TATEMS on Terminal Services Server Video Part 1

It's been a crazy world the past couple of weeks. We live in interesting times.

I pray you're doing well and staying safe wherever you are.

My wife and daughter drove to Arkansas last week to visit her parents and they decided to drive back though the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It sounded nice. I'm still waiting to see the pictures though.

Gas prices here in Las Vegas this week are at $3.39 per gallon at out local Sam's club and it's going to be 104° today.

Now on to today's tip:

I have been getting more and more people interested in installing TATEMS on  Windows Terminal Services Server.

This allows you to run TATEMS entirely on the server and can really speed things up if you have multiple users accessing TATEMS on a network.

It's the only way you can use TATEMS over the internet or from remote shops that are not on your local area network.

We are in the process of partnering with a company that will offer Terminal Services Servers over the internet with TATEMS pre-installed; for a monthly fee per user plus a setup fee to anyone who wants it. These servers are completely maintained by the company we are partnering with and we will make sure TATEMS is updated and running properly on them as well.

If you are interested in this service please let me know.  You will also be able to install and run other applications besides TATEMS on the servers if you need to.

If there is little or no interest we probably won't proceed.

In this video I demonstrate how to setup TATEMS on a Terminal Services Server (TS) that needs to have multiple users accessing the program at the same time. There are two types of remote access to the server you can take advantage of when setting up TATEMS on TS.

The first way is to grant the user remote desktop access. This is where the user logs in and sees his personal desktop that resides on the server and the TATEMS icon is on that desktop. He launches and runs TATEMS on the Remote desktop.

The other way is to setup what's called a RemoteApp. This is where the user gets an application icon on his computer for TATEMS but when he launches the application the program appears to be running on his computer but it is actually all running on the server. I'll go over setting up TATEMS as a RemoteApp in a second video in the next couple of days.

What's nice about either method is that TATEMS back end data file and front end files reside on the same computer(the server). So you don't get the performance degradation you get when you access the back end file over the network.

Here is the first video showing the setup of TATEMS in Remote Desktop Access environment on Windows Terminal Services Server:

I am also including some written instructions from out knowledge base:

For Terminal Services do a Full Install Logged as Administrator
and using Add/Remove Programs or the Terminal Service Application
installer to navigate to the setup file called:

tatemsmsi.exe on the CD or download.

When TATEMS is installed on Terminal Services
or Cirix only one person at a time can access
via remote access.

If you need to let more than one person at a time
use TATEMS via remote access then each additional
simultaneous user will be required to have their own license.

Here is the work around to let more than one person at
a time have access to TATEMS.

After the install is finished…

Create a sub folder for each user that will log in to use TATEMS
in this folder

C:Program FilesTATEMS 2005
(or in C:Program Files (x86)TATEMS 2005 on 64bit)

For Example for you might use

C:Program FilesTATEMS 2005Scott

copy this file

TATEMS2005.mde

in the

C:Program FilesTATEMS 2005

folder to each users sub-folder folder
( EX.C:Program FilesTATEMS 2005Scott ).

Then log in as each user and send a shortcut to the desktop for that file in the corresponding folder that matches the user name.

You can use the wrench.ico as the icon for the shortcut you create.

Then use the shortcut you create instead of the one created by the installer.

You can delete or hide or move the one created by the installer.

Whenever you do an update you will need to copy TATEMS2005.mde to each of the users sub-folders. You can create an Xcopy batch file to do the job for you.

You will need to own a separate license for each different user when logged in to terminal services or Citrix server in this configuration.

Take Care and Thanks Again,

Marc Ready
PCHelp, LTD

60 spreadsheets and 2 quick videos

When our puppy Kiba grows up I want him to be just like the Border Collie in this video:

Pretty cool huh?

It's going to be 105 degrees here in Las Vegas today and the gas prices are holding at about $3.44 per gallon.

And now on to Today's Tip

We have now created 60 spreadsheets that will link to your TATEMS data.

http://tatems.com/spreadsheets

I created a short video that shows you how to link to TATEMS data on a server from the Excel spreadsheets we created.

The video example uses Excel 2007:

Have a great week!

Thanks Again

Marc Ready
PCHelp, LTD

Driver History on Equipment and Selecting Work Order Labor Employees and 3 short videos

In last week's post I mentioned that my daughter collapsed a few feet away from me.

That was scary.

So to lighten it up a bit this week a bit we have a new 47 second video of our puppy Kiba up on my wife's desk.

Irresistible!

You know how they say it's 102 degrees but it's a dry heat here in Las Vegas? Not during the monsoon season.

It's a wet heat, but when the rain hits it cools us down which is very cool. Oh ya, and gas is $3.39 a gallon at our nearby Sam's club right now.

I have never seen a fireworks finale like this video that my nephew took. His video is less than 3 minutes but you have to watch it to the end.

I posted it to our TATEMS Facebook page.

Click this link and Enjoy!

And now on to Today's Tip

Real quick video and tip today.

When you want to add a driver to the Driver History for a piece of equipment you have to make sure they are setup as a driver in the personnel file.

Otherwise they won't show up in the list of available drivers.

To do that, click on Forms->Personnel

Then choose the employee and then make sure the driver box is checked.

By the same token, when adding Labor to a Work Order the employee must be setup as a Fleet Technician in the personnel file for them to show up in the Labor Dropdown
as an available employee.

I hope this tip has been helpful for you.

If you need help with anything please send an email or give us a call.

Have a great weekend!

Thanks Again

Marc Ready

New Labor Items spreadsheet and video and more

I hope your week is going well so far.

The last week or so around here has been a little crazy.

It was only 95 ° here in Las Vegas today, well below normal and the Gas prices have been getting lower. We filled up for $3.55 per gallon last Friday and have seen it as low $3.31 per gallon on the other side of town.

I usually make breakfast in the morning for my wife and me and a few days ago I did what I usually do.

I left my wife's breakfast on the counter and yelled upstairs to let her know it was ready.

Then I grabbed mine to sit down and watch TV.

She took longer than usual to come down. I was already finished when she walked over to her plate and found a plate full of ANTS! Oops…

So we spent the next few hours trying to eradicate them.

The next day as I'm making breakfast I noticed water in the kitchen sink. I thought it wasn’t draining because there were some plates on one side that were blocking the drain.

We removed the dishes and it still would not drain. So I grabbed the bathroom plunger and turned on the garbage disposal and stupidly tried to plunge the other side.

All of a sudden boom! The pipes burst, water goes spraying out the front of the cabinet, soaking my pants and flooding the cabinet under the sink and the floor.

Oh what Fun!!!

I took apart the pipes and used a 6 foot snake to try to clean it out, put it all back together, no go, tried multiple Liquid Plummer bottles, no go.

Finally got a hold of my landlord and she sent in the big guns drain cleaning service. He had to go in about 15 feet to the main drain and that did the trick.

Drama over…. For a few days.

So it’s about 6AM Monday morning and I’m downstairs in morning prayer and hear my 23 year old daughter coming downstairs to let the puppy “Kiba” out (Kiba means fang in Japanese).

A few minutes later I hear the door open and then a big bang, and the cats go flying, bells jingling and I’m thinking “what’s going on” So I look up, I don’t see my daughter, then I look behind me, the cats are staring towards the door, then I look down, and my daughter has collapsed on the floor.

I freak!

I jump up and she is laying there on her side, and the floor is hard tile, she is unconscious and her eyes are open.

As I keeled over her and starting asking if she was aright she slowly came back around.

Well thank God, it turns out she just fainted and after a while she was able to get up and eat something.

We figure it was just low blood sugar. She said as she was sitting out back waiting for the dog to finish his business she started feeling ill, like she wanted to lay down. She thought she could make it back inside but just couldn’t make it.

Scared me to no end… the sight of her laying is something I’ll probably never forget. You never want to see your child hurt in any way.

And now on to today's tip…

Shelly, one of our clients was looking for a report to show all the Labor hours and costs even if the Work Order was still open.

We did not include a time clock feature for labor items in TATEMS in order to keep it as simple as possible for technicians to use.

But due to popular demand we will be adding a way to track start and Stop times and dates on each labor item in a future
update.

In the meantime I created this spreadsheet that will let you see all the dates associated with each work order and the
associated labor so I created the spreadsheet profiled in the video below:

It’s called:

Labor on Work Orders Pending and Completed.

And it will link to you TATEMS data and display the following columns:

Equip #
Work Order #
Date Requested
Date To Complete By
Date Completed
First Name
Last Name
Labor Description
Labor Notes
Hours/Units
Cost Per H/U
Total Cost

You will need to have Microsoft Excel to use these spreadsheet and have it link to your TATEMS data.

The video also shows you what you will probably need to do in order to make it work on your computer if you are not running
Excel 2007 or 2010 or if you have a 64 bit version of Windows or if your TATEMS data is on a network then

see this video:

 

You can get the spreadsheet at our website it’s called:

TATEMS-LaborOnWorkOrders-PendingAndCompleted.xls

It’s ready for you online and ready to download here:

http://tatems.com/spreadsheets

It is spreadsheet number 60 in the list on that page.

I hope this tip has been helpful for you.

Have a great Weekend and a Happy 4th of July

Thanks Again

Marc

P.S. If you need a custom spreadsheet let me know below and if you are on Facebook please click the like button… If you do… actually like this post that is…

2 Quick New Videos… Fixing bad Odometer entries

If you missed it I also posted a Video last week showing you a couple of ways to handle Tools or Equipment that you keep on your Trucks or Vehicles

Fixing Odometer Entry Mistakes.

From a previous tip:

I had a customer call me with a weird problem today.

Whenever he ran his mileage report under Reports-More Reports Report Type: Equipment, then select the report called “Equipment Miles/Km Traveled – Hours Run”

he was getting a reading of -26066 miles traveled.

I did a quick scan of his entries via remote access and could not see what the problem was.

So I download a copy of his TATEMS data file so I could have a better look.

What I found surprised me. In the middle of all his entries he had lower odometer reading for a date of Jan 7 2800 instead of Jan 7, 2008
so the report results was always skewed. He also had a current entry April 1, 2009 that had a lower odometer reading by thousands of miles than the one entered just prior to it.

It's an easy fix but sometimes those miss entered numbers and dates are hard to spot.

So…

If you make a mistake, in order to correct it, you can click on the “Update Odometer and Hours” button.

Then you can click the “View All for This Equipment” button to find your mistake and delete it or change it.
After you have fixed it, click the “Update and Close” button.

In the short video below I demonstrate how to delete or edit An Odometer Enter that was entered incorrectly.

I hope this tip has been helpful for you.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Have a great weekend!

How to Track Tools or Equipment On-board your Truck or Vehicle

One of our new clients asked how he could track tools or equipment that is carried on a Septic Tank Truck…

A while back I sent out a couple of emails and then shot a Video that shows and describes to you how to track Tools or Equipment on-board your Truck or Vehicle but it's been buried on our main site.

So I decided to bring it out and re-edit the video, polish it up a bit and provide the text of the tip in this post as well

Here's the Video, it described at least 3 ways you can track Tools On Board:

And here are some written instructions that should help you too.

The simplest way would be to use the notes section for each piece of equipment and just list each tool or on-board equipment associated with the vehicle.

You could then print out all the notes for a piece of equipment by going to Reports-Current Equipment Reports->Notes

You can use that list to go out to the vehicle and verify everything that should be there.

You could also search for the tool to find out which truck it's on.

To do this you would probably want to use some kind of numbering system to identify each tool, especially if you have a lot of the same model of tool.

Then next to the “Search” button you would change the dropdown where it says “by Equipment Num” to Search “by Notes”

Another less desirable way would be to use the Driver History section of the Equipment summary screen. I would only recommend this if you are not currently using that section for actual driver history.

You can also enter each individual tool into TATEMS as a separate piece of equipment and in the “Location” dropdown you could enter the vehicle that it is currently in.

This would also allow you to keep a maintenance schedule for tools that need maintenance.

You could also search by “Location”. To search by Location you would change the dropdown in the search bar near the top of the screen next to the word “Filter” to “by Location”.

Then next to the word “Choose” there is a dropdown showing all the “Locations” in your database. If you were associating a particular tool with a particular vehicle then that vehicles number would show up as a “Location” to “Choose”

Once you “Choose” a Location in the search bar then click the “Search” button. To display all the Tools or whatever is at/in that “Location”

To display all your Equipment again in the Search results list you would change the “Filter” back to “Show All” then make sure the Search text box to the left of the “Search” button is empty then click the “Search” button again.

And…Wala! All your equipment shows in the list again.

I hope this has not been too confusing…

Have a great week and if you're on Facebook or Twitter be sure to Like or Tweet this post or use one of the free bookmarking service buttons we provide.

Oh ya, please leave a comment too!

All The Best!

Marc

P.S. In the video I mention using a separate empty database to store and track your tools on-board. I made a copy of an empty TATEMS database and renamed it, so it won't conflict with your default TATEMS database to: tatems2005be-Tools-On-Board.mdb then I zipped it up. If you would like to have it you can download it by clicking here

New Spreadsheet Shows All Equipment PM History

I pray that you are staying healthy and safe with all these disasters going on in the world.

On Monday we attended my daughters college graduating ceremony.

It was great to see her finish college, now on to her career in Cardiac Sonography.

Know any doctors or hospitals hiring? 🙂

Nice to see that gas has been getting a little cheaper. It's come down to $3.67 here at the local Sam's Club here in Las Vegas.

I just finished up a new spreadsheet that shows you a list of all your equipment and also all of the lube services that have been completed.

It will link to and display your current TATEMS data:

Each row in the spreadsheets contains the following columns:

Equip Num
Customer
Lube Service Type
Odometer
Hours
Date Completed
Accomplished By
Air Filter
Oil Change
Fuel Filter
Oil Filter
Transmission
Tire Pressure
Differential
Wheel Bearings
Batteries
Brake Adjusments
Lubrication
A Service
B Service
C Service
Notes

This will allow you to see which PM items were checked off over time on each piece of equipment.

I shot a short screen cam video that shows you what it looks like.

The spreadsheet is number 59 on our TATEMS maintenance software spreadsheets page

——————————————————————————————————————–
Tidbits from around the NET
——————————————————————————————————————–
From the L.A.P.D.

“Things Your Burglar Won't Tell You”

1. Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, selling magazine subscriptions or delivering your new refrigerator.

2. Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.

3. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of gaming system they have.

4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.

5. Hey your car parked in the driveway – I will use the garage door opener in your car, it activates the garage door – even when the car ignition is off. So you may want to turn your garage door opener (power) off from inside the garage when your home.

More of those on the next post.
——————————————————————————————————–
Tell a Friend about TATEMS or like this post on Facebook and leave any comments below.

Have a great weekend!

2 New Spreadsheets that pull Work Order Discounts and More

I hope your week is going well . Gas is still holding at 3.79 per gallon and the it's going to be about 92 degrees today, but the winds are supposed to get up to 50 MPH tomorrow here in Las Vegas.

American Idol or the Voice? If you live in the U.S. do you watch either of these?

OK I admit it… my wife and my daughter and I are Idol fans, but The Voice is not bad either and it brings a new twist. Are you watching the battling talent shows?

We had a request come in and a client wanted to see just the “Discounts” given on all work orders, he also wanted to see the “Misc” charges separated out on the same spreadsheet. He just wanted to see the grand Totals for the 2 fields for all equipment combined over a certain date range.

So we not only created that spreadsheet but went one better and created a second spreadsheet that will also display the Parts Totals, Labor Totals, Misc Totals, Discount Totals and Grand Totals from Work Orders for each piece of equipment.

The first spreadsheet only displays the 2 cells

This spreadsheet uses a date range of 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2050 and is a compilation of all equipment over that time period.

To change the date range in Excel 2010 see the screenshot below

The second spreadsheet displays a row for each piece of equipment and the 6 columns seen below. This one also uses a date range between 01-01-2000 and 12-31-2050.

Changing the date range on the second spreadsheet is basically the same, but the dates are not so close to the bottom of the command text box seen below. To get to the point where you click connections in step one you have to be in the data tab.

When you open either one of the spreadsheets or change the date range you may need to click the
refresh data in the data tab.

Most of this stuff looks the same in older versions of Excel, but instead of a data tab there will be a data menu item.

You can find both of the new spreadsheets at:

http://tatems.com/spreadsheets

They are numbers 57 and 58 respectively.

There is also a link on that page to a video that shows you how to link to your TATEMS data on a different server.

Or see the video on this page:

http://blog.tatems.com/video-updating-odometer-readings-spreadsheet

I hope this was helpful for you. Please leave any comments or questions below and if you use Facebook be sure to click the like button below.

Have a Great Weekend!

Thanks Again

Marc

New Version 4.3.02 and Video

Big news this week!

Osama Bin Laden is dead, my youngest daughter turns 23 and graduates from college, and we released a new version update of TATEMS!

Gas prices here in Las Vegas were 3.79 per gallon at the nearby Sam's club this past weekend and the weather is great! It's going to be about 77 degrees today and almost no wind.

I created a quick (less than 3 minute) video showing you a couple of changes we made in this version update.

Get the update here

http://tatems.com/updates

Please comment below if you have any feature requests and remember to like this page on Facebook, re-tweet on twitter and bookmark at your favorite bookmarking site!

Thanks Again

Marc Ready

New Video How to Attach an Equipment Picture in the proper format

I had someone call and say he could not get pictures into TATEMS.

You don't actually upload a picture into the program.

When you use the Equipment Picture button in TATEMS you are creating a link to a picture of that equipment on your computer or on a server.

The picture must be in a specific format. It must be in the bitmap format have the .bmp extension.

You can use Microsoft Paint which is included in all versions of Windows to open your picture
and then save it as a .bmp(bitmap) file.

It is also best if you re-size the image to either:

5 x 3 inches or 320 x 216 pixels at 72 dpi

Then you can link to the picture using the Equipment Picture button.

And from that point on when you click the Equipment Button or print a unit information report you
will see the picture.

The only exception is if you delete or move the picture to a different location.

Here is the video that shows you how to do it all:

Was this helpful for you?

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