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Date: 2007-12-10 17:07:56
Summer 2007 Newsletter
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Thank you for reading the HardHat Technologies' Summer 2007 Newsletter.
If you are having trouble reading the Newsletter, please view it on our website.
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2007 Summer Newsletter
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HardHat Technologies is the premier provider of construction business solutions in the Southeast. HardHat Technologies has been assisting construction companies since 1997 offering an array of solutions in areas such as Accounting, job costing, Project Management, Estimating and much more. We offer a complete turn-key approach; the product, implementation, training and best of all, we are there to support you while your company grows.
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Meridian Systems Updates Prolog
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Meridian systems announced (June 29, 2007) an incremental release for Prolog software, 2007 R1, which supports the new Microsoft Windows vista operation system, SQL Server Express 2005, Citrix Presentation Server 4 and IIS 7.0.
HardHat Technologies typically recommends Prolog customers wait to upgrade until the first Service Pack for a major version is released. If vista compatibility is a pressing issue for your company, Prolog users should consider this new release. However, if you are using Prolog WebiSite in conjunction with Prolog Manager, we advise that you wait for Service Pack 1 to be released as there are issues which can affect functionality in some environments.
To read the complete press release....
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Capitalizing on Overlooked Marketing & Sales Opportunities
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By Leslie C. Shiner
We all know projects are the life-blood of a construction business. Projects, though, don’t mean just work and revenue; they usually contain additional marketing opportunities that most contractors are too busy to see or think that they’re too busy to do. Here are six sales and marketing actions to help you capitalize on overlooked marketing opportunities, all of which can provide significant results with minimal effort.
- Educate the new customer. It’s your job to help a potential client who has contacted you for a bid make the right choice. Remember, you are the expert! References help assure prospects of the quality of your work and also can be used to educate clients. How? Simply create a survey to learn the three key decision points that were the most critical from previous customers’ prospective, and share this information with your potential new customers.
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Production: Seven Ways to Ensure Success
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By Gary Lewis and Lloyd Franke
Production for a contractor means getting the job done on time and within budget. Production is where the “rubber meets the road” as they say.
Almost anyone can put in a bid, buy a job, and send workers to a site. But to satisfy the customer and make a profit takes skill. On-time and on-budget sounds simple to the outsider, but many potential obstacles can make this difficult to achieve, such as:
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Field personnel accountability and communication tools
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Unforeseen issues beyond the original contract scope (change orders)
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Weather, traffic, procurement, or site related problems
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Availability of skilled labor
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Coordination and management of multiple trades on site
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Coordination and management of multiple jobs working at the same time
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Cash flow (getting paid in a timely manner to keep
Are successful companies simply lucky? Do good jobs find them? Is it the people they have working for them? What are the secrets to success?
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Meridian Named 2007 Constructech Hottest Company
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Hottest Company award participants are judged by the Constructech editorial staff based on a range of criteria, including the description of the company's product and/or service, significant accomplishments in the past year, the growth record for the past three years, noteworthy customer wins, and new products impacting the marketplace. For the fifth year in a row, Constructech has recognized Meridian as one of 2007's hottest companies. Read what Constructech has to say about Meridian.
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Key Training Dates - Prolog Manager
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Prolog Manager Training:
Intro. to Prolog Manger: Sept. 11th & 12th, Oct. 2nd & 3rd
Budget & Cost Control: Sept. 13th, Nov. 8th
Purchasing: Oct. 4th, Dec. 6th
Prolog Administration: Sept. 18th & 19th, Nov. 13th & 14th
Advanced Reporting: Sept. 20th, Nov. 15th
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Prolog - Tip of the Month
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Filtering Report Data
By Jason Faulkner, HardHat Technologies' Custom Development & Support Analyst
As you probably know, Prolog offers over 400 standard reports to put your data into a “printer friendly” format. The majority of these reports can be limited to the currently viewed record using the Quick Print feature, however often times it is essential to be able to filter reports on more than just the current record.
Prolog offers the ability to create custom filters on any report through Report Manager. Here is how:
- Open Report Manager.
- Select the Report to filter.
- Select the Designer tab.
- Under the Record Filters sub-tab, double click the field you would like to filter on. By default only the most common fields are availble to select. You can view all fields by changing the drop down list at the bottom to “”.
- When the Quick Filter dialog pops up, select the comparison operator and the filter value. The filter value can either be “hard coded” value or you can have Prolog prompt you for the value when you run the report by preceding the value with “@@”. For example a value of "@@Enter Date" would tell Prolog to ask you for the date before running the report.
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Automating Prolog Manager Database Backups
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By Jason Faulkner, HardHat Technologies' Custom Development & Support Analyst
Setting up a backup process is often an after thought which most of us probably say "I'll get to that later", but never actually do. The fact is a computer's hard drive is the most likely device to fail on your computer, yet it houses all your data.
While RAID configurations provide disk failure protection, they are not a substitute for proper backups. Database corruption, while unlikely, can happen at any time and are not protected by a RAID setup. A virus, flakey network connection or even something as simple as a sudden power outage can be enough to cause damage to and corrupt your database. Because of this, properly backing up your Prolog Database is a must.
A common misconception of backing up your Prolog Manager SQL Databases is using "live copy" backup, utilized by popular backup solutions, to copy the MDF and LDF data files is enough. According to this Microsoft KB article (the same information also applies to SQL 2000/2005), this practice only works if either the database or SQL Server is gracefully shut down prior to copying the files. Of course, this defeats the entire "live copy" idea as your database would have to be shut down in order to properly copy the files. On top of this, failure to shut down the database or services could result in a corrupt backup file.
Read on...
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HardHat Technologies
phone: 678.413.2900
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HardHat Technologies, Inc. | 1175 Green St., SE | Conyers | GA | 30012 |
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