News from the Kore

Spring 2004 Issue

Spring Has Sprung

Just as Spring brings new flowers, it also brings changes and growth to Kore Technologies. And just like spring, this edition of the Kore newsletter has grown a little too, because there is so much to tell you about. Take a look at what's happening here at Kore Technologies.

Kore Team News

Dot-Commer Joins Kore

Kore welcomes Keith Lambert to the Kore Team as our VP, Marketing and Business Development. Keith worked at DataWorks and Epicor for 11 years and held many roles in technology and management, including managing the DataFlo Custom Programming team and most recently he was the Director of Product Marketing for the Epicor iSolutions Group. For the past few years Keith has been experiencing (and enjoying) the Dot-com culture working at MP3.com (Vivendi Universal) helping them create and market cool products like e-mail marketing and digital music delivery systems. "Free massages, free lunches, a killer weight room, and an excellent work environment are great--but a real business model, that's priceless." said Keith. 

Keith brings to Kore many years of experience with DataFlo, U2 DBMS technology, and manufacturing, as well as his recent expertise with Web applications for the hosted, Application Service Provider environment. In his new role, Kore will leverage all of his product, technology, and marketing experience to help Kore succeed as we expand our product lines and explore new marketing opportunities. 

New Voice Answering the Phone

The next time you call Kore Technologies, you may be greeted by a new, pleasing, female voice. No, we didn't enhance our phone system with a female auto attendant. That voice belongs to Michelle Durbin, our new Office Manager. In addition to answering the phone, Michelle will be taking care of the accounting, assisting with customer service, optimizing our office procedures, and generally keeping all of us in line. Please help us welcome Michelle to the Kore Team when you speak with her.

 Kore Eye For the Spring Guy - The Spring Team! 

Look at those shirts!  To celebrate Spring (and demonstrate our overall general fashion sense) the Kore Team dressed in their finest Hawaiian shirts. Ok, maybe some of the shirts are not really Hawaiian but it's the best we could do without an extreme makeover. From left to right, we have: (standing) Ken Dickinson, Eric Yarbrough, John Bosley, Paul Bressler, Mark Dobransky, Rob Morrison, Andy Blanchard, Frank Kertai (kneeling) Paul Trebbien, Bob Bottomley, Frank Busalacchi and Keith Lambert. Chuck Verran  (not pictured) said he is allergic to Hawaiian shirts and would rather be helping his Clients solve their challenges :) Michelle Durbin (not pictured) joined the team shortly after this picture was taken. 

John Bosley can't find the moon

You know him as John Bosley, the MRP (Material Requirements Planning) expert. Well, John is gaining another kind of MRP expertise and becoming a Music Recording Publisher. You heard it right, John will soon publish his first music CD. His new album (all songs written/performed by John) is an excellent collection of cool songs sure to please fans of the Singer/Songwriter genre. John has provided a sample track entitled: "In The City Tonight" for your listening pleasure. The launch date for John's first solo album is May 1, 2004 and it will be available everywhere. Well, maybe not everywhere but if you send John an email at jjbosley@hotmail.com he will hook you up. Enjoy!

Tech Tip: Selecting "Today's" records in UniData and UniVerse 

Paul Trebbien
Senior Support Technician
pault@koretech.com

How many of us would like to have a list of what was entered today, what's due today, or what shipped today? I imagine there are a couple of us anyway. Here are 2 easy ways to get such a report. We'll use Sales Orders entered Today for our examples.

1. This example may be useful as a wIntegrate Query. The idea here is to use a dict item that will compare today's date with that on a record. I created a dict item, Z_TODAYS_ORDERS, with the following v-code:

IF (DATE()=F1) THEN 1 ELSE ""

Using Info/Access, I can now select and list those Sales Order entered today:

SORT SO WITH Z_TODAYS_ORDERS BY SOLD_TO_NAME SO_NO DATE SOLD_TO SOLD_TO_NAME TOTAL SO_AMT HEADING"'T' Sales Orders for Today 'L'" ID-SUPP

2. This example uses a PROC to call a program that will place the current date into the PROC buffers (I used the first buffer position) and then run an Info/Access statement which will pick up our records by comparing the record dates to the date in the proc buffer:

0001: PQ
0002: C List Today's Sales Orders
0003: RI
0004: HTODAYS.DATE
0005: P
0006: HSORT SO
0007: H WITH DATE =
0008: A"1
0009: H BY SOLD_TO_NAME
0010: H SO_NO DATE SOLD_TO SOLD_TO_NAME TOTAL SO_AMT
0011: H HEADING "'T' Sales Orders for Today'L'"
0012: H ID-SUPP
0013: P

Here's that little program which places today's date into the next available PROC buffer, note you may need to modify the buffer delimiter for your system.

* PROGRAM : TODAYS.DATE
* PURPOSE : Place Today's Date to a PROC in output format.
*

    TODAY=OCONV(DATE(),'D2-')
  PROCREAD PROC.BUF ELSE PROC.BUF=""
  IF PROC.BUF # "" THEN
    PROCWRITE BUF:CHAR(32):TODAY
  END ELSE
    PROCWRITE TODAY
  END
  *

END

* DataFlo users there is a PROC subroutine called TODAY which will place the current date into the PROC buffers.

Would you like assistance with these types of projects, please give us a call at 858-678-0030 or email us at info@koretech.com and we will be happy to assist.

Client Survey Results

Kore partnered with Optimal Connections to manage our Client survey, which was released on February 23 and ran for about two weeks. It's been more than a year since our last survey and we wanted to get an update on what our Clients think we have been doing well and also let us know about areas for improvement. Everyone taking the survey was entered to win an Apple iPod. 

And the lucky winner is... (drum roll please)... Cliff Bennett, of Marinco. Congratulations Cliff, we hope you enjoy your new gadget.

We had excellent response to our survey and thanks to everyone who took the time to give us their feedback. Here are the highlights:

• The primary reason you continue to do business with Kore is our support, followed by reliability

• The main factor influencing your selection of our products was functionality, followed by support

• About 65% of you rated our responsiveness as Impressive to Wow

• About 60% of you rated the quality of our technical support as Impressive to Wow

• About 68% of you rated our ease of access to support as Impressive to Wow

We are very happy to hear that you think Kore is still doing an excellent job supporting you and providing quality products. Of course there is always room for improvement and maintaining the status quo is never good enough when it comes to support, as expectations continue to rise. 

The most suggested areas for improvement were: 1) improve documentation; 2) better documentation and manuals; 3) better-written documentation; 4) Web-based call logging and management; 5) online knowledge base, and user forums. To summarize:  you want better documentation.

We are listening to your feedback and plan to work on many of your suggestions--especially documentation. We will be investing time and resources to continue improving the quality of our support, increase the value of our products and services, and offer new support programs. As always, we are interested in your comments, suggestions, and requests. Please send them to support@koretech.com.

Got Integration?  

Kore Technologies established itself as a leading provider of integration products and services in its first year of business. In fact, one of the very first products developed by Kore was Kourier, which was designed to provide integration and business automation with best-in-class applications for the IBM U2 database. Using Kourier or one of our custom integration packages, Kore can you help bridge the gap between your ERP system and any third-party application in a fraction of the time and cost it takes to develop new integrated capabilities from scratch.  

Here are just a few of the systems/products we have integrated:

• Seibel CRM 
• ORACLE Indirect Purchasing
• Amazon.com
• Costimator
• FileMaker (using SOAP) 
• PCMall exchange
• Inovis EDI
• spscommerce EDI XML
• BarTender - Barcode and label design 
• GFI FaxMaker - Fax Server
• Forecast Pro - Advanced desktop forecasting
• Microsoft Excel

If you would like to know more about how Kore can help you solve your integration challenges, please call your account manager, e-mail us at info@koretech.com or call us at 858-678-0030.

Sarbanes-Oxley - Are you ready?

As you may have heard, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (sometimes referred to as SOX) is a hot topic not only for CFOs but for IT departments too. And the deadlines are fast approaching, even with the SEC deadline pushback. 

If you are affected by SOX then you know that Section 404 requires management to establish and maintain adequate internal control structures and procedures for financial reporting. Unfortunately, the phrase "internal controls" is not very clear or specific and IT may be asked to implement or create these internal controls within your system. 

Here are just a few areas that must have good internal controls because they could affect the quality of your financial data: 1) Data migration or data exchange; 2) Third party product integration (e.g., financial reporting, spreadsheets); 3) Software change controls (e.g., code merging, enhancements); 4) Database access and editing (e.g., TCL or direct database access). An excellent example is your good old spreadsheet. If your company relies upon spreadsheets for financial reports (and about 47% of public companies do) are you confident that your spreadsheet-based reporting provides adequate control?

Kore Technologies can help you implement controls for your system to attain Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Our Kourier product family is designed for integration and business automation and can help you put controls around your data. Kore can also provide consulting services to help you understand, document, and implement new processes or procedures in areas of your business that require additional internal controls for SOX compliance.

If you would like more information on how Kore can help you implement internal controls for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, call us at 858-678-0030, or e-mail us info@koretech.com. For more information on Sarbanes-Oxley, check out http://www.sarbanes-oxley.com  and http://www.sarbanes-oxley-forum.com.

International Spectrum 2004

International Spectrum was held in Las Vegas from March 15 to March 18 this year. This conference is one of the few events focusing on MultiValue technology, tools, and applications. Although this is not a big event, there is still plenty to learn, people to meet, and opportunities to network. If you want to know what's happening with MultiValue this is a good conference to attend.

Of course there was the obligatory exhibition floor with the big players in this market (IBM, Raining Data) and many smaller, independent companies showing their latest technology. Even Microsoft was there demonstrating how easy it is to create Microsoft .NET applications that integrate with MultiValue databases. These sessions seemed to be the most popular and well attended, saying something about the relative interest in this technology. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference was the many breakout sessions with topics covering everything from how to create Web-based user interfaces for MultiValue applications to Help Desk Survival strategies. After attending many of these sessions and walking the exhibition floor it's easy to see that MultiValue technology is still a viable database and with many excellent tools for building business applications. 

Next year's International Spectrum 2005 will be right here in beautiful San Diego at the Hyatt Islandia from January 31 to February 3. If you are interested in knowing where MultiValue technology is going and keeping abreast of the latest tools and applications I recommend you make time for the event. Visit http://www.intl-spectrum.com/ for more information. Perhaps Kore will see you there.

Product and News

Our Kourier Forms Manager and Publisher products continue to be very popular solutions for our Clients. We have also introduced new pricing and bundling specials that make these products even more attractive. In our last issue we announced that Publisher can send ANY DataFlo report via email/fax. We have named and packaged this new offering as Publisher for Reports. It's available as an add-on to Publisher for Forms or as a stand-alone solution. Even if you have already implemented another electronic forms solution, you can still benefit from implementing Publisher for Reports. We don't think you'll find a better solution.

KommerceServer News  

webServiceCenter

Our latest product continues to improve. In this release, we have added features to handle more scenarios for the customer service organization. 

• Enter stand-alone sales orders and RMAs without entering a service order first. Great for customer service departments handling quick orders for their existing customers needing replacement or consumable parts. Because these orders are entered off-line and forwarded to your ERP system, there is no need to expand the number of user licenses when you expand your customer service department personnel. 

• Integration to field service or customer service is not required. Now you have the option to use webServiceCenter without integration to a back office field service or customer service system. In this configuration, only sales orders, RMAs, and Invoices are integrated to your ERP system. 

• Quick and advanced contact lookup. Customer service representatives handling a call can quickly and easily retrieve the customer account details by simply looking up and selecting the person on the call. 

• MapQuest address interface. Your on-site field technicians can respond to service calls more quickly, getting directions to the customer location with one click to the MapQuest Web site.

webSalesForce 

The new features of webSalesForce extend the product and enable it to be used as a light CRM system fully integrated to the ERP back office.

• Traditional header/line item sales order entry form. Sales reps can log orders for their assigned customers while on the road or at a customer site. Because orders are entered off-line and forwarded to the back office ERP, there is no need to increase the number of user-licenses of your ERP system.

• Stand-alone prospect entry and database. Manage prospects with multiple contacts completely within webSalesForce and its SQL database. Back office ERP system integration is deferred until an order is placed with a prospect, at that time the customer information and all related contacts are forwarded with the order. 

• Customer/Prospect Activity log. Easily document and manage your calls, e-mails, letters, and other information so you can keep track of the important details and follow-up more effectively.

webTeam

webTeam is our collaboration product built on the KommerceServer framework. We will be developing several new solutions for webTeam designed to meet the needs of specific departments or functional business areas. Each customizable solution will include specific request forms, queries, graphs, workflow, and e-mail notification templates. All solutions provide basic project/task management, which can be used stand-alone or integrated with the request forms acting as workflow triggers. webTeam for IT is the first solution available and it focuses on facilitating and managing internal IT requests for your company. 

The other departmental solutions on the drawing boards are:

• webTeam for HR

• webTeam for Purchasing

• webTeam for Service

• webTeam for Sales

• webTeam for Finance

• webTeam for Engineering

Call us for more information or to schedule a demonstration.

KommerceServer Framework News

We are continuing to improve our products and take advantage of industry standards and mainstream technologies. 

• KommerceServer will soon be a Microsoft .NET application. Not only does this improve the performance of our solutions, it allows us to easily leverage new Microsoft capabilities such as comprehensive search indexing, Outlook integration, and Report Server 2000.

• Integrated Authentication for local users on Windows/NT network. You will no longer have to manually sign on to Web applications. This is ideal for employees who frequently use the portal, customer service, and sales force web applications as alternatives to their ERP system. 

For more information on any of the above products or our services, call us at 858-678-0030 or contact us at sales@koretech.com and we will be happy to talk with you!

Paul's Corner

Spring is here and it's time to get my garden going. In San Diego we don't have much of a winter (usually a week of rain and that's it) so most have their gardens in by this time. I've learned to wait until March and April as the plants do much better when it's warm. I have a big garden area and usually plant a few batches of corn, lots of tomatoes, some watermelons, onions, carrots, etc. The next couple of weekends, I'll be out weeding, digging, and planting so if you're in the neighborhood stop by-I have extra shovels and lots of cool drinks.

I've been a woodworker for many years and have turned my garage into my shop. It became a shop just recently when I bought a band saw which I need for the next couple of projects I'll be working on-a car and a 'monster' truck for my grandson. That monster truck will probably be modeled after a 50's Chevy truck body with 6-8 inch wheels made from cherry wood, it will stand 12 to 16 inches tall and be about 2 feet long-truly a monster! Usually, I build small projects like the Welcome Signs I just finished. I made 6 sets of this project each consisting of a base, letters spelling W-e-l-c-o-m-e, 4 flowers, 4 leaves, 2 circles, a heart, a pumpkin, a bunny, a Santa, and a sun all cut out of various kinds of wood. I've been cutting them for weeks it seems like. Luckily, I like doing this. Why 6? One for my wife, her sister, my sister, my niece, our next-door neighbor, and one for a friend. We usually have a "Crafts" night once a week where the relatives come over and build/paint "things" like Welcome Signs, calendars, and Christmas/Easter/Halloween decorations or to just watch movies and BBQ.

Programmers, I worked on a very exciting project recently. We wanted to collect information on Vendors and the various Parts they supply (a report) and a quick/convenient way to examine the list of Parts each Vendor supplies (an Inquiry screen). For the report, we tell it how many parts and it shows us a list of those Vendors supplying that many parts or less and the last Receipt Date. For example: list all Vendors who supplied 2 or fewer parts. The Inquiry screen shows, for a specified Vendor, all Parts supplied and the last Receipt Date and Quantity. I collect the data when a Receipt is entered and store it in 2 files, one has a record for each vendor with the Parts list and the other file stores the Vendor Part# specifics. I'd be happy to lend a hand with your projects, please feel free to call me.

No Epicor User Group conference this spring I'm sorry to say. I guess we'll just have to "get together" at the next Perspectives, which will be in October this year (or when you come over to garden with me). See you there!

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:  After Posting a Prior Year Journal our Consolidated Balance Sheet (prior year) is out of balance. Note, the beginning balances in the New Year are correct - thanks for your tip on the MGL Report Writer Beginning Balance report.

Answer:  We found the problem to be the Current Profit account (prior year) so we reset the year to 2002 and ran the Month End Close with both prompts answered "N". 

Question:  We've acquired a new Preview Authorization but in the mean time we've exceeded the 2 weeks and now cannot logon to DataFlo. Is there a way to Authorize Preview?

Answer: Yes, simply logon to the DW-GLOBAL account. This takes you to TCL, enter PV.AUTHORIZE which will prompt you for your new code. Also, on later releases, it will prompt you for a Software Configuration Code that you can simply hit past unless, of course, you've acquired a new module and wish to let Preview know. I usually recommend setting a reminder to call Epicor for a new code about a month before the Authorization Code expires.

Question:  We upgraded our DataFlo to the Release 5.9 and are having troubles with the MGL Report Writer reports. One issue is the 1st set of accounts printed a second time on one report.

Answer: I'm assuming the conversion program has been run as part of the Before and Afters. I can think of 3 things to check: Have your Programmer look for and remove blank line items in the GL Columns and GL Row Detail records, and you should answer "Y" to the new field in the Company Master screen, "Utilize Enhanced GL Row Selection". To set the defaults in the Row Detail entry screen see the new fields in the Account Segment entry screen in the MGL utilities menu. Call me if you're still stuck, as I know how important those reports can be.

Question:  Who can create or update our Logo's for the DataFlo Electronic Forms?

Answer: I can. Most customers are asking for different logos for accounting, sales, and purchasing, these usually differ in the telephone and fax numbers. Note, if you have the old forms that require a chip in the printer I would recommend upgrading your software as I heard those printers cannot be found anymore. Note, I usually install and train customers on Kore Technologies' Forms Manager and I can show you how to create your own logos.

Question:  When is Mother's Day?

Answer: Mommmmm! It's Sunday, May 9th.

If you have any questions or comments about our newsletter please contact Keith Lambert. We're here to help!

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