The Sitadella

The code for SO_TravelFiles v1.0 is finished and tested, pending final release. Some of the improvements include:

• In lieue of a list of years and checkboxes, there is is a dropdown menu where you can select “Recent year. Recent 2 years… All years.” This means that the same settings can be used over and over without the user having to select a new year folder. Only the most recent documents for as far back as you want will be copied.
• The progress window has been improved to give better feedback.
• An automatic update function has been added to the help menu, allowing users to easily check for updates and upgrade their current installation if one is found.
• An option has been added to run a program after successfull completion of SO_TravelFiles. SuperOffice already has this option, but since SO_TravelFiles will have taken this spot already, it provides a new location for other programs to run from.

On a side note, SO_eFax is no longer recommended for use with SuperOffice, seing as UMSCOM’s eFax services can be integrated in a much easier and more intuitive way. Seing as SO_eFax extracts data directly from any GUI window, it may still be of interest for other programs where integration is not as straightforward as with SuperOffice.

SO_eFax has been tested and after some minor tweaks it works fine. See a demonstration of how it works here. (In Norwegian only.)

Wrote the first version of SO_eFax today and installed it through SO_Admin. SO_eFax integrates SuperOffice with an email-to-fax service provided by www.umscom.com to allow SuperOffice users to easily send faxes with Microsoft Outlook. You can add SO_eFax as a button to the leftmost panel in SuperOffice.

Without access to or knowledge of the inner workings of SuperOffice, this is the best solution I could come up with. The “user interface” is somewhat unconventional but it will do the trick for our simple day-to-day use. I’ll post a flash (Wink) presentation, the program itself and the source within a week or so.

Also, today I was granted something of a visitor’s pass to SuperOffice DevNet. I’m not entirely sure what good that will do me (or them) but I am gratefull nonetheless and spent some time this evening snooping around. My first impression was that it seems very far removed from the average users everyday SuperOffice experience and very much like a high-level developpers forum.

I realise that it is in fact a developper’s forum, but I still feel there should be a few more down to earth discussions. I’ve just visited for the first time though, so we’ll see.

The testing went well and everything worked fine. SO_TravelFiles is now ready for download:

• Get the windows installer.
• Get the source files.
• Come back here and write comments.

• I think I might have solved the problem with the icon file by using this nifty web application: http://converticon.com.
• Changed the Robocopy command to “/COPY:DAT /XO /NJH /NJS /NFL /z /LOG+:”%sLogfile%”".

I’m hoping this will have solved both issues! I’m going to test the program on a Windows 2000 Server running on 800×600 screen resolution (to check the icon file) and from a user with limited priviledges (to check the Robocopy command) tomorrow. I also used a different compiler “Ahk2Exe.exe”, it looks like this is the original compiler for AutoIt scripts?? The compiled script is just the same as before, but the file size was reduced by a few hundred kbs.

The only thing left to do is to setup a download counter and cross my fingers that the host servers can handle the immense download traffic that will ensue…. HAH!

SO_TravelFiles is currently in beta. A few bugs need to be squashed, the documentation needs to be updated and I hope to make a small AutoHotkey script that can be used to properly configure SuperOffice by automating the SO_Admin interface. Some of the bugs I have found so far:

• It looks like standard windows icon files (.ico) should always contain a minimum of four different icon sizes to support various screen settings. It looks like the icon file used for SO_TravelFiles is missing one of these standard sizes, which means the program will stall during startup. If anyone knows a thing or two about icons please email me.
• While testing the program for the first time with another user account, the log reported several errors with the text “A required privilege is not held by the client.” I thought this had to do with the user’s priviledges but according to this link, it has something to do with the robocopy flags that are currently being used (/COPYALL /XO /NJH /NJS /NFL /z /LOG+:”%sLogfile%”)

Hope to have released the first public version of the program within 2 weeks or so.