Newsletter: Holiday Letting System. 7th August 2007.

All,
      You are receiving this newsletter as registered users of the Holiday Letting System. (See http://holletsys.co.uk )

This letter covers

1. the availability of a new release (2.5) of the Holiday Letting System
2. the availability of a new beta version (2.6) that is needed if you wish to run on Windows Vista.
3. other information.

Note: On 3rd September the above Beta was formally released as V2.6. See Newsletter 7.

1. New Version (V2.5) available.

The latest version (V2.5 dated June 2007) is available for downloading from http://erwwen.com/holletsys/download.htm
(Just download and install the evaluation version – your registration details and settings are not altered.)

This new version is available at no charge to existing registered users. There are many new functions, including a major change to the way letters are produced from proformas. This allows you to have as many letter types as you wish, and to give each letter type its own name.

A list of the enhancements is below. You are advised to upgrade to this new version if you need the new functions or are experiencing any problems. Support will no longer be available on older versions.

The new functions were mainly suggested by existing users. More details are in the help file.

• Enhancements to the Automated Letters Function
  • You can now have as many automated customer letters as you want; the old limit of three letters is removed.
  • You can configure letter descriptions to anything you wish, and also alter the order of your letters with simple drag and drop.
  • Letter processing is enhanced so you can see at a glance all the letters you've created for a particular booking, and can quickly create (or recreate) letters with much more flexibility than before, from a new Letters Window
  • A new Proforma management window allows you to see, at a glance, all the proformas that exist
  • From this new window you can also edit proformas and delete, rename and copy proformas
• Data recovery is now improved. A new function Copy booking to specified file makes it easy to recover accidentally deleted booking data. Details of how to recover data is in the Help topic How to recover lost data which should be read once you've installed this new release.
• The Special Instructions field is expanded. Two lines of information may now be entered (up to 100 characters). This is printed in the report "Booking List for Local Rep" spread over two lines when necessary.
• Improvements to the Help System
  • LetSys has been converted to use the HTML Help system ("HTML Help") that is required for Windows Vista and also makes navigating around the help system easier due to the additional navigation pane.
  • All images in the help system have been updated to use the Windows XP theme instead of Windows Classic Theme, to avoid confusion for new users.
  • The Help system has been overhauled and improved in a number of other ways, including the new topic How to recover Lost Data mentioned above.
• New Availability Report: This new report is a list, by property, showing the dates that are available in a specified period. This simple text report is produced as a file that can either be printed or alternatively can be "copied and pasted" into an email to tell potential customers what periods are available.
• New "Clean-up function". You can now prune old history data (older than a specified date) from The Archive / Clean Up Window which will reduce the total data stored and speed up processing a little. You are recommended to run this at least once a year.
• Mailshots: Mailshots by email are now batched. If you are sending a mail shot to a large number of email addresses, the emails are now sent in batches to a maximum of about 80 people at a time. This addresses a Windows restriction and it may also help if your ISP restricts the number of recipients on a single email.
• Minor enhancements:
  • The File menu (in the Status window) has been rationalised as it was starting to become too long. All the reports are now grouped into a reports sub-menu. There is also a new Import/export sub menu.
  • If you export booking details to a CSV file, LetSys will try to open this file in whatever is the default application for CSV files (often this is Excel).
  • The status window cannot now be oversized (which only showed unused space). When the width is reduced the scrollbar is now shown, to make it possible to work with a smaller window, and still see the status.
  • The status shown when the balance is paid is now "Paid, sent instructions". The previous message was confusing.
  • Migration: When your settings are saved to a file the date is added to the file name
  • A number of problems are fixed

More details on the enhancements are also available in the Help files for the new version and on the web in the release history at http://www.erwwen.com/holletsys/releasehistory.htm

When you re-install the software:

• Do not uninstall the previous version, or you will lose your settings and data. Just install “on top” of your existing version.
• All options you have already set are preserved. You do not need to re-enter your registration code.
• Make sure LetSys is not running when you do the installation.

More notes on upgrading are here: http://erwwen.com/holletsys/Support/upgrade.htm

2. New Beta Version (V2.6) available - needed for Windows VISTA.

Windows Vista is growing in popularity, and now runs on about 5% of the world’s computers (a rapidly growing number). Hence we are pleased to announce support for this new version of Windows. Support is provided by a new beta version (V2.6 dated 8th August 2007) available for downloading from http://erwwen.com/holletsys/beta.htm
This version runs on any Windows System, of course, but you must use this version if you are intending to run on Windows Vista.

It would be helpful to have some more users install and test this new version.

       List of enhancements in this beta:

• Windows Vista compatibility
  • This version fixes a problem with Vista, that prevented users from sending proforma letters by email.
    
• Minor changes:  There are some minor improvements
  • The Letter Processing icon (on the Bookings Window) now has a different colour to make it easier for users to pick out.
  • Labels and envelopes are now printed with the line spacing appropriate to the font selected; this means you can now use larger fonts without text being obscured.
  • A few bugs are fixed (including one that prevented printing to Adobe Acrobat) and Label template documentation is improved.

3. Other information

Future plans

The only important enhancement now to do is provide a rewritten version to support more than four properties. Many of the improvements in the latest release are pre-requisites for both Vista and this planned version. As I am no longer doing so much teaching, I hope to make this available in the next few months. My apologies to those users who have been waiting for this for quite some time.

If you have any important requirements of your own please let me know.

My usual plea for Help!

If you like this system (and some of you certainly do judging by the comments) then please tell others you know who also manage holiday cottages about it. Thanks especially to those who have recommended this system to others; through that and search engines we continue to get a slow but steady stream of sales.

Comments please!

I hope the system is proving valuable. Your views are always welcome.

Best wishes to all users.

Regards,
        Brendan Blake.

email:info@erwwen.com
Web site: http://holletsys.co.uk
Phone: +44-(0)-20-8940-7087
88 Mount Ararat Road, Richmond, SURREY TW10 6PN.

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