Latest News

We are pleased to announce the release of PRS version 7.0.3.

The ability to use HTML and MHTML (mail archive) files in the document manager makes it easy to mail-drop HTML formatted E-mails — that’s exactly how we produced this newsletter. We show you how to mail-drop your own news letter at the end of this news letter.

Important
 If you are still running version 6 of the PRS (you can check by running the PRS Help→About PRS menu command) then you will need to perform as database upgrade and Notes migration to move to version 7 (see here for details).

Microsoft Office 2007

Here are some notes regarding differences relating to the PRS between the latest version of Microsoft Office (Office 2007) and previous versions:

  • If you are installing Office 2007 Professional edition on a PC that already has the PRS installed then Office will uninstall the PRS Runtime unless you perform a customised install and tell it not to. You can reinstall the PRS Runtime by inserting the PRS Setup CD-ROM, waiting for the Setup Menu window to appear and then typing Ctrl+Shift+R.

  • The PRS uses the Microsoft Office spell checker to perform spell checks, unfortunately the Office 2007 spell check API is not backward compatible with previous versions of Office and you will get a PRS can’t start the spelling checker because it isn’t installed when attempting to spell check from the PRS. We are looking into the problem but at this stage it looks as though it will require a fix from Microsoft.

Note
 Office 2007 is relatively new, our advice is to upgrade only if necessary, preferably wait until the first product Service Pack (SP1) is released. If you’re familiar with previous versions of Office you’ll find the new user interface takes some getting used to.

SMS Texting and Number Portability

The recent adoption of phone number portability in New Zealand has introduced an SMS texting problem: currently if you text from the PRS to Vodafone numbers that have been ported from Vodafone to Telecom NZ the message is not being redirected by Vodafone to the Telecom NZ network. We’ve brought this problem to the attention of Clickatell and they have escalated it to their connectivity people so hopefully it will be resolved. This article discusses the number portability problem.

Tips and Tricks

To delete reminders

  • Open the Reminders form using the PRS View → Reminders menu command.

  • Click on the record selector (the gray box to the left of the date).

  • Press the Delete key.

List and sort your data

  • Datasheet View (Ctrl+Shift+F) will display your Personnel, Vacancy, Site and Invoice forms in a list format.

  • Each column can by sorted by clicking on the column title and selecting Records → Quick Sort → Ascending or Records → Quick Sort → Descending.

  • Pressing Ctrl+Shift+F will return the form to the normal form view.

How to define your own vacancy activities

Vacancy activity is entered on Page 2 of the Vacancy form — in addition to the standard activities the PRS has two user definable vacancy activities. To customise these activity names:

  1. Selecting the PRS Tools → Options menu command and then clicking on the Appearance tab.

  2. Enter your custom activity names into User defined activity 1 and User defined activity 2 edit boxes.

Did you know you can do a full text search of your notes?

The PRS7 Notes Tool can perform wildcard text searches of your notes:

  1. Open the Notes Tool using the PRS Tools → Notes menu command.

  2. Press the Select button.

  3. Enter the text you want to find into the Search for text box and press OK.

The quickest way to find a person by name

Use the Alt+G shortcut key or click on the Goto button by the Last name field on the Personnel form to go directly to a single record. Enter the first letter(s) of the person’s last name optionally followed by a space and the first letter(s) of the first name.

For example entering jo b will find the first person whose last name starts with jo and first name starts with b.

How to E-Mail an HTML Newsletter from the PRS

Note
 You will need the PRS Client version 7.0.3 or better (you can install the latest PRS Client from the updates page on the PRS website).

This Newsletter was E-mailed using the PRS, here’s how to create and mail-drop your own newsletter:

  1. Open the PRS Document Manager (Tools→Document Manager) and press the New Document… button.

  2. Leave the Merge data source option set to None and press the OK button.

  3. Microsoft Word will open and the Save As dialog will appear — enter a File name and set the Save as type to Web Archive (*.mht; *.mhtml) (Word 2000/2003) or Single File Web Page (Word 2007). Press the Save button.

  4. Next add content to the newsletter, once you’ve finished close Word and save your document.

  5. Now go back to the PRS and you’ll see your new document in the Documents list in the Document Manager Tool.

The important point here is that that you’ve saved the document as a Web Archive (*.mht; *.mhtml) file (step 3 above) which is essentially a single file web page that can be sent as an Outlook mail message.

Now that you’ve finished the newsletter you will need to go to the PRS Personnel form and tag all the people who will receive the newsletter. If you are unfamiliar with tagging take a look at the Personnel Tags video on the PRS Training Videos CD-ROM. Once you’ve tagged the personnel:

  1. Open PRS Document Manager (Tools→Document Manager) again and press the Goto button next to your newsletter in the documents list.

  2. Set the Merge data source option to Tagged personnel and press the OK button.

  3. Microsoft Word will open your newsletter which you can then mailmerge to the recipients' E-mail addresses:

    • If you are using Word 2000 or Word 2003 click the Merge to E-mail button on the mailmerge toolbar.

    • If you are using Word 2007 click on the Mailings tab then click the Finish & Merge button on the mailmerge toolbar followed by the Send E-mail Messages… item.

  4. If you want to add a Note to each mail-merge recipient press the Tags button the Personnel form and select Note Tagged Personnel.