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Enron Mail |
Introduction
In response to feedback received from Enron traders worldwide, we have upgraded and improved the Stack Manager to include new functionality which we hope will improve its effectiveness and usefulness in the management of your products. This new release will be automatically installed within the next few days. Please ensure you log out at night in order to receive the upgrade. Summary of New Features Multiple Children - A "Child" product can be the "Parent" of another Child (multiple links in a chain) and different types of links can be placed against a single Parent. Static Product Bar Prices - When you change a price in the Product Bar and hit the "+" or "-" button, the price stays - it does not reset to the amount in Product Properties until you logout. Sorting - You can sort by any field on the Products Tab simply by clicking on the title of the field. For multiple sorts, hold down your "shift" key. Parent Products which are at the top of a stack do not have their basis relationship identified. (e.g. The Product bar might before have said: "Basis Link - Parent" and now would say "Stand Alone, Parent"). Detailed Feature Descriptions Multiple Children The new version of EnronOnline allows you to link several products together in a long chain. For example, Child Product A can be linked to Parent Product B, which is in turn linked to Parent Product C. Warning: Although there is no absolute limit to the number of links in a chain, system performance is degraded by large chains. This is because when a customer attempts a transaction, the database must "lock" each and every product in the chain before it can process the transaction request. The database must then update the stack for each product before releasing the locks. "Vertical" chains (multiple parents and children in one long link) are much slower to process than "Flat" chains (One parent with many children). Large vertical chains should be avoided. Related to this feature is the ability to have several types of links on the same parent. For example, Child Product A can have a Basis link to Parent Product B. At the same time, Child Product C can have a Syncopated Basis link to the same Parent Product B. Parent B is the parent for both a Syncopated Basis link and a regular Basis Link. Static Product Bar Prices The new version of EnronOnline provides for "sticky" Product Bar price and volume changes. When you change a number on the Product Bar, it does not reset to the number contained in the Product Properties menu until after you have logged out. This makes it easier to update prices, volumes, spreads or offsets in a changing market without repeated hits to the "+" or "-" buttons. One of the benefits of setting these numbers to appropriate levels is that it reduces repeated price movements. With the old version of Stack Manager, if the price delta was too small, traders would often repeatedly hit the price movement buttons. Each of these price changes must be communicated across the website to customers and consumes valuable bandwidth. This makes it harder for customers to transact with us - each time they try, a new price update moves the price, resulting in an increased transaction failure rate. Entering an appropriate price into the Price Delta field and then pressing the price movement button means that fewer (but larger) price movements are necessary, improving overall system response and reducing customer transaction failure rate. You may also notice a new addition to the Product Bar prices - a new field for Offset to Last Trade. This allows you to update the offset for Products which have Offset to Last Trade selected from the Product Properties Menu. Sorting/Selecting The new version of EnronOnline provide significant additional sorting functionality over the old. You can now choose any field heading (Type, Location, Reference Period, etc.) and sort by that item. You can do multiple sorts by holding down the shift key. Example: If you select Type and then Location while holding the shift key, you will see your products sorted first by Product Type and then within each Product Type, by Location (in alphabetical order). If you right click on the Product menu, you can choose from the same sort criteria, plus you can select "Sort by Web Order", which allows you to see your products in the same order as they would appear to a customer on the website (note however, that a customer on the website might be also seeing a number of products in addition to the ones you are managing). When you select products, you can drag your mouse while holding down the left mouse button as always, but now you can also hold down the <ctrl< key while making your selections. This allows you to highlight products which are not necessarily adjacent to one another. Parent Products and F/X Products One of the differences in the way that the new version works is in its treatment of how parent products are displayed. The old version showed the type of link associated with the parent in the Product Bar (to the left of the main Product Bar update buttons above the products tabs). The new version does not show the type of link. This is because the new version allows for more than one type of link on each parent product. Some traders may notice that their products which have f/x links are now identified with a stylised "fx" in the Product list. This is to enable easy identification of products which are run as a Foreign Exchange link to the parent, rather than managed individually. Assistance As always, if you have any problems with any EnronOnline functionality, please contact the 24 hour Help Desk (Houston: 713 853 4357, London: +44 (0) 20 7783 7783, Australia: +61 2 9229 2300). General Feedback If you have any comments on the new functionality, or suggestions for further functionality, please call David Forster on 713 853 1861. If you had previously suggested new functionality which didn't make it into this release, rest assured that you have not been forgotten - we are working hard to improve all elements of EnronOnline and will try to incorporate your requests into the next release of the EnronOnline Stack Manager.
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