Editors Note: Many of you caught the issue number misprint last time (E-News From The Suntower, Vol. VIII #4). My red-faced apologies. Obviously I was cutting and pasting far too quickly that day.

SAFE/8 Preview: Notifications And Contacts
With SAFE/8 Simple Accounting For Forms Experts (SAFE) becomes even more of a contact management program that just happens to have accounting functions built in.

IT'S ALL IN WHO YOU KNOW
Little by little we've been integrating the various master files and transactions with our contact management module. For example, when you make a change to a Customer, you're really just editing a Contact (actually several contacts) that just happens to be an entity to which you sell. Same goes for Vendors and Employees and Delivery Addresses. Pretty much everything is linked to a Contact.

NOTIFICATIONS MAKE PROCESSES MORE EFFICIENT
OK, but that is old news. The new news is that we're now throwing Notifications into the mix. If you recall from previous issues we've talked about how SQL Server 2005 supports Notifications---a powerful feature that let's automatically sends messages to users automatically based on business rules that you can set up. Those 'users' are really Contacts in SAFE, so they can be your vendors, your salespeople, your customers, your CSRs; anyone. That makes Contacts even more important in the grand scheme of things.

For example, let's take Reorder Notices. Currently these are somewhat passive forms---you run a scan of your Products periodically which suggests Products that require a Reorder Notice. Fine, but if you have certain products that turn quickly, you may run into out of stock conditions before your regular procedure. Wouldn't it be nice if SAFE automatically generated Reorder Notices automatically at the exact moment an item was needed? That's what a Notification does. All you do establish a rule in SAFE for when a product should be reordered and SAFE will immediately and automatically send a note to your inventory control person that the item needs to be reordered.

But that can be extended. Because a Customer is also a Contact and we can send a Notification to any Contact, we could also send that Reorder Notice automatically to the buyer for your client, or perhaps to your Salesperson to indicate that a sales call is in order.

And since Contacts can contain any number of e-mail and web addresses, as well as phone and fax numbers, these Notifications can find people anywhere, any time on their cell phone, PDA or Blackberry.

KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING
One of the more frustrating things in businesses of any size is that sometimes the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. For example, let's say the product above requires reordering. So the CSR takes it upon himself to reorder the item. But unbeknownst to him, the salesperson has also been Notified that the item needs reordering and she hopped on her cell phone while in the client's office to show off her responsiveness. So now there are two orders for the same product. Hmmm... an embarrassment of riches.

OK, so your vendors are usually right on top of things and they would usually catch this. Usually. But with one simple Notification set up in SAFE, your salesperson could receive a text message on her cell phone the very moment the P.O. was printed and thus avoid the possibility of duplication.

THE BIG CONCEPT
So in a nutshell, Notifications tie an event to a message. Any rule you can formulate which describes something 'happening' can be a trigger for a Notification to any Contact(s) in SAFE. With a little thought, you should be able to come up with many ways to use this ability.

OK, BUT HOW DOES IT WORK?
Notifications are set up using a Notetaker Window. They are input as free form text. After you complete one, SAFE checks for obvious errors in spelling. That's no guarantee that the rule will work as you intend of course (like Queries, you can make up a rule that is correct but not what you want.) The advantage of doing it this way, however, is that once you get a few of them under your belt it is very, very easy to cut and paste from previous rules and thus creating new rules becomes an extremely quick task. (Which is good, because from what we've heard from beta testers, after you get the hang of it, you'll likely want to create many of these little puppies!)

There are three aspects to setting up a Notification. On the one hand, Notifications are set up in SAFE much like Queries---in fact, the syntax for rules is exactly the same. So if you get the whole concept of 'IF's and 'AND's you're more than half the way there.

On the other hand, Notifications are like the Global Options Browse, with a list of modules and parameters that indicate what is triggering the Notification.

And on the other Other hand , Notifications are like using your e-mail program in that you specify one or more Contacts to actually receive the notification, along with a note (or attachments).

Here's a complete example:

Til Next Time!
 

Faxback Webinars
We're product to say we've been partnering with Faxback since 1992 to provide faxing solutions directly from Simple Accounting. Now that Voice Over IP and web-based faxing are becoming common place, now may be the time for you to investigate how you can reduce costs and reach your clients more effectively. So here is some information on upcoming eSeminars. We hope you'll check them out then call us to make Faxback a part of your winning communications strategy.

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: Quick Tips

THERE'S AN EASIER WAY TO VIEW PDFs AND IT'S FREE!
Adobe's PDF documents have become the defacto standard for transmitting documents ranging from customer artwork to important legal contracts. And for 99% of us, opening a PDF means 'Acrobat Reader'. The only problem is that, as Acrobat has grown in functionality, the 'reader' portion has become bloated and slow, Slow, SLOW! And most of that torpor is caused by features that few of us will ever use. Fortunately, there's Foxit PDF Reader, a tiny (and free!) program that opens PDFs instantly. It's become my standard way to view PDFs because I hate to be kept waiting.

TERMINAL SERVICES: KEEP IT CLEAN, FELLAS!
Many of you use Microsoft's Terminal Services to run SAFE from remote offices. And many of you will, from time to time experience <ahem> 'glitches', most notably problems with printing. File most of these problems under 'you get what you pay for'. Terminal Services is great, but there is a reason that 3rd party companies like Citrix are in business---and one of them is better self-maintenance. As it runs, T/S creates a whole lot of garbage, moving all manner of information about the user session back and forth between the server and the client. Sometimes this info gets scrambled, especially if you have many users, or users who log in from several locations.

The good news is that Microsoft has addressed this in Windows 2003 with a neat tool called User Profile Cleanup Service (UPH Clean). The bad news is that this is probably the first time you've heard about it. But the really good news is that you can download it and have it installed on your server in about five minutes.

UPH Clean does what it sounds like it does---it cleans up the 'hive' (database) where user profiles and session information is kept on your Terminal Server. Many times, this alone will solve all problems users report concerning printing issues, slow log-offs, locked sessions, etc.

Til Next Time!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume VIII #5