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.