April 2021 | Issue #102
Current Releases: SM 8.0.098 (4/5) | AW 3.5.063 (3/16)
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ACEware Systems Newsletter
Information to Run Your Program
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Remember Me On This Computer
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For years, nay decades, people have been asking for their login to be saved so they wouldn't have to enter it every time they launched Manager. For many reasons, I said no. And then one day I realized that I could make these secure and robust enough for people with multiple logins. So, I set out to do it. This feature was released in the .097 build in March.
First, a bit about what it is. "Me," is defined as the Windows login user. "This computer," is defined as the computer running the program (so it could be the server, but only if you are remoting into it.) Thus, "me on this computer" is the pairing of the Windows login and the computer running the software. "Remember," stores that information on the computer, but specific to each user. If you share computers (remote desktop into the server is an example, but also sharing local machines), as long as you have separate Windows logins, you'll not get into someone else's Manager account.
The storage of your Student Manager password is encrypted and the encryption algorithm is different than the one storing the password in your database, thus making is secure. If someone can hack this encryption, then they are a cyborg or something, because this is supposedly un-hackable.
I can foresee this question- "what if my computer is hacked?" Then yes, the hacker will have access to Student Manager. You've also got much bigger issues, but this now adds to it. For this reason, your IT may not like this feature. If so, get with your technician and they have a way to remove it (requires .098 update).
So, how do you actually set this up? First, put in your username on the login screen. (You have to have a valid username to start putting in a password.) Before putting in the password, check Remember Me on This Computer box. Then put in your password. If you put in the incorrect password, it will not be stored. You do have to successfully authenticate to have your information stored. Every time you launch from then on, you will not be asked for your login. If you have multiple Student Manager logins, you can only have one stored. Subsequent launches of Student Manager do pull up the login screen. You can't put the same login in twice, so you do need to be sure you're using your secondary account at that point. Also, if your password is changed in password maintenance or your username is deleted, it'll start asking for you to login until you set remember me on your new credentials.
I hope this feature helps you. It is already helping me with all of the testing I do. It is great not having to put in my username and password each and every time!
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When was your last consultation with ACEware?
“I wish we had this meeting a couple years ago!” This comment was made recently after ACEware met with a continuing education team to answer their most pressing questions and discuss wish list items. Their questions included “How can we...?”, “Is it possible to...?”, “We need/want to...”, and “We wish we could...”.
As part of your annual support agreement, you can bring your team to a meeting with ACEware. Gather your questions, registrar(s), coordinator(s), marketer(s), and your boss, and schedule an hour with us. We appreciate the chance to meet with your team! We want to know your questions, your challenges, and your needs. Typically, we have a solution for you!
These annual discussions are a win-win opportunity for everyone. Your team will discover new ways your software can help you get work done, and ACEware gains webinar, training, and development ideas--because if one customer has the question(s), others do too!
We hope you are taking advantage of this benefit included in your support agreement. Contact me for more information and to get your consultation scheduled!
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15 days remain to sign up for June conference to guarantee you receive your conference goodie bag before June 7! 18 sessions will be available including sessions on:
- What's New in Student Manager and ACEweb
- Successful Course Construction (including hybrid courses)
- Working Remotely: How Staff Web Access Can Help
- ACEweb STORM
- Reporting Hacks
- Mass Functions
- ACEweb Activity Logs
- Marketing Tools
- Customer Spotlights
- Small Group Discussions
- Panel Sessions
- Open Forum with ACEware
If you have already registered for conference and wish you had signed up for a pre-conference workshop, send me an email! I'll get a workshop added to your registration. It is going to be a great week!
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Tech Tip of the Month: striphtml
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Student Manager has the ability to remove all of the HTML coding from memo fields and display the resulting text in a report. This is done with the striphtml function.
Its usage is very simple; just preface the memo field you want to strip with the function name, with your field name in parentheses, like this: striphtml(conoteprt)
This example would remove all of the markup language, such as the parts of the <head>, any in-line markup or styles, like line breaks ( <br /> ), etc.!
This might come in handy if you have all of your course descriptions already marked up with html, but need a text only copy of it for a catalog print.
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Report of the Month: Enrollment Growth Chart
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We haven't shown a Report Wizard report in a while, so I thought I would share a report requested by a customer.
The request: A graph showing the number of enrollments over time. In other words, the data point for today needed to include everything that came before. I thought it was great to see if you are having exponential, linear, or some other growth with your numbers. Another part of the ask was that this was to only show for memberships, which is what we used for the data filter.
The challenge of this report was designing the formula. How do we ask the Report Wizard to return an aggregate number? If you just sum enrollment count for a day, it is only showing that day, so you get an up-down chart or saw-tooth looking representation ( i.e. /\/\/\ ). We didn't want that. Then I thought about the sumreg function in Student Manager. I came up with this formula:
SUMREG(rgcrse, "rgnumb", .f., "rgaddate<=ctod('"+dtoc(rgaddate)+"')")
We are telling sumreg for this course (as provided by the query), sum rgnumb (number of seats). Oh, and do the summing for the date in question and anything before it (the fourth parameter).
Running this produces the chart below (well, you should have more data points in yours). I chose to see this monthly, but you can see it weekly, daily, or other time breakdowns (by going to the Properties of the rgaddate element on Step 3 - Chart Layout). If you have the Report Wizard, you can import the report from this download.
If you do not have Report Wizard and want more information, I'm glad to provide a demo for you!
Happy charting!
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To your continued success,
- Chuck, Sharon, Cheryl, Jason, Joe, Lindsey, Matthew, Mike, Stein, and Susan
ACEware Systems
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7480 Dyer Road
Manhattan, KS 66502
We appreciate hearing from you! If you have questions, comments, or suggestions about this newsletter, please contact [email protected].
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