Field Swapper Work Around

I just discovered that ther is a bug in the Field Swapper tool that prevents my suggestion from a few days earlier from working. Arrgggh! Never fear...you can still copy the Enter Date field to the Violation Date field for existing records by following these steps: 1) Go the the Extra Tab on the Main Screen and click on ZP Toolbox; 2) Click on Select Database and select "violate.dbf" as the database; 3) Click on the orange safe icon to make a copy of violate.dbf in the Safekeeper folder; 4) Click on the Run Script button; 5) In the script scroll box type "REPLACE CERT_DATE WITH ENT_DATE ALL"; 6) Click on the Execute button. That's it. Now that field will be filled in all existing violation records. By the by, I have fixed the bug in ZP Toolbox version 2.59.

New Script For Multiple Violation Reporting

One of our customers recently had an interesting request. They wanted to run a year end report that only included properties where more than one violation had occurred in 2006. Such a report requires two passes over the violation database. One to get a count of all the violations that occurred at each property in 2006 and a second to pull just those that had more than one. We created a Database Browser script to do the first pass. The script scans through the violation database and returns a count for each property of how many violations are entered for any given date range. The count is stored in a user field in the property database. Once this is done it is easy to run a report from the Violations Report screen and use the Advance Filter option to key in on the property field that holds the count. You can report on every property that has more than one violation, more than two, etc. The script is posted in the new Script page of our web site. The script can be used with any application database and any date range.

Web Page Housekeeping

We've changed a number of things around on our customer support web page. We've added a new page for Scripts (which used to be part of the Download page). We've moved the colleciton of past newsletters from the Download page to the Tutorial page. Off of the Tutorial page we've updated and revised the link about learning to use formulas. We've also completely revised the list of ZonePro shortcuts which is another link from the Tutorial page. The shortcut page is now current and complete (to the best of my knowledge). The number of shortcuts has easily doubled from the last time we updated that list. The shortcut list is a good one to revisit from time to time because they are easy to forget and point out features that you may not know existed. I had forgotten about several of them myself!

Field Swapper & the new Violation Date field

Field Swapper is one of the utilities included in the ZP Toolbox module that rarely gets a chance to shine. It's a tool that is most handy when new fields are added to ZonePro and you want to move information from an existing field into the new field. Such may be the case with the new Violation Date field in the Violation database. The idea is that the Violation Date is the date a complaint was verified and officially became a violation. In the Violation Report Screen there is a new filter that lets you select only blank Violation Dates to show all of the records that are still only complaints. The problem is that for existing violation records the Violation Date field will always be blank because it was just added. You can solve this problem by filling in the Violation Date field for all of your existing violations, but that sounds like a lot work. With Field Swapper, however, it's a piece of cake. To use the Field Swapper, choose "Copy" as the desired action, select the "Violation" database, then select "ent_date" as the Starting field, and "cert_date" as the Ending Field. When you next click on the "Execute" button the Enter Date will be copied into the Violation Date field for every existing Violation record. Now all of your existing violation records are marked as verified and you can begin using the new reporting options from this point forward.

New ZonePro Release

A new ZonePro release is here. Customers will be receiving their newsletters explaining the new features in the next week. Highlights for the new release include:
- Two new date fields for the Violation database, two new filters for the Violation Reports screen, and a new option for accommodating multiple violations in one record.
- In the Photo Module you can now link pictures to all of the application databases and a new Browse option has been added to the Image Viewer screen.
- Pie Charts have been added to the Activity Report, Item Count Report and the Cross Tab Report.

Ten Years in 2007

This year marks the 10th anniversary of ZP Systems, Inc. Technically not until March, but hey. I want to thank all of the customers who made this achievement possible. We look forward to serving you well into the future.