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News from the Kore
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Spring 2003 Issue
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Kore
celebrates a great first quarter!
What better way to celebrate
a great quarter than to take a long lunch! Kore celebrants left to
right are John Bosley, Paul Trebbien, Mark Dobransky, Ken Dickinson, Rob
Morrison, Frank Kertai, Paul Bressler, Eric Yarbrough, Andy Blanchard,
and Frank Busalacchi. Ever consciencious Chuck Verran and Bob Bottomley
were too busy working to attend!
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Tech
Tip: How to print the same data to both a printer and a hold file
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Paul Trebbien
pault@koretech.com
Senior Support Technician
Kore Technologies, LLC
I put together this quick little Tech Tip in response
to a question that came up in one of the DataFlo IT Special Interest Group
emails. I suggested the
following solution and was told it worked great for their purposes.
After checking the Universe manuals for syntax, I tested the following
program on our Universe DBMS. It worked, both printed my output and
send the second copy to a hold file. This will work in both the
UniData and Universe environments, you just need to change the SETPTR
arguments for your printers (the first argument is the Printer# which is
for your user session only).
0001:
** PT.TEST
0002: **
0003: * Let's assign my default printer first
0004: *
0005: EXECUTE 'SETPTR 0,,,,,1,AT {your
printer},BRIEF'
0006: *
0007: * Let's use a printer hold file second
0008: *
0009: EXECUTE 'SETPTR
1,,,,,3,NFMT,NHEAD,BRIEF,NOFORMFEED,BANNER PT'
0010: *
0011: FOR PTR.NO = 0 TO 1
0012: PRINTER ON
0013: PRINT ON
PTR.NO "Test Printer ":PTR.NO
0014: PRINTER OFF
0015: NEXT PTR.NO
0016: END
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Kore
at the Epicor User Group Forum: Viva Las Vegas
The Epicor User
Group Forum moved to the Harrah's Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The
event was a great success with attendance well over 200! There were
talks on a multitude of subjects, most of which were well-attended. We think
two of the talks presented there were particularly
enlightening: "What is six-sigma?" and "Making Customer
Service a Strategic Advantage". (Of course, we might be
prejudiced: both were our presentations!) We tried to pick topics that
were of general interest to any Epicor user, and
given the attendees and the responses during the sessions, it sounded like
we succeeded. Since we will be enhancing the six-sigma presentation
and reprising it at Epicor's
"Perspectives 2003" (see Upcoming Events,
below). Join us at the sessions there.
We also
significantly enhanced our web products for this event. We presented
our new version of webTeam for the first time, along with our new
webConfigurator. A number of customers expressed interest in finding out more about these
interesting products. If you would like to know more about
either one, give us a call at 858-678-0030 or email us at sales@koretech.com).
Of course, the
event was important, but we had enough time to find out two very important facts while we
were there. First, the international buffet at the Rio casino really
is something special! Second, the piano bar on the ground level of the
Harrah's Casino is a great way to spend a late evening. Next time you
are in Las Vegas, say at Perspectives, you might check
them out!
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Mid-West Metal Products Has Great Success Upgrading their Unix Machine
Muncie,
IN – May 1, 2003 – Mid-West Metal Products knows the value of
technology: they are the pet home supplier of choice for
technically-sophisticated companies in the pet supply industry.
When Mid-West Metal's HP UNIX computer no longer was doing the job
for them in November, 2002, they started looking for alternatives.
The first quote they received for an upgraded UNIX box sounded
pretty good until they approached Kore Technologies: Kore offered
them a better computer with a better warranty for substantially less
money. The deal was set. The computer was delivered to
Kore for initial set up, and then shipped to Mid-West Metal.
In
mid-February, Bob Bottomley, Kore Technologies, arrived on Friday
afternoon to bring the new box up. Bob and the team from
Mid-West Metal worked that afternoon and Saturday morning switching
everything: UPS, IP addresses, etc. Preliminary testing showed
only a few minor issues with 3rd party products that were quickly
resolved. By 1:00 pm Saturday everything was a go for Monday
cutover -- and Bob had been on site for less than 24 hours.
"We have had problems with all of our other hardware
upgrades," noted Pam Besser, IT Manager for Mid-West Metal.
"Bob was so prepared that it seemed like we were ready before
we had even started!"
By
10:00 am on Monday everything was going on the new machine, and the
Mid-West Metal team had already completed UNIX training. Pam
was so confident that she sent Bob home early!
“I was thrilled. Bob goes above and beyond. From
now on no one will do my hardware upgrades but Kore and HP."
-- Pam Besser, IT Manager at Mid-West Metal Products
The
old machine is still being put to good use: it is being updated
daily with current transactions so that it can be used for disaster
recovery. Should a disaster occur, Mid-West Metal will be able
to switch order processing and shipping to the old computer at its
off-site location the same day. Of course, sound technology
decisions are the norm for Mid-West Metal.
About
Mid-West Metal Products: Mid-West
Metal Products was founded in 1921. With over 300 employees,
family-owned Mid-West Metal Products Company, Inc. maintains an 80+
year tradition of quality and excellence in producing wire mesh,
wire forming, sheet metal fabrication and steel tubing products for
our customers worldwide. Mid-West manufactures wire homes for
dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, birds, and small animals (such as
guinea pigs, hamsters and chinchillas). Most of these high quality
products are manufactured with pride in the U.S.A.! Mid-West Metal
Products is located in Muncie, Indiana. The company is
comprised of three divisions: MidWest Homes for Pets, Displays on
Demand, and Mid-West Metal Products. Find out more at www.midwestmetal.com,
www.midwesthomes4pets.com,
and www.displaysondemand.com.
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Simplify
Six-Sigma Project Management?
Has your company taken on
"Six-Sigma" or other types of process/quality improvement projects?
Do project leaders find managing these projects to be more challenging
than it ought to be? Does keeping up with assignments, decisions,
and status take too much time?
In the last fifteen years
continuous improvement has gone from "the latest craze" to
standard operating procedure. "Six-Sigma". pioneered by
General Electric and broadly adopted now by the world's most progressive
companies, is now the state-of-the-art in process improvement
approaches. Six-Sigma combines the goal of zero defects with intense
customer focus and "boundaryless cooperation" (the idea that
everyone is in the job of enhancing the customer experience and should be
cooperating with every other part of the organization to ensure that
customers are well served).
One of the challenges many
companies face in accomplishing the objectives of Six Sigma or other quality projects is
basic project management. How do you keep everyone informed on what
problem is being addressed, who is involved, what is needed, when is it
due, what is the status, what has been accomplished, what decisions have
been made, what approaches have been documented, etc.? Some
variation of "Microsoft Project and e-mail" is usually the
designated approach, but is it a good one? In that environment,
having more than one person manage the project is difficult, there is no
"group memory", and the person who owns the schedule spends a
good part of his/her productive time just trying to keep up with e-mail
and scheduling.
Kore has a better idea:
webTeam. With webTeam you get security-controlled schedule
maintenance and access, automatic e-mail notifications, group memory, and
more. In addition, when Six-Sigma projects require the customers'
help, webTeam's deep security model even lets you add the customers to
your projects, while providing them access just to the processes they need to
participate.
Given that optimizing
information flow is often an important goal of Six-Sigma projects,
shouldn't you get started with the project itself? Give us a call at
858-678-0030 or e-mail us at sales@koretech.com
to find out more about bringing the state-of-the-art to your Six-Sigma
project management!
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Kourier
News
Kourier
3.4 is now available, with new capabilities added to most Kourier modules:
Integrator now enables the exchange of XML through a secure Socket connection, Forms Manager
adds a "PCL Escape
Sequence Editor" that allows updates in an intuitive way to the arcane control character sequences
that are required to manage laser printers, and Publisher adds a dictionary-driven e-mail
address capability that allows more complex addressing of e-mails.
In
addition, we
have added a new Kourier module, "Service Monitor". The
Service Monitor periodically checks the operation of other processes, e.g. batch jobs and Web sites,
to make sure they are functioning properly. When they aren't, it
notifies the designated people of the problems and their timing.
KommerceServer
News
KommerceServer
3.4 is also shipping. Version 3.4 includes significant new extensions to
the KommerceServer architecture. We introduced standard views in
3.2 and deployed them throughout 3.3. With 3.4 these views can
now be collapsed to make better use of screen "real estate".
We also added the ability to do
graphs, calendar views and dynamic file tabs to KommerceServer, and
implemented them in some places in webSalesForce and webTeam. You can
use them, too, to enhance the appeal and ease of use of your Web site.
Soon,
We will be announcing a new KommerceServer module already in process: webServiceCenter.
We'll tell you more about it in the next newsletter.
Web Configurator
News
KommerceServer's
webConfigurator is now available for beta. We are looking for customers
who need this capability. Let us know if you are interested.
webTeam News
webTeam is
undergoing a major upgrade. The earlier version of webTeam had a
tight coupling between requests/issues and projects. The new version
separates these two concepts, allowing requests
for tasks, requests for projects, and requests that spawn projects. Much
of the new KommerceServer architecture is also being implemented. Find out
more
on "The New webTeam" next month.
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Paul's Corner
 It's
hard to believe, but
I’ve been at Kore Technologies for more than a year now!
What have I been doing? A
little of everything -- tech support, custom programming,
proposals. I’m also
learning/supporting some of Kore’s tools, mainly Kourier, and have
become really good at forms, and pretty good at exporting & importing
data between software packages. Call me -- I need more
practice!
Well, I hope
everyone had a great time at the ‘Forum 2003’ Epicor Users Conference
in Las Vegas. I know I did!
It's always fun to meet people I’ve worked with (from tech
support) over the years, but have never met face to face.
Of course, it's also great to meet up with the customers I’ve
seen before, too. You know, no one
ever looks like they sound – I know I’ve been quite a surprise to
many!
After the user
conference I went right back to Las Vegas with my family for a
vacation. We looked through the casinos, saw a bunch of shows, and
feasted in the restaurants. We
explored the countryside including Red Rock Canyon, Hoover dam, Lake Mead,
and the Valley of Fire. As often
happens in Las Vegas we had a little misfortune while we were there -- but
not the usual kind! On Tuesday after we had spent all
day at the resort, we went to pick up pizza.
As we drove through the parking lot my wife noticed the corner of
her windshield was shattered! We picked up the pizza, returned to
the resort, and were eating dinner when my wife said “that’s my car
honking”. She ran to the
balcony only to see a little old lady in a big van had run into the back
of her car! Well, after a
couple more days we returned home. As
we drove up our street I wondered aloud, “Where’s my truck?”
Yes, my truck was stolen -- security system and all. Aaugh!
Has anyone seen a 1995 white Ford Ranger in excellent condition, CA
license 5D59076?
Please remember, “Great
Service to your Customer is always rewarded”.
Paul’s
Questions
and Answers
I always enjoy answering
your questions! So
everyone, if there’s a question you have on how something works, email
it to me – pault@koretech.com.
I hope you find these useful:
Question:
In
DataFlo, I have converted a process (no report) to Report Manager but need
to know if there is a way to make the process only run once, that is run
and return to the menu. Is there a way to do that?
Answer: Yes,
Preview’s Report Manager has a property called RPT.REQ.QUIT that you can
set in the “End Process” Report Manager event that will stop the
Report Manager and thus, return the user to the menu. An example of
this in the current releases is ‘Post Adjustments to Inventory’,
MCC-10.
Question: We
set up a custom Preview Alert on a process that goes to 2 users. We
have the Automatically Dismiss flag set to Y. When one user responds
to the Alert, it is still showing as an Alert for the other user.
What’s the problem?
Answer: The
“Automatically Dismiss” flag pertains to the current user, it does not
remove the alert from other users. To remove the Alert from the
other users you need to dismiss those alerts in the “Reply Process”.
For example, in Sales if an order is entered and placed on hold a CREDIT
alert is sent to a list of users. When one of those users responds
to the alert it calls the AR Credit Hold Override screen. If you
look at the “Credit Hold Override” screen, in the 0.HOLD element at
File Time, you will see that if the user chooses to “O”verride the
credit hold code then there is coding that will dismiss this Credit alert
for all users on the list.
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October
19-22, 2003 –
Perspectives 2003, Las Vegas, NV
The
premier Epicor conference is returning to Las Vegas -- and Kore is returning to
the premier Epicor conference! Once again we will be presenting two topics
of general interest to the greater manufacturing community: "What is Six-Sigma?" and "Getting
the Most out of Your Inventory Dollar". We will also be participating in the Partner
Pavilion. Last year's program offered a whole lot for everyone, and this
year's conference promises to be equally outstanding. Come and join us to
learn more about how to make the best use of your systems -- and to have a lot
of fun.
See perspectives.epicor.com
for more information.
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If you have any questions or comments on our
newletter please contact
Frank Busalacchi.
We're here to help!
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