New Resource Tracker Diary Sync Tool in Beta

Our Resource Tracker integrated scheduling tool has always had an email link to Outlook, but for users without Outlook (Exchange) diaries this hasn't been ideal.  In addition, housing survey contracts in particular demand lots of last-minute changes to the diary and so receiving updates by email isn't always convenient.

Our new Resource Tracker Sync tool is designed to be the solution.  It auto-syncs the Resource Tracker diary with other diaries (starting with Google Calendars) without the need to use emails to transmit the diary changes.

If you're interested in helping us test the beta release of Resource Tracker Sync please get in touch with the office.

Latest analysis of Start Software Support performance

Did you know that every time you ring in with a query or bug report it is logged into our systems so that it can be tracked properly and our performance analysed?

Each month we review our performance.  One of the key stats we measure is whether we are resolving issues in the timescales you set us.  Here is our latest performance, shown as a graph.  The red line shows high priority issues (when you ring and tell us it is "urgent"); the blue line shows all problems:


Over the last 12 months, we've consistently been hitting the 95% mark for high priority issues, which is a real achievement given that we receive over 50 of these each month!

New client The Woodford Foundation host event

What a great event!  Our new client The Woodford Foundation hosted an evening reception tonight for some of their Malawi partners, hosted by Woodford's Chairman Rod Clark OBE.

It was fun to meet some of the volunteers and supporters who help the organisation and to meet more of the people who will be using (and seeing the results from) the new web-enabled database that we are creating for them using Alpha Five v10.

There was a terrific selection of photos from home and abroad too to illustrate the issues that deaf children face across sub-Saharan Africa.

Other guests included my old friend Mayor Cllr Tony Durnell - somone very special in Shrewsbury and Shropshire with a real sense of public duty and service.

Good wine too!

Tracker Upload Manager v1.0.46 now available

Tracker Upload Manager (TUM) v1.0.46 is now available to all customers with active support plans.

This release has a number of improvements including increased reliability when processing invalid/unexpected XML data.

Tracker Dashboard v1.0.57 now available

Tracker Dashboard automates the emailing of stats, facts and figures from Tracker to individuals and groups within an organisation.

Typically, Tracker Dashboard is used to generate emails overnight with "dashboards" of key data for managers and directors, and live "action lists" for processing teams.

Tracker Dashboard v1.0.57 is now available on general release for all customers with an active support & maintenance contract.  This release has improved debugging facilities and also includes a new HTML generation engine for better cosmetic performance.

Please call the office on 0845 612 2402 if you would like this release.

Tracker reaches new landmark in asbestos industry: 10 million items surveyed

Tracker is the UK's leading product within the asbestos surveying industry with the majority of the UK's leading consultancies using it to streamline their surveying and reinspection processes.

10,000,000 items now surveyed

We've very proud to say that this week Tracker reached a new milestone with 10 million items surveyed and reported to clients through its automated electronic data capture and report production processes.

With some consultancies reaching their own "1 million items surveyed" landmarks, each of the larger Tracker users has saved £100,000s in admin costs alone.  In fact, most Tracker users report that they recoup their investment in Tracker within 12-18 months of going live.

Tracker is the only system in the market which supports data capture across all of the major mobile platforms - iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile - and has lead the industry for nearly a decade.

Charity database reaches beta test phase

We've been working at Shrewsbury-based charity The Woodford Foundation to develop a web-based database application to store and analyse data relating to the impact of the fantastic work they do in Africa (Malawi in particular).

After a couple of site visits, the database is now taking shape and the productivity that Alpha Five v10 delivers has made the process of building the system very enjoyable and very productive.  As official beta testers for Alpha Five v11 we were thinking of deploying on this release in order to make use of the new calendar and Google Map support, but the stability of v10 has encouraged us to stay with the current version.

Developer Dan working on the Alpha Five database development

Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server remain our core development platforms but for web-based systems Alpha Five is proving to be a very capable addition to the stable.