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| Our Autumn 2009
meeting was held at Whittlebury Hall, Whittlebury, near Towcester,
Northants, on the 18th and 19th November. It was another
of our more select gatherings, with fewer attendees than our previous
meeting in London. However, the no-show rate was low.
The meeting's theme was 'Something for
Everyone' though our audience was the usual collection of more experienced
users and administrators, so some of the sessions may have been a little too
basic.
CODA were invited to attend, but declined.
Their reply mentioned their preference not to attend rather than their
policy not to support us, so you never know, relationships might be on the
mend!
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The presentations we have in soft copy are available in the
members' website in the Autumn 2009 meeting data folder.
Feedback about
the meeting itself from members is still awaited:
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The venue received an average score of 4.4 (out of 5) - down 0.3 |
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The catering received an average
score of 3.8 (out of 5) - down 0.5 |
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The location received an average
score of 3.6 (out of 5) - down 1.2 |
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The organisation received an
average score of 4.2 (out of 5) - down 0.3 |
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The event format received an
average score of 4.4 (out of 5) - same |
Only a small proportion of the attendees
returned feedback forms, but from the feedback received it seems this was
not as popular a venue as those where we held our previous meetings.
I think on reflection that we won't use
Whittlebury Hall again. It is geographically remote, not what you expect
from their website, quite large and impersonal, and a bit too 'bling,
bling' for us. It was fine for the hoards of twenty-something trainee tax
accountants who were there at the same time as us. |
| Sadly I forgot to
get the camera out on the first day, when the attendance was better, but
here are some excited looking attendees on the second day. |
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And
a few more. |
| DAY ONE
Mike Booty ran the
meeting, and he presented several of the sessions himself, despite suffering
from the November lurgy.
Sorsis Utilities
Mike’s first
session was an update on the Sorsis utility programs:
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The Communications
program now supports document distribution, remittances, statements, debt
recovery, general mail-shots and scanning/attaching. |
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The Sorsis Reporter
now supports several report formats: Crystal, Excel, SQL Server reporting,
plus report recipient groups, distribution and dynamic report parameters |
Both the applications
are now built in Microsoft dot.NET.
DUG Software
Mike gave a quick
overview of the User Group posting spreadsheet. See our
DUG Tools page for a click-through to the
members pages where this can be downloaded from.
QlikView
Aided by Steve Sapseid
of BME Solutions, Chris Stedham of Bath Spa University stepped in at the
last moment to give a demonstration of QlikView, a BI solution which his
organisation are making great use of. Jon Sebright was billed to do this,
but he too was suffering from the lurgy and didn't make the meeting.
Chris explained that the
QlikView solution:
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Gives a cross-table
view of a selection of data; |
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Can download a slice
of data for later review; |
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Is available free of
charge for a personal edition (where files created cannot be opened by
others); |
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Can be used on many
disparate data sources (provided they are accessible via ODBC or OLEDB); |
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Can be used for data
auditing and regular reporting; |
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Does not require
programming skills, though does use scripting (which is wizard driven). |
This was a very popular
session, and we are grateful to Steve Sapseid for his help and support.
The program can be
downloaded from:
http://www.qlikview.com/download/download.aspx?id=12896
VT Accounts
Bruce Adams of Barton
Willmore gave a demonstration of the use of VT accounts software in the
production of final accounts. As Bruce amply showed us, this Excel-based
program is quick to get started with, easy to use and pretty intuitive to
Excel users.
read more about this
software tool at:
http://www.vtsoftware.co.uk/
DUG Utilities (Budget
Maintenance)
John Walton gave a
demonstration of the Budget Maintenance program. This is (despite some log
delays for which we apologise) now just about ready to launch on the User
Group members. The program:
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Is licensed to the
member company until December 31st each year; |
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Is licensed for your
particular server; |
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Downloads current
budgets (or blank ones for next year) to Excel; |
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Uploads budget data
using the Dream External DLL. |
Members will receive an
email when this is ready to download.
Breakout sessions
The meeting split into
two breakout sessions, one hosted by Mike and one by John, who later fed
back the sessions as follows:
Mike:
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using entities for
addresses on a sundry account |
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Use of special
characters in account codes (or rather not) |
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Archiving strategies
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John:
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Reporting: DreamView
vs Report 7 |
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Index maintenance
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Where is the calendar
in Dream? |
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Office 2007 and Dream
3.3 External DLL |
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Case sensitive
databases, export and import |
The Event Engine
Mike gave a session on
the purpose and use of Dream's event engine.
The Evening
The meeting decamped to
the bar and then to a very good evening meal kindly sponsored by BME
Solutions. After eating we met in a syndicate room to have an interesting
(and rewarding) demonstration of the art of the choclatier by the hotel's
own "pudding chef". I for one ate too much chocolate! |
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DAY TWO
After the AGM the
meeting continued...
Dream Indexes
Mike gave a session on
the use of Indexes in Dream.
Mail Merging
John gave a session on
how to use nothing more complex that MS Word to mail merge to accounts on a
Dream ledger.
Ledger Operations
Mike gave a session
summarising what users can do with Ledgers in Dream.
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