Unleash the Power of Your OpenAir System Using OpenAir Scripts

OpenAir offers a lot of powerful tools and reporting to keep your professional services on track, understand usage, and executing billing quickly and effectively. Sometimes, however, there is additional data processing and features that it would be great to have that aren’t part of the OpenAir core system.

Luckily, OpenAir accounted for this need. OpenAir scripting allows organizations to easily extend the functionality of the core system. While there are obviously limitations to what these scripts can do, they still provide a powerful set of options for companies to make OpenAir work exactly the way they need it to.

Why Use OpenAir Scripting?

OpenAir is already a comprehensive PSA that offers the ability to integrate with other business applications. So, is there really a reason to offer scripting within the software?

It’s important to remember that the out-of-the-box functionality of OpenAir is meant to address the most common professional services automation and management needs. Having the ability to customize data management to meet your organization’s particular requirements and simplify your workflows increases OpenAir’s usefulness.

OpenAir scripting permits its users to automate data validation and manipulation, extend notification features, customize approval processes, and more. While creating scripts can be simple, the scripts themselves can open up new functionality to meet your company’s unique systems and flows.

In addition, with the April and October 2019 releases of OpenAir, the scripting engine now enables direct integration with other web-based systems.  This includes but isn’t limited to the most popular CRM, Finance, Expense Management, and Project Management systems.

Types of OpenAir Scripts

OpenAir offers two different types of scripts with very different features and purposes, but with the same set of overarching restrictions. Both script types use standard Javascript and several OpenAir specific libraries.

The first is Form scripts. These are the simpler of the two types, typically are only a few lines of code, and their focus is primarily on data validation with some notification abilities. The second type is typically larger and more complex. These are the Scheduled scripts and can be used to trigger events, access and manipulate records, and provide integrations with other systems.

Similar to almost any SaaS product, these scripts must adhere to a set of restrictions to run without overburdening the system. OpenAir measures the amount of processing power needed for each kind of script functionality by grouping them into “units”.  Each piece of functionality – like sending an email or reading a record from the database – uses a certain number of units. Each script type is limited in the number of units it can use. The OpenAir script tools make it easy to understand how many units your application uses.

As stated, Form scripts are less complex and focus primarily on data validation. Their restrictions make that even more obvious. These scripts must run in 5 seconds or less can only use 1000 units, and can only send 3 email messages each time it runs, albeit to many recipients.

Scheduled scripts, on the other hand, can run for up to an hour, can use up to one million units, and send 100 email messages per execution.

OpenAir Usage Examples

Knowing what scripts are and that they exist is helpful. More importantly, however, getting an understanding of what you can do with them will open your mind to how they can streamline your workflows or simplify your organization’s use of OpenAir.

To get you thinking about their potential, here are just a few ways OpenAir scripts can be used:

Integration:  Top Step has built several scheduled scripts that directly connect OpenAir with other back-office systems, including Salesforce, Jira, HubSpot, Slack, Google Sheets, etc.

Time Entry: Using a Form script, validate that a user’s time entry is valid. For instance, check to make sure they aren’t entering negative values for their time.

Budget Automation: Automate some of your budget entry with Scheduled scripts. An example might be to sum all of the hours planned for a project and then automatically moving that into the Budget (Horus) field for the project.

Automate Revenue Management: If you’re working on a fixed fee project, you can use a Scheduled script to proportionally divide the revenue between the users that worked on the project.

Milestone Updates: Use a Scheduled script to update custom fields based on the completion of specific tasks or milestones. For example, update your Expected Go-Live field based on when a milestone is completed.

For more examples, explore Top Step’s script marketplace.

Best Practices for OpenAir Scripts

Ready to learn more about OpenAir scripting? Explore the following resources to help you get started.

OpenAir Scripting Guide

Get started writing your own OpenAir scripts with this started guide from OpenAir. This documentation will give you a good jump-off point to creating both Form and Scheduled scripts.

OpenAir Data Dictionary

If you’re new to OpenAir scripting, the Data Dictionary from OpenAir can be overwhelming. But that’s because it’s a comprehensive guide to Form and Schedule scripting with all of the information you could ever need to create your own scripts.

JavaScript Reference

There are many great JavaScript references on the web. This one is easy to understand and well explained if you’re just getting started learning the language.

SOAP Explorer and Functions Explorer

Within OpenAir’s Scripting Center, where you write, test, and run your scripts, you’ll find both the SOAP explorer and the Functions Explorer. Both of these resources and powerful tools in creating OpenAir scripts that will do exactly what you need.

Want to learn more or have a process you want to improve with an OpenAir script? View our webinar, check out our library of examples, or request a custom script from Top Step.