Happy Passover And Easter!
We hope you all enjoy a most pleasant weekend. As a reminder, per our usual practice, Suntower Systems will close at 3:00PM PDST this Friday April 9th to celebrate Good Friday and remain closed for the weekend.
 

SAFE SQL Quick Tip: Disabling Lookup Records
Most data files in SAFE SQL have a Disabled check box. Many customers contact us a bit confused as to what actually gets 'disabled'. It's SIMPLE really. (You knew we'd say that, right?).

The Disabled box prevents the record from being displayed in a browse box when it is used as a Lookup Field.

In other words, checking this box hides the record from any browse box where it could be selected but not from it's main browse.

For example, if you disable a Site, the Site is still quite visible in the main Sites Browse or when you click the 'map of the USA' in the Customer Browse. But if you start a Sales Order and try to select a Site for shipping a Product from or to, the Site will not be in your list of choices. To the order entry person it does not exist.

That's all it does?

Yes. That's all it does. Sorry it's not more dramatic.

That's OK. But then, why should I care about this?

Well, let's say one of your vendors closes a warehouse. If you disable the Site, you prevent it from accidentally being used on a new order.

Well, what if the user clones an order. Huh? Got you there!

No. If a Site is disabled, the Site cannot be cloned and reverts to the Default for the customer or vendor (as appropriate).

Wow. Does this Disabled box work for things besides Sites?

Yes, currently Sales Tax IDs, G/L Accounts, Employees and Products may also be disabled to prevent their being used for new transactions. In SAFE/SQL 7 (now there's an alliteration) Vendors, Customers and Terms IDs will also be able to be disabled.

Until next time!
 

Security Update: Ollie/WebSAFE E-Mail Cloaker
Ever wonder how the spammers get your e-mail address? One of the most common ways is through automated harvesting programs called 'Spiders' or 'Bots' which search the web all the time looking over HTML pages (the pages on your web site) for e-mail addresses. In other words, they read your pages and when they find an address, they add it to their database.

A new update for Ollie is now available which cloaks all e-mail addresses used in Ollie/WebSAFE so that they are unreadable by these harvesting programs. For users of Standard Ollie, there is no charge for this update. For those using customized versions of Ollie, there will be a 1 hour labor charge to update any customized HTML pages.

Due to the ever increasing spam problem, we strongly recommend that all Ollie/WebSAFE users obtain this update immediately.

Another Fantastic Faxback Offer!
Those fine folks at FaxBack have asked us to pass on the following  NET SatisFAXtion fax server, "Powered with Brooktrout" fax card promotions.  From now, until the end of April, take advantage of these terrific fax packages:

---Faxback is the low cost, industrial strength fax server that is 100% integrated with SAFE. Send invoices, POs, reports, in fact, any document from SAFE directly from any user's desk either singly or in batches as easily as printing! SAFE handles the routing to all relevant fax numbers!

---Faxback allows you to receive faxes without paper. In fact, you can now receive (as we do!) all faxes directly into PDFs. A great way to have a -complete- audit of all incoming and outgoing materials!

---The total cost of ownership, both in terms of initial cost, cost savings over time and increased efficiencies are significant.

For more information, contact us or go to www.faxback.com
 

Ciaran's Corner: Upgrading Your Windows Server Software!
Two quick things this time:
1. Do not install Windows XP Service Pack 3! We had heard many anecdotal reports about this, but we now have empirical evidence of our own. On many machines, SP3 simply won't install. On others it demands that you install both SP1 and SP2 in sequence before you are allowed to install SP3. On many machines it causes software that was working fine to fail, including some portions of Norton Anti-Spam and Microsoft Word. Our advice? Continue to patch your computers individually to Microsoft's Critical Security Updates, but do not attempt to install the cumulative SP3 patch.

2. I don't know if we're really on 'the road to economic recovery' just yet, but we do see more customers upgrading their systems now than at any time in the past 18 months. Some of you are buying new servers, some upgrading to Windows 2003 Server and some getting your first copy of SQL Server. In the spirit of saving money, may I suggest that you consider obtaining Microsoft Small Business Server. Most dealers (including us) are selling a five user version of Standard Edition for $599 and Premium Edition for $1,499. So what does that get you?

	SBS 2003, Standard Ed. (5 users)	$599
	Includes:
	Windows Server 2003 (5 users)	999
	Exchange Server 2003 (5 users)	1,034
	Outlook 2003 (5 users)	545
	SBS 2003, Premium Ed. (5 users)	$1,499
	Includes:
	All of the above	2,578
	plus SQL Server 2000 (5 users)	1,489
	ISA Server (per server)	1,499

 

 

 

 

 

Clearly, the pricing is aggressive. For $599 you get not only the server software and user licenses but a complete e-mail server and Outlook. For $1,499 you get all that and a five user license for SQL Server for less than the price of SQL Server alone! And there are similar discounts for higher user counts.

Contact us today for your order. This is a fantastic way for companies still on NT or who need the superior performance of SQL Server to kill several birds with one stone.

Til Next Time,

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume VI #8