NEW FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1335

2 | November 16th, 2011 | Posted in Release Notes

NEW FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1335

Here is a list of NEW features and changes in FASTbook

  • Reworked balanced due/refund due logic in invoice. (7/2011)
  • Fixed charge checkboxes in edit charge/tax/discount screen.
  • Added global filters
  • Updated all printer subroutines, assuring support for windows 7 and 64bit machines. This should fix sporadic reporting issues sometimes associated with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 systems.
  • Added NEW Avails & Bookings calendar report. This new report can show either bookings or avails on a landscape or portrait calendar. It can also print out multiple months at the same time.
  • Removed “New Style” monthly calendar report. This report was made obselete by the new Avails & Bookings calendar report.
  • Fixed preview screen for calendar reports, should correctly be ablle to be emailed now and added a Print to PDF button.
  • Fixed PDF creation routines for all reports.

For more information on this release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

Printers!!

0 | August 16th, 2011 | Posted in Informative

Give me a moment to rant, won’t you?

Printers, can I tell you how much I despise printers and all the headaches they create for me? Not only do printers affect my professional life, but they seem to make my personal life much more complex than a typewriter with an ego should.

It seems that every time the folks at Windows decide I need to update some feature on my computer that I never knew existed or don’t use in the first place, my printer stops working. I didn’t unplug anything or delete anything or change any settings on my system except for FINALLY updating after the hundredth time of seeing the dumb reminder to update. I think I purposely leave my computer on, just so I won’t see that pop-up every time I just want to do a little online shopping or make a funny tweet about something my cat did. Don’t mock, my cat is hilarious. Anyway, it drives me crazy, especially since I print something maybe once a quarter. So when I attempt to print my boarding pass for the one trip a year I get to take, an hour later, some tears and some very violent threats to my printer, computer and the ridiculous people who invented such unnecessary “tools” to make my life “easier”, before I ever get to see the dreaded “Group C” on my boarding pass. I should have just saved the headache and checked in at the airport anyway.

Professionally, printers have it out for me as well. Reports in FASTbook use whatever your default printer on your system to generate the print preview and whatever is generated in the print preview is what is spit out on the actual print. Well, guess what, almost EVERY TIME Windows makes an update, your print drivers and print spoolers are changed as well, which means FASTbook now has issues printing reports. This typically requires all print drivers being removed from the computer, a PDF Printer installed (we always recommend BullZip, it’s free, easy and seems to work well www.bullzip.com), then trying to generate reports with the PDF printer as the default. Once we have tricked Windows into working with the PDF printer, you should be able to install your printer’s updated print drivers and make your printer the default.

It is a lot of headache for something that seems so easy and trivial, but as it turns out is the nature of the beast.

NEW FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1327

0 | June 15th, 2011 | Posted in Release Notes

Here is a list of NEW features and changes in FASTbook

  • Fixed some old links in the Help menu.
  • Added Social Media information for Event Software in Help menu. This should make being part of the FASTbook community much easier.
  • Renamed ‘FASTbook Direct’ to ‘FASTbook Community’ in the Help menu.
  • Added links for our Facebook page into the Help > About screen.
  • The ‘What’s New in the Community’ screen will now display when you log into FASTbook. This will inform of you any changes or additions in the lastest update, new product releases, community conversations, etc. This screen includes:
    • Latest blog entries
    • Facebook posts
    • Twitter updates
    • Contact information for Event Software
  • Added an option in a new tab in Personal Settings to disable the ‘What’s New in the Community’ from displaying on start up.

For more information on this release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

Come find us at this year’s IAVM

0 | June 12th, 2011 | Posted in Informative

It’s that time again. The IAVM (International Association of Venue Managers, for those who don’t know) Annual Trade Show is coming and will be held in our neck of the woods. The IAVM will be held July 25-28 at Phoenix Convention Center. We will be at the Trade Show, in Booth 1308, showing some new products and FASTbook features and we would love for you to come by and say, “Hello.”

Event Software has been attending the IAVM (previously IAAM) Trade Show for at least the last 15 years. We find it’s a great way to converse with users and other people in the industry, get information about competing or complimenting products and hopefully attract new customers. Trade shows have been the place to impress and dazzle newcomers for years and we will try our best this year. In the past we have also attended the ACCED and ACUI shows and are considering going to them again. The internal question is always which tradeshows make the most sense to our industry and will our presence there make sense for the right type of people. Which trade shows do all of you attend? Why are you attending them? Is there a particular trade show you’d recommend for us to attend?

We are really ramping up to put on a good show this year. As this is the only annual conference we currently attend, we want to make sure it is memorable and we put our best face forward. In the past we have gotten to meet a lot of you face to face and that experience has always helped us make a better relationship with our customers and make a more valuable product for you.

Hope to see some of you there.

FBMobile is out of beta. FASTbook calendar comes to your mobile device.

0 | June 3rd, 2011 | Posted in Informative

FASTbook is now mobile. With FBMobile, you can book your events anywhere, anytime. FBMobile works on virtually any web-enabled phone, tablet, or other device with a web browser to look up your events calendar and book directly from your phone. Search by event name or by specific dates. View event information including Event Name, Number, Room Names, Start Times and Show Times. Pull up Room Availability lists to find the perfect time and place for your event. Book events or see your calendar from the convention hall, the arena floor, main stage or your client’s office.

 

mfbo3

 

FBMobile Features

  • Connect to your LIVE FASTbook Calendar from virtually any web-enabled device
  • Search by Date or Event Name
  • Pull Available Room Listing for specific dates and times
  • View Event Information
  • SUPEVISOR control of displayed information
  • Request holds on space for new bookings

Purchase for $749.00 (includes support and updates for one full year)

Contact sales@eventsoft.com for more information.

NEW FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1326

0 | May 31st, 2011 | Posted in Release Notes

FASTbook Release Notes – Version 5.5.19.1326

Here is a list of NEW features in FASTbook

  • Moved email field in contact screen so it was just after the phone number and not at the end of the grid. Also, resized the Client screen in setup.
  • Resized Facility Information screen.
  • Corrected an issue in FASTbook where FASTbook was not always using the correct database password when the password had been changed from the default.
  • Corrected an issue in invoicing where “Refund Due” was not always showing on the invoice when a refund was due.
  • Added a button for PDF print out next to the print button on the print preview screen.
  • Fixed an issue in Event Detail where a record locked message might appear when deleting ticklers.

For more information on the release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

New FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1323

0 | April 8th, 2011 | Posted in Release Notes

FASTbook Release Notes – Version 5.5.19.1323

Here is a list of NEW features in FASTbook

  • Updated the error reporting components. This should help trap more information about obscure errors that may occur in the program. It also provides a mechanism to send those reports to us, and to automatically enter them in a databse for us to use to permanently solve them. (1321)
  • Fixed an issue on the calendar where users would sometimes get an ‘invalid argument to date encode’ message when navigating on the last few days of the month.
  • Added report in Labor setup that would print out a list of all labor positions that have been entered.

labor

 

  • Added report on payment screen that will produce a payment history of the current event.

 

paymenthist

  • Added a feature to swap two rooms. This feature is to be used by advanced persons, as it skips double book checking. The purpose of this is to shuffle events around in a facility where a certain room is trying to be made available.

swap

  • Fixed a spelling error in the Employee Schedule report.

For more information on the release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

New FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.19.1320

0 | February 17th, 2011 | Posted in Release Notes

FASTbook Release Notes – Version 5.5.19.1320

Here is a list of NEW features in FASTbook

  • Added account code fields in both Client Category, and Event Type. These together with the existing account code fields should help to assist in organizing FASTbook resources to point toward the correct accounts.
  • Added the ability to disable the text portion of the facility name on the invoice. This allows for a greater area to allot for logo images. Also, a user can now specify a different image to use on the invoice printouts.
    If the following information is placed in a text file named “override.ini” in the folder fbwin50\custom\reports\, both the facility name (hideCenterName) and the mailing address (hideMailingAddress) can be disabled. A “1″ indicates a true value while a “0″ indicates a false. So to hide the Mailing Address one would include “hideMailingAddress=1″ in the file. The useLogo option allows the user to specify a different image file to be used on the invoice header.
    Example of override.ini file:

[Invoice]
hideCenterName=1
hideMailingAddress=1
useLogo=

  • Changed some database field subtypes to a more correct category then they previously were. This change should be transparent to the end user and is only noticed in the database backend.

For more information on the release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

New FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.18.1318

0 | December 17th, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized

FASTbook Release Notes – Version 5.5.18.1318
Here is a list of NEW features in FASTbook

  • Since we added the Automatic Update feature to FASTbook, we realized that the update reminder could be quite bothersome. We have now added the ability to disable the prompt for new version, which can be found in Settings > Personal Preferences. Uncheck the box if you no longer wish to see update notifications.

version

  • Many users have commented that the Auto Update Reminder unnecessarily prompted the users that a newer version was available. Now, new version prompting now only happens once per version.
  • In the new Auto Update Reminder, you have a link that you can click on to see the full release notes. This is to help aid your decision to update when previously FASTbook versions only provided the release notes at completion of the update process.
  • While the way that attachments were compressed into the FASTbook database was changed, there was sometimes an error that the “Zipped” file types could not be opened once they were attached and automatically zipped, this issue has been resolved.
  • The Event Information Report previously would show charge and rate labels, even if the option was chosen to not show Financial Information, this issue has been resolved.

For more information on the release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.

New FASTbook Update – Version 5.5.18.1313

1 | November 8th, 2010 | Posted in Release Notes

FASTbook Release Notes – Version 5.5.18.1313
Here is a list of NEW features in FASTbook

  • Mouse wheel now scrolls through the calendar in months, instead of years! Asking around the user base, we discovered virtually no one was using the mousewheel feature due to the fact that it scrolled between years instead of months. Well your requests have been answered. Scrolling the mousewheel on the main calendar will now move you forward and backward one month at a time, rather than one year at a tiime.
  • Employee Schedule Report is now available. A new report detailing the schedule for any given employee has been added to FASTbook. This is accessible from both the reports area and the employee’s setup screen. The report shows by date which event the employee is scheduled, what room its in and what position they are filling. This should make viewing scheduled labor a lot easier than it has been in the past.

fb1

  • Replaced “T” and “F” fields in Setup with Check Boxes – previously we used “T” and “F” as marks to designated True or False on various setup fields. The “T” and “F” semmed vague and we felt check boxes would better illustrate enabling or disabling various options. (see image below)

fb2

  • File Attachments have been changed to compressed (ZIP) format internally in the database. When attaching large contracts, documents and correspondence to the Attachments Tab in Event Detail, the size of the attached files would significantly grow the size of the FASTbook Database, so much so that when 3-10 years of attachments were in the database, the program speed could start to be effected. By saving the file to the database in a compressed (ZIP) form, this drastically reduces the database size.

    HIGHLY RECOMMENDED -Run the DataUtils.exe (see below) after you do the update. Compressing the attachments inflates file size until this is run. After the compact you’ll see a significantly smaller database size.

  • Removed “New Version of FASTbook Available” pop-up notifications with a less intrusive “Floating Alert” in the lower right screen of FASTbook. Previously the message box style pop became vary intrusive when an update could not be made immediately. With the new style, the reminder will be far less comandeering until you are able to complete the update.

fb3

  • Added a quick calendar print from the calendar screen, right-click menu – There has never been a quick way to print a monthly calendar, now, instead of going into Reports, Selecting Calendar Reports, setting the dates, etc., you can just right mouse-click on the calendar and print the current month. This is not the same report, but a snapshot of what you are seeing on the screen meant only for quick reference.
  • Added warning message in FASTbooking to notify the user that all events did NOT book, in addition to the Booking Log. In the past, if users did not take the time to read every line of the Booking Log they may not have noticed that some items were unbookable. Now, when a conflict is found, user’s will definitely be aware.
  • Added ability to integrate Data Export Module. If you are currently using external signage, iCalendar Files, CSV files or trying to gather important FASTbook data for other programs, data mining or any type of exporting, FASTbook now has a new Add-On Module that will let you easily export any type of information into virtually type of file.
  • Fixed a minor bug in Setup with Contact Notes. When adding Notes to Client Contacts in setup, an invalid key error would pop-up, this has now been resolved.
  • Streamlined some of the functions of the new notes editing section. Removed some save popup dialogs in favor of the behind the scenes saving that it used to do. Added some other functions to restore more of the older functionality.
  • Redesigned the datasend program and added new functionality. DataUtils.
    • DataUtils (formerly datasend.exe) now operates both in FASTbook and externally.
    • When run on its own outside of FASTbook, it has an added feature to compact and reindex the database. Users must all be out for this to happen.
    • DataUtils will automate the following for you:
      2. Backup the chosen database to the Firebird data backup format (.fbk)
      3. Create a small text file with the facility name and when the backup was created and some miscellaneous information.
      4. Compress that backup file and the text file using zip compression.
      5. Send the file to Event Software FTP server so technical support can analyze it.

datautils

 

For more information on the release or to schedule an update, please call us at (480) 517-9990 or email our technical support at support@eventsoft.com.