2 Up Labels Return

Back by popular demand are the original “Labels- 2 Up” freight labels. This feature allows you to print to a variety of standard Two Up commercial labels or just two to a page if you choose.

Don’t worry the “Labels- Single” added as a replacement sometime back remains as well.

You’ll find the new Label selection option anywhere labels are printed. If you don’t let us know and we’ll be sure to update that screen as well.

AUTOMATED RECEIEVING NOTICE HAS ARRIVED!

You have likely noticed a new calan default Milestone, Materials Expected Back on your Project Timelines.

You can now choose to add a more rigorous element to the discipline of properly receiving back assets or remain as you are today.

This new features provides you with three options to choose from in making this business determination.

The Service’s Functionality

First, the Service is global to all accounts on your site if selected.

If the new service is activated and a date is inserted for the Materials Expected Back Milestone, the insertion can be manual or defaulted; system performs an automated return to Warehouse and check of the Final receiving flag. The trigger date for this service to run, in the fully default mode, is the maximum number of Days After Close of the event, based on your Asset Types settings, plus one day. The site Default Warehouse is selected as the return to facility. Not always the “prefect” warehouse choice and date but given all of the variables the only reasonably predictable ones for a fully automated mode.

When the trigger is tripped the entire existing Task notices and the placing of items Missing/NOT Returned functions introduced several months ago will run. Items not check marked as back prior to this action will be placed in the state of Unavailable.  Internal Project Owners are Tasked with a Receiving Report indicating the status of their assets.

Option 1: Do nothing. You have a new default Milestone. Make use of it when you like. It will not have any automated function.  The system does nothing differently than it has done in the past. You can of course send a Task notice for this new Milestone to either the warehouse operation personnel or a Project Manger. 

For either of the following two options you must contact calan to advise us of your choice.

Option 2: Passive Mode. The automated function is enabled, but the automatic trigger function is not enabled. The automated feature is in the passive mode. You have the automated function but you are reliant on a User’s action in order for the Receive back procedures to run. If for a given Project a date is inserted for the Milestone, the functionality will run as described. If no date is inserted for the Milestone, the system takes no action. You can still optionally assign this Milestone as a Task.

Option 3: Active Mode. The automated function is enabled and the automatic trigger function is enabled. The automated feature is in the active mode. You are not reliant on a User’s action in order for the Receive back procedures to be run. For any Project created, a default date based on the function’s description above, is Inserted for the Materials Expected Back milestone and the functionality will run in a fully automated mode as previously described.  You can still optionally assign this Milestone as a Task.

For either of the two options above the date is editable

Note: Please call to discuss these Options in greater detail and how they might best support your business needs.

SERVICE ALERT

calan servers suffered a total failure in the early hours this morning.

Staff began recovery efforts at 4:20 Am EST.

We are looking at an approximate full restoration of service by 8:45 AM EST.

If issues persist much beyond that time we will provide further updates.

The logs will be reviewed once full service is restored.

Performance Issue Identified

Corrective steps are being taken.

The slowness we suffered today for about an hour has been identified. In fact the last several slowness issues we have had are the result of this same issue. Brute force assaults on the db. We were getting over 2000 login attempts per minute.

The attackers are going for our port 1433, which is a standard port for OBDC connections.

We are now working to move to a random port. While not perfect, there is no way to stop attackers from trying, if your services are not on a standard port, as ours is, the attackers don’t waste the time to find which port you might be using and simply move on to the next victim.

Once we have this working on our end, we will provide all sites currently running scanners with step by step instructions to change your OBDC connection from your side and then we will close port 1433 on our end.

Shipment Scheduling adds a Transshipment tool

We received a call yesterday from a User who was trying to pull a report for TO Shipment activity. No problem. However a Transshipment is both a FROM and TO shipment, so the TO shipment side was appearing, mixed in with his other TO shipments. Despite several humorous results trying to get them out with a variety of “curious” commands on the Quick Select screen, no joy. 

Cliff however had the “right” answer. A few hours of coding and presto, a new control TRANSSHIPMENT < Yes/No >. You’ll find this new control on the bottom of the Shipping management screens.

NOTE: PS Now I know how you guys create some of those wacky error messages we see.

Shipping Labels become more flexible

Just recently we updated the Print Bar Code functions to provide greater flexibility in how you print them.

Effective immediately a similar update has been made to the print shipping Labels link found on the Mange Shipments pages; both in Projects and within the Shipping Module screens.

Instead of inserting two data sets of the address on the print page we now insert only one. The original code was to support a TWO UP print to an 8” x 10” page. The feedback from several Users has indicated that they would prefer to have a single data set so that they could use their Printer settings to produce a number of different label types.

While we were making this change we also added a reminder on the Print Label screen, “Please check to confirm you have added an item to this shipment's Packing List and selected a Carrier before printing your shipping labels.”

Happy New Year to everyone!