The OrangeHRM engineering team has made available a looming new version. The release serves as a trial-candidate before 2.6.1 is released on 20th January 2011.

It’s a reticent improvement that personifies OrangeHRM’s effort to boost the frequency the open-source  HRIS is developed.The new version was targeted at enhancing the usability of the leave module with some fine tuning touches and feature additions, the most commonly used feature around the world. This release is set to be tested out by over 2000 members around the world and more than 10,000 production users will be using the new version when it is released later this month.

Options to define company leave periods, an enhanced leave summary and leave list and improved leave notifications are some of the highlights in the release.
As always OrangeHRM never fails to reward the efforts and commitment of the community to build a classy HRIS, this season OrangeHRM will select the best feedback and reward it with a 10 user OrangeHRM Live instance for one year. We urge our users to write their ideas, thoughts and improvements to support@orangehrm.com.

Speaking to OrangeHRM Co-Founder and CEO Sujee Saparamadu, he said, “Our aspiration is to deliver a highly usable product to our end users; our community’s call to increase the usability of the leave module has been answered with this release. We will continue to enhance usability while adding new elements to the system and give the users a striking experience.”

Try it out today and give us feedback and be part of a grand open source community.

What’s New In 2.6.1?

The more your business matures and flourishes the more challenges it is going to face. People management is by far one of the earliest challenges you will face.
In order to keep up with the demands of this growing and evolving workforce, your company’s Human Resource executives need to be equipped with useful and efficient tools to assist in streamlining the constant flow of information and help them do their jobs. Even the best administrators can only do so much; and when a business needs to surpass the HR management’s ability to fulfill them, the company will find itself operating inefficiently and below its potential. OrangeHRM was designed as a solution to this disparity: Human Resource Information Software, or OrangeHRM Live, a system which amplifies the capabilities of your executives by automating many of their basic tasks and thus allowing them to focus on more specialized work.

Looking Back at OrangeHRM Live

OrangeHRM Live, the Software as a service (SaaS) version of the world famous Open-Source (Free) HR Software,” OrangeHRM” has simplified many HR functions with it’s cost effective pay as you go model, which was launched in July 2010.
OrangeHRM Live deals with a business’s most valuable asset, the employees. HR’s ability to make crucial decisions that relies on the availability and accuracy of the relevant employee data.
OrangeHRM Live fuels a vast database that is well-organized and easily accessible to all who needs it. Information is secure and readily available the moment it is needed. All-in-all, OrangeHRM Live cuts out the need for delay and uncertainty, and assists executives in making swift and confident company decisions.
After the launch of OrangeHRM Live there have been over 700 instances deployed, and in this situation numbers can speak for it’s self.

Enhancements in OrangeHRM Live

OrangeHRM Live was launched with a flare, the system contains a set of modules and features that any HR Manager would like to have.
OrangeHRM Live includes;

• Administration
• Personal Information Management
• Employee Self Service
• Leave Management
• Time and Attendance Management
• Performance Management
• Recruitment Management

Since the launch, OrangeHRM Live has been enriched with many new modules and features;
OrangeHRM Live has become one of the most sought after SaaS or HR Software’s in the SME sector. A significant advantage of using OrangeHRM over all other HR software’s would be the fact that new features added to the system are available for use at no extra cost. The OrangeHRM development team is constantly developing new tools which will plugged into live when they are ready.

The Future of OrangeHRM Live

In the near future all HR Personal can look forward to a brand new feature been implemented in to OrangeHRM Live. The worst nightmare of any HR person would be to calculate leave accruals and carry forwards every year, month, week or day. The OrangeHRM Live Leave Accrual Engine will solve this. Many customers have reuested for customizations to suit their leave management system which is developed using the leave accrual engine as a base. With more features and enhancements to be made, OrangeHRM Live hopes to deliver a prosperous HRIS to its users in 2011.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the community grow and member contributions have driven OrangeHRM to become the “World’s Most Popular Human Resource Management System.”

On 2.6.1 we will roll out a few more enhancements to leave module. While increasing the usability 2.6.1 will also feature the ability to define the fiscal year.

The new leave summary will allow administrators to have more search filters and save search time. This new release is set to come out in the week of the new year and we hope you enjoy it, and use it to take action quickly.

A performance evaluation is a stressful time for a manager. With the OrangeHRM performance module we make performance evaluation a walk through the park. While ensuring accurate reviews this new module will save a great deal of money and time.

Although this module was not introduced to OrangeHRM earlier many organizations around the world like DUKE NUS - Singapore, The ORS Group - Australia and CIM Technologies - USA use performance modules designed by OrangeHRM to suit each of these companies requirements.

This module will be released with the next stable version OrangeHRM 2.6. Development teams at OrangeHRM are working hard to release 2.6 by the end of March 2010.

A beta version will be released during the first week of March 2010.

We’re happy to announce that a web based upgrader has been added to OrangeHRM 2.4.1 which upgrades your previous stable version of OrangeHRM to OrangeHRM 2.4.1. This was done in response to numerous requests we received from the user community in our forum and through email.

The upgrader can upgrade OrangeHRM versions 2.2.2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 to the latest OrangeHRM version 2.4.1.

This is now available as a beta release from Sourceforge.

Click here to download OrangeHRM 2.4.1 with the upgrader.

Click here to view the upgrade instructions.

In the current version of OrangeHRM, project time and punch in/out time entry mechanisms are integrated in a single timesheet. The punch in/out was introduced as an easier way to enter time for organizations that do not want detailed information of time spent on projects and activities.

However, based on user feedback, some organizations use both these type of time entry mechanisms. Punch In/Out is basically used to track attendance and project time is used to track detailed information on time spent on various projects and activities.

To improve the usability of this feature, we have decided to separate these 2 time tracking functionalities. We will introduce a new report type: Attendance Report. Further, there will be configurable options to restrict employees’ rights to edit already reported Punch In/Out time data.

The latest definition of this feature is on our Wiki: Link