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

One of the biggest concerns of running a hosted service is that of performance and speed.  It's a high priority here at HaveAByte.  While giants like Google have nearly mastered the art of hosting web applications for thousands of users at blistering speeds, getting that kind of performance out of a privately operated application can be difficult.  This is particularly important when your work is dependent on the system being up and responding quickly, since AyaNova is generally considered a mission critical application.

HaveAByte has always put a high priority on performance.  We've worked to ensure that our hosted AyaNova offering is as fast, and possibly even faster, than running it in a LAN environment.

Less talk more proof, right?  To illustrated this, we've cooked up a little demonstration:

Read more about our hosted AyaNova offering here.

Full disclosure here:

First, this really is a remote workstation, and is approximately 75 miles from the server.  It is configured the exact same way that a customer deployment would be.

PC Specs: Core 2 Duo 3.21 GHz, 2 GB RAM
Connection: Time Warner Road Runner, 2.25 megabytes/second download, 0.20 megabytes/second upload.
Browser: Chrome 4 Beta 4.0.266.0
Caching: The AyaNova demo server was recently accessed, so some caching on the server is in effect here.  But these AyaNova systems tend to be accessed fairly often, and caches aren't flushed very often on the server, so this should be pretty representative.
Dataset: This is a demo AyaNova database that doesn't have too much data, but it has been shown to scale up very well due to a lot of optimization work done by the AyaNova developers especially with large datasets.  We have several accounts with thousands of records in a single grid view, and they tend to virtually load just as fast as a grid with 50 records.
Other notes: The screen recording software slowed down the performance by approximately 5-10% (very rough guess based purely on feeling.)

The surprising thing is that this is more dependent on the workstation CPU than most people might realize.  Just because it's in a web browser doesn't mean it runs "for free".  The HTML rendering and javascript are not trivial.  In the past, we hardly noticed this since download times tended to be quite long, so even if a browser required 4 seconds to render a page, we really wouldn't be affected since it would take 8 seconds to download everything anyway, so it was always ahead of the game.  With the gobs of bandwidth many of us have available, and the more complex nature of the DHTML and Javascript involved, this has recently switched places - the local system, the browser, the javascript and DHTML rendering speed, and the local CPU all combined tend to be the limiting factors, spending more time to render content than it took to receive it.

This is one reason I strongly recommend Chrome (the betas are even better, if you can stand to run them), and using a reasonably fast PC.  It's important to run a fast browser.  A quick test of simply opening a workorder on a very low-end Netbook with a 1.6 GHz ATOM processor - a machine that struggles to even run full-screen video at times - shows that it takes under 3 seconds to open a workorder with Chrome 4, as opposed to the one second you saw here.  And it's quite clear that it is being hindered by the local CPU, not the server or bandwidth.  On the faster machine, the two are generally close to one another (it takes around the same amount of time to render the content as it does to download it).  That's really the target goal for any web application, hosted or not, for best results.

In conclusion, a hosted AyaNova 6 system with HaveAByte.com means you aren't compromising your performance in order to reduce (and largely eliminate) your IT maintenance and overhead.  Paired with our AyaNovaPanel which allows you to perform full backups at any time, and a migration path off the hosted environment at any point in the future with no penalties, if your business requires it to be run locally later on, means that going hosted has no drawbacks compared to a LAN installation.  All pros, no cons.

You save money, you save time, and you won't compromise performance to get it.

An AyaNova 4 customer reported a situation where labor entries would disappear.  After some investigation, we've determined this is true under some specific circumstances.  This article should help if anyone is experiencing this issue.

Starting with a fresh sample database as an example:

1. Open workorder 43 (or any workorder)
2. Click the first workorder item (blue screen of death, or say, "workorder item #1")
3. Add a labor entry.  In details enter “aaa” and fill out the rest normally
4. Click the second workorder item (say "workorder item #2")
5. Add a labor entry.  In details enter “bbb” and fill out the rest normally
6. Save and exit
7. Reopen the workorder.  The last workorder item selected should still be selected (indicated by tiny > arrow to left of item summary)
8. Click the Labor tab
9. Click both workorder items to confirm each has its respective “aaa” and “bbb” labor entries
10. Click the first workorder item (blue screen) and press delete and confirm
11. Notice how the other workorder item is not selected (is missing the tiny > arrow)
12. BUG:  The labor entries are still visible below.
13. WORSE BUG:  I can enter another labor entry below “aaa” called “aaa2”.  I save and exit and reopen the workorder item, and both “aaa” and “aaa2” are gone.

The workaround is to click another workorder item before adding labor to prevent loss of data.

The programming solution should be, when deleting a workorder item, the screen should be immediately refreshed to reflect the deleted labor entries, the simplest method being to simply auto-select the next workorder item in the list and redraw the labor list.

I haven’t checked to see if this occurs with any other the other tabs such as travel but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens there too.

There is another situation where labor entries are thrown away:

1. Open a workorder that has only one workorder item
2. Add a new workorder item
3. Immediately after filling it out, click Labor
4. Click the service start date and time and fill in the entire row
5. After filling in the entire row, click a different workorder item.
6. BUG:  Now click the new workorder item you just added where you added the labor.  The labor entry did not save.

Given that there’s no save button next to the labor entry itself, there’s no clear way to save the entries, and the entries attached to a new workorder item are not saved at all unless the workorder itself is saved first, apparently.

The workaround is to save the workorder completely after adding a new entry, reopen it, then add the labor.

The programming solution should be to save the labor entry as soon as focus is removed from the labor entry.

This issue has been reported to Ground Zero Tech-Works and hopefully will be fixed in an update.  I hope this article helps anyone experiencing this problem.