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Advantos Newsletter
- September 2006 Volume III |
| Welcome |
Welcome to volume
three of the Advantos Systems, Inc. newsletter. This newsletter
is designed to provide information to all current and potential
Advantos System clients. In addition, we want to provide access
to other interesting information. So, check out our links
area.
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| News
and Events |
Advantos Systems,
Inc is upgrading their Hometastic ® web application software.
The upgrade will use the new Microsoft .NET v2.0 version and
improve connectivity to enhance scalability. This upgrade
will improve all aspects of our award winning web software.
The improved responsiveness and stability of this upgrade
will be enjoyed by all users.
Next, the Advantos Enterprise ® application is presently
being upgraded to a web-based application. The user interface
is designed for all users to use a web browser. Naturally,
this allows our ASP clients to access their application without
any additional software on their client machines.
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| Member
Spotlight |
ARA
Property Management is located in Chicago, IL. ARA Property
Management is focused on serving the needs of condominium
associations in the city of Chicago by providing a higher
level of service than is currently available in the marketplace.
ARAPM is using a blend of technology and hands-on customer
service to deliver the most effective and responsive property
management service in the area.
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| General
Notes |
Advantos Enterprise has a lot of help as
part of the application. Help comes in three different ways.
- field level help,
- process or menu help, and
- administrator help
Technical support updates help continuously; so visit the
Administrator help web site available to all of our clients.
Backups are an integral part of every companies data processing.
If you have Advantos installed on your company's server,
Advantos backups are normally configured to run every evening
from Monday through Saturday. Make sure this service is running
and your backups are being done. In addition to Advantos backups, your
server needs to be backed up. Since the Advantos backups are backing
up to a file on your network, clients need to
have a backup strategy in place for their entire computing resources.
Please check with your IT systems administrator for details.
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| Tech
Corner |
How do I define how printing
works from Advantos?
Printing is simply the flow of ASCII data to a printer. This
data flow has absolutely no formatting! It is a flow of one
character at a time from point A (usually a client workstation)
to point B (the printer); this flow looks like a string of
characters. What makes a printed page formatted is the flow
of data, sent to the printer, contains specific characters
in a predefined sequence (defined as the printer language) that communicate
with the printer itself, and define how the printer formats
the rest of the data flow into a printed report. This printer
language is usually either PCL or PostScript. PCL is used
by Advantos; to be more precise, Advantos uses PCL5 (or
later).
Since Advantos runs within the DBMS' application server,
all Advantos printing originates from within the DBMS. The
DBMS manages all interfacing with the print services on the
network; Advantos does not. As a consequence
of this there are two methods of printing Advantos reports:
- printing to a [S]ystem printer defined locally on the
DBMS server or
- printing to a printer defined on the client workstation
doing the printing.
When a printer is defined locally on the DBMS server it can
then be used by the DBMS that Advantos runs within. In order
to do this the printer must be defined by
the DBMS (when the service starts). It is advisable to use
network printers, instead of printers attached to workstations,
because once a workstation, where a defined printer is attached
to, is powered off the DBMS must be rebooted
in order to reinitialize the printer.
The user has a choice in Advantos where to send the print
job. This selection must be made before the report is run
(use the "Output Routing Manager"). If the user
selects the [R]emote printer then this is the one accessible
from their Windows workstation through the terminal emulator
(AccuTerm or wIntegrate). If you have any problems printing
to your default printer, or another Windows accessible printer,
it is a Windows problem and you should see your Windows system
manager.
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| Useful
Tips |
It often occurs when a user
needs to find someone by name but they don't know the client.
This can be accomplished by going to T/R option# 1 and prefixing
the portion of the name with a back-slash (\). For instance,
suppose someone comes into your office and they're not sure
what association they're delivering a payment to. But the
owner is on the check (let's say their name is "SMITH").
At the client# field in T/R option# 1 simply enter "\SMI".
Every "Smith" in the address book will be accessible,
regardless of the client they belong to.
When the client# and name is displayed you get the usual "Action:
[N]ext, [P]revious, [F]irst, [L]ast, [A]ccept ?" prompt.
At this point you can enter "?ROG" to access any
T/R owner/resident in your address book whose company name
or last name begins with "ROG...". This is a very
useful tool to track down residents or owners.
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| Client's
Corner |
Deborah Haskett of Hometown
Property Management in Lacey, WA tells us she often has
to look up units by address. To do this, she displays a report
then uses the built-in search capability of the report API
to locate the address. For instance, Deborah generates the
T/R option# 4.2.2.1 "Name and Address" report to
the screen then enters "/" to access the search
function then enters "6405 Lake" to find the address
beginning with "6405 Lake...", which in this case
happens to find "6405 Lakeway Road SE".
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| Interesting
Links |
One of our favorite links is
to the astronomy
picture of the day web site. If you click on the "Discover
the cosmos!" link you have access to their archives.
One of the great aspects of this site is you can end up at
all kinds of sites that provide background information for
the content you're reading. Another great sight is how
stuff works. There is all kinds of useful information
located here.
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