combine Descriptions Dialog
top
MERL 4.2 is free of charge to any Michigan Local Agency and their consultants.
To request a CD copy, call 906-487-2102 or send an e-mail to MERL Support