We’re proud to share that it’s our Living Wage Anniversary at Start Software! If we didn't pay such good wages, Robin could afford a razor! For another year running, we’ve maintained our commitment to being a Living Wage Employer , ensuring that everyone on our team earns a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work. Doing business "right" - fairly, decently, ethically - is at our core The Living Wage movement has always been close to our hearts. It’s about recognising the real cost of living and supporting people to thrive, not just get by. We believe that fair pay is the foundation of a happy, motivated team — and that benefits everyone: our clients, our community, and our company. If you’re an employer who hasn’t yet joined the movement, we’d encourage you to take a look . It’s a simple but powerful step towards building a fairer economy and a stronger workplace culture. You can learn more here: https://www.livingwage.org.uk Here’s to another year of doing business the...
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Another strong month for our UK and Australian Support Teams 💪
October was another excellent month for our Support Teams, with 92.4% of tickets resolved within their target time and an impressive 97.2% of high-priority issues handled on time.
That’s 876 tickets completed within SLA (and 171 high-priority ones), from a total of 948 issues logged and solved in October. It’s a busy workload — and the consistent high standards show just how hard our team works to keep our clients happy.
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| Thanks ChatGPT for the graphic - but why the mix-and-match on decimal points and commas?! |
Here’s how our “in-time” performance has looked over the past few months:
| Month | In-time % | High Priority In-time % | Total Solved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | 92.41% | 97.16% | 948 |
| Sep 2025 | 94.20% | 98.38% | 879 |
| Aug 2025 | 90.97% | 97.08% | 831 |
| Jul 2025 | 91.40% | 97.88% | 977 |
| Jun 2025 | 90.45% | 97.40% | 838 |
| May 2025 | 92.14% | 95.42% | 852 |
We’ve now kept performance above 90% for six months running, proving that reliability is more than just a number — it’s part of how we work.
If you ever need to log a support ticket, you can do so anytime (24x7, literally). We look forward to being of service.
Heathrow, Natwest, Minecraft all sorted... and so is Alpha Tracker document production
Microsoft has resolved their "Azure" issues from yesterday and all systems are back online.
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| Microsoft have resolved all of their Azure cloud problems |
Sorry if you had issues producing some documents - we are looking at ways to make ourselves more resilient when Microsoft's Azure cloud has problems in the future.
Some of our Alpha Tracker services are being affected by the Microsoft outage - we are waiting for them to resolve
Some of our Alpha Tracker services are being seriously affected by the Microsoft outage as reported by the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rj45n4x5eo. Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft are among some of the sites and services experiencing problems.
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| We're in good company, many organisations are being affected |
Our affected services include document production for asbestos and water clients. We apologise for the outage and are waiting for a resolution from Microsoft.
🎉 Celebrating Our 100,000th Support Ticket!
We’ve just hit an incredible milestone — our 100,000th support ticket has landed!
That’s 100,000 times our customers have reached out with questions, ideas, or requests — and 100,000 opportunities for our support team to help, learn, and make Alpha Tracker, Alpha Legal, ecoScribe and all our other systems even better.
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| 1,000,000 grateful customers (well, most of them...) |
A huge thank you to our customers
Every ticket tells a story: a new project getting started, a clever feature being used in a new way, or a challenge that helped us improve our software. We’re genuinely grateful for every message, call, and support request that’s come our way over the years. Without your feedback and patience, we couldn’t keep making our systems as powerful and reliable as they are today.
And an even bigger thank you to our support team
Our support heroes handle everything from “how do I…” to “help, it’s all on fire!” - and they do it with professionalism, good humour, and an impressive amount of coffee. Reaching 100,000 tickets is a testament to their dedication and the relationships they’ve built with customers across the UK and beyond.
Looking ahead
If 100,000 tickets got us here, we can only imagine what the next 100,000 will bring. More innovation, faster responses, smarter systems — and, no doubt, the occasional head-scratcher that keeps things interesting.
At this rate, we might even start placing bets on when ticket number 1,000,000 will arrive…
Thank you for being part of our journey — here’s to the next big milestone! 🚀
Faster report production with our Cloud Document Maker update
Jack and the team have deployed a new version of Cloud Document Maker which means that some Alpha Tracker clients - water hygiene users in particular - will notice that their documents are generated much more quickly.
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| Yet another AI-generated blog image |
There is also an update coming soon which will increase the speed of asbestos report generation - so watch out for that.
Alpha Software roadmap review with Selwyn and his development team
Jack, Dan & Robin held an Alpha Software roadmap review with CEO Selwyn and his development team today.
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| Jack, the Alpha Software team (via Teams), and Dan |
Start Software are Alpha Software's UK professional partners with specialists working in Alpha Anywhere, Alpha TransForm and Alpha Cloud. We build and support apps and web systems using the Alpha Software development framework.
During the two-hour review, we covered a huge range of topics, including:
- the "free threading" performance improvements in the Alpha app server
- alternative deployment platforms (including Linux)
- use of better code editors and alternative debugging options
- automated testing tools
- upcoming improvements and changes to the Alpha Cloud deployment platform
- and - finally - AI.
It was a really useful call - and one we'll repeat in a few months.
If you need help with your Alpha-based system, get in touch.
PS it was great to include the UK Alpha legend Glen Schild from gjstats.co.uk on the call, too!