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README.NEW
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1991-01-25
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DATACAL PLUS - NEW FEATURES - VERSION 3.0
--------------------------------------------------
**********************************************************************
* Redesign Of Database Pull Down Menu
The Database Menu has been shortened to help simplify the appearance
of this pull down. All of the previous features are still available
but you must select option # 6 (Database Sub-Menu) to access them.
**********************************************************************
* Width Of Company & Street Fields :
The width of the Company & Street fields have been increased from
30 characters wide to 35. Only first thirty characters are
displayed on the screen but if you continue typing past that limit
the field will scroll to the left to accomdate the extra five
characters. A flashing Plus "+" sign will appear just to the right
of the field letting you know that there is information that you
can not see. This will also occur in the State field.
If you have need to view the hidden characters, press EDIT, go to
the field and use your right arrow to pan over.
Because the Company field is an important one that helps create
the link between various files, changes were also made to the
following Databases.
Customer.dbf, Invoice.dbf, Payment.dbf, Comments.dbf
This requires that this version of Datacal be used ONLY with the
proper file structures. If you have a succesful conversion, this
will be done for you.
**********************************************************************
* Telephone Extension Field Added
A telephone extension field has been added to the Customer database
file. It is a four character (9999) wide field that can accept
both numbers and letters.
The extension does not effect telephone dialing in any way. It has
been added as a convenience to our users. If you have need for
extension longer than four characters, use one of your many user
definable fields.
**********************************************************************
* Adding New Customer
You can now ADD a new customer while you are in the EDIT Customer Mode.
This means you no longer have to leave EDIT to enter a new client. A
side benifit to this is that you can also CARRY OVER information from
a previous customer onto the newly created record.
For Example: You have multiple Contacts at XYZ Company and you want
to ADD a new one for the same company. First FIND XYZ
Company and have it displayed on your screen. Select
the ADD option at bottom of screen.
The program will ask if you want to CARRY OVER Displayed
information. If you say (Y)ES, the Company Name, Address
Phone & Code will be copied to the new record. The First
and Lastname is left intentionally blank since Datacal will
not allow a duplicate record to exist. A duplicate record
is one in which the Company Name plus Last Name exactly
matches another record in your file.
Another benifit to ADDing customers from the EDIT screen is that sometimes
you may want to check if they already exist in your files. You first try to
find them and if they are not found, just press 'A' and ADD the new record.
**********************************************************************
* Escape Key Throughout
For the most part, your ESCape key will emulate the 'X' key when
sitting at any of the command line prompts.
Many programs use ESCape to BACK OUT OF parts of the program to a
higher level and has been added here for compatiblity sake.
**********************************************************************
* Yes/No vs. True/False
All Yes/No questions expect to have a 'Y' or an 'N' typed in for
their response. Previous versions would say (T/F) for True/False.
Even though our users have quickly adapted to the T/F senario, we
felt it time to make this change for the peace of mind of ever
growing number of users.
**********************************************************************
* Criteria Selection
Criteria Selection or Filtering has been completely revamped. It
marks what may be the most significant change to version 3.0 .
Whenever you request to print a report or send a form letter etc. to
a group of people you'll be presented will the new Criteria
Selection procedure.
Datacal field names will appear in a scrollable window. You'll
scroll to the desired field and press Enter. Next a window will
appear to allow you to select how you want this field to be matched
up with info you will type later (ie. Equal To , Greater Than etc.).
Once you select let's say 'Equal To' you'll be able to enter what
you want the search to be equal to ( ie. Los Angeles). If you
want to add new conditions to the same search you can choose 'AND'
or 'OR' and repeat the cycle when that window appears.
It will make a lot more sense when you actually try it on your own.
A big plus in this version is that you may now store a particular
search filter for later use. You'll love doing this. Previous
versions required a criteria selection sequence each time you wanted
a report, now you can print the report by selecting a saved filter
that you made weeks ago. Try it, you'll see what we mean. Just make
sure you read the screen carefully. Up to 99 filters may be saved.
**********************************************************************
* Locate
You can now (L)ocate a customer while at the Customer Input Screen
by almost any imaginable criteria. Previously you could only find
a client by one of seven different ways:
Company, Code, Lastname, ID Number, Zipcode, Follow-Up Date, Salesman
The above fields used an Index to Find the records by jumping right
to it quickly. Locate is simular but not quite as fast. The
advantage of it is that you can use ANY field to create your search,
even a phone number.
It uses the same criteria selection method as mentioned above. It
took a lot of work to give you this, PLEASE use it!
Locate can be selected by typing 'L' while at the command line in
the Customer Input Screen.
**********************************************************************
* During Criteria selection if you select a date field as part of your
filter AND the date specified is Today's Date, Datacal will pop
up a window asking if you would like to use the New Date Feature.
The new Date Feature will allow you to save a FLOATING Current Day's
Date as part of your criteria.
For Example: Let's say you often print letters or reports for
people whose Follow-Up Date is equal to Today.
Normally you would have been forced to go through
the entire criteria selection each time because
your saved criteria would have a HARD CODED & FIXED
DATE in it (ie. 12/14/90) .
By using the new feature everything about your filter
would remain the same except it will now be smart
enough to know to use TODAY's current date, whatever
that date happens to be. It will read your computer's
clock and use that date as part of the filter.
To Use New Date Feature: Proceed with your criteria selection as
normal. Enter in Today's Date for a Date
field selection. Datacal will sense that
this particular filter may be a candidate
for the Floating Date Feature and will POP
UP a Box to allow you to choose what you
want to do.
Any dates entered other than today's date
will have no effect on the proceedings.
NOTE: Make sure you save the filter for
future use or you would have lost the whole
point of it.
**********************************************************************
* Phone Dialer & Automatic Comments:
Previous versions of Datacal would always update your Comments
database with the message "Call Made Using Dialer" as well as the
date of the call. For some people this proved to be a great
feature. It saved extra keystrokes by the user.
However some people use the phone system in Datacal so much or use
comments in a particular way that this automatic updating was an
undesired annoyance.
Version 3.0 provides a way to eliminate the unwanted comment
entries. When you run DATACAL SETUP you'll be asked if you would
like to have your comments updated with phone calls. Answer NO if
you do not and YES if you do.
**********************************************************************
* Accessing Comments When Phone Call is Made
If you use Function Key <F-2> to call a customer a popup screen will
appear to let you update the LAST CALL field. You may now also
press the letter 'C' to do the update and immediately bring up your
comments. When you return from Comments, you may then update the
Follow-Up date in the normal fashion by using the arrow keys.
Some of our users felt this method would be in tune with they way
they actually do business. 1 - Make the call, 2 - Enter a Comment
3 - Enter a Follow-Up date after the conversation is over.
**********************************************************************
* Single window in MailMerge & numbers for choice instead of scroll
By popular demand we have returned to selecting one of the forty
Mail-Merge letters by choosing the number of the letter. In reality
this method does make more sense and is quicker than scrolling
through the list and hitting return.
It also makes it easier to select a particular letter using the
built in macro feature in Datacal.
The duplicate view of letters in two windows was found to be
unnessary an has been removed.
**********************************************************************
* Printing MailMerge to Single Person & several Name Matches are Found
If you wanted to print a Form Letter to Ben Jackson and you had
several Jacksons in your database, Datacal would find the first
Jackson and print the letter.
Now Datacal will pop-up a box with all of the Jacksons in a
scrollable window. You can then scroll down to the appropriate
individual, hit return and have the letter printed.
We were surprised that none of our users called to let us no this
could be a potential problem. This new change was made due to our
own in house use. We think you'll really appreciate it.
This new feature will work for both finding Company names & Last
names.
**********************************************************************
* Creating Form Letters is Performed in A Word Processsing Window
The creation of Form Letters (Mail Merge) is now performed in a more
Word Processing type of window. This means that your text will wrap
when you reach the end of the line and you may scroll through your
text much more easily.
You can create up to 3 pages for a form letter. This section is very
similar to the way the notepad has always worked.
**********************************************************************
* Run Your Own Word Processor
You may now access your own word processor from within Datacal Plus.
A sixth choice has been added to the NOTEPAD pull down menu called:
'Run Your Own Word Processor'.
To accomplish this, you or your consultant will have to create a
batch file in the Datacal directory that contains the DOS commands
to run your text editor.
A sample of such a batch file is listed below.
WP.BAT -> d: //log on to drive D
cd\wp //change to Word Perfect directory
wp //start the program
Only the commands under the d: above are actually placed in the
batch file. Use your editor to create this file.
Datacal will check to see if a file called WORDPROC.MEM is located
on the disk. If it is NOT found (the way it will be the first time you
select this option), it will ask you for the name of the batch file that
loads your word processor. Simply type it in.
The next time you select this option it will attempt to follow the
commands located in the batch and run your program. When you are done using
the editor you will be returned to Datacal Plus.
Computers with lots of Expanded Memory will find this whole process
is quite fast. Others will have to wait for a few moments while Datacal's
memory image is store to disk.
**********************************************************************
* Run Outside Program
Similar to the statements above, you can run almost any Outside program
from within Datacal. Function Key F-6 has been designed to read a Batch
File perform those actions.
To accomplish this, you or your consultant will have to create a
batch file in the Datacal directory that contains the DOS commands
to run your program.
A sample of such a batch file is listed below.
123.BAT -> C: //log on to drive C
cd\123 //change to 123 directory
123 //start the program
**********************************************************************
* Deleting Customer & Invoice Records
When you delete Customers from the Client Input Screen those records
still exist but you can not see them. They also continue to take
up space on your hard drive.
To Permanently remove them from your file and free up disk space you
must select the option "DELETE UNWANTED RECORDS" from the Database
Pull Down Menu. You'll be given a list of the records marked for
deletion and one last chance to recover particular records if you select
to do so. This feature was always available in prior releases of Datacal.
A new feature for this version is the ability to Mass Delete a Group of
Invoices using criteria selection. For example, if your company creates
a lot of invoices and you fear disk space may become a problem, you could
delete all Invoices that have a Date Less Than Jan 1,1991 (ie. < 01/01/91 ).
If you select to do this you must remember that these invoices will be
permanently removed from your file. Associated Payments will also be
deleted. We suggest some clear thinking before you do this. There is
no recourse.
If you do mass delete a group of invoices from the CURRENT YEAR, we
caution you to NOT use the recalculate procedure in the Sales Graph. You
will wind up with a graph that is not accurate because the records that
it depends on have been deleted.
**********************************************************************
* Balance Due On Invoices
When you print an Invoice on Plain or Letterhead Paper the invoice
now displays two new items.
Underneath the Grandtotal amount you'll notice a line that prints the
Amount Paid (including all payments) received on this invoice as well as
the Balance Due Amount on the succeeding line.
This was done to accomodate our users who are using Datacal as a Point of
Sale system. Previously you would have to send your customer a statement
to show any record of payments made. This feature simply makes the invoice
more complete. Statements are still better for the OVERALL picture while
this enhancement is nice for the singular one.
**********************************************************************
* ID Number Field Can Now Contain Letters and Numbers
The ID # field is a User Definable Field and may have been renamed
to something else like Membership #, Badge # etc. In any event this
field was able to contain only numbers. You may now use any combination
of characters you wish.
This feature makes it much more flexible in the real world. Remember this
is an Index Field (For Quick Finds). Try to use it for fairly important
information because of it's added power (indexing). Use other User
Definable Fields for less important information that you may not need to
quickly find.
**********************************************************************
* Pop-Up Calendar
Previously you could only access the Calendar by going into that section
from the Main Menu. Now you may enter appointments and notes on the 'FLY'.
When you press ALT-F9 a browsing window of your notes will appear. You can
ADD, EDIT or FIND notes from this window. This features is available
throughout most of the program. We feel that this enhancement will increase
your usage of the the Calendar Section.
##########################################################################
# Bug Fixes
# Previous versions contained a bug in the invoice section that would
only appear if an exact series of functions were entered. The vast
majority of our users would never even incur this anamoly.
The function sequence was:
1. While in the invoice section, find an invoice not belonging
to the company displayed on the top of your screen.
2. When the new company appears and the found invoice is
displayed, ADD a new invoice.
3. Datacal would incorrectly maintain the Company, Address &
Name information from the customer record you were sitting
on in step # 1 even though it displayed the correct info
on the screen. This newly created invoice however would be
updated with the wrong data. This occurs behind the scenes.
If you printed the invoice you would notice that the wrong
company appeared on the invoice. Because of this, erroneous
sales amounts could be attached to the incorrect account.
This oversight has been corrected.
# A bug existed in the printing of Mailing Labels which caused the printing
to become somewhat misaligned. This occured only when your files used
the Street 2 field in the Customer file. This problem was not consistant
and hard to find, but has now been fixed.
The same thing applies to ADDRESS PRINTING using ALT-A in the Customer
Input screen.
# Although not technically a bug, a true inconvenience was found when
editing a Note Pad Memo. If you pressed the ESCape key, you would lose
any changes that you most recently made. The memo would revert back to
it's original state. Now the ESCape key is turned off when editing a
Memo or Mail Merge Letter.