Highlights from the 7th Annual VMS User's Conference

Last month we had our annual VMS users' conference at Pensacola Beach.  It was a great opportunity for us to show everyone where we are with Ventus, and to get feedback from the users about what we need to do next in the product.  Thanks to everyone who attended this year's conference.  Your participation and interaction are what helped to make it so successful.   For those of you who weren't able to make it to this year's event, here are some of the highlights. 

The first day of the conference was focused on the Ventus product; what has happened over the past year, where we are at today, and what we have planned for the next year. 

Ventus Product – The majority of the applications are complete with the following exceptions:

• Bar code scanning – to be completed by June 15
• Mobile Data – laptop/netbook is already written in .net. The communication piece to the new database to be completed by Aug. 31
• T&M Billing – 50% complete now, to be completed by May 31
• Estimating – programming complete and in testing phase

Ventus Conversions– We are now scheduling two conversions per month for the next few months and we are planning to move up to 3 per month over the summer.  For those who are interested in scheduling a time for your conversion, please contact Angela Brutto at 850-476-0094 or email angelab@vertical-market.com. 

A special thanks to one of our customers, Kevin Buss at AC&R Services for doing a session on Crystal report writing.  Everyone who attended said it was a great presentation and very informative.

And congratulations to Gary Berkhimer and Scott Wiersma, winners at the annual VMS golf tournament for the longest drive and closest to the pin! 

Thanks again for making this a great event and we’ll see you all again next year! 
Best regards,

Angela Brutto

Why More VMS User's Are Adapting Mobile Data

Date: Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Session Length: 2 hours
Session Time: 9:30am Central Time
Location: Internet WebEx (login instructions to be provided upon registration)
Cost: No charge
Trainer: Tom Collins

This webinar will cover the following items:
VMS users are adapting Mobile Data to include:

• Technology behind Mobile
• Equipment options
• Pricing structure

Full demonstration to include:

• Complete processing of work order by field technician
• Processing of mobile work order through completed ticket entry in VMS back office software.

We expect a high number of attendees for of this session and would encourage you to sign up as soon as possible.

To register please call or email Linda Bishop: (800)-476-0094.

Ventus Overview Presentation

Based on the number of requests from our users who want to see the Ventus applications we are rescheduling another overview session on this exciting product.

Date: Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
Session Length: 1 hour
Session Time: 1:00pm Central Time
Location: Internet WebEx (login instructions to be provided upon registration)
Cost: No charge
Trainer: Jim Snyder

This session will give you a brief overview of Ventus.  You will see firsthand the ease of use, real-time posting, flexible reporting options, and a host of other new features made available as a result of using state-of-the-art .NET programming tools from Microsoft.

We expect a high number of attendees for of this session and would encourage you to sign up as soon as possible.

To register please call or email Linda Bishop: (800)-476-0094.

The Importance of Creating Backups on a Regular Basis

By Martye Beck – VMS Senior Programmer Analyst

Has this ever happened to you?  You’re working right along in your software package, processing this or that, when suddenly everything comes to a swift and grinding halt. Or maybe you come in on a Monday morning after a great weekend only to find a BSD (blue screen of death) on your server monitor.  In a panic, you call up your computer hardware technician and he rushes right over to assess the problem. After only a few minutes of diagnostics he sadly informs you that your old faithful has passed on and you need a new server. So after a couple days of down time for server removal, purchase/building, installation and configuration your network is back up and running. Now comes the task of data restoration.  The tech pops the last backup tape in the drive and starts the data restore process when the backup software reports there is no data on the tape!  You try a previous backup and another and another until you realize with frantic dread and horror that your backups have been failing for an untold period of time!  Or worse – maybe you have not been performing backups!
Don’t laugh!  I have seen this happen more times than I care to recall. If you have never experienced this nightmare count yourself lucky. But be prepared! Verify your backups on a regular basis; do not rely solely on the backup software. In fact you should restore your backups to an alternate location periodically for peace of mind. Also, tapes do wear out! Optical drives get dirty and/or just fail after numerous uses! And the horror is that generally there are no errors or warning messages to signify the failure. If you use tapes and they are three plus years, replace them! If you use CD/DVDs, use the single use write once kind – they are cheap insurance. You should also keep at minimum two weeks of backups. Protect yourself with good data backups. You’ll be glad you did!

VMS Referral Program

Please click image to open up pdf document.

Back Up Your Work!