Advantos Newsletter - September 2006 Volume III

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.