Support News

June 2003 Edition

New Feature Spotlight: Virtual Ticket Release Preview
Q&A with Technical Support: Attaching Digital Resources to Email
Smart Tip of the Month: Using MetaScript Loops and Indexes
Third Party Software: OpenLink Software ODBC Driver
Support Bookshelf: Guru’s Guide


New Feature Spotlight

Virtual Ticket Release Preview

MetaCommunications will be presenting a major release of Virtual Ticket, due this summer. This edition of the MetaCommunications Support News provides customers with a preview of the new features expected in this release.

Form Buttons

Virtual Ticket will have the ability to perform scripted actions with buttons. These buttons can be placed on any Virtual Ticket form to perform tasks using MetaScript. Write scripts to make your buttons print Virtual Ticket forms, open another Virtual Ticket browser window or open a URL in an Internet browser, plus many other actions.

Word Search Capabilities

Now users can set up Virtual Ticket finds similar to Internet search engine word searches. For example, suppose you want to search the text content of some PDFs to find all files which contain the words: report, annual, and earnings. In older versions of Virtual Ticket, a line would be needed for each search criteria value. Now, adding these words to a single search line in Virtual Ticket implies the AND operator and eliminates the need for multiple lines.

OpenURI

The MetaScript function OpenURI() will provide users with the capability to open other browser windows from within the Virtual Ticket browser and find windows. This includes opening other Virtual Ticket records in the desired Virtual Ticket form or jumping to an Internet location. Look for SmartTip examples to follow in an upcoming issue of the Support News.

Other features include:

  • Scheduling of time consuming operations in InterSync.
  • Multiple conditions in content control settings of InterSync.
  • Execute compiled AppleScripts from the database.
  • Retrieve Digital Resource file paths using MetaScript
  • New version of the MetaConsole
  • And, much more…

Customers with SAS (Software Assurance & Support) contract will receive this major upgrade free of charge. Customers without SAS should contact their sales representative for information on upgrading.


Q&A with Technical Support

Is there an easy method for attaching digital resources to email messages?

Searching for files to attach to an email is as simple as drag and drop. Macintosh users of Virtual Ticket can drag and drop files from any file collector to a message being composed in Microsoft Outlook. This eliminates the need for searching through the file system to find a file you need to send. This feature is coming soon to the Windows version of Virtual Ticket.


Smart Tip of the Month

Using MetaScript Loops and Indexes

Loops and indexes in MetaScript provide many speed and consistency advantages to your MetaScript. In situations where a script must be run many times, a loop is perfect. In the following example, the form has a series of fields called Popup_1 through Popup_40. These fields are populated with the value chosen from a dynamic popup, which appear next to the field. Instead of creating dynamic popups to go with each Popup_x field, the smart thing to do is to add a MetaScript Loop and create an index field which will allow you to specify the popup line you would like to modify.

Form.addEventListener("elementChanged", GetList);

function
GetList(aEvent)
{
if ("Popup_Item_Selector" == aEvent.targetName)
for ( i = 1; i < 41; i++)
    {
    var i = (Field( 'Index' ));
    var List = Field( 'Popup_Item_Selector' );
    SetField ("Popup_" + i, List);
    }
}

For more information visit:
http://www.meta-comm.com/support/knowledge_base/article.asp?id=16142


Third Party Software

OpenLink ODBC Driver

Looking for an ODBC driver to connect to your SQL database from Microsoft Excel X for Mac OS X? OpenLink Software’s Cross-Platform Universal Data Access Driver Suite has been recommend by several users who like to use Microsoft Excel X to retrieve data and report with Microsoft Query X. An evaluation version is available for those wishing to try it out. After the evaluation has ended, purchasing options are available through the OpenLink Software Sales department.

For more information visit:
http://www.openlinksw.com/


Support Bookshelf

Guru’s Guide

The Guru’s Guide to Transact-SQL. Ken Henderson. If you are looking for a SQL scripting book which contains a large number of examples for different situations, you will want to look at this book. The book provides more in-depth examples than Microsoft Books Online with the SQL examples using to the standard Microsoft sample database Northwind and Pubs.



Miss an issue of the MetaCommunications Support News? All back issues are available at:
http://www.meta-comm.com/support/support_news.htm.

Have an idea or topic you would like covered in the MetaCommunications Support News? Send your ideas, topics and comments to:
support@meta-comm.com

  Download this newsletter



THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE METACOMMUNICATIONS SUPPORT NEWS IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. METACOMMUNICATIONS DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL METACOMMUNICATIONS OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF METACOMMUNICATIONS OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGES. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES SO THE FOREGOING LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY.