Microsoft Crm Data Import Faq

Writen by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft CRM has built-in conversion tool, however you should probably first try third party conversion tool, such as Scribe. It is relatively expensive and has bunch of importing capabilities, that you might never use and need. Scribe allows you to map objects in source and target, when source is ACT! for example. If you are just realized the need to load data into CRM – please research Microsoft CRM import tool and Scribe. Here we will describe other option and possibilities

• Master records import – you can import via MS CRM integration tool. Tools->Import and select contacts or leads

• Duplication dilemma. In version 1.2 as well as in 3.0 (as far as we know) you do not have duplication check and you can import duplicate leads or contacts.

• MS CRM SDK custom data migration. If data import is critical and you have reasonable budget for the migration – you can appeal to MS CRM customization partner who specializes in the complex data import. In MS CRM SDK you can program duplication check, special rules for security settings. We have to stress here, that this is not one thousand dollars project and if you are small company, you should stick to Scribe or native MS CRM import tool

• Large Scale MS CRM implementation. For corporate business security might have top priority and migration should be programmed in MS CRM SDK.

• Some technical tips. Post-call-outs. In MS CRM 3.0 which should be released in earlier 2006 there are so-called pre-call outs (in version 1.2 we have only post-call-outs). Pre-call-out should allow to check for duplication, based on your duplication recognition criteria and cancel record if it is duplicate contact, account or lead

If you have a need in large scale data import, you can always have us help you with MS CRM SDK data conversion. Give us a call: 866.528.0577 or 1.630.961.598, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

An Introduction To Maintenance Management Software

Writen by Richard Romando

Maintenance management software is a complete maintenance solution for businesses and organizations to improve their efficiency. It helps to achieve optimum utilization of vehicles, equipments, and other facilities at the company's disposal. The functions of a maintenance management software include asset management, inventory ordering, work order generation and management, tracking and reporting, purchasing management, scheduling, service request processing, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, and much more.

Maintenance management software is a perfect tool for all types of businesses including manufacturing plants, health care facilities, retail and commercial properties, government firms, and educational institutions. Standard maintenance management software provides effective scheduling of work and generates full history reports. It estimates costs correctly, handles spare parts inventory, improves the reordering system, and enhances the material tracking process. It can keep track of service contracts, problem reports, preventive maintenance schedules, and material inventories. Maintenance management software can reduce paperwork and communication costs. In short, maintenance management software helps to improve the productivity of any business.

Most maintenance management software has facilities for detailed and graphical reports. Most software provides easy report writing tools that do not require any knowledge of programming. Many maintenance management software programs help to automate tracking and scheduling of maintenance activities. Some maintenance software has advanced purpose-built user interface and browser-based requesting system. Built-in procedure libraries are part of most common maintenance management software. A lot of software comes with comprehensive dispatching and scheduling tools that help enhance productivity. Certain software allow you to stay connected with customers, suppliers, technicians, and the back office with a view to achieve best results.

Most maintenance management software are user-friendly and require no training. MPulse, ePAC, Servicom, CrossForm, Smart Maintenance, MainBoss CMMS, FTMaintenance, and FaciliWorks are among the popular maintenance management software available in the market.

Maintenance Software provides detailed information on Maintenance Software, Maintenance Management Software, Fleet Maintenance Software, Preventative Maintenance Software and more. Maintenance Software is affiliated with Facility Maintenance Management Software.

Updated Notes And Concerns Regarding Windows Update

Writen by Mark Berger

Although in my previous article I may have made mention to the disadvantages of using Windows Update, lately I have noticed other things about the software that give it both merit and further thought.

Recently I worked on my Dad's new PC after he tried to switch the ram in his old one while it was on and wound up frying the mainboard, and I noticed a couple things about Windows Update. His girlfriend made sure that his copy of Windows XP home was completely up to date; installing just about every update that existed.

While I tried to explain to her that this was a somewhat paranoid way of protecting his PC, I noticed that without SP2 certain functions of his PC would be disabled, or not work as well as they should. You may notice this as well. For example, if you have a ATI Radeon card and would like the newest drivers - the manufacturer website recommends having SP2 installed as they work best with that platform.

Recently I was also working on a friend of the family's PC. It was a IBM Thinkcenter PC; and his USB, audio, and VGA drivers were not working properly. This could be fixed easily with a motherboard system disk, but he didn't have that. I visited the IBM website to get the right drivers, and it mentioned that the USB drivers were in SP2. As he had a pirated version of XP and could not download SP2, I had to install a stock version of SP2 I had with me.

After that, his USB port worked fine. So, to re-iterate: Windows Update is nessecary, most definetly, for updating to new service packs. Also, windows update is also very useful for finding drivers you might need for legacy devices and onboard devices. For more information related to finding drivers for legacy/onboard devices, refer to my guide on that topic.

Other then that - security updates - not all of them are completely nessecary. I will be writing an article on security updates shortly, so check back soon.

I am a young, aspiring computer engineer into Internet Marketing, hardware, software, web design, SEO and just about anything related to computers. Please come check out my growing PC forum at http://www.markspcforum.com

Pdf Ocr And Speech Recognition Solutions From Nuance

Writen by Steve Williamson

Nuance Software offers all sorts of solutions that can make your business run more smoothly and efficiently. From speech recognition software to imaging, PDF and OCR programs, Nuance has software that can help you get your work done better than ever before.

Nuance, formerly known as SoftScan, is the maker of the famous Dragon dictation systems including Dragon Naturally Speaking and Dragon AudioMining. Dragon Naturally Speaking is the most accurate voice recognition software out there. It's a much as 99 percent accurate in converting human speech into text.

Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking can be used with just about any program you might need plain text in, such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Outlook Express, even Internet Explorer and America Online. It allows you to get words down more quickly than you could if you were typing and is easy to use and actually gets more accurate the more you use it.

Nuance also offers one of the world's most popular optical character recognition software packages, OmniPage. OmniPage is simple to use and allows you to convert paper or PDF documents into changeable digital files in three quick and easy steps.

Nuance allows you to convert paper forms into digital forms or turn any paper document into a digital format simply by scanning the document, performing a quick conversion and saving the new file in one of 30 different program formats, including Word, PowerPoint, XML and PDF.

Speaking of PDFs, Nuance also has software that will allow you to instantly create, edit and share PDFs. What's more, you'll also be able to take a PDF and convert it back into the original format document, which will allow you to edit and reformat documents that otherwise you would only be able to read.

Nuance can also help you or your office organize paper and digital documents into an organized document storage system. PaperPort software will help you scan paper documents and store, view, sort and organize their digital counterparts without having to open the associated applications.

PaperPort allows you to search for matching documents and automatically creates an index for any PDF files you create. The professional version of this Nuance software will help offices eliminate paperwork without losing valuable documents. It's like creating an archive of every piece of paper in your home or office so you will always be able to find exactly what you are looking for when you need it, even if its been years since you "filed" that document.

Nuance also offers telecom solutions that can help startup telecommunications companies and other businesses to automate their call centers and provide more value to their customers.

Whether you're part of a telcom company, a small business person or simply someone looking to get more out of your personal computing experience, Nuance has something for you.

Steve Williamson is the owner of Best Software Review, your source for reviews of the top software for your home and office. Shop smarter and run your home or business more efficiently with a little help from http://www.best-software-review.com.

7 Ways To Tell If Your Business Has Outgrown Microsoft Outlook

Writen by Jeffrey Alexander Brathwaite

Here's a question for you. What did you use to send email before there was a program called Microsoft Outlook? I for one used a program called Eudora for windows. Not that many people know about Eudora but it was once the best email clients there was on the market way back in 1996. Fast forward ten years later and most of us are using the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. Outlook has been very good to me over the years and it will continue to be the main source on which I send and receive email on a daily basis.

Microsoft Outlook has many strengths as an email client, calendar and task manager but it will not do some things that are almost required to be successful in email marketing. Microsoft Outlook falls short in sending out bulk or broadcast emails to ones client email list. If you are still using Microsoft Outlook to send email to your many distribution lists then you have an idea of this limitation. Here are the seven questions that you need to ask yourself to know that your business has outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

1. Distribution Lists Management

If you are having trouble keeping your distribution list organized and you don't have a clue who is on or off them? You may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

2. Duplicate emails

If you send out emails and are not sure if you sent the same email out more than one time to the same person? You may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

3.Using BCC over CC

If you are confused or not sure when to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) over CC (Carbon Copy) then you may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

4. Follow up

If you do have someone who signs up to be on your mailing list and you don't have a way to automatically get back to them based on the date or how long he or she subscribed then you may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

5. Email Campaign Reporting

If you have no idea if the people you send email too even receive or even opened the email message then you may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

6. Personalization

If you are unable to personalize your broadcast emails and can't send the same email message to the many people on your list by name then you may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

7. Segmentation

If you have no way of determining who on you list fits the target market in which you are focusing your email messages then you may have outgrown Microsoft Outlook.

So you may be asking if I have answer at least 3 out of 7 questions with a "Yes" then what am I to do? Well 3 out 7 means your company should be in the market for a third party broadcast email service or software.

There are several broadcast email service and software answers. Two of the best hosted services are from Roving Software Incorporated and Broadwick Corporation. Roving Software puts out one of the most popular hosted services, Constant Contact and Broadwick counters with Intellicontact. Both are very similar in features and price. These two broadcast email services are ideal for the micro to small businesses who can't afford to outsource entirely but do want some of the responsibility of the sending of the email off their hands.

One of the most noted software solutions to broadcast email is a company by the name of Arial Software. Their flagship software Campaign Enterprise gives professionals one of the most advanced permission email marketing programs in the industry.

Last but not least there is one more alternative and that is a Microsoft Outlook Add-on. This is a software program that installs and attaches itself right on the Outlook menu bar. Summit 5 software has a great add-on called SwiftPage email.

No matter which one you choose, all will be able to satisfy your needs when it comes to outgrowing Microsoft Outlook. Take time to test drive each alternative and see which one works better for your type of business. But who knows, once you try one of these alternatives you may find out that your growth spurt just has not happened quite yet. In that case just stay with what you know until it does happen and believe me it will.

May you all continue to take your businesses 2 the next level of success.

Jeffrey Alexander Brathwaite, aka "JB" is an Internet Technology Coach, Speaker, Trainer and Broadcast Email Expert. http://www.broadcastemailexpert.com. JB prides himself on helping small to medium size businesses that are frustrated with dealing with the Internet. If you are having problems trying to deal with Email marketing and distribution, Search Engine marketing or just getting your own website off the ground the right way. Please go to our website http://www.2thenextlevel.com

Fun Photo Projects For Children

Writen by Susan Share

If you're a teacher or parent, you may be interested in creating some fun digital photography related projects for children. I sometimes plan fun and interesting photo projects for my daughter so that she can learn about photography and have a whale of a time too.

In this article, we'll explore 3 interesting photo project ideas we can prepare for children, so read on!

Idea 1: Make a Flash Photo Album

One interesting photo project is to let the child create a personal photo journal. Ask the child to hang on to the digital camera for a few days, snapping anything that captures his or her fancy.

At the end of that period, help him or her to upload the pictures to a computer, then add some good captions or funny quotes, even animated cliparts. A simple, easy activity to do, which is also rewarding for the family too.

You can use a program like Wondershare Flash SlideShow Builder to maintain the photo album and turn them into a compelling Flash gallery.

Idea 2: Create a Nice Photo Collage

Here's a good project to undertake if your child likes digital scrapbooking. Print out some nice, small format pictures, then stick them onto a large cardboard.

Another way to do this is to use a cool software I found called Photo Collage Studio. This program allows you to turn your favorite photos into an artistic compilation with beautiful photo frame and mask effects, which you can solve on the computer. Neat, huh?

Idea 3: What Could This Be?

Another interesting photo project is to snap a picture of a common, everyday object - using a very odd angle or close-up view.

Entrust the digital camera to the kids, then ask them to sniff out ordinary objects to take photos of. Ask them to take the photos at weird, unusual, and otherworldly angles.

When they're done, upload the pictures to the PC and start playing a guessing game. Ask the kids to guess what subject is being photographed in each mystery photo. You'll be amazed at the answers you get! Snap a whole slew of such pictures and you'll occupy the kids for the whole afternoon!

Chiropractic Software Program Comparisons

Writen by Thomas Morva

It is important to choose a software program based on what it can offer your practice, and not solely on cost. It is understandable that most new chiropractors come out of school with a lot of debt and want to get started for as little money as possible. Scrimping on something as important as your office software could cause you big headaches and even more money in the long run. If you have to upgrade to a better program, not only will you have to contract workers to perform the upgrade, your office staff will not be able to access your records for a period of time until the upgrade process is effective. These are thoughts to consider when reviewing your software options. Chiropractic software comparison is a necessary evil when finding your perfect software match.

Weeding through the various types of programs available can be exhausting. Some programs offer insurance billing specifically, while others focus on only patient records. Prepare to spend several hours in reviewing your options and be sure to speak with your office staff about their needs. Since the staff will be the ones using the programs, it is absolutely imperative that their input is considered. The Internet is a good search tool when looking for chiropractic software comparisons.

One of the most utilized programs today is Eclipse® Practice Management Software. This company has been providing office solutions for over 20 years and has one of the most comprehensive office management software packages in the industry. According to their website, "ECLIPSE includes billing, scheduling, EHR (electronic health record), daily notes, an extensive alerts system, certified HIPAA compliant electronic claims & remittance, security features that include patient data access tracking to help you run a HIPAA compliant facility, and myriad reports fine-tuned by two decades of client feedback". Eclipse also boasts of the software's abilities to streamline your office records and create a virtually paperless office.

Another popular chiropractic software program is Lytec®. Founded in 1989, this company is well-known as a leader in helping chiropractic offices streamline their records and superior customer support. Lytec specializes in the efficiency of patient billing, insurance filing and appointment setting. Included in their software package is a patented program called Code Import which loads CPT-4, ICD-9 and HCPCS directly into the Lytec software to greatly reduce coding errors. Another interesting feature of the Lytec software program is the Fee Schedule Import feature. This feature "automatically loads Medicare fee schedules into Lytec saving time and improving accuracy."

ChiroSoft® is a software program designed especially for today's chiropractic offices. It was first launched in 1982 and has had over 20 years experience in fine-tuning the software for the busy chiropractor. One of the most recognized and appreciated features of this program in the fee slip feature. According to their website, "A fee slip is printed on each patient before they see the doctor, this allows for easy communication between the front desk and the chiropractor. The front desk must post services into ChiroSoft® to cancel out that daily fee slip. This prevents billable services from being missed by the office staff." Many chiropractors find this feature very valuable and recommend it to others.

Chiropractic Complete Max Pro® is another widely used software program for chiropractic offices. The tagline for this company is: save time, improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase productivity, and maximize profits. This product seems to offer a variety of necessary tools to maximize the performance of the chiropractic office. It offers flexible appointment scheduling, automated payment plans, statistical reports, the ability to bundle procedure codes that are used daily for quick reference, Multiple case management without creating double patient accounts, mailing list creation, electronic patient records, front desk management, and marketing tools. This is a bundled program that seems to offer nearly any tool that a chiropractor needs.

Finding the appropriate software for your practice can be very time consuming. When you first begin your search, it is likely that you will be overwhelmed with choices. Remember to consult with your office staff to determine what their needs may be. That is a good starting point in deciding which programs to purchase. Getting the right software in the beginning can save a lot of trouble in the future. If you have to change programs, you will have some lag-time where you will not be able to access your records. Finding a good vendor who understands your needs and who will offer excellent customer support is also a very important step. It may take some time, but with all of the products available on the market today, with a little research and thought, you will find the product you need to make your business successful.

Chiropractic Software Info provides detailed information on chiropractic billing and office management software, as well as detailed chiropractic software product comparisons. Chiropractic Software Info is affiliated with Original Content.

User Driven Modelling Detailed Explanation Part 3 Criteria Necessary

Writen by Peter Hale

Why a different approach is needed

Translating concepts into an implementation is difficult. The difficulty of trying to explain the subjects of interest in a call for papers, or proposals illustrates this problem. Because of the ambiguity of words, there is always going to be a problem of interpretation between those who specify the requirements, and those who need to understand and interpret them.

For software development, a good way to reduce the level of misunderstandings is to go through the loop from concept to design to implementation quickly and efficiently so that feedback can be returned from the software model. Then mistakes can be seen and corrected quickly. It becomes much easier to achieve this high speed development, if the interface for development is made sufficiently easy to understand, so that a domain expert can use it to create the software, or at least a simple prototype that a developer can then work with and improve. Even if the aim of the users is to specify requirements rather than create programs, creating working programs conveys requirements much better than any other form of requirement specification.

It may also prove possible to work in reverse from implementation to design, or design to conceptual model. A UWE paper explains how ontologies could be mapped to conceptual models, El-Ghalayini Et al. [1]. This process can be made easier if the same open standard software representations, languages, and structures are used throughout this process. This would be useful for checking software is designed well or re-using software designs.

User involvement is important in the development of software but a domain expert does not necessarily possess expertise in software development, and a software developer cannot have expertise in every domain to which software might apply. So it is important to make it possible for software to be created using methods as close as possible to that which the domain expert normally uses. The proportion of domain experts in a particular domain (aerospace engineering) for example who can develop their own programs is fairly low, but the proportion that are computer literate in the everyday use of computers is much higher. If this computer literacy is harnessed to allow the domain experts to develop and share models, the productivity for software development will be increased and the proportion of misunderstandings between domain experts and developers reduced. The domain experts can then explore a problem they are trying to solve and produce code to solve it. The role of developers would then become more that of a mentor and enabler rather than someone who has to translate all the ideas of experts into code themselves. Other developers may work at providing better translation software for the experts.

User Driven Model Development

The intention of the research into User Driven Modelling (UDM) and more widely User Driven Programming (UDP) is to enable non-programmers to create software, from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in the form of a tree diagram. The research involves developing ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. This is very important and useful for many employees that have insufficient time to learn programming languages. To achieve this, visual editors are used to create and edit taxonomies to be translated into code. To make this possible, it is also important to examine visualisation, and visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non-experts to create software.

The research mainly concentrates on using the above technique for modelling, searching and sorting. The technique should be usable for other types of program development. Research relevant to User Driven Programming in general is covered, as this could be applied to the problem in future.

This research unites approaches of object orientation, the semantic web, relational databases, and event driven programming. Tim Berners-Lee defined the semantic web as 'a web of data that can be processed directly or indirectly by machines' [2]. The research examines ways of structuring information, and enabling processing and searching of the information to provide a modelling capability.

UDM could help increase user involvement in software, by providing templates to enable non-programmers to develop modelling software for the purposes that interest them. If more users of software are involved in creation of software and the source of the code is open, this allows for the creation of development communities that can share ideas and code and learn form each other. These communities could include both software experts, and domain experts who would be much more able to attain the expertise to develop their own models than they are using current software languages.

Criteria necessary for User Driven Model Development

This section explains the theory behind the User Driven Modelling approach, and the factors necessary to make this approach possible. For this research the focus is on combining the development of dynamic software created in response to user actions, with object oriented, rule based and semantic web techniques. Research has examined ways of structuring information, processing and searching this information to provide a modelling capability. Research by Aziz et al. [1] examines how open standards software can assist in an organisations collaborative product development, and Wang et al. [2] outline an approach for integrating distributed relational database systems. Our automated production of software containing recursive Structured Query Language (SQL) queries enables this. This approach is a type of very high level Meta-programming. Meta-programming, and structured language is explained by Dmitriev [3] and Mens et al. [4]. The approach proposed is intended to solve the problems of cost and time over-run, and failure to achieve objectives that are the common malaise of software development projects. The creation of a web based visual representation of the information will allow people to examine and agree on information structures.

Firstly it is necessary to find a way for people with little programming expertise, to use an alternative form of software creation, that can later be translated into program code. The main approach taken was the use of visual metaphors to enable this creation process, although others may investigate a natural language approach. The decision on what combination of diagrammatic or natural language to use in the representation may be influenced by the type of user and the domain to be modelled. Engineers usually deal with diagrams as a regular part of their work, so understand this representation particularly well. In fact developers also use metaphors from engineering diagrams in order to provide a user interface for software design. This is explained in Tollis [5].

A translation method can then be provided that converts this representation into program code in a number of languages, or into a Meta-language that can then be further translated. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for the translator to understand and interpret equations that relate objects in the visual definition and obtain the results. In order for the user to understand the translation that has been performed it is then important to visualise the translated code, and this must be accessible to others who use the translated implementation. Web pages are a useful mechanism for this as they are widely accessible.

This visualisation of results is essential to express clearly their meaning. Words in a report document can be ambiguous. So the relationship of results to inputs must be clearly shown.

1 El-Ghalayini, H., Odeh, M., McClatchey, R., Solomonides, T. (2005). Reverse engineering ontology to conceptual data models, http://www.uwe.ac.uk/cems/graduateschool/news/posters/conference/conference2005.pdf, Graduate School Conference, 114-119.

2 Berners-Lee, T. (1999). Weaving the Web, Orion business - now Texere, http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/Overview.html.

3 Aziz, H., Gao, J., Maropoulos, P., Cheung, W. M. (2005). Open standard, open source and peer-to-peer tools and methods for collaborative product development, Computers in Industry, 56: 260-271.

4 Wang, C.-B., Chen, T.-Y., Chen, Y.-M., Chu, H.-C. (2005). Design of a Meta Model for integrating enterprise systems, Computers in Industry, 56: 205-322.

5 Dmitriev, S. (2004). Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm, http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/is1/articles/04/10/lop/.

6 Mens, K., Michiels, I., Wuyts, R. (2002). Supporting Software Development through Declaratively Codified Programming Patterns, Expert Systems with Applications, 23: 405-413.

7 Tollis, I. G. (1996). Graph Drawing and Information Visualization, ACM Computing Surveys, 28A(4).

I am a Researcher Associate in the final year of my. I specialise in applying Semantic Web techniques. My current research is on a technique of 'User Driven Modelling/Programming'. My intention is to enable non-programmers to create software from a user interface that allows them to model a particular problem or scenario. This involves a user entering information visually in the from of a tree diagram. I am attempting to develop ways of automatically translating this information into program code in a variety of computer languages. This is very important and useful for many employees that have insufficient time to learn programming languages. I am using the Protege ontology editor developed from a project of Stanford University. I am looking to research visualisation, and visualisation techniques to create a human computer interface that allows non experts to create software.

My Home Page is at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ My blog is http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/

Reporting For Microsoft Great Plainsdynamicseenterprise Rw Reportwriter Tips For Developer

Writen by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is written in Great Plains Software programming tool: Great Plains Dexterity. Dexterity in turn was built with conception of graphical cross-platform transferability (in time – 1992 – mostly Mac and MS Windows). Plus Dexterity had database abstraction level (through C programming language). The result of such a shrewd future-looking architecture – Great Plains ReportWriter has multiple restrictions and drawbacks.

Let's first look at the advantages of using ReportWriter:

• Seamless integration with Great Plains forms – the most typical scenario – you modify SOP_Long_Invoice_Form or SOP_Blank_Invoice_From and then print your invoices with modified form – usually with your logo and changed formats and positions of the fields

• Parameters Entry Forms. Each existing report (Reports section) has associated parameters entry form. Restrictions:

• No Cross-Modules links. You can not associate report with the tables from non-related modules. For example you can not have Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing data on the same report (you actually can – but you need Dexterity programmer help)

• Custom Reports. You do not have parameters entry interface for your custom reports, but you could use restrictions to restrict the selection. Custom reports could be used to export data from Great Plains in text (and then Excel format)

Advanced ReportWriter programming

• Rw_ functions in Great Plains Dexterity. When you need cross-modules data on the same report (Bill of Lading, which you could produce on the base of Picking List) you need to move the report you want to customize into your custom DYNAMICS.DIC and fill the gaps with RW_ functions – these are allowed to be placed on the report with parameters

If ReportWriter doesn't do the job:

• Crystal Reports. Current version 8.0 and 8.5 (July 2005) are MS SQL Server based, where Crystal Report could work at will and produce all the desired links – we recommend you to base Crystal Report on SQL Stored Procedure or SQL View. You call Crystal Report engine via Modifier/VBA – you need Customization Site Enabler license. If you are on Great Plains Standard version: 7.5, or Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise 7.0, 6.0, 5.5 or 5.0 Btrieve/Pervasive SQL/Ctree – you need to install Pervasive SQL driver (or Faircomm driver for Ctree)

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia

Cad Indiaraster To Vector Conversionpaper To Cad Conversion3d Modelingarchitectural Drawing

Writen by Neeti Sharma

Why Paper to CAD Conversions?

In today's high tech world one needs to save time, to utilize it for better resources.

In the present era of computers, managing your Paper documents can really be easy. All your architectural, mechanical or engineering drawings or Drafting can easily be converted into digital format.

With the help of CAD, computer aided design; one can address all issues regarding 2D, 3D drawings, raster image scanning.

CAD can convert manual paper drawings into digital format. You just need to lay confidence in the present technology & see what all wonders can be done.

CAD conversion are useful to many industries as they convert paper to digital format. With CAD, existing manual hardcopy drawings get easily converted into Electronic CAD files. These become professional record drawings.

Paper to CAD Conversion offers various benefits as converted drawings give more professional look to your work

All kinds of Engineering Drawings, Mechanical Drawings, Architectural Drawings, and Scanning of Documents can be done with computer aided design.

CAD has found its application in various industries including architectural, engineering and in building industry.

So, utilize this service, to cut down on your paper documents. As this will give an edge to your business over others.

Webmaster -http://www.bluentcad.com

Microsoft Great Plains Partner Selection Overview

Writen by Andrew Karasev

Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Solomon and Axapta are Microsoft Business Solutions ERP applications, serving to the whole spectrum of vertical and horizontal markets. Assuming that you already have one of these systems installed and implemented we would like to give you - IT director, Database Administrator, Programmer, Software Developer, Controller your options in supporting/upgrading Microsoft Great Plains for your company

It is always good idea to install everything on your own - however Great Plains requires combination of computer networking, some programming, good accounting/distribution/logistics/reporting background - so it is not a surprise that Microsoft Business Solutions requires their customers to have specially assigner Microsoft Great Plains Partner/VAR/Reseller to serve the account.

First Scenario. Due to the recession your former MBS partner went out of business, leaving you without support and you lapsed in payment annual enhancement fee. This is very common scenario - in fact Microsoft Business Solutions introduced direct quoting to the companies like yours - just to insure that you have an option to pay this required maintenance fee. In this situation - you can not get new version/migration tool, etc. until you get your company reinstated in MBS enhancement program. What you need to do is these:

1. Find reasonably inexpensive MBS partner and switch to it as your MBS VAR - it is very easy to change your VAR - you compose the letter stating that you would like to switch to company ABC as your MBS VAR, sign it and fax to your new VAR.

2. MBS Promotions – Microsoft has promotion programs for orphans like your company to be re-enrolled into annual enhancement program, usually with small additional charge, for example in October 2004 you could get your reinstatement for 20% of the software list price (normal price is 16%)

Second Scenario. You need to migrate from Pervasive SQL/ctree to Microsoft SQL Server/MSDE. It is known fact that Microsoft decided to breach contract with Pervasive Software and stop supporting Microsoft Great Plains 7.5 and earlier versions on Pervasive SQL 2000. You need to migrate to MS SQL Server ASAP - or you will be out of support

1. As in the first scenario - select your MBS partner or ask you old partner to give you the quote on Migration tool (k$1.5-k$2)

2. Migrate on your own - or send your data to migration specialist - your partner may provide these services - normal price is 8 hours of consulting fee

Third Scenario. You have bunch of Great Plains Dexterity, VBA, SQL customizations and need upgrade and your former GP reseller is not providing customization upgrade services (due to the fact that all developers were laid off several years ago)

1. Locate customization partner. Usually you have to find small nation-wide VAR, who serves you via remote support. Switch to this partner

2. Ask for customization analysis - most of the old customization pieces should be migrated to new technologies, like Dexterity to SQL and Crystal Reports, web publishing, eConnect, etc. Don't pay for upgrade "as is" - you will lock yourself with the problems

Also couple of hints about how do you switch the partner. It is actually more easy than you may think - you just send to your new proposed partner the letter in free format saying that you would like to switch to you as my Microsoft Business Solutions partner - and this is it.

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, Arizona, Georgia, California, Texas, New York, Florida and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. Andrew can be reached: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, akarasev@albaspectrum.com

Barcoding For Microsoft Dynamics Gpgreat Plains Customization Review

Writen by Andrew Karasev

As we see ERP system are implemented in the companies, where it must be tightly integrated with existing or legacy system, automate warehousing, shipping & receiving operations, bar code scanners (Symbol wireless and stand alone) inventory order fulfillment. One of the directions is so-called supply chain management implementation (Radio Beacon, for example), integrated with Microsoft Great Plains. Another solution, which should be cheaper and fit for mid-size warehousing operations – use third party custom modules for Microsoft Dynamics GP as well as have customization partner to tune custom piece for your unique warehousing operations. In this small article we will give you an overview of light barcoding functionality, available for Great Plains.

• Sales Order Processing (SOP) custom logic. Barcode scanning is in general similar to entering characters from the keyboard itself, and it is natural to improve SOP logic to automate such processes as order fulfillment or shipping. In this case you should be able to invoice more than it was ordered, for instance. Simple Great Plains prompt screen should just let you decide if you would like to overship or not.

• Barcode – Item number. You should probably be able to have these two coexist in parallel – we suggest the association to be stored in custom table.

• Serial/Lot Number. We often see the need to associate lot number with the specific large unit of measure, like roll (of cloth/fabric), having slightly variable number of yards or meters each new time (having new lot number or serial number). The variable length must be associated with the lot number in parallel with standard unit of measure logic

• Technology. The customization technology for Microsoft Dynamics GP is still the same as it was 5-10 years ago – Microsoft Dexterity or former Great Plains Dexterity. Customization exists in the form of chunk (file with .CNK extension), which is integrated with Great Plains workstation the first time you launch the application and then becomes custom dictionary file (DYNAMICS.DIC is core functionality, CUSTOM.DIC is your customization dictionary for example). Dexterity uses scanscript coding and has Microsoft Dexterity IDE. In some cases you can extend Dexterity customization with SQL stored procedures, VBA scripting with Microsoft Great Plains Modifier (DYNAMICS.VBA), but the Dexterity is still preferable, if we are talking about standard Great Plains client application. If you plan to deploy web interface, you should consider newer technologies, such as eConnect.

• SQL Tables. In the case of SOP you deal with SOP10100 – Sales Document Header, SOP10200 – Sales Document Lines, plus you need to read IV00101 – Inventory Item Master and IV00102 – Item QTY Master tables

• Microsoft RMS Integration. If you sell on the retail level and would like the transactions to be consolidated into Great Plains – you need Microsoft Dynamics GP – MS RMS Integration module. In our case we have it for AR/SOP/POP level, then you post transactions in Great Plains and have them come through the whole way up to GL

Give us a call 1-866-528-0577 or help@albaspectrum.com if you need additional information or directions.

Andrew Karasev is technical consultant at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.greatplains.com.mx http://www.enterlogix.com.br ), serving clients in Illinois, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, New Jersey, Washington, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and having locations in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Germany, Mexico

Why Stick With Email Clients Like Outlook

Writen by Iulia Pascanu

Trying to figure out a stream in banning one email client or another is no easy job. As soon as somebody rises up saying Outlook is bad, somebody else comes saying it's good and the other one is bad. And the story goes on and on.

On one hand, email clients like Outlook Express and (even more) MS Outlook do a really good job when it comes to user friendliness. What email client allows you to use more options on the agenda, bell ringers, flag wavers and contact managing tips than MS Outlook?

The ease of use perfectly molds on human indolence. That means I would never question about Microsoft Outlook being or not a good email client if it comes together with my Office pack that comes together with Windows that comes together with my computer.

Here is another red flag: MS Outlook is not free as long as I'm paying for my Windows license. This should count when choosing an email client.

Moreover, everything is so easy to install with those cute wizards, and installing sessions are ready within minutes.

Until... well, until I spend enough time online, using email, starting to receive viruses, worms and other creatures that do bad things to computers. If you ever had to do one of the following when using Outlook or Outlook Express:

• try very hard not to click on a message subject that looked suspicious; anyway, not without using a small trick (that used to work for me): pressing Shift, selecting the suspicious messages and then hitting Del,
• try hard not to select some very good and very important messages together with the suspicious ones,
• accept phone calls from extremely upset clients accusing you of infecting their computers with God knows what worm (personally got in trouble with BugBear),
• working on an extremely low system because an efficient AV is doing its job scanning, updating, warning, locking etc.
• delete all your Outlook contacts in order not to become infectious for friends and clients in case your computer somehow got infected,

...then you know what it's like. Both Outlook and Outlook Express, while different applications, with no related history, have security as their weakest link. And that's why some people switch to other email clients that are said to be more secure.

It is true that most worms are today Outlook dedicated because Outlook has both more users and more security holes. It is also true that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates set security as a top priority back on 17^th January 2002 (it's been almost two years by now). While I don't mean to ban Outlook or Outlook Express, I'd like to choose the best for me, and the best doesn't seem one of the fore mentioned, at the moment.

Iulia Pascanu writes for http://www.emailmarketingsoftware.org/ where you can find more information about Email Marketing Software. Please feel free to use this article in your Newsletter or on your website. If you use this article, please include the resource box and send a brief message to let me know where it appeared: mailto:iuliap@gmail.com

Writing Ms Word 2003 Create Your Own Custom Toolbars

Writen by Ugur Akinci

MS Word comes with a wealth of toolbars, all accessible from the View > Toolbars menu.

But what if you need your very own special toolbar with only the kind of menu items and functional tools that you need and use frequently?

By designing your own toolbar you can increase your productivity substantially.

Follow these steps:

1. Select Tools > Customize to display the Customize dialog box.

2. In the Toolbars tab, click the New button to display the New Toolbar dialog box.

3. Enter any name you want for your custom toolbar. You can make this toolbar available either only a part of the existing document or the Normal.dot template. If you select the Normal template, this toolbar will be available every time you create a new Word document. Otherwise, it will show up only if you save your current document and reopen it.

4. Click OK and Word will display a small gray square as the main frame of your new toolbar. Now it's time to add the all functions and buttons you like onto your custom toolbar.

5. In the Customize dialog box, click and select the Commands tab.

6. Select a Category from the left list. Its associated Commands will be displayed on the right list.

7. Click on the Command you like and drag it on to your "toolbar square." When your cursor transforms into a crossbar (like a capital letter I), release your mouse and the new command button will be dropped into your toolbar.

8. Repeat the above step with all the other functions and command buttons you like and soon you'll have for yourself a special toolbar more useful than perhaps any other standard Word toolbar because it contains only those functions that you use frequently and nothing else. Enjoy.

Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a Creative Copywriter, Editor, an experienced and award-winning Senior Technical Communicator specializing in fundraising packages, direct sales copy, web content, press releases, movie reviews and hi-tech documentation. He has worked as a Technical Writer for Fortune 100 corporations since 1999. He is the editor of PRIVATE TUTOR FOR SAT MATH SUCCESS web site http://www.privatetutor.us In addition to being an Ezine Articles Expert Author, he is also a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and a Member of American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI). A true movie fan since he was a child, Akinci provides FREE MOVIE PLOT IDEAS every day of the year at SCRIPT BOILER. Visit http://scriptboiler.blogspot.com today. You are most welcomed to visit his COPYWRITING WEB SITE http://www.writer111.com for more information on his multidisciplinary background, writing career, and client testimonials.

What You Should Know About Installing Screensavers

Writen by Roman Kramar

Do you remember that frustrating feeling when you find an interesting screensaver and can't install it on your computer? This article will help you to never have it again.

Back to when Windows 95 started to find its home on many computers there was just half a dozen of screensavers preinstalled with the system. All you could do was selecting one of these. It was as simple as boring.

Luckily those times are left behind. Now we have hundreds of screensavers developed throughout the years and available for download. Finding a nice screensaver matching your taste and style can be a hard task. How much disappointing is it when you are unable to install the discovery on your computer then? I bet you know.

Often you come across a screensaver with an intriguing description and no screenshots. You are curios to see it in action. But: SLAP! You can't figure out the way to make it work on your system and you will never know what you have missed. What a pity! I know.

Well... Enough! Enough of this! There should be a way to make us, screensaver hunters, luckier. Keep reading. There's something that can open a whole new world of screensavers to you.

First, in order to fight this evil, we should find its roots. Why is it so that we have the problem? Mainly it's because there are several ways to distribute screensavers:

1. As self-extracting installation packages

2. As ZIPped installation packages

3. As individual .SCR files

The self-extracting packages are the easiest to install. You just download the screensaver and double click it. Then the installation program starts and performs all the steps necessary to install the screensaver. That is, you have it ready for use just with a few mouse clicks.

You can recognize the ZIPped installation packages by their names. They have ".zip" at the end. Double clicking such files will probably get you nowhere unless you are well prepared.

The third category is represented by files with names ending with ".scr". Activating such file usually launches the screensaver. That's not bad. At least you can see what it's all about. But this way it won't appear in the list of available screensavers that the operating system starts if your computer goes to rest. That is, you have to use a little trick if you like the screensaver.

Now that the reason of our problems is a bit more obvious, I almost hear your question. Once the self-extracting packages are the easiest to install, why just not to stick with them? Okay, you are right. It makes a perfect sense. But you forget one important thing. Screensavers are created by programmers.

And programmers differ from other computer users in that they see everything from their very specific and technical point of view. It's not a problem for them to extract files from ZIPped packages as they work with them very often. It is rather natural for them to copy files into secret system folders that 80% of users didn't hear about and don't have to.

That's why they create screensavers and put them on download sites in the form that is hard to install for you. But don't hurry to blame them. They mostly do it unintentionally, not because they hate people who can't handle ZIP archives or bare screensaver files.

I know it because I am one of them. In fact (my face goes red here) my Rainy Screensaver ( http://www.elasticsystems.com/rainy/ ) was distributed as a ZIPped package until version 1.7. Thanks to the people who provided me with their feedback. I really don't see any reason to hurt those who use their computers as tools or source of entertainment. These people don't have to know all technical aspects.

I hope more and more screensaver writers will understand this and will make their screensavers easier for you to install. Meanwhile you yourself can get the knowledge needed to handle not so friendly installations without a problem. So let's get back to installing ZIPped packages and bare screensaver files.

* ZIPped installation packages

These ".zip" files are known as archives. It is very popular way to spread software and information over the net. They let you to "pack" many files into one that is much easier to download. They also use special methods known as compression to reduce the final size of the packed files and thus save your time and money spent downloading them.

In order to unpack (extract) files from a ZIPped package you should use a special program. Probably the most popular and easy to use is WinZip. You can download it from http://www.winzip.com. Windows XP has a built-in support for ".zip" files so, if you use Windows XP, there's no need for additional software.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that a ".zip" package usually contains a collection of files that should be extracted somewhere before you can use them. It doesn't matter what program you use to extract the files. Just follow its instructions to do it and put extracted files in the place of your choice. It's better to create a special folder for such cases. Alternatively you can use temporary folder provided by Windows.

Once the files are extracted you should examine them. If you see one named "Install.exe" or "Setup.exe" among them then you can double click it to complete the installation process. Even though archives are very convenient when used on a bunch of files, they can be used to pack a single file to reduce its size. So if you have extracted a single file with its name ending with ".scr" then you should keep reading.

* Bare screensaver files

As I have said before, these files have their name ending with ".scr". They are screensavers themselves. That is, they are the programs that create all these amazing effects when started. You can find some details about them in my article "Windows Screensavers Explained" at http://www.elasticsystems.com/articles.html .

The easiest known way to install ".scr" files is to right click on them and then choose "Install" from available menu options. Once you do this, Windows will set the screensaver as default and open Display Properties dialog where you can adjust screensaver's settings if you wish.

This way has some disadvantages though. First, you should be careful with where you keep the screensaver file. If you have put it in the temporary folder and it is likely to be deleted or moved somewhere else later, then the system won't find the screensaver anymore. So you'd better create a special folder for screensavers that you choose to install this way. Second, if you select another screensaver from the list in Display Properties dialog then Windows will forget any screensaver installed using the described method. That is, you will have to right click it and choose "Install" once and again.

Nevertheless, this way is very convenient if you just want to take a look at the screensaver, play with its settings and delete it. If you really like the screensaver and want it to brighten boring cloudy days then you'd better find a cozier place to keep it.

How do you find such place? It's easy. What you need is to drag the screensaver into your Windows folder. If you use Windows 95/98 or Windows Me then chances are this folder is on your drive C: and has a name of "Windows". If you use Windows NT/2000 or Windows XP then it's probably on your drive C: and is called "WINNT". Once you put the screensaver in this folder it will be available in the list of installed screensavers in Display Properties dialog. Now you can select it whenever you wish. Furthermore, you should worry no more about reinstalling it every time you change your mind and select another screensaver.

TIP: Sometimes you download a ZIPped installation package for screensaver, extract its contents to some folder and find there both "Setup.exe" (or "Install.exe") and ".scr" files. In this case double clicking "Install" or "Setup" is the preferred way. That's because the installation program will perform all the steps needed to install the screensaver like copying necessary files, updating system registry, providing uninstaller and so on. Simply copying the ".scr" file to Windows folder apparently won't do it.

Now that you have a few more useful tricks under your belt, you can install much more screensavers. Add here acquired confidence that those screensavers you like are ready to please you whenever you wish and there's a good reason to become a bit happier.

About The Author

Roman Kramar is a software developer who enjoys writing screensavers as his time permits. Visit his site at http://www.elasticsystems.com/ to find out more about screensavers and his work.

webmaster@elasticsystems.com

Design A Web Album Using Adobe Photoshop Part 2

Writen by Robert Kennedy

So let's begin crunching down these 300 images using Adobe Photoshop from start to finish. When I say 'crunching', to some 300 images may seem like allot, but it's not. I have done jobs for clients that have 100,000 plus images. When you have that many images to produce there are other programs I use that are designed for this. We'll cover that another day.

To this point we have ensured that our images are web ready, cropping, retouching, watermarking, etc. So let's get at it. I will assume that we are all using Adobe Photoshop version 6 or greater.

First we will go to the 'file' menu and select 'Automate" shown here http://weprintcolors.com/screens/screen_dw_create_photo_menu.htm. Now you are ready to create the theme of your photo album by filling in the required textfields. Remember to be as brief and descriptive as possible, as this information gets published on all html pages generated by Photoshop. This is where Photoshop is seems to offer more that Dreamweaver. You will notice the first pull down menu 'styles'. There are many different horizontal and vertical styles available. The second menu allows you to enter an email address that you may want to be available to your visitors. However, I advise against it. Remember that thing called SPAM. Then next pull down menu allows you to specify .htm or .html extensions. Now we'll click the 'browse' button and locate your image source folder. Click the 'destination' folder. This folder should be located somewhere in you website folder. If you don't have one, make one. 'Options' is, again an area that Adobe seems far more thorough that Dreamweaver. The 'options' menu let's you specify every aspect of your photo album…size of small thumbnails, size of large thumbnails, add custom colors to better tie into your corporate scheme. Remember to complete the 'site name', 'photographer', textfields tactfully; this is what tells the search engine what your subject matter deals with.

Are you ready now? Go ahead click OK. Like magic your photo album manufacturing itself. This is a great tool that can be used commercially or just for fun. Create commercial product pages for your clients or create an online photo album for family and friends in minutes.

Robert is the marketing director of an online print and design firm http://www.weprintcolor.com. Robert covers all aspects of graphic development and digital media designs.

Banking Gis A New Approach In Bangladesh

Writen by Md. Bayzid Khan

GIS is now-a-days a very useful tool for decision making. Whenever it requires making a decision related to "location", it comes to the word 'GIS'. GIS makes these location related decisions and analysis very easy. It makes the analysis simple and precise if the inputs are correct. Thus one can have the benefits of analyzing spatial data as well as socio-economic data in GIS platform.

GIS in developed countries

Developed countries like USA, UK, Japan are using this technology enormously in different business sectors beside development activities like real state business, banking, information sharing and so on. They use it to leverage their functionality and also increase output. With GIS, the productivity is increased and also the decision making jobs are very easy and accurate.

GIS in Bangladesh

In recent days, GIS technology is used in different sectors of Bangladesh. But the matter is it is only used to prepare a resource map or risk map of an area. The analyzing power of this tool is merely used in those areas. The organizations working in development sector are preparing maps and reports. But the funny matter is maps are prepared in one cell. The person working in this cell is well skilled in GIS technologies but he has very limited access or time to see the reports. The reports are prepared by another person who has very limited knowledge about the technology. As a result, the prospect of this vast technology is overlooked. Again, the scope of using GIS technology is very vast. As mentioned earlier, location and GIS is related to each other. Thus any organizations working with location data can use this vast technology to enhance their activities. For example, the banking sector has to work extensively with location. They have to locate their account holders or locate a plot or property if anyone wants to take loans. Again any business organizations can use GIS tools to increase their business in different areas. They can use this tool to take decisions about establishing their advertising boards or choose their routes to supply goods. The GIS technology can also be used to identify future growth of the city and establish new areas to business. In the following discussion, prospects of using GIS technology in banking sector are highlighted. It is not a full study report. There may be many other sides where GIS can be useful for Banks to increase their performance and customer services.

1. Decision regarding sanction of loan- spatial analysis of the plot.

One of the tedious jobs in banking system is to provide loan service for the clients. Banks do so as to enhance their accessibility to the customers. It's been being a competition among the banks that how a bank is providing these service. In doing so, Banks need some security like some visible property or established business etc. Now where comes the visible property, the GIS also comes there. Banks take mortgage to sanction and specify the amount of loan. In doing such decision, banks have to analyze the property or plot like distance from the main road or size of the plot, verify the actual owner of the plot, current land valuation etc. They are doing these things manually by going to the sites or contact with third party for doing these jobs. This takes at least 30 days to do the jobs and also have to spend a lot of money. It also need a lot of time to make the decision. Yet there is another chance to use the same plots to different banks for loans.

But if they have a GIS database, they could do the followings easily:

• Do the spatial analysis easily with just one click on the computer.
• Calculate the area or distance from main road without going to the site/plot.
• Calculate the land value of the area by analyzing the surrounding area.
• Creating a central database system to prevent the double loan takers utilize same plots.
• Can reduce the investment time by 30 days.

This is a big factor for any banks to reduce their investment time. If they can save 30 days they can have a profit of BDT30-40 lacs (US$42857.14-US$57142.85) per year.

Bank just need the following information for this analysis:

• Plot/property location (address).
• Owner name.
• Plot size (area).
• Distance from the main road.
• Adjacent road width.
• Present land use (specific).
• Land value.
• Information of the plot i.e. past owner, case, previous loan taking condition etc.
• Crime rate of the area.

Many of the data like plot size, distance from the main road, adjacent road width, present land use etc. can be derived from the digitize map of an area. Others are to be collected from the field level survey.

2. Decision regarding establishment of ATM booth.

Now a day's banking service is increasing rapidly. Every bank is trying to take the services to the customer's home or offices. ATM is one of them. But to provide an ATM machine to an area, Bank has to think different spatial issues like concentration of commercial land use, concentration of debit/credit card holders of an area, route for taking money to the ATM booth etc. These all can be done easily with a GIS tool.

Decision derived from the map regarding ATM booth:

• Area an ATM serves.
• Factors to establish an ATM.

3. Location of the loan takers.

Bank is now spending a lot of money to locate the account holders or loan takers. They are communicating with their client at regular interval to locate them. This job can be made very easy with GIS as here a loan taker or client can be easily identified in the map. But for this, the database has to be regular updated as this is presently done.

• Present address of the loan takers.
• Change address.
• Distance from the branch and route to the address.

4. Best route of the van to deliver money to the ATM booth/branches.

This advantage is discussed slightly earlier. A bank has to analyze thoroughly to select the delivery route of the van to take money to the ATM booths. They have to think about the security. In GIS, they can do this with creating simple network topology of the existing road and select the best routes to take money.

5. Decision regarding establishment of new branches.

As banking sector is a fast growing field in Bangladesh, many new banks and branches of existing banks are establishing now. They have to take into account different spatial issues to establish a new bank or branch. For example, they have to do the followings things:

• Have a general idea of the area like land value, socio-economic condition etc.
• Locate the commercial land use of the area.
• Locate the bazaar or market area.
• Locate the residential area and business area.
• Locate the existing road network.

All these things can be easily done with a GIS tool by analyzing and querying to extract the data.

6. Decision regarding selection of new investment sites for Banks or clients

Banks can also take decisions to locate or identify new potential sites for new investments through GIS. They can analyze an area with potentiality for economic growth, existing pattern of development and come to a decision whether they invest in that area.

With the GIS database, a bank can do the following:

• Regional analysis to identify profitable location to invest.
• Identify different attraction points of the area.
• Identify the present land use and industry of an area.

Advantages the Bank can get:

• Improve the customer services dynamically.
• Considerable Reduction of the maintenance and processing cost of the Bank.
• Select the best location to establish a new bank or branches.
• Choose the best route for money delivery van.
• Secure the loan process by maintaining the data in central database and share it by online data management process.
• Reduce the head count.
• Database maintenance is very easy and cost is very low.
• Banks can save their investment related inquiry by one months.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, it can be said that banks can have lot of advantages by introducing GIS in their daily activities. It can save money, time and manpower which are the target of any business organizations. It is very important to manage the data as there will be a vast amount of data they have to handle. But by establishing a cell or by giving third party the duties to manage and share data, the procedure can be a very profitable for banks or other business organizations.

Free Alternative To Microsoft Office

Writen by Jim Edwards

Anyone who ever priced the Microsoft Office Suite knows it represents a significant investment.

A quick check of the CompUSA.com website shows Microsoft Office Standard costs $399 and Microsoft Office Professional will set you back $449. Now, this doesn't discount the value of the software.

In fact, the functionality in MS Office represents the true workhorse of home and small business computing, namely: word processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), presentations (PowerPoint), and desktop database applications (Access).

However, with the cost for such functionality at a premium, it comes as no surprise that a viable alternative emerged to challenge Microsoft's position atop the office application market.

OpenOffice.org offers a suite of office software applications free to download for anyone with a computer, including PC's operating with Windows or Linux.

Open Office also offers a free version for Macintosh computers.

Open Office offers its software freely to anyone who wants to download it.

Their all-volunteer organization, sponsored in large part by Sun Microsystems, operates with the noble goal of making productivity software available worldwide in 36 languages, particularly to economies that simply can't afford the cost of other office solutions.

The Open Office software publishes in the Open Document Format to make data universally available (instead of using proprietary file formats that, for instance, make it hard to share between Microsoft Word and Word Perfect).

Open Office contains several main components, each of which help the user with specific tasks.

Writer - This software offers a full-featured word-processing program enabling the user to type letters, brochures, faxes, even entire books. No matter what you need to type, this program lets you do it. It also offers such features as spell check, auto-correction, and thesaurus.

Calc - Calc offers a spreadsheet program enabling the user to create cells containing text or digits, execute simple and complex calculations, database functions, and more. Calc is perfect for accounting spreadsheets, inventory and more.

Impress - Impress enables the user to create "slideshow" presentations containing text and images for use in sales or group presentations. Impress also allows the user to create impressive slide transition effects and eye-catching animation.

Draw - Draw gives the user the ability to create simple to complex drawings using vector graphics. Users can create drawings by hand, or incorporate an array of existing shapes, arrows, lines and other graphics.

Though it does represent an excellent alternative to expensive office software suites, Open Office is not without a few drawbacks.

Since they make the software available free of charge, tech support for the free version only lasts 30 days. Also, by its nature, the software is a "work in progress."

As such, you will find bugs periodically that should get reported to the Open Office website so they can fix them.

However, despite these drawbacks, Open Office software rates a "must look" if you need word processing, spreadsheets and other capabilities we've naturally come to associate with home and small business computing.

Copyright 2005 Jim Edwards

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and co-author of an amazing program that teaches you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

Architectural Rendering Training

Writen by Alison Cole

Architectural rendering is the art of creating a two-dimensional image of a projected architectural design, which can help architects and architecture students to see the building they are about to build before construction even begins. Traditionally, architectural rendering was done by hand, but now architects and students prefer using computer-assisted architectural rendering. This is because doing so provides them with a 3D image of a structure that is very realistic and allows them to make the modifications using their computers without having to do everything all over again. However, using computer-assisted architectural rendering requires that people undergo training so that they can effectively use the the software. The good news is that most schools include this training in their curriculum, so architects can always avail themselves of the training from a number of sources an, example of which is the Internet.

Online architectural rendering training

With regard to online education, one of the best things available online is computer training. Apart from the fact that you are already using the media that you wish to get further education on, learning new skills can be very easy. Evidence to this are the numerous online degrees in computer studies that are offered on the Internet. However, online education can also be used in other fields of studies because the training is readily available online, especially from architectural schools that want to teach computer-assisted architectural rendering skills to their students and to architects as well.

One of the biggest advantages to getting training online is that you can do it at your own speed and your own time, which can make learning more effective. In addition to this, online training is also usually shorter than traditional training in classrooms because online training allows for one-on-one teaching, which can make learning faster. For architects, this is very important because, given the competition among architects in the market, being equipped with the necessary skills will give them an edge and open more opportunities for the architect faster.

For architects and architecture students, computer-assisted architectural rendering provides numerous benefits. However, using computer-assisted architectural rendering requires that people get the necessary training so that they can effectively use the software. Fortunately, this kind of training is readily available from a number of sources, which includes the Internet, which provides the necessary training as well as other benefits.

Architectural Rendering provides detailed information on Architectural Rendering, 3D Architectural Rendering, Digital Architectural Rendering, Architectural Rendering Software and more. Architectural Rendering is affiliated with CAD Software.

Software Migration Test

Writen by Uzi Shuri

The purpose of this article is to describe the recommended method and approach of testing new implementation of migrated software.

The coverage and effort of testing migrated software is extremely high. Although from business component point of view there should not be any difference between the Legacy outputs (outputs of the old system) and new system, all other components are completely different. I would like to list those components: software, operational platforms, infrastructures, interfaces, data bases and even human resources. Testing group has a main roll and responsibility bringing a success or failure in such projects.

The suggested test approach presented below feats to new implementation of migrated software projects and based on personal experience, but need to be adapted in case of specific and special needs are required.

The method is having three main active testing groups. First group is a familiar one, the UAT group - User Acceptance Test. Second group is Operational group. This group includes all the relevant people that will use the system for any kind of reason in real live mode. The Third group called Legacy group and includes business people that highly familiar with the old system. The UAT and Operational groups will perform test design and execution in parallel on two completely different platforms with different goals and purposes. The Legacy group will work with each one of the other groups separately, meaning 50% with UAT and 50% with Operational.

The main task of UAT group is defining, executing and analyzing the results of all possible business test cases. Although it might looks like a regular UAT task, it is definitely not. The trivial UAT work is becoming a big unknown while testing migrated software, because the business scenarios are new to the testers and this will be the first time they will actually test them. Since business scenarios results are very important and must be accurate, there is almost no tolerance of having a mistake, the Legacy business group will work closely with UAT. In practice Legacy business group will approve or not approve each test case result that UAT will execute and produce. Without these approvals the system will considered as not ready. The rest of UAT elements which specializing this group will remain as usual - test environments, test labs, synthetic data, converted data, simulators etc.

UAT and Legacy groups will verify the business scenarios results to the level of bits and bytes: correctness of values, data, print files, calculations, file structures, working buttons, incoming files etc.

The Operational group will perform tests in parallel to UAT, but for completely different purpose. This group will work on the real near future platform, environment from all aspects. The target is testing all system components not from the business point of view, but from connectivity and operability views. The Operational group will also test interfaces, performances, system back-ups, system down-times and more elements which specializing real environment platform. Since the Legacy group has the knowledge of all the old system internal and external outputs and general system behavior they will compare and approve the output test results produced by the Operational group.

From experience, reaching the Operational group targets is definitely not easy and required many intervals of executing the same processes until system is stabilized.

Conversion of Data Base

In a software migration project the data base in the old system need to be converted to the new data base structure and definitions. The complexity of this activity is depending on the data variety. Each project management is planning the readiness for the conversion data base in different time stages according to other constraints. I strongly recommend performing this activity as early as possible. The reason is related to the UAT and Operational test groups. From testing point of view it is important to prepare and execute test cases for the different and real profiles, options and types which define in the data base, otherwise many test cases will be tested on synthetic data which is not a valuable data in migration projects.

A successfully migrated software project is depending on the approval of the Legacy group to both accumulated test results which produced by UAT and Operational groups.

My name is Uzi Shuri. I am a professional testing adviser. My profession and experience is all related to testing of software. From being a tester to managing big groups of testers, I was experienced all roles and responsibilities of testing in software life cycle. Now, I would like to share it with you.

What Are Your Pdf Document Security Needs And Preferences

Writen by Reena Cruz

PDFs can be used to format anything. So the security measures you take will depend upon the intended purpose of the PDF itself.

* What kind of material does your PDF contain? Protection.

Does the PDF contain any personal information? An important work draft? Professional and financial information? In every case, you need to assess what needs to be protected and what doesn't.

* Who is the PDF file intended for? Control.

Creating a document in PDF, you probably already have a sense of who the file is being sent to. However, ask yourself who the file isn't intended for because this will determine what other precautions you may need to take.

* Will the PDF you create be used for on-line viewing? Accessibility.

If your document is allowed to be publicly or privately viewed, consider how you want that viewer to use your file. Do you want any information to be edited? Printed? You can set specifications on how much access the user has with the document.

Determining the answers to these questions will help you decide what kind of security your PDFs need. When you have made this determination, consider implementing them using the secure features of the secure Sonic PDF Creator to create your PDF documents.

Reena works for Investintech.com Inc., the developer and publisher of powerful PDF creation and extraction software products, including Able2Extract and the Sonic PDF Creator.

Outsourcing For Cutting Costs

Writen by Paul Cris

Outsourcing is the delegation of projects or jobs to a sub-contractor who could be based in the same country or outside the country. The word outsourcing has been used a lot nowadays. Lot of outsourcing in the IT sector has made this a buzzword.

Outsourcing is not only done in the IT sector. Many other sectors like manufacturing, fashion designing etc are outsourced. Companies outsource mainly to cut costs. The salary of overseas staff is quite less compared to the current staff salary.

Nowadays, most of the software and other IT related work are outsourced to countries like India, Singapore and China. The hourly wages are low in these countries compared to UK and US wages. When a company can get the same quality at a lower price then the company can outsource some of its operations as it is a good option. Out of the fortune 500 companies in US, nearly 400 companies outsource their work to countries like India and China. UK and other European countries also outsource their work to many Indian companies. Call centers have sprung up in India, Caribbean and Philippines. Telemarketing work has been outsourced by many US banks to many call centers in other countries. The main job of these call centers is to sell more credit cards, insurance and provide customer support services.

In the manufacturing sector, components, textiles etc are outsourced to countries where the labor costs are very low. Most of the companies outsource around 50% of the work. For example: A car manufacturing company could outsource its gear parts to a company in India to cut down its costs. To manufacture the gears, the company has to invest a lot, so they outsource it to other companies, which has the competency to manufacture these products.

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Finding An Affordable Crm Software Solution

Writen by Stu Pearson

Have you made the decision to implement CRM software into your business? If so, you might be confused as to which Customer Relationship Management software is best for your needs. While there are many different options available, we'll break them down for you in this article so that you can make an informed and cost-effective buying decision. Let's take a closer look at finding an affordable CRM software solution for your business.

The most important consideration when finding an affordable CRM software solution is to buy with your customers in mind. Keep in mind that CRM software is intended to process and analyze the information you provide about your customers. This means that the more insight you have about your customer base, the more effective your CRM software will be. If you have a solid understanding of your clients and the reason they buy your products, you can then make a CRM software decision that will enhance your knowledge.

While it is crucial to have a solid understanding of your customer base, what if limited time and resources have you behind in this regard? Well, there are CRM software solutions that will do a lot of the legwork for you. While some CRM software solutions are capable of collecting and analyzing information from your customers through web site visits and marketing campaigns, still others are able to analyze existing buying habits to provide you with a clearer picture of your clientele. When finding an affordable CRM software solution, it is important that you determine the areas in which you need to become more informed about your customer needs and preferences. This will ensure that you buy a helpful and profitable product.

It is also important to choose a CRM software solution with a solid reputation. What good is saving money if you receive a substandard product that fails to deliver? It is important to ask questions of the company you are considering. Any high quality CRM software company will be able to tell you every aspect of their program, as well as how these features can assist your business. They should also be able to easily explain to you how the data analyzed by their CRM software will directly affect your business. If you run across a dealer that seems unsure about their product, or can not give definitive information, it is best to consider another CRM software solution.

The last thing to keep in mind when finding an affordable CRM software solution is ease of use. It is important to remember that your employees will need to have a solid understanding of the CRM software in order for it to work effectively. If your employees need to spend a large amount of time working with and learning about the CRM software, you may end up spending more money than you are actually saving. Make sure that the CRM software solution you ultimately choose is simple for both yourself and employees.

Finding an affordable CRM software solution does not have to be a difficult process. By evaluating your existing customer knowledge and identifying the goals you would like to further accomplish, you can find an effective and affordable CRM software solution that is right for your business.

Stu Pearson has an interest Finance, Business & Technology related topics. To access more information on crm software solution or on management crm software, please click on the links.

Corporate Accounting Microsoft Dynamics Gpmicrosoft Great Plains

Writen by Andrew Karasev

The ideas of Corporate ERP/MRP/Accounting application was developed back in 1960th, however nowadays the topic is still actual and we are watching how dozens of new Accounting packages hit the market every year. This process sees some consolidation, to be admitted. In this small article we will be reviewing key parameters to take to the consideration while selecting corporate ERP and Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP as budget option for large or mid-size corporation

• Database Platform. If you look back to 1990th – the competition between cheaper platforms, such as Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 was in the progress. However now Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005 is solid rock product, which can support unlimited database size and data recording/retrieving pattern. In 1990th you would be thinking about Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. to select reliable database platform

• Computer Hardware. Well, the question of computer hardware is still actual, however we see more trust to Intel/AMD platforms, yes servers from Dell, HP, Compaq. Even Linux is coming to Intel/AMD servers world and the question of hardware competition should be probably deemphasized. The question on Unix/Linux/Windows competition is still on the place and we expect more harmony in the future

• Microsoft Dynamics ERP Selection. Here we see several products: Microsoft Great Plains/Dynamics GP, Microsoft Axapta/Dynamics AX, Microsoft Navision/Dynamics NAV. If you think about rich-functionality ERP – this is Microsoft Axapta. However in our opinion – corporation should consider budget solutions first – and this is where Microsoft Great Plains comes to the consideration

• Regional Consideration. If we are thinking about Microsoft Dynamics ERP products – Navision and Axapta should be considered as very good candidate for localized products for new and emerging markets: Brazil, LATAM (Latin America), China, India. Microsoft Dynamics GP/Great Plains is good candidate for English speaking countries and French Canada/Quebec/Montreal.

• Brazilian Localization specifics. In our opinion, if you are mid-size branch in Brazil, you should consider SAP Business One as a hub ERP application to be consolidated to your European (mySAP) or USA headquarters (Microsoft Dynamics GP)

• LATAM Consideration. Great Plains Software, later on purchased by Microsoft and renamed into Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions, has very long and successful presence in Latin America

• Europa. Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0 will be available in UK, however French, Belgium, German, Dutch versions will be translated in the second half of 2006. Version 9.0 of Microsoft Dynamics GP will be probably the last one available for non-English speaking countries in Europe

• eConnect. If we are diving into technical depth of Microsoft Great Plains – this is where you should be investing into your developers training and certification. Even Great Plains Integration Manager will be rewritten in eConnect technologies. Plus you should be aware about eConnect domination in Ecommerce area for Microsoft Dynamics GP

• Oracle Financials/E-Business Suite. I our opinion Oracle Applications should be competing freely with Microsoft and SAP ERP products. If you are large corporation – you should consider Oracle Financials and SAP R/3 as rich-functionality ERP prior to jumping to budget solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics Nav, or SAP Business One.

• C#/VB.Net consideration. In our opinion – if you consider Microsoft Dynamics GP development – Microsoft Dexterity – with Dexterity Source Code programming option is the best choice, however Microsoft will expose more programming options to C# and Visual Basic developers through XML web services. This should be considered as replacement to VBA/GP modifier development

Author is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies (http://www.albaspectrum.com, http://www.greatplains.com.mx, and http://www.enterlogix.com.br) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

Please do not hesitate to call or email us USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, Brazil: +55-11-3444 4949, help@albaspectrum.com

We are serving USA/Canada Nationwide: Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Miami, Seattle, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia

The Truth About Antivirus Software

Writen by M. Allen

The companies that make anti-virus programs have bold statements trumpeting the accomplishments of their software in the battle against computer viruses and spyware. They speak of up-to-date definitions and thorough scanning of the computer, and they are correct in that the anti-virus programs of today are leaps and bounds ahead of what was available just a couple years ago. A word of warning though, don't take a deep breath and rest easy because you have an anti-virus program running on your computer.

The general way that almost every anti-virus program works is that it must be updated regularly to download the definitions of the newest viruses and spyware. The problem in the system lies in that once a user has gotten the notice or reminded himself to update his anti-virus program, the virus writers have moved on towards, and in some cases already have been, releasing newer versions of their viruses that are not in the updated definitions log yet. This problem is compounded by the fact that many anti-virus software companies do not have the resources to release new patches and fixes as quickly as they are needed by their users, which results in users often already being infected by the time the new update is available.

Even when their computer has become infected, many users feel safe in that they have an anti-virus program that can now do a scan of their system and isolate and delete a virus related program it finds, restoring their computer to its pre-infection glory. The sad fact is that many times this is not the case. Many viruses today mutate themselves so completely once they have infected a computer that it is difficult for the bulk of anti-virus programs to remove them. Often times, the anti-virus software is unable to remove the hidden or mutated virus files without further damaging the computer itself.

Don't think of this information as insinuating that anti-virus programs are ineffective in the battle against computer viruses and spyware. Be aware of the problems and limitations that anti-virus software has in protecting your computer. As of right now, the best defense against computer viruses may be the knowledge that there is no perfect defense. Attention to computer performance (both speed and error messages) will always rank high on the list of things one can do to protect their computer.

Mark Allen provides the knowledge you need to protect yourself from a computer virus, spyware, and Internet scams at: http://www.SaferEmails.com