Staff Sites Deployed

Every ZP SQL customer now has the new version of the Staff site available for them from their web root page. Please try this new site out and let me hear your suggestions. In almost every case, the new Staff site is accessed from the same link used to get to the old Staff site. If you wish to have access to your older Staff site for some reason, it is still there and I can easily add a link. If you have your old Staff site linked from another page (such as your main community web site) you may want to consider switching to the newer version. I'd be happy to advise based on how you currently make use of the system.

New Staff Web Page

I've posted the demo site version of the new Staff web page (www.zpdemo.zpuser.com/staff/). This is a complete rewrite of the previous Staff page. My goal this year is to continue to develop this web page until it can rival the Windows interface in functionality. The idea being that eventually users will be able to do everything they need to do from a web page. The new site differs from the old Staff site in that it requires a user log in. It has a fancier floating sidebar and some other changes that are designed to make it work for mobile devices as well as larger screens. The next step is to roll out this version of the site for existing ZP SQL customers and then return to enhancing. I am very interested in getting customer feedback on this new site. I need to know what features I should work on adding first and where the current weaknesses are. Any suggestions you have to share would be appreciated!

New Local Copy Setting in Global Options

Recently I have a rash of support calls where the culprit of problems turned out to be the "Create Local Copy" button. The "Create Local Copy" option was designed to give users a way to save various Maintenance databases locally so that ZP would not need to make an Internet call to get that data. In theory this would be a time saver but in reality the feature causes more trouble than it is worth. Now there is a new Global Personalization Options on the Two Tab of that screen that says "Allow Local Copy Option in Maintenance Screens." Keeping that option checked means the button will work as it always has. Unchecking that option means the buttons will be disabled for all users. For most customers I would recommend going ahead and turning this feature off. If you have a Maintenance Screen where the "Local Copy" button reads "Delete" instead of "Create", I would go ahead and delete the local copy before disabling the feature system wide.

New Max Rows Setting In Personalization Options

Every report screen in ZP SQL has a Max Rows option that is set at 100 records by default. This means that no matter what report criteria you use, ZP will return no more than 100 records for that query. This is basically a safety feature to prevent users from accidentally requesting a huge data set over the Internet and bogging down their connection. You can manually change this value any time you run a report but some users wanted a way to avoid this limitation all together. So now there is a new setting in the SQL Tab of the Local Personalization Options screen that lets you keep the default setting at 100 or change it to 0 which effectively turns the limitation off. The new option "Set Max Rows to 100 in Report Screens" will be turned on unless you go into the Personalization screen and uncheck it. This new feature affects just about every module in ZP SQL so you will have to download a full complement of upgrades to implement it.

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.