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September 2010 News Letter

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SPOT Newsletter September 2010 In the News 2010 SPOT User Conference It is hard to believe that the 2010 SPOT User Conference is just around the corner. This year’s event is being held at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah. Attendees will be treated to the beautiful fall colors found in Utah’s mountains along with meeting, learning and socializing with many of the country’s best operators. Come meet the SBS staff, relax, learn and enjoy the Utah Mountains. For more information and reservations download the Registration Forms and view the Preliminary Agenda. If you have any questions about the 2010 SPOT User Conference please contact Mark Jones at 801-208-2231 or [email protected]. Microsoft Announces End-of-Support for Windows 2000 Server and Workstation Please review Microsoft’s statement announcing that as of July 13, 2010 Windows 2000 will no longer be supported. http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1131#tab8. This announcement may affect your operations. SBS and Microsoft suggests your company explore and implement a migration plan for moving these workstations and servers to a current Operating System such as Windows 7, Server 2003 or server 2008 R2. SPOT Compatibility of Windows 2000 and SQL 2000 in Future Builds Our next major release of SPOT slated for release in late September will include new development components that will enhance our development options. This change may affect your operation of SPOT. Please read the following notes. Hosted Customers: If you are running SPOT in our SBS hosted environment you will not be affected with the operation of SPOT as the application is running our servers in the server farm. You may continue to run Windows 2000 at your workstations for now. It is suggested you explore a migration plan from any Windows 2000 workstation, as Microsoft will no longer supply Windows updates. Stand Alone / Self Hosted Customers: These changes will cause post September 2010 builds of SPOT to be incompatible with Windows 2000 and SQL 2000. This incompatibility means you will no longer be able to operate SPOT in the Windows 2000 / SQL 2000 environment. Builds prior to 6.00.0018 will be compatible with Windows and SQL 2000, anything beyond build 6.00.0018 will be incompatible with Windows and SQL 2000 and will not run. Microsoft and SBS suggest that you implement a migration plan for any Windows 2000 workstation/servers and SQL 2000 databases currently in use in your SPOT environment. Microsoft no longer supports the Windows 2000 operating system and will no longer supply Windows updates for the OS. New Features Coming Soon New features available in our next release include GPS device integration, Google Maps integration, updates to email processing, SPOT licensing updates, Marketing report optimization, new reports and many other items. Announcements 2 new users have joined the “SPOT User Forum” in July. join >> Spot Version 6.0013 is released and available for installation. view >> Learn, Share, Discover Version 6.0 Release Notes view >> Summary of New Features view >> SPOT Documentation more >> Media Guide view >> Join the SPOT User Forum join >> Feedback on Newsletter submit >> Tips and Tricks Can’t find a Customer by name or phone number? Try using the “Address” or “Email Address” search options to find a customer. I brought in a “Red Dress”! If you have a customer insisting they brought in a red dress with the sweater you have already cleaned you have a couple options to quickly verify what was dropped off with the sweater. You can use the “View Visit History” or “Reprint Visit” options. With these options you will see what orders and items had been dropped off with the known items or orders. If the item is not found with either of these options use the “Garment Search” and search for the item using a date range to include the suspected drop off date. Do You Have a Tip or Trick? If you have a Tip or Trick you would like to share please email [email protected]. Office: 801-495-1200 | Sales: 801-208-2212 | Support: website or 801-208-2210 www.SPOTpos.com Feature SPOTlight Customer Search Functionality Have you ever searched for a customer using the customer’s name or phone number and can’t find them. You can search for a customer by using Name, Phone, last 4 digits of Phone, Invoice Number, Customer ID, ItemTrac ID (HSL or temporary), Extended Lookup, Address and Email Address? The address field will allow you to search on any content found in a saved address. For example if you are searching for the address of “12345 South 300 East”, you may use the address option and type 1234, south, 300, East or even 300 East and find the address. If you are looking for email you are able to search for content starting with the left most characters of the email address. An example email address of [email protected] can be search with my, myname or even myname@myc. At the store level you have the option to enable or disable any of our 10 search options. You may navigate to Setup > Store Settings > Search/Lookup Settings > Customer Lookup Types and enable or disable search types. Only enabled search types are displayed on the search screen Forward SPOT Messaging to Your External Email Address Have you ever received a SPOT message and not been logged into SPOT to read it? We have the solution to this problem. You have the option to forward any SPOT message to your external email address. This feature requires that you have basic email configured and operational in your installation. Once you have basic email configured you will update the Users “Email Address” found in Setup > User, Groups, Rights > User Email. Along with creating the user email address you will need to enable each user that require emails to be forwarded to this email address. You will enable email forwarding by user by navigating to Setup > Company Settings> Email Settings > External Email User List. From this list you will select and enable those users that will have SPOT messaged forwarded to the defined user email address. Home Screen Summary Tab For quick access to sales reports use the “Summary Tab” found on the Home Page. You have access to all stores sales, labor and other miscellaneous information. You have the option to select a date range and stores to be included in the displayed data. FAQ From Support Upcoming Events Keep SBS Updated with Current Contact Information If you have changed an email address or any other contact information please forward any details of the change to [email protected]. We will update our records to make sure we keep you informed. Dryclean and Laundry Expo 9-25-10 Verify Your SPOT Data Base Backups We have had a rash of customers calling with failing hardware. Most of the hardware issues are on hardware that is 5+ years old. Several of these hardware failures at standalone customers have caused data loss. Without a backup you cannot recover data when a hard disk fails. SPOT supports backing up to the local disk, other workstations disk or removable disks. Please verify that your system has a proper backup by following the steps below.  Verify you have the proper .bak files written to your local server’s hard disk or other device specified in your backup process. Verify that the file size and time stamps of www.SPOTpos.com these files are current as of the last backup processed.  Verify that your scheduled task controlling the backup job is running with no errors.  Enable SPOT “Backup Warning” reminder on workstations. This will warn the SPOT user of a failed backup every time they return to the home screen. (See the Administration Guide for more details on enabling this feature)  Verify that your clerk’s are not by passing the “Backup Warning” screen at startup. If you are a SPOT user running our software locally please take the time to verify your current backups are occurring. When you need the backup it is a bad time to find out you don’t have a restorable backup. SPOT Users Conference The 2010 SPOT Users Conference will be held th nd Sept 30 to Oct 2 at Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah. Come Join the SPOT team and your peers for 2 days of learning, fun and great food. The conference will sell out so reserve your seat today! For more information and reservations download the Registration Forms and view the Preliminary Agenda . Office: 801-495-1200 | Sales: 801-208-2212 | Support: website or 801-208-2210 www.SPOTpos.com