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'The Electronic
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Volume X #7 |
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SAFE/X: Image Tips!
A couple of
issues ago we talked about PDFSaver--the new feature that lets you automatically
save report runs to PDF. This time, we'll discuss another small, but quite
useful enhancement to imaging.
Ed Note: Why the emphasis on imaging and PDFs? Auditing! Saving paper! Failing memory! The longer we do this, the more we realise how important it is to be able to document what we're doing and then be able to quickly find it later. Information overload! We've all got it. Even if you save everything, can you remember where you put it?
OK, here's the feature: You can now paste images from the Windows Clipboard into a Linked Image. So, any image that you can copy from any application can now be inserted into SAFE, saved, and and linked to a transaction. Whenever you look up that transaction, you then have access to that image.
Here's the tip: If you buy anything on line (as so many of us do nowadays), you fairly well always get a 'receipt' page. When you see this, hit your PrtScrn key to 'take a picture of it' to your Windows Clipboard. Now, open SAFE and enter the transaction into A/P. Then, right click on the transaction from the Bills Browse and click on Linked Images. Hit <Insert> to create a new Linked Image. Now right click and select 'Paste' from the pop-up menu. Press the [OK] button. You now have a copy of your receipt in SAFE.
Time Is Almost Up For The
Sale: PDFXtensions and Translog!
As we've been saying all month, our
favoritest new feature in SAFE/X is PDFSaver, which lets you save report runs
automatically to PDFs for permanent recall. But you need PDFXtensions and Translog in order to
take full advantage of PDFSaver so we've been offering a great deal on both SAFExtensions. For the
month of March 2008, get PDFXtensions and Translog for only $995. If you
already have either SAFExtension, get the other for only $495.00!
Unfortunately, time has almost run out! You only have until Friday night (April 4, 2008) to place your order so act soon and save big!
Til Next Time!
Ollie Tip:
Image Types
Another area
where Ollie can be a bit confusing is in setting up images for the various
products. As per usual, we erred on the side of flexibility and as you know by
now, more choices mean more thinking. 
You need these different types because there are different presentations. When we originally designed Ollie, we did not provide any way to edit the HTML size of each image; the image simply displays according to it's size. This made sense at the time because if you've ever seen images which are improperly stretched or shrunk on a web page, then you know how ugly and unprofessional that looks. So we put the onus on web designers to make certain each image was made the correct size in an image editor.
Tip: You can use the same images over and over. In Ollie/9 you can specify the size (in pixels) of each image, despite it's physical size.
Grid: This is the image you see in the 'browse' pages; ie. the list of products to sell.
Small Preview: When you click on an individual record in a grid, you usually get a larger image along with various editing fields.
Then, if you click on the Small Preview, you get an even larger image; the Full Preview. However, if that image refers to a PDF or other document type, the 'click' can take the user to that document.
VIEWABILITY
This brings up another important concept: 'viewability'. First off, there is
nothing in Ollie (or any other web application) which lets users 'see' a preview
image. It's amazing how many users think that a link to a PDF or
a Microsoft Word document means that the user can see a little 'thumbnail' of
that document. Not true. Browsers generally only display images which of certain
universally accepted types---GIFs, JPGs and PNGs. Other popular image types,
such as TIFFs, BMPs, EPS, cannot be 'previewed' in any of the commonly used web
browsers.
This is the reason why it's important to have a 'thumbnail' of every document you want to link to in Ollie. The thumbnail GIF or JPEG gives the user some idea of the linked document's contents; even though the thumbnail is not the document. And that means that when you link documents to Products in Ollie you should think in pairs: the document and it's thumbnail.
The good news is that you don't need to create a separate thumbnail for every document or product. Since it is just a teeny, tiny image, you may have, for example, only one thumbnail for all your Word documents and again, just one for all business cards. Just use the same thumbnail image over and over for each linked Product.
OPENABILITY
Which leads to the next point:
You can link your products to PDFs and Word documents and Excel Spreadsheets
and, basically any type of document you want, but that doesn't mean the user
will be able to open it! Because most of us have Acrobat Reader and Microsoft
Office, doesn't mean that everyone does. So if you publish a document in Ollie,
you need to be sure that your audience's computers have the application at their
end to read it. Important point: it is up to each end-user's computer to open
any linked documents, so it may not be wise to link to certain types of
documents, regardless of how wonderful they are, unless you are sure that your
users have the requisite application.
NEXT!...
Next month we're
going to dive into one of the main reasons to work with Ollie/8; interfacing
with the outside world. There's a lot to cover, including terms like RSS, XML
AJAX but these are the keys to linking Ollie with other web systems, remote
servers and SAFE.
Til Next Time!
Ciaran's
Corner: More Memory Loss. I Think.
'Twas just a
month ago I launched into one of my more memorable rants about politics, the
internet and so on and so forth. Sadly, there are already proofs in the daily
news. If you watch/listen to what's happening over in Tibet, you know that
getting reliable information about the situation is quite difficult. I recall a
short time ago (ten years) when there was much joy at how the Internet was
supposed to be a safeguard against tyranny---after all, information would flow
freely and that would keep the spotlight on all oppressors and blah, blah, blah
freedom...Of course, as any first year computer science student will tell you,
companies like Cisco and HP which make all those neat-o routers and switches
that move data across the world fill them to the brim with lots of neat-o
filters to keep data from getting in or out.
How soon they forget. It was back in the early 30's and Thomas Watson was really struggling to keep his company afloat amidst the depression. Fortunately, a new foreign customer had a problem keeping track of a new kind of inventory. Watson's company IBM had just the kind of counting machines Germany needed to manage all that data... er... people.
I keep ranting about this kind of thing because I don't think people realise just how much control and security we're giving up simply because no one can remember that the same crappy things have already happened! Our lives move at such a pace now that it's easy to forget and it's crazy how quickly people forget about lots of things. (For example, how many times have I gone on about 'backup' systems that are so outmoded they can no longer be read from.)
PAPER CHECKS?
We had a situation here a
couple of months ago where our company checks to American Express were being
returned. What? The problem turned out to be that Amex has recently cut out the
middle man and now performs it's own ACH processing of checks directly. In
short, they get paid more quickly by not sending payments through a 'bank'.
Evidently their new software is very picky about the placement of MICR characters on
checks. Unfortunately, although they upgraded their back end, they neglected to
tell their front-line employees about this new system. So when a check cannot
be processed, regardless of the reason, it is simply flagged as 'returned' in
their system. And when you call about it, you are treated accordingly.
Show of hands: how many of you still write checks in your personal life? Not too many, I'd guess. What we discovered is that the Amex customer service people don't either. They have no personal experience with checks, thus it doesn't occur to them what things can go wrong when a check is processed. To them, it's all abstract. Since all their computer screen tells them is that a check was 'returned' what else can they think? To their generation, 'returned' = 'deadbeat'.
OK, we got it straightened out. But it took a month and, having the good fortune to find someone (sorry to put it like this) as old as you and I. The young kids just didn't have a clue and the 'old hands' hadn't taken the time to pass along their wisdom to handle such cases.
Yesterday I was in the supermarket and this woman 'of a certain age' whipped out her checkbook to pay for her purchases. I could see the eyes rolling in the queue as if to say, 'how dare she waste our time with such an antiquated payment system!' Then I started thinking about it: that lady has the right idea. It's us who aren't taking care of business. She's using a self-contained payment system with a full and trustworthy audit trail. What a concept! Me? With all my debit card receipts floating about? In terms of good bookkeeping practice, my personal life is a shambles.
More and more, I'm at the mercy of what my bank says because I don't keep good records. I got 'convenienced' into it. But I've ceded a great deal of control of 'truth' as the price for that 'swipe n' go' lifestyle.
So here we're placing more and more emphasis on auditing in SAFE; not just transactions, but also finding ways to store the associated events and supporting documents. And we're attempting to do this with several levels of redundancy and reliability. It's a lot of work. And a lot of this work is about as sexy as that lady's checkbook. But the older I get, the more I think we're on the right track, even though it doesn't add all that much to a 'new features!' list. We hope you'll agree and take the time to learn to use these tools to their full advantage.
Til Next Time!
Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com
End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume X #7
