Goodness, surely not another year gone by, we hear you say, but yes, Christmas is nearly upon us. It's strange but true that this is always our busiest time of year with installations, extensions and consultancy. We think it must be that everybody year ends are on the same day! We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome all our new users into the fold, we really look forward to getting to know your working ways and you personally.
It's sometimes easy to get bogged down in technical jargon and computer gobbledygook, but in the end, however fast a computer, however good a program, it's the people using it, their ideas, flair, accuracy and personality that is the heart of the business. That why keeping in touch with our users is so important to us.
As usual over Christmas, we will be closing the telephone lines from 5.00pm on Tuesday 23 December until 9.00am on Friday 2 January 1998. We shall be coming in and out of the office over that time for various projects, so if you have anything desperately urgent it is worth sending a fax, but as they say, don't ring us, we'll ring you!
Those of you who have been with us a long time may remember our first newsletter announcing the first R.E.D. baby, Brandon. He has just had his seventh birthday, and Aline is now three. How the years fly by! Helen, John and the children turned their hands (and feet!) to roller-blading and mountain biking on their holidays this year, though they've been uncharacteristically uncommunicative about how successful they were!
Emma has taken to coming to work on a motorbike. She says it is quicker and more fun, but we think it's only an excuse to wear all that leather stuff. She just laughs when we ask!
This is a very important day to mark in your calendar, because this is when the first user-group meeting is taking place. We really hope that as many of you will be able to come as possible. Currently we're looking for a volunteer to be Chairperson - not an on-going commitment, just to move things along on 22 January. Please contact us if you'd like more details.
One of our users is transferring some of the work currently done in their London office to their South African one so the R.E.D. horizons have suddenly and unexpectedly moved southwards! We're delighted for them and wish them great success.
If you use BACS to draw payments from your customers or subscribers, please remember that there are a number of unlikely days over Christmas and the New Year when they will not be processing. You should have received a complete listing from BACS as to when and how they will be working and from that, you might decide to enter earlier processing dates.
Also, remember that the days of the BACS disk are numbered, and you should be well on the way to using a modem to download your BACS information.
It's always good to catch up on your news and we enjoy our annual chats with those of you who only ever ring to find out what format to request the Post Office database in!. The answer is, in fact, FIXED FORMAT. but don't let that stop you ringing to say hello - we would hate to stop these chats and lose contact with you!
When you receive the disk from the Post Office, it is important that you do not use it for postings taking place before 2 February 1998. For the first mailing using the new database, be sure to encode ALL rather than modified or new addresses.
We recently bought a CD writer, technically for business use, but which has already given us hours of fun! We don't intend to start using it for standard updates, but if you would find it dramatically more convenient to receive updates or exchange data on CD please let us know.
We're pleased that more users are getting the idea of what the ‘wish list’ is, and here are just some of the new bits which have gone into the program recently which have come about because of your feedback.
IMPORTING
There are a number of very useful things here. One is that importing can now be a multi-user activity, which will be useful for the busy marketing folk. Secondly, there is now an SDF option. This is for files produced using Standard Data Format which, by a strange quirk, are completely non-standard looking files!; and thirdly an extra bit n CSV files, which again are non standard, but in a different non-standard way!
DEMOGRAPHICS
This was an inspired idea, which we can't understand why we hadn't thought of it ourselves! With comma-separated lists, the information BEFORE the comma in the list content is displayed on the address screen in the normal way, but any details entered AFTER the comma is shown when sitting on the address an pressing F10 to see the listing. It's brilliant!
FAST ENTRY SCREEN
To date, many versions of this screen have been designed by us to try to meet each users particular requirements. Changes have become increasingly difficult, so we decided to make it user-definable. So, this is your big chance to get artistic and design your own screen!
We have had a number of meetings recently with the BPA to discuss
changes in reporting requirements and procedures. The module,
like all our programs, is evolving over time, and produces beautiful,
accurate reports, given good data. But the predominant difficulty
on the part of users seems to be lack of time to prepare all the
outputs required since all the audits come at the same time. So,
at the suggestion of the BPA, we now offer to run these reports
at our end as an optional additional service which we hope will
ease the time pressure.
It’s now possible to put shaded boxing into report generator reports and form letters. They look lovely, do let us know if you'd like further details.
If you press the Print Screen button while running our program in a DOS box under Windows, the job will not come out of the printer, but go to the Windows ClipBoard, from where you can print it. (It took us a long time to discover where the jobs were going!)
We now have a technical sheet available on the different media types which we can read when you want to send us your data. Let us know if you'd like one.
An address label caught our eye recently. It was self-adhesive
attached to an envelope, but with a second self-adhesive layer
so that we could peel it off the envelope to us and stick it onto
a reply slip inside. This must eliminate all those tribulations
of reading handwriting on responses. Unfortunately there was no
manufacturers name on the label, but we'll keep our eyes open
for the next one and hope it does.
May we wish you all a very happy Christmas, and a successful and fulfilling 1998.