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August 2010 

Introduction - Paul Holmes
JAVELIN Development
JIMS
Events
Green Tips
Testimonials

Welcome to the August Newsletter

With the summer holidays upon us and in full swing you may be reading this either before you go or after you’ve been. Either way we hope you have/had a pleasant break.

At this time of year we are usually busy putting the details together for our Annual Customer Event. This is still the case but this year read Events!!  We have decided to hold two Customer meetings this year, one in Leeds and one in Swindon.  We take the presentations on the road on 6th /13th October at Swindon and Leeds respectively.  As a result we expect to see the number of participating customers increase.  For more details click here.

The focus of the events this year will be the launch of JAVELIN’s MS SQL version, branded JAVELIN.  JAVELIN is a significant step along our ongoing development plan and we are confident it will compliment the needs of our customer base as well as future demands from the manufacturing industry sector.  This ‘relational database’ platform will provide us with additional scope for future development and further integration with other software tools.  (MS SQL is often available as a free download or rolled into MS server operating systems).  This will not affect any customers using the Pervasive database.  Releases from October 2010 will accommodate the Pervasive and MS SQL users.  We plan to continue partial development in the Pervasive system for the next two years, therein we will turn our full development resources to the MS SQL version.   Customers who decide to stay with the Pervasive version after this time will obviously be fully supported as normal and indefinitely whilst in maintenance.

I mentioned in the last newsletter that we were looking at changing the style of our training program delivery.  With our new Training Consultant now onboard we are re-writing all previous programs and reviewing our options in the ways in which we deliver them.  We will be able to roll out our training and delivery plans at the Customer meetings in October. This will include details of our on-line training proposals.

The JIMS reports (JAVELIN Informed Management Summary), the on screen management tools, continue to be taken up by customers but we are still looking for more ideas as to future content.  If you have an idea for the ‘dashboard report’ you would like to see then please let us know.  Details of what versions of JAVELIN will support JIMS are available from Tom McClure.

We are advized by MSE, owners of the MAGIC licenses used by JAVELIN, that their version 9 series will no longer be available from the end of this year.  Any customers still using these older versions that may wish to take any additional licenses should do so before the end of the year.  Again, any questions in this regard please contact your Account Manager Tom McClure.

I hope to see everyone at one of the customer events in October.  Enjoy the rest of the summer.

For more details on Jobshop, JAVELIN, Events, Training and Support, please visit our website javelin.verosoftware.com.
 

General Manager

JAVELIN Development

Development of our flagship JAVELIN product continues to move on at pace.  As previously mentioned this MS SQL version of JAVELIN will be on display at the customer events later in the year.  It is already going through rigorous testing in-house and will soon be installed at a beta test site.  Somewhat surprisingly perhaps it looks and feels much like the current version (making for a seamless upgrade) but it’s what’s ‘under the hood’ that we are excited about.  The use of the MS SQL database allows us to take advantage of the most powerful servers, passing much of the heavy duty number crunching and data mashing involved in procedures such as MRP and Scheduling onto the server.  The speed and performance of JAVELIN will now be only limited by the environment in which the database runs rather than the database itself.
 
MS SQL also makes future system expansion and integration to third party products easier, something that the development team will focus on again after the initial release.  Although our development roadmap has to some degree ‘stalled’, with the main thrust being the conversion to MS SQL, JAVELIN 2011r1 will contain some new features – after all we have to have something to brag about in October other than technicalities of database languages.  Visitors to Swindon and Leeds will witness the new ISO approved part control option, where design critical changes to parts, BOMs and Routings are tightly controlled and monitored.  Also on display will be two new features to help site managers implement and apply JAVELIN.  The first is a concept borrowed from Wikipedia, a facility that allows users to input their own procedural notes and information against individual programs.  These can be displayed from within the program via a context sensitive hotkey or reviewed via a tree structured menu emulating the system menu structure.  The second is a log file keyed against programs where users can register inquiries and queries against particular procedures, to be reviewed and resolved by the site manager – a kind of internal helpdesk log.   There are a number of minor improvements to existing procedures, including the use of Crystal templates to format export data from within the generic accounts interface plus import of Credit Control data from any accounts package that can provide an output.  There is now no excuse for not integrating JAVELIN with almost any Sales and Purchase ledgers.
 

JAVELIN Informed Management Systems (JIMS)

As mentioned earlier the JIMS development is still very much alive but waiting for your input.  Watch out for new links in JAVELIN allowing integrated JIMS screens to be called from within the system menu.

Events

Aero Engineering Expo & Congress: Stand 615, Pavilion 1

29/09/10 – 30/09/10 NEC, Birmingham
http://www.aeroconf.com

Customer Event: Swindon & Leeds
06/10/10 - South - Hilton Swindon Hotel
13/10/10 - North - Hilton Leeds City Hotel

JAVELIN Green Tip for August 2010

Save the rainforest by ditching paper based procedures – utilizing the integrated Wiki functions in JAVELIN puts procedural information at the fingertips of all users.  Ctrl-W displays up to date information about whatever aspect of the current procedure users deem important.

Website Testimonials

If you would like to provide a testimonial for our website we will publish it and make reference to your name and link back to your website, which will help you with your Google ratings!  email Mandy Riley.