Selectively Print From A Notes Field

Like any programmer I'm always learning new tricks. I learned one yesterday that will change the way a lot of you use ZonePro. I've figured out a way to make it easy to selectively print any section of a Notes field on a document or a report. As you know the Notes fields in ZonePro allow you to enter in an unlimited amount of information. The problem has been that when it comes to printing a Notes field it has always been an all or nothing proposition. This new approach takes advantage of a string extraction function that I had never played with before. This function makes it easy to print just a selected section of a much larger Notes field. Further, you can have as many of these designated sections as you like. That's like having the ability to add unlimited new fields to any database. This is a big deal! I've posted an example of how to use this ability in the Tips and Tricks page. I hope to post a training video on the topic soon.

Sliding Expire Date Tutorial

A few months back I wrote about a script to assist in maintaining sliding Expire Dates. These are Expire Dates for Building permits that change in relation to inspection dates. Since that initial post we have explored this issue quite a bit, which has led to several more scripts. All of this information has been collected together in a tutorial and posted on our Tutorial page. This tutorial is a must for any customer interested in tracking sliding Expire Dates but it also serves as a good primer to the way you can use scripts to accomplish things in ZonePro. As a side note, I have converted all the tutorials on our web site to PDF files. This makes them easy to view directly from the web site.

A Script To Add Photos To Contractor Screen

Recently a customer asked if the Photo Module could be used to attach image files to Contractor records. You can't. But I did devise a script that adds some of the same functionality. This script lets you use the Script Button to launch Windows Explorer showing you the contents of a folder that is assigned to the current contractor. You can fill that folder with photos, scanned images, Word documents, etc., and have easy access to these files from ZonePro. It's a neat trick that can be used in other screens as well. You try this script by copying it from the "User Script Examples From Customers" download on the Scripts page of our web site.

Custom Privilege License Program Posted

In response to a customer request I just posted a demo version of a custom Privilege License module on our web site. This application was written a few years ago, but we did not have a version posted for downloading until now. This is the same Privilege License program that is explained in the Walk Through section of our Custom Apps web page.

Duplicate Address Script Using SQL

Today I learned a fancy way to use SQL to search for duplicate data in a database. I wanted an example of this technique on our web page so I could reference it easily if I ever need it in the future. The example I created is a script that tags duplicate property address records in ZonePro. You can find this script on our Scripts page. As a general rule you don't want to have duplicate addresses in ZonePro so this script may prove handy for those looking to clean up their property databases.