Information to Run Your Program

October 2014

ACE Award Winner Spotlight -
Karen Rankin

At the 2014 ACEware Annual Users' Conference four customers were awarded the ACEware Champion Educator (ACE) Award for their innovative and extensive use of Student Manager at their institution.

This month, we highlight award recipient Karen Rankin, Manager, Information Technology Services for University Outreach at Auburn University. Chuck comments that "If we were looking for a model of who we'd choose as an ideal ACEware support person, Karen Rankin's name would pop up."

While she would be quick to tell you that she is not an ACEware expert, if you have a question about a report, about a design on a web page or getting to a special field, Karen can help you out.

She provides support to three different Student Manager/ACEweb installations at Auburn University, and manages numerous ACEweb interfaces. She is able to generate special custom web registration forms to address the myriad of programs that Auburn offers.

She has been key in working with ACEware Software Developers in fleshing out new features and in building some custom routines to address needs of some unique programs. One of our challenges as a software "manufacturer" is to get a full and thorough test or model implementation of the new feature. Karen knows both the "ACEware" side and can articulate and work through the business case that her department is trying to solve."

Michael serves as Karen's technical support representatives and comments that she is "the most easy going IT customer I've ever encountered."

Chris Harvey, Karen Rankin, and Chuck Havlicek

Karen expressed that she was absolutely surprised to receive this award. Her co-workers and family were impressed. Karen said, "I am honored to be one of the first recipients of the A.C.E. Award. I would like to say thank you to everyone at ACEware for all the great service and support provided over the last 15 years."

Auburn is a bit different in that they have three departments running Student Manager. Between them, they have about 1,100 activities a year that generate about 36,700 participants.

Karen's advice to Student Manager users:

"I would say that the online help is a great resource to answer general questions and a way to find out about features that you may not currently use."

(In an interesting coincidence, ACEware is planning a webinar that reviews the online help guide. Find out more and register here.)

What she would like to share with professionals considering the use of Student Manager:

"ACEware has provided hands-down the best technical support that I have ever experienced. If I can't figure it out, Michael, our technician, is always only an email away. Everyone at ACEware is always so willing to help you figure out a problem or how to make something work if you are trying to do something new."

The software feature most beneficial to Auburn's operation:

"My favorite feature of Student Manager/ACEweb is the ability to customize registration pages and reports as needed."

Karen had this to say about the future:

"Our five year vision is to be using cloud based registration and reporting software that could possibly tie into our main campus database. We are looking forward to converting our Student Manager databases to SQL and then testing the waters with NxT."

Annual Users' Conference -

Budget Now and Plan to Attend

Start planning now to attend the conference in Myrtle Beach next April. Here's a glimpse of what we're developing:

Preconference Sessions -

Tuesday, April 21

Student Manager 101 - This workshop covers the nuts and bolts of Student Manager. Though ideal for our newest ACEware family members, it's also a great opportunity for seasoned Student Manager users to learn all about the new features in SM8! This day will provide a thorough introduction to Student Manager, therefore preparing you for the more in-depth coverage during the rest of the conference.
Introduction to the Art of Reporting - You put considerable time and effort into gathering data to improve your programs, but do you know how to report the data? Student Manager contains nearly 200 ready-to-use reports. This workshop is designed to help you take advantage of the nearly 200 ready-to-use reports that are available to you in Student Manager. Learn how to search for reports, create queries, and make basic modifications to your reports.
Advance Report Writing - This session is for your team member(s) who are ready for master's level reporting! It is for those confident in running and modifying reports and ready to take the next big step in report writing (complex expressions, variables, special functions and exporting data.)

These full day workshop will run concurrently. Strengthen your entire team by coming to the conference together -- and save $49 person!

Preconference Registration Fees:

Single Registration - $349

Two or more - $300 per person

Registration fees include all materials, breakfast, lunch and two breaks.

Conference Sessions - Wednesday - Friday, April 22-24

We continue to finalize conference sessions and workshops but here's a preview of what is being planned for YOU!

Extended Workshops

You asked for more time, and we listened. New this year, we'll be offering 90 and 120 minute hands-on workshops.

Student Manager as your Marketing Partner
Instructor Management from set up to payment
Course Packaging/Managing Discounts/BOGO
Financial Management with Student Manager
Contract Training
Data Clean Up
And more!

Best Practices Sessions - hear from ACEware and your Continuing Education colleagues:

Benefits of Third Party content providers
Credential Management
Workshop Management
LMS Interfacing
Benefits of SQL Server
ACEweb
And more!

Conference Registration Fees:

Single Registration $795

Two or more - $749 per person

Registration fees include all materials, three breakfasts, two luncheons, an evening social event at Ripley's Aquarium, and all breaks.

Registration opens in November. Remember, customers with a current support agreement are eligible to receive scholarship funds to use for the conference registration fees. Email [email protected] to see what you have available.

The conference will be held at the Sheraton Myrtle Beach Convention Center Hotel and we've secured a discounted rate of $129 (+ taxes) per night for a single/ double room. Reservations can be made now. If you plan to attend and take some personal time before or after the conference, we recommend you make your reservations now, even if tentative, so you can receive the group rate.

No tricks, just treats from ACEware!

At ACEware we hear every day about new discoveries made by our customers. Statements like "I didn't know that was there!" or "I didn't know you could do that!" tell us that you have found another treat in Student Manager or ACEweb. We are not trying to hide these goodies; we distribute them gladly through bi-monthly webinars (we even archive them for you), an outstanding online help site, a forum for discussion (with techs and other ACEware Users) and our Annual Users' Conference. We want you to know just how much our software system can do for you, so below, we're sharing some treats that a few customers enjoyed in September. Maybe you'll have an "Aha!" moment, too. Keep reaching deep within your ACEware goodie bag to discover (or re-discover) what ACEware can do for you!

Certificates - There's a report for that! There is no need to hand-create your certificates. By modifying the report template, you can add your school's logo and/or staff signatures. c Print on your desired certificate paper and you're done!

Where can you find it? On the course screen; it's one of eight quick reports available for you! It is also available from your reports menu.

Find Button - When you are on a course, name, or instructor record, you do NOT have to select OK/Close to search for another record. Just click the Find button at the bottom of the record to be transported directly to the search screen. We want to save you time!

Special Button - Clicking this button lets you to jump to comments, enter a callback, conduct a custom name search, or give the selected student instructor rights and more. Give it a try; you'll be glad that you did!

Online Help has been redesigned for you! The Online Help Guide has been rebuilt and now contains an entire section on Reports. Remember, nearly 200 reports have been provided for you.

You saw what Karen Rankin said about Help, right? Did you also see we are having a webinar on it? For more information on the webinar and to register, click here.

MATTHEW'S CORNER (of the cabin) - Setting a Report as the Default

Do you have an additional report that your staff runs all the time? Do you and the rest of your staff never run the default report in the same area? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then you might want to consider setting that additional report as the default. Here is how you do it:

Run your additional report with modify report on the print options checked.
Make some minor change to the report. (I usually just click an object on the report, hit my right arrow key once, and then hit the left arrow key once. This moves the object and then moves it right back to where it was. The goal is to trigger the Report Designer to tell Student Manager that the report has been modified.)
Close the report.
Answer Yes to the prompt to Save Changes.
On the Saving Modifications screen, click on the Save as Default button in the upper right corner.
The next prompt will ask if you want to save the default report as an additional report. I recommend saying yes unless you never want to see the old default report ever again.
The report then runs as normal.

Your additional report is not erased in this procedure, so your staff can still have access to that report as an additional if they forget that you've made it the default report. If you don't want to see the report as a choice, you can go to Tools -> Reports -> Activate/Deactivate Reports, choose the proper report area, and uncheck Active. (Alternatively, you can delete the report through Tools -> Reports -> Delete Additional Report, but I don't recommend that.)

If you need any help with this, please contact your technician who will be happy to walk through this with you.

Until next time,

Matthew J. Olson

ACEware Systems

Programmer

ACEware Programmers

Stein and Matthew are heading to Arizona this month to attend the Southwest Fox/XBase++ developer conference. We are proud that Matthew was selected as a presenter this year. You can be confident that your ACEware programmers are knowledgeable and respected in their field. They know what they're doing!

Back-To-School Drawing

Congratulations to Vicky Tabor, Forest Hills Community Service, Janet Burleson, Columbia Adult Education, Tammy Woods, Center for Community Education and Training at SUNY- Alfred, Kim Malac, University of Central Florida Continuing Education, and Jeanette Zipf, Mt. Cuba Center, Inc. for winning our September drawing! To be entered, they had to complete one or more homework assignments announced in the September newsletter: posting to the Forum, attending a webinar, liking the ACEware Facebook page, and/or signing up for the newsletter. Each of our winners will receive a portable, rechargeable battery backup for their mobile devices!