Flex Rental Solutions has been working diligently on making the transition to Flex5 Desktop. As part of the 4.27.0 release, you may have noticed some new links in Flex called “Open in Flex5” on financial documents, inventory, and some scanning screens. You will only see these links if you have the System Administrator permission granted, but this will change in the future so eventually every user will be able to see the links. Currently, these links take you to a “Coming Soon” page with information about Flex5. But in the coming weeks and months, we will be allowing some customers access to select features in Flex5 and they will be able to use the “Open in Flex5” links to quickly navigate between Flex4 (the current Flash based version of Flex) and Flex5 (the new and improved HTML5 version of Flex).
The 4.27.0 release was extremely important in getting closer to allowing customers to use select features in Flex5. While you won’t notice any major new features or fixes in Flex4 after the release, there is a lot happening behind the scenes. Essentially, the architecture is now in place for us to turn Flex5 access on or off for customers without needing to do a new version update. This is key as we get closer to finishing up some of the initial features in Flex5.
What’s next for Flex5 Desktop
Through September, we are hoping to allow early access to select Flex5 features (like building and editing financial elements, inventory viewing and editing, and some scanning). Initially this access will be limited to a dozen or so selected customers. Then as we get feedback from these early-adopters, we’ll gradually start rolling out access to more and more customers. You’ll be able to use these initial features in Flex5, but will continue using Flex4 for features and functionality that are not yet complete in Flex5.
Our goal is to have a lot of the core Flex functionality (building jobs, inventory management, contacts, and scanning) available in Flex5 by the end of 2019. Then we’ll continue developing features in Flex5 through 2020 until everything has been ported over and you will no longer have to use Flex4 for anything. Of course we will keep everybody updated on all of this, including when the first beta release of Flex5 is widely available.
The future is bright for Flex5
As you can see, we’ve been hard at work for a while getting the first pieces of Flex5 Desktop ready for customers to use. We’re excited that we’re finally getting closer to the point where you can see this hard work and use Flex5 live in your system. We want to say thank you to all our customers for your continued patience and commitment as we make this transition to Flex5. We appreciate the trust you put in our team and our product.
