August 2015

Looking ahead to September

To celebrate the USA Labor Day, our offices will be closed on Monday, September 7. 

Throughout this summer, we were kept busy helping many labs upgrade their computers and operating systems and have been told by others that there are plans for this to continue into the early fall.     It was just one year ago that the newest Windows operating system was 8 and now it has skipped to 10.   Some articles have said that Microsoft skipped 9 because this is a perfect 10!

Have you updated to Windows 10?

Microsoft would like you to do this and is offering a free upgrade to those who have licensed Windows 7 through 8.1.   This offer is limited to one year following the release date and will end in July 2016.   Microsoft will review your system configuration prior to the update to make certain you have sufficient resources.  They have been sending invitations to registered licensees and then scheduling appointments for installing the update.

We have found in our own update to Windows 10 that our installations and settings for other software were not in any way disturbed by the update.    There is a nice transition from the old to the new and we will, as we find time, explore through the many new features and keep you posted. 

To answer your questions...

Q:  We liked a small survey requesting feedback on their performance at the bottom of an invoice we received from one of our vendors.  We would like to do something similar.  Can this be done in DQB ? 

A:  Yes, there are several possibilities to generate a response/feedback request in DQB: 

1. You have in the Actions menu for your cases an option to Print QC Form.   This form includes information about the case and then an area for comments and feedback.  Since labs have had a variety of rating formats, for the standard we have used a generic text area but can easily customize this for the format of youir choice.
   
2. If you print your invoices in DQB, we could customize the invoice format to include a section for the ratings.
3. If you print your invoices in QB, the footer section does not have much space but could be used for a brief rating/feedback request.

Q:  We have fallen behind ten quarters in updating our DQB.   Do we have to run the updates for ten releases to catch up? 

A:  No, each release includes the cumulative updates from prior releases.  Updating for the releases is quick and easy, but if this is your first time or if you haven't done one in a while, you can always schedule a short session with our tech support.   If you want to see a list the enhancements and new features, these are published in the Support/.Quarterly Releases section of our website:  www.mainstreetsystems.net

When you are very busy, time flies

We have had an extraordinarily busy summer this year with lots of customization requests, conversions, updates and new installations. The autumn months are looking like this will continue.   This newsletter will be a short one.  Instead of including our educational topics here, we will direct you to our new website and its Blog section.   Here we have already added these topics:

• Case scheduling
• Coordinating the desktop and the cloud
• Custom fields in DentaLab for QuickBooks
• Fast easy way to store and retrieve digital documents
• If you want to be smart when selecting software
• Patient safety compliance for dental labs
• Understanding price levels
  

In the works are new topics on business intelligence and your case reports that hopefully will be ready for publication in September. 

So when you have a few moments for self-education, take a look.   The new website is:  www.mainstreetsystems.net  

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