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'The Electronic
Newsletter For Users
Volume IX #1 |
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Happy New Year Discounts
On Ollie
May 2007 be your
most joyful and successful year ever... however you define success.
Now, let's assume that you at least partially define success as increased on-line sales. Well then, now is your chance to either purchase a new copy or upgrade from your earlier versions of Ollie to the brand spanking new Ollie 8.1 and save 15%.
Ollie 8.1 has the following features you've been asking for...
But this offer is only good through Jan 31, 2007 so please contact Ken or Jen or call (206)878-0578 to schedule your install or preview a demonstration site (including a link to your own custom entry page).
Til Next Time!
SAFE Quick
Tip: It's A Drag (And A
Drop)
One of the most
common features of order entry is repetition.There's a lot of it, for sure.
Unfortunately, as you know, many products in the printing biz are complex so
anything that speeds data entry and reduces errors is a good thing. So SAFE has
a number of techniques for doing just those things. Some you probably know well
(cloning orders for example) and some you may not. This tip is about one lesser
known gem for making data entry easier: namely drag and drop.
Most of you have used drag and drop in other Windows applications, but we find time and again that many people do not know that drag and drop is used heavily in SAFE.
COPYING A
LINE ITEM FROM SALES HISTORY. METHOD #1
1. Open the Sales History Browse and locate a record.
2. Open the Sales Order Browse and highlight an order.
3. Click on the Sales History Browse record and hold down the left mouse button and drag the line item over to the Sales Order Browse.
4. Drop the mouse cursor on the destination Sales Order you want to copy to.
5. Now open the Sales Order in question. Et Voila! A copy of the line item has been added to the Sales Order.
COPYING A
LINE ITEM FROM SALES HISTORY. METHOD #2
1. Open the Sales History Browse and locate a record.
2. Open the Sales Order Browse, select an order and open it.
3. Click on the Sales History Browse record and hold down the left mouse button and drag the line item over to the Sales Order Editing Window.
4. Drop the mouse cursor on the Sales Order Editing Window.
5. A copy of the line item has been added to the Sales Order.
COPYING A
LINE ITEM FROM PRODUCTS. METHOD #1
1. Open the Products Browse and locate a product.
2. Open the Sales Order Browse, select an order and open it.
3. Click on the Products Browse record and hold down the left mouse button and drag the line item over to the Sales Order.
4. Drop the mouse cursor on the Sales Order.
5. A new line item, using the defaults from the Product Master has been added to the Sales Order.
MORE WAYS
TO BEAT A DEAD HORSE
OK, we think you
get the idea. So we'll leave you with a few more possibilities that you can
explore on your own.
You can drag
and drop a line item from one open Sales Order to another open Sales Order.
(Yes, you can have multiple open Sales Orders in SAFE. Oh, that's a new one
too? Well, consider it a NEW YEARS BONUS TIP!
You can drag and drop a line item from a Product History Audit Trail onto either an open Sales Order or just the Sales Order Browse.
A COUPLE
OF NOTES
When you drop a
line item, you get to use the same cloning options as when you Clone a Sales
Order.
There are some limitations (or rather restrictions). For example, you cannot drop a Product owned by one customer onto another customer's order.
IN
CONCLUSION
Drag and drop is
something that seems a bit 'fiddly' at first, but it's great for saving time and
preventing errors. We, ourselves have tried mightily to give users ways to
avoid using the mouse in SAFE so perhaps we haven't pushed this feature as
much as we ought--especially considering it's usefulness. One of our goals for
2007 is to do just that: call to your attention more and more of the under-utilised
features of SAFE. As we always say, SAFE is deep. so we need to work hard
to guide our users in plumbing more of those depths.
Til Next Time!
Ciaran's
Corner: Thar She Blows: Re-run And Climate Change!
The television
networks do re-runs this time of the year, so why can't I?
So the opening portion
of this text is plagiarised from me own column at the end of last year (two
weeks ago). I'm not just lazy. Oh no. I'm also aware that whole bunches of you
weren't aware of what was going on so I think this bears repetition. You count
on us to be there for you come rain or come shiiiiiiiiiiine...
As the result of an unprecedented storm Suntower Systems was been effectively off the air from 9PM PST Thursday, December 14th to 15:00PM Sunday, December 17th 2006. Windows buffeted all of the west coast of Washington state knocking out phone, fax, e-mail and internet service for SAFE customers.
We dearly regret this inconvenience for our customers and will automatically add one extra week of service to any eligible support plan by way of compensation.
To put your minds a bit at ease, it's well to understand the unusual circumstances of this storm. As normal practice, we have two ISP connections to the internet, one in the Seattle area and one in Portland. We do this specifically to have a back up connection in case of a catastrophic failure at one site or other. Additionally, we keep a third backup/backup connection via cable modem with Comcast. Finally, we have a separate voice service from Qwest which acts as a backup/backup/backup to our VOIP phone system. Whew.
However, we did not count on the most dramatic windstorm of the past 50 years--with wind velocities exceeding 75mph from Vancouver Island and the Straits Of Juan De Fuca down past the Columbia river; in short--everything from Victoria BC down to Eugene Oregon. Over one million electrical customers in the Puget Sound area alone have been without power for 72 hours.
This is the second time we have been off the air in twenty one years of business; the last being the earthquake here in 2002. We thought we had learned all the right lessons to prevent a recurrence of this situation, but obviously Mother Nature knows best!
...
THE TIMES
THEY ARE A CHANGIN'
Since I wrote that, there have been two more storms, and in fact, this Tuesday
AM there is yet another storm going, replete with lightning---heretofore a very
uncommon thing for western Washington. So clearly something is up that we need
to address on an ongoing basis. And I'm going to suggest the same for all of you
as well. There are practical things that we all need to do to in order to
address the dreaded global warming.
There I said it. I'm a raving tree hugger and Chicken Little to boot. Or am I? When I moved here twelve years ago, very few houses had air conditioning and neither did smaller office complexes. (Sure, large offices did, but that's only because they need big air flow.) Now? almost all new construction includes air conditioning, or is at least made A/C ready. There are simply many more days when the mercury tops ninety. Sewer? We've installed a new drainage system in the back of our down town office building to handle the increased rainfalls we now routinely get (Seattle did not used to get as much rain as people think---gray yes, rain no.) And don't get me started on earthquake insurance.
These are all practical things that affect our ability to do business (yours too!). More heat, more problems with your presses. More snow, more trouble getting people to and from work. And in all cases, more reasons for the over-stressed power grid to go down.
IT'S THE
TREES STUPID
And another thing: The focus on the recent power outages has been on one simple
fact: no one has been cutting back trees in the past 20 years. Utilities used to
do this routinely as a matter of course. They started cutting back on cutting
back as a cost saving measure. So all the overhanging trees were just waiting
for the right storm to bring down the entire grid. How stupid! I, as a
homeowner would have my pants sued off if even one home was damaged
because I didn't trim my trees.
SO WHAT'S
YOUR POINT?
My point is that we're reaching a turning point. We need to recognise that
climate change has material affects on our businesses that we need to start
dealing with now and we need to start doing so on two fronts:
individually and collectively.
Individually: by taking steps to harden our businesses against the increasing
stresses of more heat, cold, wet, dry, whatever.
Collectively: by letting our lawmakers know that we need to stop taking our infrastructures for granted. The grid. The roads. The water. The air. We had the best systems in the world. But that was in 1975. Now, all pride and patriotism aside, we don't. And it's bad for business.
I know we all have a thousand other things to do each day and what I'm writing about might seem abstract to someone in Kansas (..er.. until that next round of tornadoes in May.) But it's far from abstract to us right now; in fact it's been downright costly. I'm going to suggest that, like it or not, we all need to start making time to plan against problems caused by weather and climate in the same way that we make the time to talk about insurance or disaster planning. Like it or not, climate change is something that you will need to put some energy into, as a regular cost of doing business. And as such, we're getting with the program sooner rather than later.
How about you? I know there have been numerous cases of mega-storms throughout the country this winter. Have you started thinking about making changes to your business to cope with these things on an ongoing basis or do you still think they are one offs? I'd be very interested to get your opinions.
Til Next Time!
Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume IX #1
