Happy Thanksgiving!
Suntower Systems will be closed on November 25th and 26th to celebrate Thanksgiving. We will re-open on Saturday November 27th. May you all have a happy and joyful holiday.

Preparing For SAFE 7: What's In A Name?
Backward Compatibility. Customers love it. Developers hate it. Imagine trying to design a new car every year that must be compatible with parts from previous years! Now here's a secret: SAFE7 is done. Complete. In the can. Finito. In fact, we have been intentionally sitting on it until next January. Mainly to give you plenty of time to do what we've been asking you to do for the last three years! But times up! It must be done! So here it is once and for all: 'Contact Names are going away'.

Everywhere you see a First Name or Last Name field that you can now type into? Well, it won't be there.

Well... OK, actually it will be there, but Name and address information will be completely stored in the Contacts table.

Why Does This Matter? Sites!
Actually it doesn't matter all that much. The screens will all look much the same. But there is one big change that could affect you and you need to be aware of it now. Notice how there is a First/Last Name in the Sites Master? It has to do with the Attention Line on various forms such as invoices and packing slips. Now most of you select a specific Contact for each Sales Order. This is the 'modern' way of doing things. You are not affected. But some of you, still have your invoices pulling contact information from here. Since these fields will no longer be there, where will this information come from? Good question!

So What Do I Do?
You will want to click in the right hand portion of the browse and assign a Default Contact for each Site. And you'll want to type in the matching contact information you want to appear as a default for this Site. Then, when you upgrade to SAFE7, this Default Contact will be used on your forms and reports.

That's A Lot Of Work! Why Are You Doing This To Us? You're Always Doing Something Painful!
*Payback? . Just kidding. No angry letters, please. Actually, what we're trying to do is get rid of ambiguity. For example, when you look at a contact name in a Site is this the proper contact name or is it the Linked Contact? Too much confusion. And not just for you! Remember that every day more and more of you want SAFE to work and play with other database systems; web sites, EDI transactions, etc. We need to have a completely clear spec for these vendors to integrate their wares with ours.
Ed. Note: *A completely discredited theory. It goes like this: our customers beat on us during the course of the year and upgrades are some sort of petty revenge.

What Happens If We Do What We Always Do And Ignore Your Sage Advice? You'll Let Me Off The Hook, Right?
If you do not convert this information now SAFE will automagically create a Linked Contact for you upon conversion to SAFE7. However, it will simply create a Contact based on what you have in these fields now. And here is why this is bad: Let's say you have a Site (Ship To Address) with the 'real' First Name/Last Name and you already have a Linked Contact which has stale contact info? Goodbye First Name/Last Name. Next time you print a packing slip, you'll be printing the stale contact data. Get it? So, for your own sanity: you must check all Sites for the correct Linked Contact.

What About The Custom Forms I Paid You Guys An Arm And A Leg For?
You must. We mean you must test your forms, and we mean every form and Internal Custom Report we have created for you that uses a Shipping Address Contact Name. And you must do this as soon as you upgrade. Of course, we will make any corrections to Custom Forms and Internal Custom Reports at no charge.

Again: If you have been using SAFE in the recommended way (as of version 5) and been assigning a Contact Attention Line to each Sales Order Line Item, you will have no problem. It is only those of you who are still pulling the First/Last Name data directly from the Sites which need be concerned.

Any Good News To Report?
Sure: This is the last of the backward compatibility issues brought over from SAFE/DOS. As of January, there will be no more compatibility issues to address so this type of 'pain and suffering' will not occur in foreseeable future upgrades. Remember that this is the old 'fast vs slow band-aid pull'.

Flash Back Time: The changes we have been making could have been implemented as far back as SAFE5. The problem for us all is how much to ask of you with each upgrade. Most of our beta testers felt it was too much to do all the changes we wanted to make in one go so we've been trying to spread the effort across several years. Fortunately this is the end of all that.

This concludes the bad news portion of upgrading to SAFE7. Next time, we'll discuss improvements to reports, including new features which let you generate custom formulas and totals for any report.

Til Then!
 

The Autumnal What Do You Want? Rant!
The Marrons have asked me to step in here because, well frankly, they need a break from the semi-annual begging/pleading. I think the last time, Seān even went so far as to simply cut/paste a previous rant. It's all the same thing: we need you to tell us what you want for future versions of SAFE.

Sadly, the same group of users supplies almost all suggestions for SAFE year in and year out.
SAFE looks the way it does, acts the way it does, is documented the way it is, because about 20 guys say so.

That's the deal. Don't like it? Welll! In this post-election furor over 'democracy'  all I can say is, 'Become part of the democratic process!' This is one area of your life where you can make a difference.

One thing we have groused about for years is the amount of effort we will put into developing code for the now which then sits around for a good long time until users pick up the ball. Faxing? We did it 13 years ago. E-mail POs? Eight years ago. PDA integration? Four years ago. Typically, it will take 3 years for customers to start really using our new ideas. That's a long time.

So, rather than just beg, here's a twist, I am presenting some big ideas which have already been floated. They have been proposed by customers and that's good, but now it's time to vote, vote, vote!

Process Control
Many distributors want us to develop a better method of tracking the progress of orders. In other words, to define a series of steps for each type of Sales Order and force operators to sign off on each step as it is completed. For example:

1. Judy entered the order

2. Fred printed POs

3. Rhonda received acknowledgements

4. George printed packing slips

5. Phil packed the order

...and so on, with a complete log of who did what and rules to stop orders proceeding forward if certain steps are not completed according to your company's policy. We're certain some of you would find this extremely useful while others would just as certainly find it very constraining. The main thing everyone seems to want is more accountability and ways to prevent orders from 'falling through the cracks'.

Ad Spec Vendor Integration
Many of you are selling more and more ad specs through sites like Sage. Time and again we are approached for a direct link to such web sites. The problem there is with Sage. They have expressed a willingness to provide direct links between our systems but at a rather hefty cost. There is simply no point in our making this a default part of SAFE unless enough of you are willing to commit to using it.

Mailing List Management
More and more of you are making money doing bulk mailings. There are lots of software packages that do this well, but then there are many billing challenges. Since SAFE can store any number of mailing lists in it's Contact Management system, it seems logical to add this sort of functionality into SAFE. We already have code for manipulating images, including placing data from our Contacts tables into various variable imaging formats.

Improved Shopping Cart
Lots of you use Ollie and WebSAFE. And many of you have cobbled together your own web sites using our Dreamweaver compatibility. But a number of you say you want us to develop a new standard shopping cart with several alternate styles of presentation. This would be primarily for various non-traditional items (multi-sized previews for ad specs and wearables, clickable PDFs for catalogs, user-definable templates, etc., areas for promotions, and even surveys for gathering customer feedback.) All easily done.

Four51 Integration
Many of you have expressed an interest in integrating with Four51 web sites. We are only too happy to do so. The problem for us is that almost all these queries are hypothetical. A classic chicken and the egg deal: Yes, we do have code to do this. But before we take this out of the realm of Custom Code and make it a free free free part of SAFE, again, a certain number of you have to commit to this before we can take the plunge.

Multi-Currency
A number of you have expressed an interest in support for multiple currencies. Mainly this is in Europe (Euros vs Sterling) but I am certain that there is interest amongst US/Canadian businesses near the borders. Again this is not rocket science, but it is a big effort if not enough of you are going to be using it.

So: Can We Count You In?
We want you to vote. But we also want you to 'vote with your hands'. 'Why whatever do you mean, JC?'

1. Send us a detailed spec on what you would like? These are always most welcome. You have no money to spare and no time to test, but you do have a great idea and a specific idea on how it should work. Bring it on!

2. Send us some cash! Yes, yes I know upgrades are supposed to be free but let's say we have only five customers who all want one of the above big deals done. Are you willing to pay? No, not a ton of money, but something---a fee which is spread across all five. Great. Then you win. Your ideas are implemented at far less than having a 'custom' program written and you get the results the way you want and at probably 5% of the real fees to develop such a thing. Sure, you might feel jealous of future users who may get the feature gratis, but remember that without you the idea may never have come to fruition at all. Someone has to jump first!

3. Be willing to beta test. OK, you have no specific big request, but you do want some say so in how all the dozens of little improvements are implemented. Great! Become a part of the team. Probably 90% of SAFE is what it is because of people such as yourself who were willing to give a little time every day in order to make SAFE better for everyone. Plus, you get the benefit of having far more influence in the direction of SAFE than other users!

Finally, It's The Little Things
I also want to emphasize that it's actually the small things that matter a most. The ideas presented above are all big ideas, but what really matters is your help with the hundreds of incremental improvements we make to SAFE every time out. Seriously. We've always felt that big features are all very well, but it's the small improvements to workflow that matter most because you use them every day. Actually, if I was smart I would have put that last sentence at the top of this article. Oh well. Bad genes, I guess. Maybe some nice editrix will come by and somehow emphasize what I'm talkin' about so I don't have to re-write this whole thing.
Ed Note: Well, just this once...

As Always: Thanks For Your Support!

---JC
 

Ciaran's Corner: XP Service Pack 2 Is SAFE
With the latest patches (Cumulative to October 29th, 2004) XP2 is now passed all tests for compatibility with SAFE. It is important to understand this specifically:

1. XP SP2 Pro and Home are guaranteed compatible only if you have all critical patches installed through the 10/29 release.

2. XP SP2 Pro and Home are guaranteed compatible as clients only. They are not guaranteed compatible if you are using Windows XP Pro as a data server for SAFE/SQL. If you are using Windows XP Pro or Home as a 'server' for SAFE/SQL you may still have problems with the Windows Firewall which will automatically attempt to disable any incoming connections it sees as threats. Unfortunately, these include computers attempting to connect to SQL Server.

So: used as we recommend (as a client) XP SP2 is now completely SAFE. If used as a data server, it may or may not work properly right out of the box, but can be tweaked to work properly. If this is the case, we recommend you engage a Microsoft Certified Consultant (your computer support person is certified right? Right?) to adjust your computer accordingly.

Til Next Time,

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com