November 2008 Customer Newsletter

Opening Comments

A lot has happened since the last newsletter. In preparation for release 10 of ActiveApplications-SQL we have written several changes. These changes all contribute to attaining our general development goals. Our top three development priorities are 1) Make applications Internet aware 2) Create more comprehensive or all in one applications 3) Create video movies to better relate training issues than the help system.  

These goals have caused us to start programming with several new technologies that have been difficult to master but important in the long run for you and your company. The learning process has been long but the results are starting to appear.

Landscape Maintenance Business Process Now in AA

Since the last release we have added some comprehensive programs to manage the landscape maintenance business process and better integrate automatic invoicing and job costing with those programs. There are many features that you will find attractive:

The ability to automatically send invoices every month to maintenance customers
The linking of Automatic Invoicing and Job Costing
Optionally show the dates of service visits to your customer
Automatically add billable extra service items to the automatic invoice
Keep track of past due tasks so they can be picked up later
Easily scheduling of the job for the year with varying service frequencies
Assign the route and crew when the Job is created or assign them later
Print a Work Order for the scheduled activity
Print or Preview the Activity List for the day(s)
Print or Preview the Route Sheet for selected activities and crews
Easily change the print options
Dynamically assign crew members based on labor estimate for the scheduled activities
Assign the crew for an activity
Easily move a scheduled activity from one crew to another
Quickly find and assign incomplete or past due activities
Clearly see all the scheduled activities for a day or multiple days
Create Job Plans Automatically
Quickly complete all scheduled tasks and send them to job costing
 Quickly remove some or many scheduled tasks from the completion list (make them past due)
Communicate seamlessly notes from the estimate to the scheduled task to the work order
Optionally forward messages to crews at the time of scheduling
Labor hour estimates are clearly displayed to make crew size decisions obvious
Dynamically expand or limit the display of scheduled activities for better viewing
Easily add scheduled tasks (items) at any time during the scheduling process
Graphically view schedules
Move a single scheduled event or all following events with a few clicks
Export to a hand held (Windows Mobile 5) device with a few clicks
Select all scheduled activities for a crew with a single click
Print reports from selected items with a single click
Change the service date for selected activities with a few mouse clicks – Only selected items
Create job cost transactions and complete tasks for selected items with a single click
Select or deselect a scheduled item with a click
Print invoices for all or partial list of automatic invoices with activity dates  or not based on customer

This is only a partial list of features. I am sure I have missed a few others but it provides a good idea of the function added.

Best of all learning how to use the new programs will be easy because of the new video that is available. Visit http://www.aasqlsupport.com/videoplayer/webvideoplayer.aspx to see the movie. Please let us know what you think of the video training. Your comments will lead to improvements on the next one.

Print to PDF Options added to Documents

With release 10 of AA-SQL documents can be “printed” to your printer or into a PDF file format. The PDF print can then be emailed to your customer either individually or automatically. By documents we mean Invoices, Orders, Estimates, Automatic Invoices and Customer Emails. Maybe by the time 10 is released Statements will be included, too. We are thinking of making it an option for all reports.

There are two main reasons documents should be sent this way. First is the customer service level. You will send documents more quickly and with less effort. The second is the cost. A PDF file costs almost nothing to send. To send the documents by mail requires printing to paper, putting that paper in an envelope, attaching a stamp and taking it to the mail box. At the absolute minimum it is 50 cents in cost. More realistically it is $1.00 or more.

Learn how to use the program in the PDF Printing movie. It is available on http://www.aasqlsupport.com/videoplayer/webvideoplayer.aspx web site. Take a look. It is easy.

It will require a bit of customer training and a little effort to set up the customer records but once in use it will make sending reminders and status orders a snap. It is all explained in the PDF Printing video. Take a look.

ActiveApplications Movies. That is right AA MOVIES

Seamless integration between ActiveApplications and a video help system is currently one of our goals at UDS. Creating videos has two drawbacks. The first is that they are large and require a lot of disk space. Because of the size we will store them on one of our servers and make them available through the Internet.  If Internet access is not available they can still be available on your network if you provide the space.

The objective is to play a video off our web server from within AA on a subject of interest. This will provide easy access to information on complex applications that you will use immediately. As the video library expands you will automatically be able to access it off our server without downloading anything.

Video movies are desired because they have several properties that make them immediately useful.  They have pause, rewind, and fast forward built in. This makes movies the ideal teaching tools. You will be able to use any video player to view the videos. Our video player will add the ability to see all the videos available and display a topic list once a specific subject is selected. We will write the topics within a video to make the information more accessible and specific to your current needs.

Movies can relate a lot of information in a short period of time. The problem is the amount of time necessary to generate them. My first 15 minute video took 4 full days to produce. I am somewhat better at it now but the undertaking is large if we document everything within AA. A lot of additional documentation must be created, too.  

You can see a test player at: http://www.aasqlsupport.com/videoplayer/webvideoplayer.aspx  This player will be expanded and new titles will be added as they get completed.   

Please let support@udsgis.com know what topics you would like covered. We are working on videos every day your topic could be next.

New! Campfire Service Soon to be Available

Campfire is a service that allows many people to read and add comments on any subject of interest. We signed up for the service to be able to have multiple users and companies make comments on proposed program changes. This should minimize the development time for new features and make sure that everyone that wants to can have input into the new development.

Over my 35 years of computer experience I have learned to listen closely to your requests and interpret the words used to describe the need. From there I design an application to meet those needs. Jeff then programs it. Usually the needs are described by one or two people from a single company. Once written into AA the change is released then other companies provide comments and the program gets rewritten to fulfill their needs.

This process can take years before it is complete and everyone gets what they need.

Campfire will allow us to share those comments across our geographically divergent customer set without traveling to a central meeting site. More people will be able to comment sooner. Those comments will be written into the software sooner.

If it works we will keep it as an added service. New topics can be created as they come up. It should improve the quality of communications between our customers and us as well as between our customers.  

Coming Soon

Thanks to ArborGen we have been forced to learn Campfire to share project development efforts. We would like to try it out with a Campfire Meeting on the Lot Number field in inventory. Join the discussion on campfire. The meeting will be announced soon.

The season is almost over. That means it is time for the ActiveApplications User Conference. Look for an announcement Email soon. We have lots to show and discuss. Join us for the "No Free Lunch" AA Learning Session brought to you by AA University.