SAFE Quick Tip: Mail Merge!
Many of you old timers from SAFE/DOS tell us you still miss the days of our built-in mail-merge/form letter writer. Even considering it was DOS, that was a pretty cool tool! Nowadays, with our SAFExtension for Microsoft Office, there's no reason to feel particularly nostalgic for the good old days. However, what if you've been too che... ...er. 'frugal' to invest in SAFE OfficExtensions? There's still hope. As with most things that save money, all it takes is a bit more time.

The magic key is our Export File utility for various reports. Remember: you can Export from SAFE in CSV (comma delimited) format. And since you can use a CSV file as a mail merge file in Microsoft Word or Publisher, you can pretty much create any kind of mail merge letter you like!

The 'trick' is knowing where to get the data from---in other words, which report to run to get your data. Usually this isn't too hard. If you want to print letters to customers, open the Customer Browse and export from there. Want a list of sales prospects? The Contacts Browse is the logical spot. Vendors? Well... you get the idea. The important thing is to export all the fields you'll need (Name, Contact, Address, City, State, Phone, etc.)

MORE CHALLENGING
Now what is a lot more difficult; what will require much home study, is creating letters that have a list of information, such as a Customer Statement with many line items (open invoices). To do this, you will need to sort your data so that it can be properly grouped in Microsoft Word. And when you import your data into Word, you'll need to do some fairly fancy work with macros to get each letter to properly display the line items you want.

And that leads us to why you might find it worthwhile to investigate OfficExtensions---this is the kind of thing that OfficExtensions was meant to do. Just run the report you need in SAFE, but when the Print Preview opens, select the Word Document as your destination. Presto! All your statements are instantly printed using your custom Word letter!

We'll get into more of the benefits of OfficExtensions soon, but this tip wasn't meant to be a sales pitch, so we'll sign off for now having accomplished our task: to give you a zero dollar solution for fancy mail-merged letters using SAFE that's quick and easy.

Til Next Time!
 

Time Is Running Out On New Year Discounts For Ollie
As we said last time, 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...

• New Web Gallery View (think Amazon.Com)  lets users compare various products within a given category on a single screen.
• Order tracking and price estimation for UPS, Fedex and DHL carriers
• User-definable Product Templates. Now each customer can create their own Product Templates.
• Enhanced Notification Options. E-mails can now be sent to up to six recipients as it's status changes.
• Much improved report generation speed. Results are now displayed instantly in most cases, but users still can sort or filter on virtually any report column!
• Reports can now be saved for re-use and forwarded to approvers.
• New On-line Help System with full indexing and table of contents that you can modify for individual clients.

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!

 

Ciaran's Corner: The Grandfathered Report And SAFE/9
OK, it's time to start talking about the next major release to SAFE: Version 9. And of course, this brings up all the feelings, both good and bad that these bring up for users. And you know which ones I'm going to talk to you about!

Some of the most valuable, and the toughest features to add are improvements to reporting. And the biggest challenge is grandfathering, which means, how does a new feature deal with information entered before the new release---that is, before the new capability.

OK, here's a teaser to demonstrate: SAFE/9 will offer period based inventory reporting at no extra charge. IOW: you'll be able to print up an Inventory Status Report that shows the state of your inventory 'as of' any financial period, without loading snapshots of your entire database. All the standard reports will include this capability.

So you'll install SAFE/9 and decide to run an Inventory Status Report for July 2006. And of course, you'll get all zeroes because there is nothing in the database for that period. Nope. You'll have to wait until you start building data with each new period moving forward. What a gyp!

Next, you'll go and look at your forms management reports. And they don't even have the ability to select  a prior period. Double gyp! Some new feature!

So, this is where you have to choose.
1. For the first case, you have to decide whether or no you need the standard reports available with prior period data. As with SAFE/8 when we offered the same period-based reporting for A/R and A/P, we told you that such a conversion (grandfathering) would cost. If you can wait, the data 'buckets' will fill themselves and within a few months, the reporting will be useful. If you need it right away, then we need to run special routines to create the period data from your transaction history. That takes time. Time is money. And it's billed per hour.

2. For the second case, we come back to that old bugaboo of custom reports: your forms management reports are yours and need to be hand-updated for each of our customers in order to accommodate the new features. We can't just send you a standard update of each report. We have to spend time at each customer's site that needs this. And many of you don't.

In both cases, we have a new feature that will eventually be used by pretty much everyone, but which is only immediately crucial for some and which requires intensive labour---sort of like having to take your car into the dealer for a retro-fit. So it only seems fair to charge those who need it, rather than applying these changes to all users---many of whom don't need it and then charging -everyone- an average cost.

On the positive side, we now have a feature that many of you have asked for and which is normally only found on the most high-end accounting packages.

In the final analysis, a major part of our job is balancing the need to innovate with the responsibility to be as non-disruptive as possible. How to deal with 'grandfathered' data is just one of these challenges. Hopefully we make the responsible call with these decisions, but the only way to know is to get your feedback. So please, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Til Next Time!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
 

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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume IX #3