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Release 2010_09 14/06/2010
STANDARD LETTERS
1. The wording on the SL selection screen has been revised.
Help Note 1100 has been re-written. The revised help note explains that standard letters are, in reality, reports on a single contact, but in the guise of a Word document. In effect this means that you can design your own reports on any contact; that can include standard forms designed to be filled in where coecontact is not available.
2. The _Addressee field is now updated before a standard letter is created. The effect is to capture any change of name or address that had not been saved after editing.
3. The pop-up form, from which you choose which standard letter template to use, now closes itself automatically.
SECURITY
Some new anti-hacking devices have been added, to increase data security.
REPORTS
The short cuts for opening reports on the main switchboard have been revised. As all letters of the alphabet have been used, Alt # is used to open 'Contacts for whom no publication medium has been set'.
A new screen and report Cash Rebate Return provide the data in a format preferred by HMRC. A bug in the new report was fixed on 14/06/2010.
CONTACT METHOD
A bug in Contact Method Maintenance prevented new contact methods being added; it has now been fixed.
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Release 2010_08 15/04/2010
FIND ACTIVE CONTACTS BY CATEGORY …
FIND ACTIVE CONTACTS BY CATEGORY … MAILOUTS
In both of these screens you may now select contacts by gender (or ignore gender).
Use selection by gender to -
1. Find the contacts for which gender is still set to 'not stated'.
2. Include gender when selection by multiple category, sub-category with or without postcode or age.
3. Use the list of contacts selected for reports such as 'Time spent by Activity Type' or 'Count of Events by Activity Type'.
LOCK/UNLOCK ORGANISATION & CONTACT INPUT
There is a new aid for users prone to accidentally amend contact records when moving from one record to another or when tabbing through the fields. In the My Preferences screen, a user can set a new preference 'Make data input lock active or inactive' to active.
+ A new toggle button LOCKED will appear on the first page of Contacts and their Events also on Organisations and their Contacts.
+ To edit (amend) a record, the user either clicks the toggle or keys Alt U (for Unlock). This unlocks the input fields and enables other buttons that alter data. The toggle button's caption changes to UNLOCKED. Click the toggle again or key Alt L (for Lock) to restore the lock. A visually impaired user will probably find Alt U and Alt L easier, because those key commands give the same result regardless of the state of the toggle button.
+ Moving to a different record automatically locks the inputs.
+ In the LOCKED state the 'Create a New Contact' and the 'Create a New Organisation' buttons are disabled.
+ A newly created Contact or Organisation record is automatically unlocked as there's no point in creating a new record if there's nothing to input.
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010
Changes have been made towards compatibility with Office 2010.
In Mail-out + Auto Events, 'Make events automatically, to record the time spent for or by the contacts listed', a harmless bug has been fixed.
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Release 2010_07 14/03/2010
STANDARD LETTERS
KIT MAINTENANCE
Input verification has been strengthened so that the Supplier's Kit Code and the Own Kit Code automatically default to the Kit ID if no value is input by the operator. The Kit ID is a suitable temporary value as it is necessarily unique.
The help note has been amended accordingly.
KIT MOVE TYPE
Where a contact is a supplier of kit the kit move types now appear, even though they are only selectable on the supply side, via Kit General Functions.
Double-click to edit text, or drag to move.
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Release 2010_06 27/02/2010
STOCK CONTROL (Kit System)
A user with the general permission to delete records may now delete both cash and kit records.
(A) When a cash record (debit or credit) is deleted the contact's cash balance is adjusted.
(B) When a kit movement record is deleted:
+ the quantity of stock-on-order and the quantity-in-stock are adjusted as necessary;
+ the contact's cash balance is adjusted.
Kit notes are word documents detailing a loan, sale or other kit movement and are created automatically from a Word template tailored to the kind of kit movement in question.
+ Existing kit notes are now opened automatically when the 'Print Note' button is clicked.
They are opened 'Read-Only' unless the current user is the author and the record was created on the same day. This is done to allow correction of errors, but also to preserve the integrity of the kit note record subsequently.
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Release 2010_05 09/02/2010
CONTACT EVENTS - OPENING ANY FILE TYPE
We have strengthened contact events so that you should now be able save and re-open any file type known to Windows.
For example, if you want to email a report from a database such as coecontact:
1: Create a new event for the contact in question and choose xps as the event record type. Suppose that the Event ID is 1234.
2: Proceed as though to print the report, but instead of selecting an actual printer, select 'Microsoft XPS Document Writer'.
3: Save the document as 1234.xps in your common file location (called CoeDoc or something like that).
4: Close 1234.xps
5: To re-open the document, click the Event ID button marked 1234. 1234.xps should appear.
CASE STAGE MAINTENANCE
The process has been simplified and more helpful input verification messages provided. The help note has been updated to reflect the changes.
KIT ISSUE
When you choose an item of kit to issue (lend, prescribe or sell) the kit codes and kit names are sorted in alphabetical order.
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Release 2010_05 05/02/2010
Standard Letters
The data recorded when a standard letter is produced has been amended. The effect is to enable a new range of reports on the usage of each standard letter. See Standard Letter Maintenance.
Contact Input
Amendments ensure that when a contact's data are edited, the changes are immediately reflected in standard letters and all other derived outputs.
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Release 2010_03 28/01/2010
KIT MOVEMENT TYPE MAINTENANCE
A new screen, accessible via Kit General Functions, allows you to edit the abbreviations, names and various other fields to do with kit movements. Kit movements are dated transactions such as buy, lend, prescribe or sell things kept in stock. There is also a help note (1082) on the new screen, which explains kit movements in some detail.
Choosing a name for Client/Customer Case/matter Agent/Representative has now been combined in a single pop-up screen, accessible from the Standing Data Maintenance page.
The mouse-free key strokes on the Reports page have been revised so that all buttons may be used with an Alt x key combination. For example, Alt A opens 'Time spent totalled by Month'.
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Release 2010_02 20/01/2010
All the buttons on the Report page of the main switchboard have been give a letter A … U to permit Alt x instead of click to facilitate operators that are not using a mouse.
The Case Stage Reached button and screen have been renamed to make it clear that it refers to open cases only. The corresponding printed report has also been cleaned up.
A bug in Standard Letter Maintenance has been fixed; it arose when the button Create a new Standard Letter was used.
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Release 2010_01 19/01/2010
Two new user preferences give the choice of having:
+ Cases in ascending or descending order of Case created date in Contacts and their Events; and
+ Case stages in ascending or descending order of case stage order number.
The pre-set or default value is ascending, that is the lowest is at the top of the screen so that new cases or stages are added below. Many people find that's the most natural, but there are advantages in having the latest at the top (descending order) as occurs in contact events.
We have put clearer guidance on the use of keyboard shortcuts for the Client/Customer Case/Matter screen. Such shortcuts allow the operator to key Alt x (where x is a letter of choice), instead of clicking a button or tab control with a mouse. For example on most screens Alt x may be used instead of clicking the Exit button. Client/Customer Case/Matter and Agent/Representative are special in that licensee may choose a name for these entities.
A bug that gave an error when a new contact was created from within Organisations and their Contacts has been fixed. This bug had been created by the new facility of making the choice of event activity type optionally dependent of a contact's categories.
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Release 2010_00 11/01/2010
New in coecontact 20 10
BUSINESS PROCCES / CONTACT CASES
The system makes it easy to manage a repeated standard process such as client assessment, client take-on, staff recruitment, or volunteer induction. We have completely re-designed the system so that for each type of process, you may define any number of stages and:
+ the stages can act as a checklist of what needs to be done;
+ you can monitor progress across each type of process;
+ 'audit' stages may be used for quality control or to record outcomes such as 'satisfactory';
+ events related to a process can be viewed separately from the contact's other events.
STANDARD LETTERS
The standard letters system has been completely re-designed so that the customer may create any number of Word templates, each of which is the basis of a standard letter. A master template, containing all the variable fields is supplied, together with three demonstration templates. More than forty variable fields include the ever-useful _addressee and _who fields found in coecontact Word Merge (see below).
STOCK CONTROL
The Kit system now allows:
+ Pricing and valuation of stock
+ Stock ordering
+ Alerts for stock that has fallen below a pre-set re-order level.
+ Better stock control.
+ A new ledger combines all debits and credits arising from both cash and kit transactions.
+ Where the contact has no kit transaction, the revised Cash Ledger is much easier to read.
+ Where kit is lent or sold to a client or prescribed free of charge or at a subsidised price, new user amendable Word templates are provided. The resulting Word documents include variable fields for the contact's name and address, description of the item etc. in the manner of a Word merge document. These documents may incorporate the licensee's logo, letterhead layout or any other element.
---------- OTHER DEVELOPMENTS ----------
CREATING NEW CONTACTS ACCIDENTALLY
Customers have reported that their users sometimes create a new contact unintentionally. Now if a new contact record is abandoned, the following is put into the surname field:
… created by ABC, where ABC are the user's initials. As '…' comes before the beginning of the alphabet, such unwanted records are easily found and deleted.
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
The system now warns you if you begin to delete a contact's event where it has a dependent file, such as a Word or pdf document.
EMAIL ATTACHMENTS
Emails may have multiple attachments, whether they are sent as
+ contact events, or
+ with a 'publication' that is in fact and email to many recipients.
EVENT ACTIVITY TYPES
+ The maximum number permitted has been increased from 18 to 28.
+ Activity Types may now be grouped to permit reporting in aggregate.
+ Any activity type may be assigned to a category and/or a category/sub-category pair so that it is only selectable as an activity for a contact that belongs to the category or category/sub-category in question.
ORGANISATIONS - DEPENDENT CONTACTS LAST EVENT
The organisations and their contacts screen may list many dependent contacts. Now the date of the last event, if any, for each contact is shown. You can sort the list by Contact ID, Contact Name or Last Event. This shows which of the contacts were most recently active.
USER PERMISSIONS AND PREFERENCES
The system now has stronger security and allows us to add new permissions or preferences easily. Each user's individual preferences come up whether logging on to a local area network or over the web. We are open to suggestions for new user preferences.
WORD MERGE
A new derived field (_who) in tblWordMerge, which is in CoeWordMerge.mdb, gives the most informal style for opening a letter. The following is the order of priority:
Dear Bob (where Known As is given)
Dear Robert (where Forename is given)
Dear Mr Smith (or Miss, Ms, Mrs or Dr or whatever is given)
Dear Sir (if the gender is set to male, for female: Dear Madam)
Dear Sir or Madam (if no gender is set).
If, for example, the contact has a knighthood, then you could put 'Sir Robert' in the Known As field or whatever is the correct style.