Welcome to the Summer 2007 Edition of News From the Kore. We hope you enjoy this issue. Back issues are available on the News menu of our Web site.

• Inside Kore

• Kore is Moving

• Product News

• Kore in the Community

• Kauai Office

• Tech Tip: How to Publish DataFlo AR Statements

• Kore Support Program for DataFlo

• IBM U2 News: U2 University Dates and Locations

• Paul's Corner

• Kore 2007 Holiday Schedule

By Keith Lambert  -- It's August and the Summer of 2007 is just about over, but things are just heating up here at Kore. In fact, we have been so busy that we've had to expand the Kore Team with 3 new people just to keep up with the demand for Kore products and services. Take a look at the gigantic Product News Section and you'll see that Kore has been very busy creating and improving our products.

Even with all the new ERP systems on the market today, the DataFlo application continues to be the primary ERP system for many companies and these companies need DataFlo expertise to help them maintain, enhance, and support the software. To help address this need for additional support and services, Kore hired Lewis Batcher, a very experienced DataFlo programmer / analyst whom we worked with previously at DataWorks/Epicor. But wait, there's more! Many new clients are implementing our Web-based applications such as webStoreFront, webPortal. and Kourier Integrator for U2 so it was necessary to expand the Web development team too. Therefore, we brought on board two very talented Web developers in Erik Foley (another previous co-worker from Epicor) and Oakkar Aung, a recent graduate from UCSD majoring in Computer Science. To learn more about our new team members read below.

The New Faces at Kore

Lewis Batcher. With 12 years of U2 software development and customer support experience for DataFlo, and 3 years experience using Progress, C# and .Net for the Vantage product, Lewis brings an excellent and versatile skill set to Kore for our DataFlo and other clients. Lewis said, "I am thrilled to be at Kore, it's an environment which is great to work in. Joining the Kore Team is like coming home after being away at college. At Kore I can use my experience with the DataFlo customer base and the DataFlo product to help our clients achieve their manufacturing goals and to enhance the Kore Products."

Erik Foley - Erik brings over 15 years of software development experience to Kore. He has a broad background in software engineering, application development and management. His past projects include application framework development, an eCommerce Web-site product, Data Warehousing, and large-scale ERP systems for manufacturing and retail. "I'm very excited about joining Kore. I’ve had the opportunity to work directly with several members of the Kore team in the past, and have a great deal of respect for the talented individuals here. I’m looking forward to working on software projects that make a real difference for our customers,” said Erik.

Oakkar Aung - As the youngest member of the Kore Team, Oakkar brings a fresh perspective and new ideas to Kore. His technical knowledge and experience in software engineering and architecture is a great fit for the KommerceServer development team too. He has been working with Web technologies for about 6 years with many platforms and languages including: .Net C#, VBScript, Java/JSP, PHP. Oakkar's thoughts on joining the team, "Kore is giving me opportunities and a challenging environment for me to gain knowledge and endless thoughts and ideas on technologies. The people at Kore are experienced and I enjoy learning a lot of ideas from them."
 

As always, if you have any questions or if Kore can be of service to you, please contact us.

KommerceServer Products

KommerceServer 4.6 is available now and Release 4.7 will be available soon (items marked individually).

KommerceServer Architecture - General Framework

• Added support for sending Order Confirmation e-mails for stand-alone implementations or when the back office system cannot send the e-mail.

• Productized the capability to send transaction e-mails to facilitate stand-alone "rip-n-read" type integrations. This can also be used as a transaction archive log.

• Improved UI Framework to support many new rich Web controls for use in KommerceServer applications. New UI controls include: editable grids, menus, trees, and dates.

• New Object Security Model provides a greater level of control while being easier to implement and administer. This will be available initially only for the new webTeam and later for all KommerceServer applications. (4.7)

• Added XSLT support for e-mail notification of Web transactions. E-mail content and layout can be user-defined using Extended Markup Language Transformation. (4.7)

webStorefront

• Order comments can be added during checkout process.

• Defined a new Web setting to determine how order request dates are implemented, Options are:

  • Do not allow request dates.

  • Allow request date with 1 day minimum.

  • Allow request date with lead time enforcement as minimum.

• Support for a Price List Override field to the Price Adjustments data feed. Price adjustments for discounts and markups can now be based on an explicit price list. Prior to this the discount/markup was based on a single price list associated to the customer.

• New data feed for Product Categories. Unlike the product class hierarchy, which is defined exclusively on the Web site and used for on-line browsing of the storefront, the product category is an internal categorization from the back office. This makes it easier for catalog managers to find products by expanded criteria.

• Added Make-Model-Year support for manufacturers in the auto industry. Leverages AJAX in new UI framework. (4.7)

• Support for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) implemented in the database-driven storefront with extended meta properties which are editable within the catalog manager by product or by class. (4.7)

webSalesForce

• Support regions and sales reps at the order and invoice line item. This provides for more control and flexibility with explicit assignment of region. The prior release gave credit for the order using the sold to customer region when processing reports.

webTeam (4.7)

We will be unveiling our latest version of webTeam with the 4.7 release. This release takes full advantage of our new UI Framework and will be sporting a new, more powerful and easier to use User Interface. It has also been significantly enhanced to support the needs of Professional Services Organizations (PSO). Watch for more announcements on this in the near future. Key new webTeam features include:

• Project Management with hierarchical work breakdown structure (WBS).

• Time/Expense Reporting and Management.

• Flexible billing rates by service type or by job title.

• Billing Management with invoice creation and posting.

• Defined account codes and periods for finance and payroll system integration.

By Paul Trebbien --   I passed the 5-year mark at Kore Technologies a couple of months ago and have been so busy with all my DataFlo support, installing Kore’s Forms and Publisher products, and all the custom reports that I had not had a chance to play with our data integration tools. Oh, I’ve had many opportunities to look at this and that, but never really sat down with one of the guys to create something. Well, I received a request the other day from one of our DataFlo customers asking if we can generate an XML price list document from the wIntegrate Query Builder and I got my opportunity to do a little learning. The answer for my customer was “no”, not with wIntegrate, but since you have our Kourier Integrator package we can create an Export which does exactly what you’re after plus you can add all kinds of other information to our XML document if you wish. Note, we can define and run just the Export, set it up as a Service to run periodically, and/or create a Report Manager process so a user can generate a new XML doc anytime they want to (we can also add selection criteria in the Report item).

Now, I’m not an expert in importing and exporting data but I would be very happy to answer any questions you have or, better yet, you can call Kore and talk to one of the guys who have all the answers. Note, if you do not have DataFlo please call us because we have a Kourier Integrator product that works for any application that runs on the U2 database too.

I don’t know if you missed me but in June my wife and I took a nice long Road Trip to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We drove 3900 miles over 2 ½ weeks visiting Santa Cruz, CA; Stampede Reservoir, CA; McCall, ID; Yellowstone National Park; Grand Teton National Park; Zion National Park; Las Vegas to rest up; and then on home. It was the ideal adventure for us, as we did not have any schedules other than Santa Cruz for a family reunion and to get home on time. I believe hunting Grizzly Bears in Yellowstone was one of the highlights but then again there were the mother and baby moose in Idaho, the elk and buffalo herds with lots of babies in Yellowstone, and the spectacular scenery everywhere we went. Finding the Grizzly Bears is a little luck, a good spotting scope, and a lot of patience to methodically search the hill sides across the valley for them. Sometimes, you find someone else alongside the road who is watching one so you join them. We found one or more every night including a mother and frolicking cub our last night. Yellowstone is a great place. Our trip was totally amazing.

Well, it has happened. I have been re-bitten by the "fishing" bug and seems like I’ve been out at the lakes or down along our coast most every weekend for months now. And that’s not all, I started collecting antique fishing reels, not just any reels but the old Mitchell spinning reels – Remember those 300’s? I do, I still fish with the ones I bought in the 60’s. Now those are some fishing reels, almost 50 years old and they still work great. Anyway, over the last few months I have collected about 50 or so, some brand new (or close) still in their boxes and some fixer-uppers. My wife has asked a couple of times what am I going to do with all of that fishing "stuff" – some peoples "stuff"’ is other peoples "treasure"’. I do plan on taking all of the fixer-uppers apart, clean them up, grease them, matching them to the brand new fishing poles I’ve been collecting and selling them while I’m out at the lake fishing. Thinking of hanging a sign on the back of my truck:

Rod & Reels for Sale All rods are brand new and all reels are Antique Mitchell reels Ask the guy at the lake with the white beard and the “I love Woodworking” ball cap

What do you think? Should I start a business and record those “Travel, bait, and Lake Permit” expenses? If this grows into a big business should fishing experience be required for new employees?

Until next time please remember, "Great Service to your Customer is always rewarded".

New Digs for Kore - With all the new people joining the Company in recent months (see The New Faces at Kore), we have found our current office space getting a little crowded. Therefore, we have selected a new site to unleash our creative juices. That's right, we will pickup up and move our offices probably about 500 feet down the street to a new, bigger and better 8,500 square foot location--almost doubling our current office space! Perhaps this will leave room for a Ping Pong table or other recreational item...

We will be moving the afternoon of September 28th and unfortunately this will require that our systems be offline for that afternoon while we relocate our servers, phones and setup our data lines. However, we will provide an emergency support phone number and procedure to be used during this time. More information will be published in a separate e-mail to all our clients in the near future. Our phone numbers will remain the same, but check our contact page for Kore's new corporate address effective 9-28-07.

Relay for Life By Paul Trebbien  -  The Relay for Life is a 24 hour event where participants have raised funds for Cancer Research and then come out on the scheduled weekend and walk for 24 hours – actually the idea is the Team has a walker on the track all 24 hours.

This year the Relay for Life event in Lemon Grove, CA was held on May 18th and 19th. It was a huge success as over $36,000 was raised for Cancer Research. After last year’s event, the committee set a few goals for this year’s event and surpassed each goal set: double the funds raised, double the number of participating teams, and double the number of Cancer Survivors. My mother, a survivor of 10 years now, came out again this year.

Last year our team sold hot dogs and pickles, this year, we sold street tacos. My daughter, who suggested and captained the Street Tacos booth, said it was totally amazing and she could have easily sold twice as many tacos if she had a couple more barbeques. If you wish to find out more about the American Cancer Society ‘Relay for Life’ fundraisers click here. 

How to Publish DataFlo AR Statements By Paul Trebbien -  Kourier Publisher for DataFlo is an excellent solution that offers an easy, effective way to communicate with your customers and suppliers by sending them reports and business forms in Adobe PDF format via e-mail or fax.

This teh tip will show you how easy it is to electronically publish AR Statements from DataFlo.

To find out more, read the full Tech Tip >>

The Kore Support Program (KSP) gives you another choice for better DataFlo support. KSP  is designed to protect your company's DataFlo investment and is ideal for companies that want to increase their level of DataFlo support while lowering their overall maintenance costs.

Join the growling list of companies that have switched over to the Kore Support Program and get more for your support dollar.

Regardless of whether your company plans to continue using DataFlo for many years or just wants to keep their options open for a potential migration to another ERP application in the future, the bottom line is: KSP provides better DataFlo support at a lower cost.

Read more about the Kore Support Program.

The Kore Offices are scheduled to be closed on the upcoming holidays so that we can spend time with our family and friends.

2007 Schedule

• Monday, February 19 President's Day

• Monday, May 28 Memorial Day

• Wednesday, July 4 Independence Day

• Monday, September 3 Labor Day

• Thursday, November 22 Thanksgiving

• Friday, November 23 Day After Thanksgiving

• Monday, December 24 Day Before Christmas

• Tuesday, December 25 Christmas

Kore is able to provide holiday, weekend, or after hours services and support if needed. Please call us in advance at 866-700-KORE (5673).

To learn more about Kore Technologies or any of the products and services mentioned in this newsletter, please visit our Web site, call us at 866-763-KORE (5673), or send an e-mail to sales@koretech.com.

If you have any questions or comments about our newsletter, please send an email to kore_newsletter@koretech.com. 
We want your feedback.

 © Copyright 2007 Kore Technologies.
All rights reserved ■ Various trademarks held by their respective owners
Kore Technologies | 9323 Chesapeake Drive, Suite D | San Diego, CA 92123