Trialing Lite and Full AyaNova: If web requested trial or regular limited trial, will continue to show switch in Help menu so that you do not have to directly edit the config.txt

Notification Deliveries related: When processing notifications, will now check to see if there are *any* smpt delivery method ones, if so then before any delivery attempts probe smtp server by attempting a connection first.

If this fails then it will be logged through the Administration navigation pane's Notification Deliveries (last 7 days) log if in generator service and skip all smtp type notifications but continue to process others that *can* be delivered.

Notification - Global Settings related: A new global setting "SMTP Retry Deliveries" which when set to true means SMTP / SMS notifications that fail to deliver due to unable to connect to smtp server will no longer be removed from the notify event table but will be kept and re-attempted on next deliver until the smtp server can be connected to.

If set to false (the default) then on next generate if the smtp server is still not connectible then they will be removed.

This setting is useful if the SMTP server is not always available (i.e. notebook computer that is not always able to connect to the mail server).  Or any situation where admin wants to keep notifications until smtp server is available.

This option only relates to an smtp server that is unavailable, it's *not* related to individual notifications that can't be delivered for any other reason, i.e. invalid email address etc.  Those will still be deleted.

Service Workorder Parts: When a part request is received, AyaNova will now only delete quantity zero part record if it's retail price is equal to the current inventory retail price for that part and the description field is empty. This way if you have edited the zero quantity part record in the service workorder, you can still refer to it after receiving.

Issues addressed in 6.2.0.0

Grids: Delete record row option will no longer show if security group of user logged in does not have rights to delete or workorder is Closed. Resolves topic http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic4995-96-1.aspx

Service Workorder - Loans: Resolves issue identified in http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic4974-96-1.aspx as now have dropped AACTIVE column from AWORKORDERITEMLOAN

User entry: Resolved issue (with Firebird database only) where there was no error message when user entry screen was not saving if login/password already entered for another user.

Search Database: Error no longer occurs if search result Source is a workorderitem part that a user selects in the Search DataBase screen. Resolves forum topic http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic5037-96-1.aspx

Notifications: schema update SQL db ASAVEDMESSAGE column in ANOTIFYVENT table set to nvarchar(1024)NULL to resolve forum topic http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic5083-96-1.aspx

Service Workorder - Part Requests: Can now no longer delete a user that has part requests (otherwise would cause a broken link when try to view PO's Requested By field). Set a user to inactive rather than attempting to delete if was used to perform any work within AyaNova.
Resolves forum topic http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic5084-96-1.aspx (about PO and user deleted)

The following message was sent February 4 2010 (slightly modified here in formatting/layout only):

As a registered user of AyaNova, we occasionally send out email messages letting you know about new versions and new features.

We are very proud to announce the many new plug-in's and add-on's that are now available with the latest version of AyaNova 6.1

• AyaScript for developers
  With AyaScript, you can quickly create useful utilities or add-on's without having to build a full AyaNova plugin or stand alone application and your end users can execute the script from within the AyaNova program without any programming knowledge. Note - no license needed for this utility.
• OLI (Oulook Interface)
  Run from within Outlook, OLI (Outlook interface) provides you with the ability to easily import your scheduled items into an Outlook calender; import your AyaNova clients, headoffices and/or vendors into Outlook as contacts; export your Outlook contacts into AyaNova as either clients, vendors or head offices; create AyaNova schedule markers from Outlook emails and create AyaNova service workorders from Outlook emails directly from within your Outlook. License needed for this plug-in.
• Outlook Schedule Export
  Run from within AyaNova, the Outlook Schedule Export plug-in with one click exports your scheduled workorder items and schedule markers into an Outlook calendar. License needed for this plug-in.
• Export To XLS
  Run from within AyaNova to easily export record data to an xls file for additional business analysis, import into other software, etc. License needed for this plug-in.
• Quick Notification
  Quickly send a message  to one or more of your AyaNova users. Great for quickly paging a tech or sending a quick message. License needed for this plug-in.

Check out http://www.ayanova.com/plugins.htm for more details.

If you want to try out any of the plug-ins that need a license before purchase, just email support@ayanova.com in reply with a copy of your ayalog.txt file from your AyaNova 6 program folder and we will send out a temporary AyaNova 6 and optional add-on key.

If you have not yet upgraded to AyaNova 6, do review http://www.ayanova.com/FaqUpgrading.htm

Any questions, let us know.

Sincerely,

Your AyaNova Sales & Support Team

Ground Zero Tech-Works has released the AyaNova 6.1.0.0 maintenance update which fixes a number of issues (see http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic4969-96-1.aspx) including some issues HaveAByte has brought to their attention which are affecting some customers:

1.  If the ampersand (&) symbol is used in a Workorder Status viewed via MBI, it can show an XML error.

.2  Scheduled items "disappearing" (not permanently from the database, they would just become temporarily invisible) if the user just selected to graphically print a different date than viewing.  This is not quite the same steps as one of our customers reported, but hopefully that is what the issue was and is now resolved. Refer to http://forum.ayanova.com/Forum96-1.aspx

Ground Zero Tech-Works just sent out the following email notification and any HaveAByte AyaNova installations are ready to update at your convenience.

As a registered user of AyaNova 5.x, we wanted to let you know that we have released the maintenance update 6.1.0.0

If you have already updated to AyaNova 6.0.0.0, do check out what fixes and new features are in this 6.1 maintenance update by viewing on the forum topic http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic4969-96-1.aspx and then follow the steps at http://forum.ayanova.com/Topic4968-96-1.aspx to update.

AyaNova 6.x is a no charge update for licensed AyaNova 5.x users so check out the new features identified in the AyaNova 6 Help file http://www.ayanova.com/AyaNova6webHelp/how_is_ayanova_6_different_fro.htm as well as the new optional plug-ins now available for version 6.

As normal, update steps to 6 for AyaNova 5.x users are in the AyaNova 6 Help file

Once updated to AyaNova 6, you can easily check to see if a new version is available by selecting the Help -> Check for Updates menu option.

If any questions, do let us know

Thank you,
Your AyaNova Support Team

The server issue that occurred (discussed in the previous blog post) has been resolved.  The issue was linked to an anti-virus email scanner.  While the issue is not fully understood as it has not been duplicated on another system yet, it was unmistakably linked to this as disabling this scanner resulted in a total recovery of the system without having to restart services (note that prior, even restarting the services completely failed to resolve it).  The TCPView utility from SysInternals reported this scanner having a large number TCP endpoints (and possibly half-open or fully open connections) which were not shutting down.  It may have also overloaded the Named Pipes causing other havoc, but primarily the connections and endpoints appear to have caused the system to hit a limit preventing new ones from being created, essentially blocking the web server from communicating with the database.  The scanner has been shut down until the situation is understood better thus returning the server to a fully functioning state.  This scanner had been enabled and tested many weeks ago and was thought to be completely stable which made it difficult to zero in on the problem.  Why it suddently started behaving in this manner is unknown as there was not a seriously increased influx of spam or other messages that would clearly have led to this, and even so, it should have been designed to handle it better.

Thanks to our customers for their patience and prompt reporting of issues which was helpful in resolving the situation and we apologize for the interruptions that were caused.

A server issue occurred this morning. The result of this issue was that some site functions and AyaNova systems were unavailable.  The basic cause was essentially that the databases stopped responding to internal requests from the web server.

Due to the time of day and the nature of the problem as it could be best understood at the time, I made some adjustments to various configurations and then did a full shutdown / reboot in order to get everything up and running as quickly as possible.  The system is back up and hopefully the changes made will ensure that the system will remain stable throughout the day until further investigation can be done and no further interruption will occur.

The problem is not yet fully understood due to the extensive log data that I will need to examine in order to properly investigate, which I will be doing throughout today.  Any further adjustments to the server will be made during the standard maintenance window of 7-9 PM tonight if necessary.

For the technical among you and in the interest of full disclosure:

The problem spanned Microsoft SQL and extended to MySQL causing them both to fail to respond to requests simultaneously.  Restarting various services revealed that the IIS FTP service refused to restart with an error regarding “insufficient storage” (of course it is not a disk related error), and while the databases restarted without incident, they failed to respond to requests.  The Event Viewer reported nothing of interest, however the Microsoft SQL logs have some information that will need to be examined more to understand.  My sense of the matter based on the FTP service failure message is that it lies somewhere in the arena of the Microsoft MSDTC system and how it internally maps ports in the networking layers for requests.  Some significant Windows Updates were applied on Sunday which were tested ahead of time, and worked fine Monday and Tuesday, but as always unforeseen issues can appear later as may be the case here.  The adjustments made to hopefully reduce the problem for today were reducing the port usage range for MySQL, reducing the total number of active connections in the AyaNova IIS Application Pool.  There was a known MSDTC problem noted in earlier versions of IIS, but resolved in the version we are running making the workarounds for the previous versions invalid for this one, which is another reason I suspect the recent Windows Updates may be at work here.