Release 12.29

Release 12.29 enhances the GHG Reporting tools within Sigma allowing you to:   

• Report multiple GHG categories from a single Commodity. Learn how to independently calculate and report Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by applying multiple categories to a single commodity.

Also available is a new importer for Ecotricity gas bills.

For helpful advice on Sigma’s GHG reporting functionality, click here.

Release 12.28

Release 12.28 includes changes that enhance the GHG Reporting tools within Sigma. They allow you to:   

• Link GHG Emissions Factors to a reporting period. Learn how to choose the DEFRA factors most suited to your reporting period; “Effective dated” or “Greatest proportion”

• Create commodities in bulk, helping you to set up your system for effective GHG reporting across different streams of data and GHG categories. Find out more

The latest 2021 DEFRA Emissions Factors are being updated in Sigma. When ready, carbon emissions reports from EI for data included after 1 January will use the new factors. The change outlined above will enable you to use the factors that suits the majority of your consumption.

Also available is a new importer for Ecotricity electricity bills.

For helpful advice on Sigma’s GHG reporting functionality, click here.

Release 12.27

Following the launch of the recent GHG reporting tools and functionality, 12.27 includes background enhancements that ensure reliability and performance.

Plus, four new reports available:

• Gaps in Monthly Billed Cost and Consumption (by Account)

• Gaps in HF Data (daily, within last 14 months)

• Periodic Consumption Values

• Days since last Meter Reading 

Recap some of the recent highlights:

• Meet your Greenhouse Gas Reporting needs across scopes 1, 2 and 3

• DEFRA emissions factors available and maintained out the box or ability to use your own

• Forecast consumption and emissions across all commodities with flexible configuration

• Watch previous training webinar videos

For helpful advice on Sigma’s GHG reporting functionality, click here.

Release 12.26

Focusing on future consumption and emissions forecasting, release 12.26 gives you the ability to generate detailed forecasts in the context of your supply point data to a daily granularity. These changes build on the “Best Available” data foundations delivered in prior releases enabling you to project your future energy use using a precedent based approach.

Watch the training video here

Release highlights:

• Forecast based on historical data from Supply Points and configure in line with your best available preferences. Learn more

• Forecast based on historical data from Consumption Data items, which are used to represent ‘scope 3’ types of data such as Waste and Business Transport. Learn about forecasting consumption and emissions data.

• Configure which commodity data should be forecasted in your global level preferences, up to a two-year forecast horizon Learn about the default configuration in EI Management.

• Specify the percentage increase or decrease required for your forecasting at a commodity level. Learn how to set a compound increase or decrease to make your forecasting suit your reporting needs and consider changes in your estate.

• Set forecast configuration for individual supply points which will override the global level configuration. Learn how to change supply point forecasting configuration.

• Derive emissions forecasting using the latest effective emissions factors for the appropriate commodity and forecasted consumption. Find out more

Release 12.25

Continuing to enhance the emissions reporting tools from the most recent releases, 12.25 focuses on bespoke GHG emissions factors and Scope 3 data management. These changes provide superior raw data control and improved flexibility in the conversion factors that can be used when calculating emissions. The release also provides enhanced password security to set configurable minimum password strength rules.

Watch the training video here

Release highlights:

• Load bespoke emissions factors which can override the core DEFRA options and enter these for effective periods of time. Find out how to load your own emission factors.

• Choose to enter "market" based factors that may vary for individual streams of data and set them against an individual "commodity”. Learn about setting different factors against your commodity data.

• Bulk load consumption or emissions data into multiple Consumption Data across different commodities to alleviate GHG Reporting administration time. Find out about bulk loading data.

• Tailor password setting options, for example, password length, age, and types of characters to be contained, to meet the requirements of organisational security policy. Learn about using the Security Settings activity in Sigma.

Release 12.24

Building on the foundations from the last release, 12.24 focuses on enhanced Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting in Sigma to support your wider sustainability needs.  The changes help to measure and report on all emissions beyond the core site commodities across your entire operations and give you a complete view of your organisation’s carbon footprint.

Watch the training video here

Release highlights:

• Extended set of UK Government published emissions factors, all maintained within Sigma, now available to provide comprehensive emissions reporting. Find out about the conversion factors available.

• Categorise your utility data’s resultant emissions in terms of Scope, Type, Activity and Subtype in line with GHG reporting standards. Learn about categorising your data’s emissions types.

• Load any stream of data for the purpose of calculating GHG emissions. Take a look at Sigma’s comprehensive coverage of GHG emissions.

• Flexible data capture. Sigma can compute the emissions based on the raw data entered into the system or manually add known emissions to your reports. Find out how to capture your data to suit your reporting needs.

• Segment your data as needed, for example by geographical location, department, scope, or category. Learn about building customisable emissions reports.

• Complete transparency of all conversion factors used in calculations and when data has been changed giving you 100% auditability. Learn more.

• Limitless streams of GHG data can be reported alongside existing core energy and utilities. Explore the categories and activities available that can be scaled according to your reporting needs. 

• Enhanced “Emissions Summary” dashboard to incorporate the new additional streams of data to provide an estate level view into overall carbon emissions. Learn how to make the most of your reports and dashboards in Sigma.

Release 12.23

This release enhances the Consumption and Emissions reporting that is available within Sigma’s Energy Intelligence (EI), ensuring that it provides an accurate and complete picture of data that you can trust for your reporting outputs. It weaves together the different sources of data to ensure the reports are ready when you need them - estimating missing data and forecasting to the current date where required.

Watch the training video here.

Release highlights:

• Get an instant insight of your estate’s overall Greenhouse Has (GHG) emissions with a new dashboard and suite of reports in EI. Learn about seeing a full and auditable picture of consumption and carbon emissions across your sites.

• Data can be enriched with DEFRA emission conversion factors and driving data such as floor area, occupancy and degree days Learn about the specific emissions factors used by EI.

• Get up-to-date reports from EI as and when you need them by triggering a data refresh during the working day. Learn how to trigger an EI refresh.

• Different sources of consumption data (from meters, bills, and supplier statements) can be stitched together to provide the best available picture for a date range. Learn how to get a picture of your Best Available Data in EI.  

• Flexible configuration at a global or individual supply point level to set your preferences on how the data is sourced, prioritised, and estimated. Learn how to set system level rules to all or individual Supply Points.

• A new tiered estimation solution facilitates accurate and complete reporting. Find out how to set the estimation technique to fill missing data from specific Supply Points.

• To provide realistic and timely reports, data can be forecasted to the current date where there may be a delay in getting recent data into Sigma. Learn how to enable Data forecasting estimation.

• To ensure complete and consistent reporting, consumption data is converted into a common unit of measurement (e.g., kWh). Learn more.

• Enhanced validation when creating Channels and Supply Point configuration periods in Sigma. Learn more.

Also contained within the release are a number of system and infrastructure updates that keep Sigma and your data secure.

Release 12.22

Along with developments that reinforce Sigma’s security and performance, release 12.22 helps to automate file exporting and facilitates data robust auditing.

This release’s new functionality allows you to:

• Export files via FTP from the document library or Accounts Link Download features in Sigma to third parties without manual intervention.

• Have improved auditing and execution visibility for data imported into Sigma via the Importing Agent. Find out how to get better insights for your data importing schedules

  • Please note – for Customers that use the Sigma Importing Agent, an updated version of the Importing Agent software will be required for the enhanced auditing to be available. Our Customer Success team will be in touch to make this available.

• Control the EDI batch names for automated file loading. Learn how to ensure consistency for EDI batch naming.

• A Tenant Bill Batch identifier in Energy Intelligence to provide reports for specific bill runs.

Sigma Energy Intelligence update

As an extension to the developments in 12.21, this mid-release update presents changes to the Energy Intelligence tool within Sigma.

These include:

• A modernised interface to enhance EI navigation

• A new Carbon Emission Report, enabling you to report on billed cost, consumption, and carbon emissions, filtered by Date, Commodity, Site Group and/or Site. To access this report, open Energy Intelligence and search 'Billed Cost, Consumption and Carbon Emissions'

Find out more about Energy Intelligence Reporting

Release 12.21

Learn how to use the new features in this release via the Sigma 12.21 training video.

Along with developments that reinforce Sigma’s security and performance, release 12.21 presents enhancements that provide advanced transparency around a site’s meter structure and improvements to help users visualise and navigate estate assets in the system.

This release’s new functionality allows you to:

• Capture, manage and visualise the complex hierarchical structure of Meters, Sub Meters and Virtual Meters across your Sites in Sigma, enabling you to capture parent and child relationships and perform efficient gap analysis, identify problems with data capture and find faulty meters.

• Easily assign various estate items which capture data to an Asset Type for augmented reporting and analysis. Categorise your streams of data into what they represent to help you focus on what you need to see. For example, being able to differentiate fiscal grid import, solar generation, HVAC system, EV charging etc.

• Bring your energy estate to life with improved visual clarity of what the data represents based on the Commodity and the Asset Type.

This release also includes general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.20

Modifications in this latest release boost Sigma’s security, reliability, and performance, to ensure our solution meets all your energy management needs.   

Find out about Browsing Data, Estate Management, Bill Validation, and the full range of Sigma’s extensive features by navigating on the left-hand menu.  

Release 12.19

This release ensures Sigma continues to meet your energy management needs with changes that boost performance, system reliability, and data security.

For helpful guidance around using Sigma’s extensive features, navigate the links in the left-hand menu.

Release 12.18

As well as building on Sigma’s performance and reliability, release 12.18 delivers enhancements that support transparent and efficient bill management. This includes a:

• Bill Loading framework enhancement to differentiate “Water” and “Sewerage” bills received from the same supplier allowing them to be accounted for separately in Sigma. 

Navigate the links on the left-hand menu to access helpful guidance on Sigma’s extensive features.

Release 12.17

Release 12.17 provides changes that ensure Sigma’s security, reliability and performance. data accuracy and transparency. These include:

• Added visibility of inactive supply point information to help you keep accounts, meters, and contracts up to date.

• Analysis Browsing Data function update providing cost insights based on raw consumption data. Learn how to find cost information based on consumption.

• Data monitoring functionality has been enhanced for gap filling. It now accurately handles periodic meter reading drop-outs ensuring complete data, accurately reflecting meter readings for missing periods where there has been no advance

• A modification to improve the navigation in the Item Finder allowing you to access your non-periodic channels more efficiently.  Find out more

Navigate the links on the left-hand menu to access helpful guidance on Sigma’s extensive features.

Release 12.16  

The latest release provides developments that extend Sigma’s security, reliability, and performance. There has been an improvement in validation performance and functionality to boost database quality and consistency.  

Navigate the links on the left-hand menu to access helpful guidance on Sigma’s extensive features.

Release 12.15    

This release ensures Sigma continues to meet your energy management needs with changes to ensure reliability and performance.

For helpful advice on Sigma’s functionality, please visit the links in the left-hand menu.

Release 12.14 

This latest release comprises a number of non-functional changes that improve Sigma’s reliability and performance.

Here is a recap of some the recent changes:

• A brand-new suite of Data Monitoring tools

• Email alerting

• Energy Estate Management

• Embedding reports to support digital signage

Release 12.13  

Our latest release enables comprehensive report integration and distribution from Sigma Energy intelligence (EI) within Sigma and in third party locations.

Sigma EI is a flexible and configurable framework that creates content that can be customised to your needs. Reports and dashboards can provide:

• Efficient and captivating stakeholder engagement

• Engaging communication for improved employee awareness to support positive behaviour change

• Promotion of good energy performance and green credentials

This release’s new functionality allows you to:

• Create sharable links to facilitate collaborative and efficient working within Sigma. Find out how to create a link to share with other Sigma users.

• Generate a HTML snippet to support the embedding of content in locations outside of Sigma for broad and varied engagement. Learn how to create an HTML page to display content outside of Sigma (e.g. website, wiki or digital signage).

Also contained within the release are a number of general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.12 

This release delivers enhancements that simplify bill validation processes.

These features provide:

An enhanced view of Account Bills within EDI management

• This displays all bills for an account in a pop-up screen, this right click option is called View in Account Context. Find out how View in Account Context can provide transparency and efficient analysis of potential billing issues and save you time.

A Query Option when Passing a Failed Bill

• This is an addition to the override feature when bills have failed bill validation. For information about how the new Query Option simplifies supplier recovery opportunities and ensures a valid audit trail.

Also contained within the release are a number of general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.11

This release delivers various improvements around email importing security and data import visibility. Plus, tenant billing enhancements that provide extended flexibility around charging and data reporting.

All changes included in release 12.11 are as follows:

Importing Improvements

• Email importing has been changed to support “Secure POP3” offering further security around sourcing and importing data to Sigma. Additionally, there is capability to test the connection before saving the schedule to ensure that it runs successfully. Learn about using the additional configuration options available when importing and how to test the connection

• Enhanced visibility for import schedule execution history providing more precise traceability of the data importers performance. Find out how to get better insights for your data importer schedule

• Enhanced exception information around importing problems giving clearer explanation of what hasn’t worked and why to support efficient problem resolution. Understand how the importing exceptions and error log can give you better insights around data and help you save time.

• Channel audit history improvements showing where there is loaded data from historical schedule executions. How to see key information relating to completed importing for specified channels. Also available in Energy Intelligence for report inclusion

Tenant Billing Improvements

• Clearer naming conventions added to improve usability when creating tenant’s bills. See how “Pending Actions Run” appears in Sigma Tenant Billing

• Enhanced VAT configuration making VAT calculations clearer for tenant billing tariffs. Learn about selecting individual charge lines for VAT calculations

• New functionality to create ad-hoc tenant billing invoices for more versatile billing. Learn about creating stand-alone and one-off bills outside the billing cycle

• Reporting enhancements in Energy Intelligence for Tenant Contracts and Tariffs for detailed statements including charge lines and unit rates. Learn about building a statement in Energy Intelligence that is linked to Tenant Contracts and Tariffs

Also included in release 12.11 is a performance enhancement for the Item Finder. This change makes it quicker to load the lists for Accounts, Supply Points and Sites improving user experience when working with your energy estate.

Also contained within the release are a number of general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.10

Strengthening the Data Monitoring tools that we delivered last month, this release helps you to see key information relating to the structure of your entire site.

This Sigma enhancement assembles your data logically and intuitively, giving you greater energy estate visibility.

Presented in a suite of new screens providing:

• Interactive filtering on data sets helping you to expose key pieces of information

• Clearer visibility of time-bound relationships to help you see how your energy assets evolve. For example; contract periods, meter and bill relationships and site closures

• One-click contextual navigation

• Faster insight into key information and the ability to make changes to your estate quickly

• A breakdown of your complete site into four key assets:

  • Site Summary – providing a complete and single view of the site; showing the assets that exist and key financial and consumption information. Explore the site summary page of an energy site.

    • New pop-up to help you manage associated data in the context of any of the tabs. Learn how the associated data pop-up can provide you with speedy access to your core data sets.

  • Supply Point – displaying a record of each supply point and key information: provider, contract, current billing account, effective dates, and associated data. Find out about understanding the relationships found within supply points.

  • Accounts – displaying a record of each billing account and a summary of key information such as last bill date, total bill value (cost and consumption), missing bill days and queries. Understand about the links with accounts, supplier’s contracts and meters within the accounts tab. 

    • The Validator Setup screen has been enhanced to show all validators that run for a selected billing account. Learn more about validator management.

  • Meters and Channels – displaying a record of all meters and the channels they are connected to along with the ability to access a quick view of the recent consumption data/profile over time. Learn about appreciating the relationship between meters with accounts and supply points.

Additionally, release 12.10 contains a change to the accounts link generation screen to include details of the gross bill value. Tenant Billing now supports 6-monthly and custom billing periods so that the date range that the bills are being created for can be specified at the point of initiating the bill generation process.

Also contained within the release are a number of general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.9

As an extension to the Data Monitoring framework delivered last month, this release presents core changes that support:

• Email alerting – Sigma will notify you about any data issues for each of your enabled data monitoring strategies. Multiple email contacts and alert frequency can be set. Learn about setting up the data monitoring email alerts.

• Defining channels in your monitoring strategy – With Sigma, you can apply a “context” to your monitoring strategy enabling smarter identification of the data channels that the strategy will run for, they are either:

  • Fixed – channels assigned on a case by case basis

  • Flexible – attributes of the channel can be configured so that new or evolving assets will automatically run in the monitoring strategy.

Learn about defining and assigning periodic channels for your monitoring strategy.

• Trend Analysis – This new feature in Sigma highlights potential data issues in your monitoring strategies. The two new data monitoring types that enable this are:

  • Dynamic profile – supporting general analysis of data when behaviour goes out of trend compared to averages in recent behaviour

  • Fixed profile – providing sensitive analysis comparing recent data against defined thresholds at specific intervals. Exceptions will be raised where data falls outside of these high or low thresholds.

Learn more about configuring your data monitoring strategy types to meet your energy management needs.

• Also featured is the brand-new Visualiser app which identifies dynamic trend issues in the context of the surrounding data. Learn about how the Visualiser enhances your monitoring strategies

Additionally, there have been Bill management improvements that deliver a new validator that supports the ability to validate against associated data items and wider range of data scenarios.

Also contained within the release are a number of general bug fixes and system availability improvements.

Release 12.8

This release includes:

A brand-new suite of Data Monitoring tools. This framework promotes proactive energy management with robust, quality and auditable data; alleviating inaccurate reporting, flawed compliance submissions and failed energy efficiency projects.

Access information about Monitoring Data.

These tools allow you to:

• Find and resolve problems in data – read an explanation of the Data Monitoring Activity

• Create monitoring strategies to define how the system searches for gaps, overdue data and unexpected data. Configuration will allow you to let the system automatically fill the gaps or extrapolate where the data is overdue as per your requirements. Learn about the Strategy Configuration Tab

• Actively view, progress and resolve any notifications that have been raised. Workflow can be used to highlight issues, capture notes and remove unexpected data. Find out about the Data Monitoring Notification Tab. To find out how view the Periodic HFD Channel Editor - Data Monitoring Tab

• Access data monitoring information in Energy Intelligence and create data rich reports and dashboards.

Additionally, this release presents Bill management enhancements that provide a full history of query summaries, and intelligent VAT validation to ensure the charging of VAT conforms to UK legislation.

There have been technical modifications linked to EDI loading and performance plus ongoing bug fixes.

Release 12.7

This release presents further bill management functional enhancements, including:

• New Bill Entry capability for raising queries. This provides users with the option to raise queries from the Supply Overview section in the New Bill Entry screen at an account or bill level (which previously was only possible when a bill was entered and failed validation). This prompts pro-active bill validation and enhanced cost recovery. Access information about using the new ‘Add Queries’ button in Bill Entry.

• Alerting functionality when a query’s next action date falls on a non-working day. The Query Manager warning message displays when a weekend date is selected in the ‘Chase Date’ field when editing an existing Query or Emailing a Query. This feature increases accuracy and reduces the likelihood of queries incorrectly going overdue. More information about using next query action scheduling.

• Duplicate EDI Batch Notification. This provides feedback to users when the same EDI file has already been loaded into Sigma. This feedback happens before the EDI file load is processed and makes EDI loading faster, helping to identify problems sooner, and reduce processing and handling time. Learn about using the EDI duplicate notification feature.

There have been several technical modifications linked to resilience and performance plus ongoing bug fixes.