Another asbestos consultancy chooses Alpha Tracker - welcome LAANZ!

It's lovely to end the year with another Alpha Tracker asbestos software order.

This time it is Auckland (New Zealand) based asbestos consultancy LAANZ who has researched the market and has chosen to have Alpha Tracker as their asbestos management software.

LAANZ are WorkSafe New Zealand licensed asbestos assessors having proven their abilities with industry qualifications and many years of experience in the industry.  Specifically, LAANZ work in these areas of asbestos management:

• Issuing clearance certificates
• Management surveys
• Refurbishment surveys
• Demolition surveys
• Air monitoring
• Management plans
• Asbestos awareness courses
• Asbestos Removal Guidance

Improving the efficiency of surveying for asbestos is at the heart of Alpha Tracker:

1. Before the survey, you can log calls and other contacts, generate quotes and plan work
2. When the asbestos surveyor is on site, they will have access to the Tracker Mobile data collection app enabling data, plans and photos to be captured on smartphone and tablet
3. Back in the asbestos lab, the results are recorded and auto-entered into the survey report
4. The asbestos report is generated with one-click!  It is produced in your format, too, not ours
5. The report is then viewable and shareable via the built-in Alpha Tracker Client Portal
6. To wrap up the job, you can generate an invoice automatically and post to Sage, Xero or other accounts packages.

Welcome LAANZ to the Alpha Tracker asbestos software family!

Resource Tracker v1.0.649 SVN42 now available for download

Resource Tracker is the diary and scheduling system for Tracker.

The latest release, v1.0.649 SVN42, has many performance improvements and improving emailing capabilities.

You can download the latest version from here: http://start-software.com/tracker/modules/resource-tracker/

Alpha Tracker's new route planning feature when scheduling appointments

We've got a full week of updates scheduled in Alpha Tracker - updates which will be of great use to asbestos consultancies and asbestos surveyors using the system to automate their operations.

One of the first updates being tested is a new feature in the in-built diary enabling auto-route planning when appointments are diarised for site staff:

The new appointment dialog will enable driving directions to be auto-calculated

Contact Dan or Judy for more info on the updates going live this week.

Daily diary summaries from Google Calendar

I blogged a couple of weeks ago to explain how to be automatically reminded of appointments created through Resource Tracker Sync.  Resource Tracker Sync enables asbestos surveyors and other staff to have their diaries available on their PC, smartphone or tablet with their diaries automatically updated from the Tracker or Alpha Tracker calendar.

There is another feature in Google Calendars which is really useful and very easy to enable.  Google can automatically email daily digests (summaries) of your diary at, typically, 5am so that an asbestos surveyor or other member of staff can get an automatic summary of their day sent to them by Google in their email ready for when they start work.

Go into Google Calendar, choose Settings, then Reminders and Notifications, then tick the box as shown below:

I've been "hacked" - or is "Hackered"?!

Our Alpha Tracker diary is pretty cool and even displays a thumbnail image of the person being scheduled so it is easy to see, at a glance, who is doing what and when.

I've just been elected as a town councillor and so the team here at Start decided to adjust my thumbnail image... see the results for yourself!

Dan's "faces on diary" technique showcased on the Alpha blog

One the new features in Alpha Tracker's diary (the web version of Resource Tracker) is that appointments are shown with a thumbnail photo of the staff member to make reading the diary at a glance so much easier.

This was a feature that Dan coded and his technique has been publicised on the Alpha Software blog:

http://alphasoftware.net/custom-application-development-a-small-change-makes-a-big-difference/

Nice one Dan!

Open letter to all Tracker customers - Tracker 10 years on

The New Year is always a good time to reflect & plan and this year is especially important for us because it is the 10th anniversary of bringing Tracker to the market.

We’ve been at the top of the asbestos consultancy industry for a decade now and we intend to continue for another 10 years more (at least!).

2012 saw some huge changes to Tracker including:

- massive improvements to Tracker Mobile including mix-and-match support for iPhones, iPads, Android tablets & smartphones

- new features in Tracker Dashboard giving you the information you need to run your business delivered direct to your Inbox

- a brand new module – Tracker Filer – acting as an extra pair of hands, filing emails and attachments in your Tracker system

- new options and facilities within Tracker Web Server connecting you to your customers better than ever before

- the option to record lab data directly on iPads within Lab Tracker

- another new module – Resource Tracker Sync – to give you the option of synchronising your Resource Tracker diary to Google or Exchange calendars.

You can read all about the Tracker modules here http://start-software.com/tracker/modules/.

Our next plans include a fully “cloud” based version of Tracker (called “Alpha Tracker”) which we’ve been working on for 9 months now and launching this product into a number of foreign markets, starting with Australia.  There is some early information here: http://start-software.com/tracker/modules/alpha-tracker/.

We know we’re not perfect but we continue year on year to improve our service to you and we continue to improve our helpdesk (see http://start-software.com/support/performance-charts/).  At our last ISO9001 inspection we passed with flying colours again which was a testament to my team’s continued hard work.  We’ve also launched a brand new portal for you, our customers, which enables you to have direct access to the information about projects and problems we are working on for you.

For our business to continue to grow we need to keep our existing customer base and build upon it with new companies coming on line with Tracker.  This year has seen a number of new Tracker users including some of the industry’s biggest consultancies as well as some of the smallest too.  What is really satisfying is that surveyors leaving existing Tracker businesses and starting their own businesses often ask us for our Tracker Lo-Start system – Tracker genuinely is popular with directors, management and surveyors alike.

We are now working to complete Alpha Tracker whilst starting a new project in conjunction with the University of Wolverhampton to bring “smart tag” RFID technology to the asbestos consultancy market.  If you are interested in being the first consultancy to use this exciting new technology, get in touch and I can explain what it could mean to your business.

Thanks for reading.  Don’t forget to check our website regularly at www.start-software.com or – better still – follow the blog at http://blog.start-software.com so that you will see the weekly announcements about new Tracker developments.

Here’s to another 10 years.

Cheers,

Resource Tracker v1.0.614 SVN35 released

This is a bug fix release with a number of minor problems fixed in Resource Tracker including one that affects copy/paste operations.

Please contact the office if you would this like update.

New client "portal" now live

I don't know if you've noticed our new-look web site at http://start-software.com?

It has lots of new content and many new sections with even more to come.  One of the most important new sections already live is our new "portal" for customers to log in and:

• tell us about a problem or ask us a question
• chase up open problems
• search old problems and queries
• monitor work we are doing for you.

Click where I've highlighted (on the left-hand side) to log in to the Start Software client portal

Your existing "extranet" user ID and password should work - if it doesn't or you want a hand logging in, give Elaine a call on 0845 612 2402 or email support@start-software.co.uk as normal.

Resource Tracker v1.0.613 SVN34 released to beta test customers

This new release of Resource Tracker has an important new feature when logging in plus an improved database consistency check process.

To improve performance when loading Resource Tracker, especially for multi-office companies, the user logging in can now pre-select the group of staff to be displayed:

In addition, the database consistency check feature (available through the File|Consistency Check menu option) will run more quickly and will not require users to present while the check takes place.

Beta test customers can contact the office to request this update.

Web Resource Tracker prototyped

An entirely new build of Resource Tracker is under way completely rewritten from the ground up.

We've gone with a web interface to the diary which is fast, slick and much more "friendly" than the existing Resource Tracker.

Dan's early prototypes are working well and we're now testing the system on large datasets to check that performance will be good no matter how many staff or appointments are in the system.

Contact Robin if you would like to arrange a early viewing of the new system.