Printer Summary Option Improved

The "To Printer Summary" output option available in most report screens is really useful. It allows you to condense multi-page reports to just the relevant subtotals and totals. It eliminates all the detail lines and just shows the meat of a report. But in prior versions there was no way to preview a report in summary mode and no way to direct such a report to anything but the default printer. The most recent updates fix these shortcomings. Now when you select "To Printer Summary" and right-click on the Printer button you will see a preview of the summary version of the report instead of the full report. I have also changed the code so that when you left click on the Printer button with "To Printer Summary" chosen, you always get the printer prompt dialog so that you can direct the report to any printer. These two changes should make this option a lot more user friendly.

Staff Web Site Changes

I have a test version of a new web site up for the Staff web site at www.zpdemo.zpuser.com. I have changed the way the site keeps track of logged in users. The main problem I am trying to solve is having the ability to keep users logged into for long stretches of time. This new approach should keep you logged in as long as you do not close your browser. This should work better for inspectors in the field who want to stay logged in as they drive around. One of the side benefits of this new approach is that now we can show who is logged in at any given time. A new button called "Track Users" off the Main page shows a list of recent users. This change affected just about every page so I am testing it out on my demo site before moving it out to customers. Please let me know if you encounter any problems when using the site.

Special Script Allows for Time Box Customization

In several of the screens that track inspection you can launch a Time Clock box that lets you fill in the Inspection Time field by selecting a pre-defined value from a list. Recently a customer asked if there was a way to customize the time options offered in the Time Box list. Now you can by using a special script file. You can read more about this in our User Scripts Blog. You can also download the starter script (along with scripts to customize the Application Buttons on the Property Screen) by getting the Time_Clock_Script file and copying the script to your main installation folder. You can then edit the Time Clock list in the User Defined Scripts Screen.

Last Known Inspection in Combo Reports

An extra field has been added to those pulled by the Building Combination Reports screen. The field, MAXDATE, pulls the last known inspection date for each permit. This is useful information to compare with the Expire Date field to see if a building project is truly in progress. The MAXDATE is determined by looking at all of the Last Inspect fields for each given permit and selecting the most recent one. If no inspections are recorded for a permit the field will be NULL.

Notes Field Fix

I recently discovered an odd glitch. A problem in the communication between the Windows client and the SQL Database caused memo fields to be truncated to 8000 characters. Memo fields are the fields in ZonePro that do not have length restrictions such as the many Notes fields. It is very rare that anyone typed in more than 8000 characters which is why it took such a long time to discover that the problem even existed. I found a way around the communication glitch and now all updates of memo fields are once again unlimited. For now this only applies to updates or edits, not to inserts or adds. That means when you add a new record you should not immediately type more than 8000 characters into a Notes field. Instead, Save it first and then Edit the record to add your copious notes!

Adding and Subtracting from Date Field

ZP SQL handles dates differently than ZP 32. In ZP SQL all dates are stored in a long DATETIME format that includes both date information and time information. In ZP 32 all dates were stored a simple DATE format. If you want to perform calculations with dates in your ZP SQL reports or documents, you sometimes will need to convert the long DATETIME format to a simpler DATE format first. This is done with the function TTOD( ) - which stands for "Timestamp to Date." So if I want to add 30 days to the Violation Date my report expression would be: TTOD(vio_date) + 30.

Document Editor Text Block Video

I just created a short video that talks just about the process of creating and editing Text objects using the Document Editor. The Document Editor is one of the trickier tools to use in ZonePro so I figure every little tip helps.

Staff Web Page Noodling

I messed around with the various Building pages in the Staff Web site trying to get things more interlinked so that it would be even easier to use for inspectors in the field. So now a list of Pending Inspections shows every time you go to a Property record and then to its corresponding Building Results page. I also added a mapping option directly on the Inspections page so that you can get that info even if you bypass the Property page. I made a few other minor changes all with the intent of making it easier to navigate around and get to important information a variety of ways.

Fee Details in Fee Collection Report

Several of my Building Module customers told me that they submit a daily account report to their county showing all the fees collected. In coaching them through the process I always had to advise running two reports: one from the Fee Collection Report Screen for all the non-building fees, and one from the Building Fee Detail Report Screen for the building fees. This always appears confusing at first because the Fee Collection Report Screen does have the building databases listed on it. The problem is that it pulled only the fee total for each permit, not the individual fee details that make up the total. And when you want to break down the report by Account numbers, it is the individual fee details that matter for the building records. I have just posted an update to the Fee Collection Report Screen that solves this problem. There is a new check-box on that screen that allows you to pull Building Fee Details instead of totals for any given report. This means that you can produce one report that will sort by Account number all of the fees collected during the day (or any period). The download is available now through the Installed Modules Screen.

Security Training Video

I was reviewing the list of Training Videos on our web site and realized that some basic feature were not covered...such as the Security Module. So I have remedied at least that one. It is now posted for viewing. I also did some rearranging of that web page to hopefully make it easier to find videos of interest.

Expanded Name Fields

Throughout ZonePro we have expanded all Last Name and Applicant Name fields from 30 characters to 50 characters.  With a First Name field of 20 characters and a Last Name field of 50 this should allow customers to accommodate all but the most ridiculously long names without much compromise. The change to the databases was made for you but you will have to download the latest program updates to take advantage of the new name lengths. Because this change affects so many different aspects of the program I am not sure that I have found every case where support for the longer name fields needs to be added. If you come across a part of the program that does not seem to handle the longer name fields correctly please let us know!

Web Site Gets Better Violation Letter Option

A while back I added an option to generate a Violation letter via the Staff web site. But it did not offer any flexibility. The user had little control over the format and content of the letter. I think I have improved the process greatly. You can demo the new letter option from any Violation record screen in the Staff web site. Clicking on the "Violation Letter" button takes you to a screen that lets you construct a letter several ways. You can click on the "Generate Full Letter" button to generate the complete letter is one move. A major improvement though is that the letter is now presented to you inside of a editor -- a simple word processor that lets you change anything about the letter before you print it. Another improvement is that instead of generating a complete letter you can build it in sections. There is a drop-down box that shows the sections currently available and a "Add Section" button to append each choice to the current letter. Each section is just a predefined piece of the letter such as the greeting or closing, etc. As of now we have enough sections to generate a complete "ordinance" version of the letter and "resolution" version of the letter. As we get feedback from users we can add more sections. A third button called "Add External Paragraph" adds even more flexibility. This button has an accompanying drop-down box that lists any text files stored with the web site. These text files can be appended to the letter just like the sections. This is an easy way to set up a library of custom text files for each customer to add to different letters. So now you have multiple ways to construct a letter and the ability to edit the letter directly throughout the process.

Web Site Supports Adding Zoning Permits

The Staff web site has long had an option for adding Violation records and Building Inspection records but now I have added an option to add new Zoning permits from the web site. You can demo this option from the Zoning Results page of your Staff web site. I'm not sure how useful this feature is in the web site since it has limited functionality compared to the Windows interface. The big problem I am having is figuring out how to handle fee formulas. The formulas and scripts that can do so much in the Windows interface are not compatible with the programming used for the web site. So I need an alternative way to handle formulas via the web site. If anyone has any ideas on that shoot us an e-mail!

Web Site Updates

We've made several updates to our web site offerings this week. 1) First I want to note that the demo of on-line permit application submission web site has been thoroughly revised. This site is still in beta testing but getting closer to use in production. 2) The Public web site was recently expanded to include permits in the Extra database. 3) A special print option was added to the Building Inspection page in the Staff web site.

Trouble Opening Or Editing Spreadsheets Created By Excel

I've had a couple of customers call recently saying they are having trouble opening or editing the spreadsheets that they generate from ZonePro. The culprit is some security changes that Microsoft made recently. You can resolve it easily enough by making some changes in your Excel settings or your registry to allow you to open and edit early Excel spreadsheet formats. Here is a link to a Microsoft page that explains how to handle this in Excel 2010, 2007 or 2003.