Back

It seems that it was only yesterday the last newsletter went out, but the sunny days (!), and smell of charcoal in the air tells us that summer is finally here.

And what a busy time it has been since the last newsletter. Chris of LUK gave birth to a bouncing baby boy earlier this month, and Britta from CRU gave birth to a bouncing baby girl, wishing both mothers and children all the best. LRB was nominated for having one of the top 300 websites in the UK, well done! Dalesman have recently celebrated their fiftieth birthday, congratulations.

John, Helen, and JB all attended John Barry's wedding at Amberley Castle recently. A lovely day was had by all, and John is now in Bali with his wife Lisa for two weeks, we're not jealous, honest!

We had lots of responses to the chocolate anagram this time, but the one that pipped you all to the post and was the proud owner of a huge bar of chocolate, was Joyce from Quintessence, so well done. The answer was Windows Program.

Farewell and Goodluck Emma

Sadly as many of you will now know, Emma has left us and gone to new horizons. Emma has been with R.E.D. for just over six years doing a variety of tasks such as administration, manual writing, training, support, marketing, and sales. She has moved into a career in sales, so we wish her lots of luck (not that she will need it) and she will be missed by all!

Emma is still collecting foreign postage stamps and would appreciate it if people could still send them to R.E.D. and we will pass them on.

Welcome Nik and Julius

But onto happier things! Firstly we would very much like to welcome Nik to our team to work in the capacity of programmer with John, John Barry, and JB. Not happy with filling the office with Johns we have now decided to accumulate Nik's as well! Nik comes directly from university with a degree in Computer Science which will open up lots of opportunities for R.E.D.

Secondly, in a couple of weeks we will be welcoming another new face, Julius, to our team to work alongside Helen and Nicola in all aspects of client services. Julius previously worked as a customer service consultant in a service centre.

Total Show

After the extraordinary success of last year, we'll be there again on 7 and 8 July. We've enclosed a couple of tickets, and we do hope that you'll pop along and see us on Stand 650A in the Specialist Services Pavillion.

User Group Meeting

The latest User Group meeting was once again held at the offices of IDS just off Old Street. We would like to thank IDS, Christine, and her team not just for their generosity in providing an excellent venue, but also for their help in tea and coffee making tasks, and room re-arranging antics!

Over 30 people came this time, with a mixture of new and long standing smiling faces!

This User Group meeting had a slightly different format to the previous meetings and it seemed to work well! This was known as question time.

There were two topics that were discussed, the first being day to day issues that arise from running a high volume subscriptions and mailorder operation, that included using Direct Debits, Continuous Credit Card payments, electronic Credit Card Processing, and PAF.

The second was about the customer service aspects of providing Internet or CD-ROM products. Lots of interesting issues arose from the questions and lots of useful information was shared. A big thanks goes out to our speakers (or question answerers!) who provided answers to all of the questions!

The information packs included two useful articles written by users, one on Junk Mail and one on running R.E.D. remotely using an ISDN line.

In the break we demonstrated running R.E.D. remotely by using a modem, dialing up R.E.D. and connecting to JB's computer. This is very handy for those who would like to work from home! If you would like more information then please let us know.

Helen gave a brief chat regarding some of the new, more general-interest, program developments - what they do - how they can be used and what's in the pipelines. Then there were the special interest group gatherings. In this time people interchange ideas and mutual help

The next User Group meeting will be in approximately six months, but we will let you know the date nearer the time but in plenty of time! We hope lots more people will be able to join us.

New Stuff

Suppressing Campaigns
For those of you who now find that they have lots of old campaigns, you can suppress them from the pick lists when entering a new sub or a renewal making inputting that bit quicker! For a fact sheet phone, fax, or email us!

Fast Entry Screens
If you currently use fast entry screens you will be pleased to know that you can now design your own fast entry screen via a form letter.

For those of you who don't use this facility and might be interested then please let us know and we will be happy to explain!

Outputting HTML from R.E.D.
You can now output documents from R.E.D. directly into an HTML page, by setting up a special form-letter.

Windows Program.
Those at the User Group meeting had a chance to see the latest beta version of the program. This version is now at evaluation sites and we will keep you posted on its upcoming launch.

Exporting Log Labels
For those of you who use log labels, you may be interested to know that it is now possible to output these as an export file, as well as being able to print to labels.

JB's Technical Line
You may have noticed that technicalcalls tend to take longer than normal support calls, thus blocking our hot-line! So we shall shortly be introducing a special number, (which will be chargeable), for technical calls only, for an evaluation period. The number to follow shortly.

Y2000 Compliant
The words that are on everybody's lips as we draw closer to the millennium! Well you will be happy to know that R.E.D. software has always been Y2000 compliant, but if you would like it in writing then please let us know. One user did find a screen a while ago that showed a short format date incorrectly, (although the date was stored correctly), and was promptly awarded with a bar of chocolate! For those of you who now go looking for incorrect dates I'm afraid there aren't any!

Stop Press!

You may be interested to know that one of our clients has informed us that the two Agents Swets and Blackwells are all set to merge into one! We will of course be working on an easy solution to help you sort out your invoice addresses!