Sortec Software Development has again enhanced its long term partnership with Rotherham company Complete Technical Services (CTS), the leading installer of ATMs to banks, retail chains and small businesses. By working in concert with CTS’s marketing and creative departments Sortec have taken over the on-going development of the website and have already helped improve the site’s visitor experience and visibility on major search engines, particularly Google.

By advising CTS about content, page layout and avenues for site promotion Sortec have ensured that the site is both concise and relevant to human visitors and palatable to search engines by using proven white hat methods.

At the same time Sortec Software Development have added secure access to Complete Technical Service’s client portals direct from the site for the convenience of CTS’s customers while performing a smooth migration to a new server.

Future developments will see further enhancements to the site to highlight the range of services from ATM installation and ATM refurbishment to CCTV and Air Conditioning that the company provides.

Sortec Software Development will continue to develop the website, customer portal and internal systems for Complete Technical Services providing technical expertise and dynamism demanded of it.

Ways in which Microsoft Word and Excel can be enhanced by utilising automation from Windows software have been addressed in previous articles. This article will cover some of the ways in which Outlook may also be enhanced. 

The simplest way of automating Outlook is to have a button on a company or contact page of a CRM application which, if clicked, will generate an Outlook email with the email address already filled in.
This can be taken further. When the button is clicked, instead of immediately creating an Outlook email, a form can be displayed which will allow the user to make certain choices.
If email templates have been created, these can be stored on the system and shown in a dropdown box so that the appropriate template can be selected.  
A list of files may also be stored on the system allowing one or more to be selected and added as attachments.
Once these selections have been made, a button can be clicked to create the email. An email will be generated automatically, based on the template selected, addressed to the company or contact previously chosen, with the selected files automatically attached.

This can be taken further still. Placeholders may be used to allow appropriate text to be inserted in the email when created.
For example, the title, forename and surname of the recipient may be required to personalise the email. If placeholder text such as @@Recipient@@  is placed in the appropriate place, when the email is generated, the application can find the title, forename, surname etc. of the recipient from the database and replace the placeholder text accordingly.

 The possibilities outlined above reduce the fairly lengthy process of writing an email and adding several attachments to a swift operation involving just a few clicks of the mouse.

Previously we have looked at ways in which Excel can be combined with Windows software to further enhance its functionality but it is not just Excel that can interact with a Windows database application; Microsoft Word can also be automated by Sortec applications to produce enormously powerful and useful solutions.

A given document can be created with certain key text phrases working as placeholders. When the document is opened from the application, the placeholder text is replaced by the appropriate text from the database. A simple example would be a standard letter which may need to be sent to a number of different recipients. The main text of the letter will be identical in all cases but the recipient’s name and address will be different in each case. The sender may also be different. By putting placeholders in the document it is possible to place the correct information in the correct place simply by selecting the appropriate recipient and sender from the application and letting the program fill the placeholders accordingly.

If a bookmark is created in the document, it is even possible to choose a certain image to appear at the place where the bookmark has been set. In the above example, user signatures could be stored in the database as images. When the sender has been selected, the correct signature image for the sender can be drawn from the database and appear beneath the typed name of the sender.

All that would be required of the user in this example would be to select the document to create from a stored list, pick the recipient and sender from further lists and then click a button to create the document. This way many letters can be produced for minimal effort.

Quite often, when a new application has been written for a company, Sortec are asked if it is possible to quickly enter large amounts of data into the database with which the application works. CRM systems, for example, usually need a large amount of data to be entered, with hundreds of company and contact records requiring entry.  Clearly it would be a time-consuming and costly process to have these records entered manually by staff. Fortunately, there is a better way.

An Excel spreadsheet can be saved as a CSV file which stores its information in such a manner that a program can be written to transfer the information into the appropriate locations in the database. The only constraint is the column order – a format must be agreed to which any spreadsheet to be imported must adhere.

The import program will allow the user to browse to the CSV file which is to be imported. A button can then be clicked to begin the import process. The data is first scanned to ensure that each column contains data appropriate to the database location to which it will be sent. If any problems are detected, the import routine is not run; instead, any problems detected are displayed in a grid, showing the row on which the problem was located, the column which caused the problem and a short note describing the nature of the problem. The spreadsheet should then be amended accordingly. Once this has been done, another attempt can be made to import the file.

Once the file contains no errors, the data will be imported into the appropriate database locations.

Further information can be imported via other spreadsheets in the same format as required.

It is also possible to write an export function which will create a CSV file in the format that has been agreed. This will allow records to be exported to Excel, manipulated and then imported back into the database with the updated values.

The benefit of having such a function in an application is clear. Some of our clients have imported thousands of records in just a few minutes, as opposed to the many hours of staff time which would have been be taken up by manual entry of the records.

Previous posts concerning Microsoft Office have limited themselves to considering the suite in isolation. Though the power and functionality of Office is immense, this is by no means the limit of its potential.

At Sortec we have a number of clients who take advantage of the ability that our applications have to automate Microsoft Office functions. This truly is a best of both worlds scenario, fusing the power and multiuser advantages of a database driven bespoke application with this wide-ranging functionality. We will look at some of the ways in which users have been able to take advantage of this union in the next few articles, beginning with one function which is simple and cheap to implement but tremendously useful.

Practically all of the software solutions created by Sortec require information to be displayed to the user based on various filters which allow the data shown to be restricted to those records which the user really needs to see. For example, a form may give the user the ability to choose a range of dates, to view orders that were delivered within the range, or perhaps choose a customer from a dropdown box, to restrict the information viewed to data pertaining to just the customer selected.

Once the user is satisfied with the choices made, a button can be clicked and the relevant information displayed in tabular form in a grid. Often, clients will ask for a report to be written to enable them to take a hard copy of the results thus obtained but there is an alternative – export the information to Excel.

All the user need do is click a button, select the location where the file should be stored and an Excel spreadsheet will be created containing all the information stored in the grid. This function can even cope with grids with multiple levels. For example if a grid shows a list of orders which can be expanded to view the individual items on a second level, this hierarchical structure will be preserved when the data is exported. Additionally, any colour-coding will also be preserved so if, say, certain records are given a red background for emphasis e.g. to highlight that a delivery is late, the line in the spreadsheet created will also have a red background.

The result is that a user has a dynamic set of data generated for them which can be manipulated as the data in any spreadsheet might be, without the constraints inherent in the static output which the hard-copy of a report would give them.

In the latest addition to Sortec Software Development’s client portfolio a vehicle rental and fleet management company based in Stoke On Trent have chosen the Sortec Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) to form the core of their client management operation.

Sortec’s customer will use the Sortec CRM Software to enhance and develop its customer care and ensure a consistency of service throughout its vehicle rental and fleet management customer base. Managing the customer relationship is a task key to any business so being able to call on an already capable and comprehensive CRM package like that offered by Sortec brings immediate benefits. Sortec’s ability to add functionality to the software and integrate with a client’s existing systems means the client and their customers will feel immediate benefits.

Sortec comes to this particular project with several years of experience of developing CRM, fleet management and vehicle leasing systems and direct motor industry involvement on the part of its staff.

Key features “out of the box” include:

• Contact management providing a full history of interaction with clients thereby ensuring any member of the sales team can interact with customers, developing leads and progressing enquiries
• Management of leads allowing sales staff to ensure conversions to orders are as high as possible
• Order processing
• Invoicing
• Payment management
• Management information systems providing information on the sales pipeline including graphical analysis and representation of processes and data to improve clarity

Any of these features can be removed, changed or improved according to the client’s requirements.

By choosing this system Sortec’s client has recognised the inherent flexibility in the software designed and constructed by Sortec Software Development. Through use of standard modules to reduce development time and reduce costs to the client, combined with customised modules to achieve tight and efficient integration with existing IT and manual systems Sortec will always deliver a solution that best fulfils the customer’s needs. By providing a CRM that is a “good fit” for existing processes Sortec will ensure that implementation costs are low. By making sure that existing procedures and systems to which the vehicle rental CRM system is interfaced will not be adversely impacted disruption to the day to day operations of the business will be negligible and third party development costs minimised or eliminated altogether.

Initially to be implemented as a desktop system the CRM software will eventually be rolled out to a web based platform capable of operating from a desktop web browser and handheld mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs.

That stalwart of smaller databases, Access, has been given very minor updates for the ordinary user in 2010 with much of the changes relating to Sharepoint integration.

One of the changes that we hope makes a difference with this version is the ability to apply themes to a database, with the various forms and controls adopting this theming information. We’re regularly called in to modify or finish a database that someone else has started and has been unable or unwilling to finish and anything that stops us scarring our retinas with gaudy colour schemes is a big improvement so far as we are concerned. More seriously, a new facility called Data Macros has been added which are effectively triggers that react to data changes. Yes, this functionality has been present in more serious databases for years, but its appearance in Access is very welcome. The Data Macros come from the new macro editor which seems to have been improved considerably in this version.

As with Outlook, the improvements are difficult to spot in Access 2010 putting this in a lower league than Word and Excel.

In the next article we’ll be looking into the main new features in OneNote.