Yes, another quarter has gone by, and it’s that newsletter time again. Many of you have been away on holidays, and we hope you had a wonderfully restful break, not a database in sight, not even at the hotel reception!
We’d like to say good luck to Sue who many of you will have been helped by on the telephone. She worked here on contract, and has now landed a super job closer to her home. Dominique has gone back to college now, and we wish her well in her final year.
We were so very pleased to see more than half our 70+ users at the Total Publishing Show, it was quite a party and great fun, if wearing on the feet and body! Your photographs looked absolutely lovely, really jolly, and completely different from all the other stands which looked rather formal and quite ordinary by comparison! Thank you for sending them to us. You should have had them back by now, so if you've not had yours please let us know.
We had fully expected that we wouldn't need three pairs of hands on the stand and had made plans for one person to get back to the office. In the event it was such a good show and so much interest was generated that we could easily have done with another body, to help out. We've booked for next year already, so be prepared! (Not that we are - but we'll think of something!)
The winner of the anagram from last newsletter was Linda from Lettres (UK) and the answer was .
YEAR TWO THOUSAND
We've got another one for you: this is the first verse of the ‘Hokie Cokie’, R.E.D. summer style.
Second and subsequent verses??? Any suggestions? Usual big bar of chocolate for the best one, and if it's printable, it'll be in the next newsletter!
If you have lots of different recipients at the same physical address, or one company with different locations, it is a shame to have to modify them all manually if a part of the address changes. It is now possible to link addresses together, with the head office at the top, chained addresses attached to that, and linked records further down the line. An address is linked to the one above it and you may specify which lines should copy automatically if the address is modified. So, if company MNO Ltd changes to MNOP Ltd, the company name line in all the linked records will change automatically if the company line has been specified as a ‘copy’ one. This is known as hierarchical addressing in some systems.
We imagine that this would be more useful for business to business publications rather than consumer ones. If you would like details, let us know.
We have been told by a few users that the United Kingdom Newsletter Association had a very useful and successful conference this June. It's not a group we know much about, but when we looked through the list of delegates, we realise that many of your colleagues were there. The phone number for details of the UKNA is 0171 404 4166
If you are planning any training or consultancy days, please remember to book it with us in good time, we are jolly busy at the moment and are currently working with a lead time of about three to four weeks. Remember, it is easier to cancel a day we have pencilled in for you than for us to find a spare day at short notice!
You might remember that last time we told you about our project for the multi-currency sales ledger. I have to say, this news didn't seem to inspire scenes of wild excitement in those of you not yet involved, but we are very pleased that this project is now at the point of installation. It puts us all in a good position for when EMU comes in, which potentially is as close as 1999, and which will cause at least as big a stir in the computer press as the famous Year 2000.
Over the years, we have had enquiries about the possibility
of exporting sales information into a separate accounts package.
While it has always been technically possible, nobody seemed that
bothered about it, but now we are pleased to say that the first
export, in this case into Sage Sovereign, has happened successfully,
transferring account information, nominal ledger codes and cost
centres, all in one go. Magic!
If you run our programs in a Windows DOS box so that you can open the program more than once and flip from one to the other when the phone goes, or whatever, please be very careful that you close all the versions of the program before you attempt to run a backup, put on updates or perform single user operations, otherwise you'll get "oops" messages on screen! I hope we needn't tell you how serious this could be when it comes to backing up. So, check, check and double check!
The Windows 95 version of our software is coming along, as time permits. We stopped our development of a Windows 3 product some time ago as the development tools simply did not work well enough. Windows 95 looks much more promising. We are also looking at an Internet/Intranet version, probably running on Windows NT.
No, this is nothing to do with the clothing industry, nor some hints and tips for those who play Scrabble! This is to let you know that we now have a Zip drive, so if you would prefer to send us your data on Zips rather than tapes, please do.
Matt has had a super response to his letters, almost everybody is interested in coming to a User Group meeting, but sad to say, nobody wants to say anything! He wasn't asking you to give a huge lecture, but it would be nice if a few people could speak for, say, three or four minutes, then the meeting, we are sure, would take on a life of its own. We know you can do it, so don't be shy!
If you use Presstream or Mailsort, you will soon be asked to fill in a form by the post office as to how you would like to receive Database 98. The answer is FIXED FORMAT.
It may be that you can use the DX system to dispatch some of your journals if you have a large number of local authorities or solicitors, etc on your list. We can pass a contact number on to you if you are interested in finding out.