Autumn Seminars
The creators of development and reporting software are currently focusing on ease of use - which is a good thing for all of us.
We have two days of briefing and introductory training coming up in October.
Come to the Seminar for an update on what is possible with these much eaier to use systems, andor learn in more depth about actually building business applications for yourself.
Both days are free of charge!
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 We have a busy Autumn coming up by the look of it!
By the time you receive this, we will have been to the Healthcare Facilities Consortium annual Conference where our Eclipse-fm® faciliies management suite is a star of the show. This year is particularly exciting for as as we will be showing our new Mobile devices module of for the first time. More on this in a later edition, but for now, using Visual DataFlex and web services to talk to the existing Windows and Web system has made this a very rapid and straightforward development project.
Next, we are stepping right out of our usual VDF and NHS worlds to tackle "high finance". The about to release V6 of Dynamic AI is much improved in its user friendliness (and wasn’t bad before!), so much so that we are taking it to Softworld Accounting and Finance Exhibition in Birmingham on October.
And it that wasn’t enough, the following week we have Visual Dataflex newcomers training on October 24th, and a whole day seminar on October 25th. Visual Dataflex is unusual in being a development system that has very few limits in creating Windows and Web applications, while being easy enough for newcomers to learn to use surprisingly quickly.
This seminar will in fact be of interest to anyone concerned with building business applications, Web development, reporting on business data, and exchanging data between different systems. We guarantee that you will go home with some interesting and practical ideas for the future!
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Free Systems Development Seminar, and Introductory Training sessions
October 24th and 25th
In addition to Visual DataFlex itself, the seminar day will be covering the new version of Dynamic AI, and DataSlave, a new data synchronization tool from UK company Baycastle Software that allows exchange of data between many different database formats, including Visual DataFlex.
Both these days are completely free of charge. The venue is the Menzies Strathmore Hotel in Luton - as easy a place to reach as any from most of the UK.
Click on these links for the full program for
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 Asckey Takes Dynamic AI to Softworld
Softworld is the UK’s only software exhibition and conference for the accounting and finance profession, which is exactly where Dynamic Ai is at its most effective
We will be showing Dynamic AI v6 which is nearing full release. Version 6 has concentrated on usability, to very good effect, making it even quicker to develop comprehensive and meaningful analysis of your business data.
We are in the finance section, come and find us on Stand AF 342
17-18 October 2007
Hall 18, NEC, Birmingham
We will also be showing Dynamic AI v6 at the VDF seminar in October as mentioned above.
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Asckey Email Service Upgrade
Those who use our e-mail services will be interested to know that as we go into October we will be upgrading our e-mail provision with a new mail server system.
The new system, which we have been testing with selected clients, will offer two major new features, and is already proving to deliver mail much more quickly than the existing system.
The new features are:-
WebMail
You will now have a webmail capability enabling you to view emails that have not yet been downloaded to your desktop, and to send emails, all from a Web browser interface "any time anyplace". This is not intended as a full Internet based email provision such as provided by Yahoo etc, but when away from base you will be able to use your Asckey serviced email account from an Internet café etc rather than have to fall back on a more general MyName99@commercialSP.com type of email ID.
Spam Filtering
As we have discovered, whether spam filtering should be done at the desktop (i.e. by your mail client) or by the service provider (i.e. by the mail server) can be a very individual choice. The new system uses Spam Assassin and will allow you to set up spam filtering on the server, right down to individual account level. So within any e-mail domain, "I" could teach the server to filter out my junk e-mail, while "you" can elect to receive e-mail unfiltered and continue to rely on your e-mail client to perform the spam filtering. Similarly, the scoring system on the server that determines if an e-mail is junk is configurable for each user account.
This looks like giving a best of all worlds’ solution, by putting control where it belongs - with the e-mail user rather than dictated to you.
Rather like Thunderbird it has a "learn" capability that makes it easy to "teach" it what you consider to be spam. That would mean that you would be using the spam filtering facility before downloading the good emails to your PC mail client. Before you ask, no, you can’t expect your PC mail client to teach the mail server what is junk!
SpamAssassin - SpamAssassin is generally regarded as one of the most effective spam filters. If you would like to know more about it, this is the SpamAssassin web site URL. Remember - you don’t have to worry about installing it, just what it can do and how it works! The FAQ page is extensive and highly informative.
Other facilities
Full email account administration - of course
ˇ Add accounts
ˇ Set Aliases
ˇ Set "out of office" messages
ˇ Fetch mail from your other mail service providers
In fact, all the usual mail account necessities, plus a whole lot of customization facilities to play with!
Web Extras
ˇ Address book
ˇ Calendar
ˇ Notes
All available "any time, any place" of course
Did you know we offered e-Mail services for your own domain name? All part of our overall web site, and web application hosting services. If you don’t have spam filtering provided by your e-mail service provider, and this is important to you, talk to us!
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Crystal Reports Licencing
Many of our readers use Crystal Reports, and we are aware that the licensing provisions can be confusing. We recently came across this in a newsletter from Ken Hamady which makes one aspect clear in principle, if somewhat contradictory to implement. The respondent is a Business Objects employee
A user has one named user license but installs it on 2 PC’s in his office. If he is the only person that uses the software on both PC’s has he violated the license? It is after all a Named User license not a PC license.
[Answer. No. He has not violated the named user license.]
If you have a "5 user licence" this doesn’t mean 5 simultaneous, concurrent users, it means 5 specific individuals and no sharing. In fact this isn’t mechanically enforced (you don’t enter a name to validate the license), and is not apparently tracked by Business Objects.
So, while a single user, with a single license, can legitimately install Crystal Reports on several different PCs he/she must be ONLY person who uses Crystal Reports on those PCs. That means that if 2 people share one PC and both use Crystal reports to create reports, then they must own a license each. They can’t use them at the same time (which would be difficult, so that is OK) but the sting in the tail is that User B cannot in theory use their licence on that PC if the one allocated to user A is installed on it!
A further reply from Hamady clarified that there is no implication of corporate ownership - a Licence is licensed into the custody of one person, not a business.
For those looking for more of a shared usage concept, Business Objects provides server based Crystal Reporting - the Crystal Reports Server.
We have a whitepaper on Crystal Licensing. If you would like a copy (and it runs to 12 pages!) email us.
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Websites - getting your search engine ratings up
Especially as more of you are using our Electos Web Site and now Web shop hosting facilities, from time to time we get asked about web site ratings and how to improve them. Indeed, such thoughts have been occupying us with our own web sites in recent months.
To some extent, I wish I had come across this site before, so without implying any endorsement, if web site search engine optimisation is of any interest to you, you could do worse than take a look at http://www.shcl.co.uk/library.asp. There are a lot of myths surrounding this subject, and this collection or articles blows most of them out of the water!
Electos users - expect some new provisions for creating the necessary page titles and keywords in Electos V3.1 soon to go into a Beta release.
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Thinking of a new website, need to revise yoir existing one, or need web shop facilities - Talk to us! 0845 270 7747
Asckey Data Services Ltd’s ISO certification was renewed this month. In fact, we passed with flying colours, with no reservations and a "best practice ever seen" in respect of our internal staff skills assessement and training. Perhaps next month we will go over what working to ISO standards has meant to us in the two years we have been running it.
Church End Farm
Warboys Road, Pidley,
Cambs PE28 3DA
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