Sorting Option for Building Maintenance Screens

The Building Inspection Maintenance Screen and the Building Fee Detail Maintenance Screen now both have a Sort button in them. This means you no longer have to worry about the order in which you enter these list items in the maintenance screens. You can rearrange the list at any time. The order that you choose is then carried forward when you start a new Building permit and the Inspection Details and Fee Details are populated for that record. There has always been a sort option in the permit Inspection Details and Fee Details screens and the new maintenance option uses the same Sort Screen to do it's thing.

Property Screen Efficiency

I wrote earlier in the summer about trying to squeeze more speed out of ZonePro. To that end I have published some updates that make numerous small coding changes. Most of the changes involve taking code out of the main ZonePro program and app files and putting that code in the SQL database instead. This means you can make more efficient SQL calls and the SQL database can be more efficient in producing results. In this pass I made changes to the way the Property Street search function operates, and the way the Application counts at the bottom of the screen are called. Typically the kind of speed increases for changes like this are measured in milliseconds rather than seconds, but every little bit helps.

Formula Messagebox Function Training Video

I had written about this function before in the Tutorials section but since I did the Inputbox() video it only seemed fair to do one for the Messagebox() function. The Messagebox() function is another way to prompt a user for input in the midst of calculating a permit formula. It is best used for Yes or No prompts. The training video shows how that works.

Formula Training Video on INPUTBOX() Function

I added a new training video to the web site this morning that shows how to use the INPUTBOX() function in a formula if you have a calculation that requires additional input from the user. I was helping a customer set up some fees and they had an oddball permit that required information they don't normally store in the database so I showed them how you could use a special function to prompt for that information inside the formula itself.

Big Help File Update

I just put a lot of effort into adding more information in the Help file for users who want to customize their documents. It is now much easier to find out field name information for adding new fields to documents. Most of the field description screens in the Help file now also include the internal field names so that you know what you need to type into the Report Expression dialog. All of the Document Screen help sections how include extra information about the specific databases that are open and available for inclusion in custom documents. Let me know if you see other areas where I need to flesh out the Help files.

Bulk Processing Owner Discrepancies in Compare

The Compare Module has a feature that reads in a new property data set and looks for discrepancies between the owner information listed in that file and the owner information already in your ZonePro system. I have long maintained that you should manually review these discrepancies to see if the new info is really better than the information you already have. My customers, however, have always preferred to save time by just accepting whatever changes there are. So I have added a button back into the ZP SQL Compare Module that lets users auto update any owner discrepancies found. The old Owner record is retained in these situations but its relationship is changed to "Ex-Owner." The new info is inserted with an "Owner" relationship.

Fire Inspection Count

Just added a new field to the Fire Inspection Screen to keep track of the number of inspections. The Inspection Count field fills a need if you wish to use the same record to keep track of re-inspections after the initial inspection has failed. This way you can reuse the Last Inspection and Next Inspection fields while still keeping track of the total number of inspections involved.