AbodeHMS News

I’ve released version 0.12.3 tonight.  This upgrade includes the following:

  *  ability to edit forwarding addresses (including forwarding type, ie. summer, home, school-year) on the resident history screen (that were previously entered on the checkout screen)

  *  new button to copy the home address for the forwarding address (saves typing for forwarding address entry)

  *  pull down instead of radio buttons for entering “forwarding type”

  *  country field now optional when checking out

  * new “forwarding labels” report.  Select a student and this report will print a page of forwarding labels based on the most recent forwarding address for that student.  (NOTE:  This report will not work for students that do not have any checkouts/forwarding addresses.)

The forwarding type determines which address the updated address will go into on the campus records database.  I’ve been told that for end of spring quarter checkouts this should always be “Summer”.  I’ve gone back and edited any previously entered checkouts since May 1, 2007 to be “Summer”.  Please make any future checkouts (before autumn quarter) have forwarding type “summer” (this is now the default).

Enjoy!  Let me know if you have any questions!

Rudy

 

Greetings,

I’ve been a little lax in keeping up to date with this blog.  We’ve had a couple releases this quarter–mostly to correct some minor problems in various reports.  Our most serious reporting problem was detected last week.  The summary report incorrectly reported the number of absecenses and worships missed for students who had been moved from one room to another during the quarter.  This problem has been corrected in the version released today.

 Best wishes!

 –Rudy

 

Greetings,

I’m pleased to announce that last Monday’s new update went smoothly.  We did introduce some problems, but I think we got those all smoothed out last week (you may have noticed a flurry of updates :-).  Sadly, I got a flu about the same time we were working out these updates so I apologize for any difficulties you may have had reaching me.  Luckily I’m feeling much better!
Version 0.12 brings some new features including:

*  The new “HISTORY” tab on the student screen.  This is a very handy tab because it provides a complete room assignment, check-in, and check-out history for each student.  And what’s better?  It’s EDITABLE!  This means if you accidently key in the wrong check in/out, or assignment date for a student, you can just edit it on this tab.  WARNING:  Be careful because making edits on this tab will CREATE/DESTROY check history data.  That is to say, if you move a check-in date earlier–”no contacts” will be created for the newly included days.  If you move it later, any check history on the days that are no longer part of the student’s check-in history will be lost (if you change it back, they will NOT come back).  So keep this in mind when making changes on the new page.

* NEW semi-automated magic “roommate finder”.  The long awaited roommate and room assignment tools are now available.  We are still tweaking these and they require a little training to understand, and I know most of your assignments are already done for fall quarter, so this will probably be a tool for next year–but let me know if you’d like a tour of the new system.

* NEW export information.  When you check out a student Abode will now ask for the “Type” of forwarding address you are providing.  This can be “Home”, “School Year” or “Seasonal”, the appropriate address in Insight will be updated–giving you more flexiblity for student checkouts.  You can also now include a country, and home and cell phone numbers for forwarding purposes.

As always, please contact me with any problems or questions!

Thanks!

–Rudy

Just a remainder that AbodeHMS will be down for updates today beginning at 10:00 am.  Thanks for your patience.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks!

–Rudy

I am pleased to announce that we completed the move of the Abode database to it’s new (dedicated) server at 10:30 am (over 4 hours ahead of schedule!).  So Abode was only down for about a half-hour labor day morning.  The new server will allow us to get your updates more quickly and will also provide better security.

The next Abode upgrade is scheduled for next Monday, September 11.  Abode is scheduled to be down again from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm (although we hope to be back up and running more quickly).  This update will provide several new features including the intelligent roommate finder.

Please contact me with any questions.

Thanks!

We are scheduled to move to our new server on Monday, Sept. 4th.  Due to move, Abode will be unavailable between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. (or sooner or everything goes smoothly).  If this date or time will pose a problem, please contact me and let me know and we will schedule another time.  Otherwise we will plan on making the transition on Monday.

The server where Abode is located had some troubles this weekend and as a result you may not be seeing no contacts from Friday, August 4 through today.  We are working to resolve this problem and should have it corrected later today.

The good news is that Abode will soon be getting it’s own server.  Yay!  When that happens (later this month), we shouldn’t have to worry so much about these types of problems as it will not be sharing resources with other programs.

Thanks for your patience!

Good news–the 0.11.2 update has been released.  This workstation upgrade corrects several minor problems in the workstation application including:

Changing colors on some screens to improve readability
Fixed a problem where “last night” was actually 2 nights ago on some report screens.
Fixed several problems with online leave requests (these are fully functional now!)
Fixed an error that prevented adding new users to the admin privileges
Improved data export for insight

We’ve also cleaned up some problems with data history including removing some “no contact” rows that had been added by mistake.

At this time, we plan to have one more major release 0.12 before releasing our final version 1.0 in the next few months. 0.12 will focus primarily on features for assigning new students to their rooms.
Please keep the bug reports coming in.  They have been very helpful in getting these final problems resolved.

I’ve been a little behind in updating this site recently, so I wanted to give you the latest news.

1)  Both dorms are now using the new door client software for entering checks.  This new version of the door client represents the changes that will be coming to the full management program soon and focus on performance improvements (no more long waits!).  Unfortunately the new door client cannot coexist on the same computer as the old management program so computers running the new (fast) door client cannot also run the older management program.

2)  But the good news is that the new management program (v0.11) is in final bug repair stages now and should be released shortly!

3)  The new version will include the ability to “check-out” students from the dorm.  Checked out student’s addresses will be updated automatically in the Insight database.

4)  Finally, we traveled to sunny California to demonstrate AbodeHMS to La Sierra University this Monday.   The La Sierra deans asked me to send their greetings back  to you here in Walla Walla.

After the version 0.11 release, we will turn our attention to version 0.12 which will include features for assigning students to the dorms next year including a “roommate finder”.

Thanks!

AbodeHMS will have a table at the Adventist Student Personnel Association conference at Union College in Lincoln, NE. We will be at the conference Thursday and Friday, March 2 and 3. Come by and say hello and help us spread the word to our sister colleges!