Address Change!

Just a reminder. As we’ve been saying, effective December 1, 2010 please address all
mail to us at:

Suntower Systems

PO Box 1643 Mukilteo, WA 98275

Through the magic of VOIP, the phone and fax
numbers remain, respectively, (206)878-0578 and (206)428-6035.

Ollie Discussion: Ollie X Enters Beta!

Ollie X, the newest version of our easy to use on-line print management software has now passed internal testing and is now ready to be seen ‘in the wild’ by a select group of test customers. If you’d like to be a part of this program, please contact us.

The feature set is complete and will have lots of goodies including many we’ve discussed here in previous issues:

• Much lighter page design. Pages load several times faster
• Fully user-definable style sheets with a simple user interface that will let you, your client companies, or even individual users, customise the look and feel of Ollie to make their print management experience easier.
• Full Section 508 Compliance for disabled users.
• Integration with the industry standard WordPress blogging software. Start your own user blog!
• Integration with Social Media Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
• Full RSS feeds
• A completely re-designed search function that will let users find any product or order using a single Google-like search box.

 

Til Next Time!

SAFE Quick Tip: Locators Yet Again!

There’s a ton of power in the Locator. Sure the Goggle Search is cool, but even the good ol’ ‘Classic’ Locator has some great tricks up it’s sleeve that people don’t always take advantage of. So for a quick review of four oft-overlooked keystrokes:

Ctrl+R	Removes one character from the value in the Locator field and refreshes the browse. This is very simple and very, very useful; it just sounds confusing. An example is perhaps the best way to make it’s purpose clear. Let us say that you are searching for a Product ID you believe begins with ‘115’ but the Locator shows no records. If you press <Ctrl+R> the Locator changes to ’11’ which then shows all records beginning with ’11’. You instantly see that the Product you want is actually ‘1115…’ We put this keystroke first because it’s our secret weapon for overcoming ‘locator fatigue’ — that feeling that the locator is just not working! A lot of the time, when it feels that way it’s because we’ve entered one or two characters too many to get the proper matches.
Ctrl+L	Jump to the Locator field. This may not seem like much; it just saves a mouse click. But as we’ve noted so many times over the years, we try to use a keystroke whenever possible and avoid mouse over-kill.
Ctrl+Shift+L	Resets the browse box to it’s default order and clears the Locator field. Every browse has a default sort. Usually this is based on a field that is unique and can be sorted through as fast as possible. (For example, in the Customer Browse, this is the Customer ID field; in the Sales Order Browse is the Transaction ID.) Whenever you want to show all records and get to to the fastest browse performance, press Ctrl+Shift+L for instant gratification.
Ctrl+Shift+R	Insert the value of the currently selected row into the Locator from the sort column. This automatically refreshes the browse with records matching that value. This, like Ctrl+R sounds a bit trickier than it actually is. It’s also very useful! And again, an example is probably best. First example. Let us say you are in the Sales Order Browse and have sorted your Orders by Customer ID. Your currently selected Customer ID is ‘SUNTOWER’. Now press Ctrl+Shift+R. The browse redraws to show only orders from Suntower. Second example. Let us say you are in the Sales Order Browse and have sorted your Orders by Invoice Date. Your currently selected Invoice Date is 01/10/10. Now press Ctrl+Shift+R. The browse redraws to show only orders invoiced on the tenth of January 2010..

 

We know that these keystrokes can be hard to remember if you don’t use them every day. That’s why we recommend printing out the Key Commands Topic from our on-line help and taking a bit of practice every day until they get completely under your fingers. Yes, it’s a bit of school work, but once done, we think you’ll find just these four keystrokes can really speed up your workflow.

Til Next Time

 

Support Tip: Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder!

Pretty much everyone is giving Windows 7 good to great reviews. After the slog that was Vista, we know a lot of you were pretty much innured to anything from Microsoft so Win7 restores a lot of people’s faith in big companies ability to listen to customers. One thing we really like about Win7 is how much easier it makes troubleshooting SAFE. This has been improved in two significant ways

Far too often in earlier versions of Windows did a program crash create much head scratching. We tried our best to build a ‘tracker’ into SAFE that would give us information after the fact when a problem occurred. But far too often, Windows would generate one of those lovely ‘Windows Has Experienced An Unexpected…’ and just die with either no explanation or some very cryptic information about ‘Registers’ and ‘Addresses’ that had no meaning for anyone (including us!)
You may even get a helpful offer to send the error off to Microsoft, but what good would that do?

On the other hand, many reports we get do not involve a ‘crash’ per se, but rather some unexpected behaviour that would be very hard to describe without many words, screen shots and lots of your time!

Windows 7 improves in both these areas. First of all, our anecdotal evidence from you and our own testing is that it crashes less. We’re not exactly sure why because internally it’s very much like XP and Vista but enough time has gone by to tell us that it’s not some placebo effect. It really is more stable for most users. Great.

But when there is a problem, Windows 7 includes a fantastic new tool called Problem Steps Recorder which allows you to easily document any repeatable issue.

According to Microsoft:

 

Again, note that this only really helps in situations that are repeatable; PSR is of no help if you have a problem that is a one-off. But that limitation aside, PSR saves you all the time of documenting a problem and taking screen shots to explain what is going on. The MHTML file is nothing but a fancy web document that we can open and look at to see what you did to cause the issue. Step by step.

A lot of you are waiting for your next computer to upgrade to Windows 7. But the combination of increased reliability and tools like PSR demonstrate the real benefits to Windows 7. Each of these may be small in and of itself, but add them all up and we’ve come to realise just what a compelling upgrade is Windows 7.

Til Next Time!

Ciaran’s Corner: Paperless Cuts!

One of the nastiest customer meetings I ever listened in on involved an established distributor who read us the riot act for offering him the option to do e-billing. This was over ten years ago but I can still see him all red-faced tryinghis best not show utter contempt for our obviously moronic and insensitive marketing efforts.

He had spent much of his career specialising in very elaborate embossed forms and letterheads; and made a very handsome living doing so. I think I can summarize his feelings as such: ‘If I offer e-billing to my customers, that completely de-values the very core of my business.’ He insisted on sending out four colour invoices and statements to all his clients. To him, every piece of paper from his company was a marketing tool that sent a powerful message; either positive (his invoices) or negative (a plain-paper invoice or worst of all an e-bill.)

That day, we learned a lot about trying to be more sensitive to this mindset, even though we felt then that, as Dylan said, ‘the times they are a changing’. It’s hard to straddle this very fine line. Most every enhancement to our software now has some ‘e’ component–designed to speed workflow by, frankly, cutting down on good ol’ paper. One customer joked that this may well be ‘death by a thousand paperless cuts’.

Now, here in 2010, the world is a different place, but the drive towards ‘e-everything’ continues at an even greater rate than back then. Most of you who have thrived have done so by finding a niche that cannot be easily commoditized or virtualised. For your creativity and stick-to-it-iveness we salute you! But what I want to ask today is how you feel about the state of print management? Do you still think our old customer has a point? Or are you moving towards virtualising your billing and payment functions as fast as you can? Regardless of your answer, are there things we can do to help with your strategy? If you e-bill or e-pay, how do you explain this to your customers (or do you even feel a need to try?) If you don’t, why not? Is it an issue of principle or do you have benefit case to make that we can help you push forward to your customers?

I’m very interested in all points of view on this topic. As the ‘paperless office’ finally starts to become something tangible, I think the answers to the above are even more relevant today than they were ten years ago–mainly because it’s not a pipe-dream anymore. It’s here if you want it.

So… what do you think?

Cheers,

Ciaràn Marron

Technical Support Manager

cm@suntowersystems.com

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Suntower Systems on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Suntower Systems must respond to change in market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Suntower Systems and Suntower Systems cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT. The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions:
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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume 912