July 2003 Edition
New Feature Spotlight: Using AppleScripts
Q&A with Technical Support: Query User Charges
Smart Tip of the Month: Printing to PDF
Third Party Software: Crystal Enterprise
Support Bookshelf: Operational Excellence
New Feature Spotlight
Using AppleScripts
AppleScript gives Macintosh users a way to automate many of their Virtual Ticket tasks. The Virtual Ticket AppleScript reference guide is available from the Customer Resource Center and provides a listing of supported commands. Using these AppleScripts users can execute functions to perform tasks in Virtual Ticket, retrieve information, run SQL commands from the server, update job tickets and much more.
This month we will feature an AppleScript to retrieve job information about a file (Digital Resource) in Virtual Ticket. In the example, users can drag and drop files from their file system to the AppleScript droplet (available below) and quickly retrieve information pertaining to which job(s) the file is referenced to in the database. This method illustrates how AppleScripts can be used and save time by looking up job reference information from the database.
To try this droplet, visit:
http://www.meta-comm.com/support/knowledge_base/article.asp?id=16140
Q&A with Technical Support
Can a report be made to show only the job charges applied by the currently logged in user?
In some environments, it may be desirable to restrict what users can access when executing a Job Charges report, such as limiting a user to viewing only the charges they have entered into the Job Manager database. Job Manager users with Package 104 and higher can use the custom query available in Knowledge Base article 16132 to accomplish this.
Knowledge Base article 16132 is available at:
http://www.meta-comm.com/support/knowledge_base/article.asp?id=16132
Smart Tip of the Month
Printing to PDF
PDF has become a universal format in business and creating PDFs is now a necessity for most companies. If you have the proper tools, printing to PDF is a very easy process. Utilizing tools such as JawsPDF Creator, Adobe Acrobat Distiller, or Acrobat PDFWriter, PDFs can be generated directly from Job Manager and Virtual Ticket, as well as other applications. Print items such as: work order acknowledgements and other forms in Virtual Ticket, invoices from Job Manager, and search results from Job Manager and Virtual Ticket. Once the PDF is created, simply attach it to an email and send and in fact, JawsPDF can be configured to automatically perform the email attachment. Attaching a PDF to email saves time and money required for postage plus it provides the opportunity for quick feedback from customers and project collaborators.
If you have Acrobat PDFWriter installed on your Macintosh, simply press the control key while choosing Print from the File menu of Virtual Ticket. This will select the PDFWriter driver for printing. You may also print to PDF by choosing the PDFWriter or JawsPDF Creator printer in the Print Dialog window. PC users can print to PDF by choosing the Acrobat Distiller or JawsPDF printer drivers in the Print Dialog window. You will be prompted to name your file and the location for saving the PDF. PostScript files can also be processed by Acrobat Distiller and JawsPDF Creator (on Macintosh and Windows) to create PDFs.
For more information about JawsPDF Creator, visit: http://www.jawspdf.com
For more information about Acrobat Distiller, visit: http://www.adobe.com
Third Party Software
Crystal Enterprise
Need a way to publish reports to the Internet? Provide your users with useful information directly from your Job Manager/Virtual Ticket database with the Crystal Enterprise component of Crystal Reports. Crystal Enterprise provides an ideal outlet for publishing your previously created Crystal Reports to the Internet, which allows your users to access reports at their discretion in a secure format. With Crystal Enterprise, you can choose which reports are published to the web, determine how reports are grouped together for viewing, who can access these reports, and set when the data in the reports should be refreshed. In Virtual Ticket 5.5, it will be possible to use the OpenURI MetaScript function to open a web browser (from a Virtual Ticket form) directly to the page where you access Crystal Enterprise, making the connection between the two seamless.
For more information about Crystal Enterprise, visit: http://www.crystaldecisions.net.
Support Bookshelf
Building Operational Excellence: IT People and Process Best Practices. Bruce Allen, Dale Kutnick. 2001. Addison-Wesley Professional. This book provides insight into the practices of IT departments and the methodology required to successfully and efficiently manage these departments. The authors represent a consulting group and based this book on their experiences while building IT departments for companies such as Intel. This book is good for IT departments of several people to hundreds or for those looking to define the practices for their own department.
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