by Mark Nemtsas | Nov 2, 2014 | New Releases, News
A new release of Time Clock MTS today, taking us to version 5.0.9. Here’s a complete list of the changes made:
- Added some new functionality to the search box on the Employee List screen. If you type a full employee name followed by a ‘+’ character then that employee will be punched in or out. Additionally if you prefix the employee’s name with an ‘=’ then the search box will immediately grab the focus. This new functionality allows the employee list screen to be used with barcode or magnetic card readers with badges of the form ‘=Employee Name+’.
- ALT-A shortcut added to bring up administrator login screen or to log the administrator out.
- Internet time server lock now can affect the keypad screen.
- Optimized the search box to stop needless database access.
- Fixed the export reports to CSV or TAB formats.
- Fixed up a multiple time punch error when holding down the ENTER key on the keypad screen.
- Put some extra interlocks in place to stop users seeing an internet time server lock when they shouldn’t.
- Fixed a typo on the Edit Times screen.
- The ‘View My Information’ button now displays the correct customized label when logged in as the administrator.
- Logging put in place for main timer loop crash seen on one computer.
- Fix for accruals where manual start date is set prior to the calculated start date.
by Mark Nemtsas | Oct 14, 2014 | New Releases
For the last two years some Time Clock MTS users have experienced a crash when starting up Time Clock MTS. The error message Windows gave was a rather unhelpful “Time Clock MTS has stopped working”. And that was it. The perplexing thing was that Time Clock MTS would work for months and years on a computer, and then one day it would just stop, and users would be presented with the mysterious message. And nothing they (or we) tried could ever get it working again.
We’ve spend hundreds of hours trying to get to the bottom of the issue with no luck. Mainly because we’ve never been able to reproduce the issue on one of our own computers. But yesterday, a long time user of Time Clock MTS experienced the problem and made his computer available to us via remote connection. After spending the whole day working on his computer we identified the cause of the issue and put a fix in place. Thank goodness! Our thanks must go out to Jose Moldes of International Taxes Inc. of Florida for his time, patience, and for making his computer available to us. I don’t think the problem would have been solved otherwise.
Here are all of the changes made in this release:
- Fix to start up crash seen on some computers. The issue was the text labels on the time clock and keypad screens. These have been replaced and the bug seems to be resolved.
- Fix to various screen elements not re-painting correctly.
- Removed an API call to repaint various window elements because it was surplus to requirements.
- Reworked much of the start up code to prevent needless multiple screen redraws.
Needless to say if you’re experiencing a start up crash of Time Clock MTS this update is a required one.
by Mark Nemtsas | Sep 4, 2014 | New Releases
I’ve spent the last few days working on a minor release of Time Clock MTS that was uploaded this afternoon. Version 5.0.6 includes the following changes:
- Replacement of the temporary registration key system with a 7 day trial extension. Users who have purchased the software when the trial has expired can now extend the trial for a further 7 days while they wait for their permanent registration keys (which are usually sent within 24 hours of purchase). Simplifies the process considerably and will lead to fewer users having their hands tied because they couldn’t work out the temporary keys they were emailed.
- The seven day trial extension can be accessed via a popup message on the day the initial 30 day trial period expires and also via the File menu. Once the extension has been used there is no way to extend beyond that point and the software will then operate in free mode (3 employee maximum on a single computer).
- Fixed some typos on the program splash screen.
- Reworded much of the registration information throughout the program for better consistency and easier comprehension.
by Mark Nemtsas | Jun 14, 2014 | New Releases, News
Despite me saying that version 5.0.4 would be the last bug fix release for a while we’ve decided to issue another minor release that addresses some rather serious issues with the system for getting the time from internet time servers. It appears that a Windows update sometime in the last few months broke something and we’ve had to come up with a fix for it in a hurry. Version 5.0.5 contains that fix plus some other things we’ve been working on in the background. Here’s details of the changes made in this new release:
- A fix to the ‘reset forgotten password’ functionality for users of the free version, those who are in the 30 day trial period, or those who have purchased and are still waiting for their permanent registration codes.
- Complete re-work of the code that selects the last employee time punch. This significantly reduces the number of database accesses during this process and should speed up performance for users with large databases.
- Made a change to the MySQL database creation script to include some new indexes on the time table. These indexes have improved the employee list refresh speed for MySQL users by about 1000% percent.
- Re-factored some code that handles employee time punches to increase performance and reliability.
- Small changes made to the licensing system to account for recent Windows environmental variable changes.
- Fixed up an issue with importing jobs with a job code longer than five digits.
- Fixed for checking time from internet time server when computer had been running a long time (30 days plus).
- Fix to startup process that gets the time from an internet time server. This was broken sometime in the last few months by a Windows update.
I strongly advise that ALL users of version 5 of Time Clock MTS upgrade to this release and have the software running seamlessly again.
by Mark Nemtsas | Apr 29, 2014 | New Releases, News
We’ve been largely happy with the release of Version 5 of the software with just a few minor issues that needed fixing up. The last of these have been cleared up in version 5.0.4 of the software which is uploading to our website as I write this. This will be the last bug fix release before we begin development of version 5.1 which will include some new features. Here’s the details of what has been done to this version:
- The Daily Hours Report now displays times correctly in hh.mm (decimal hours) or hh:mm:ss format as per the setting on the Report Settings screen.
- The Daily Hours Report no longer displays zero activity employees if the Exclude Zero Activity Employees check box is ticked on the Report Configuration screen.
- Fix to the Database Connection Wizard that was preventing connections to MySQL or SQL Server databases.
- A fix to the time period dropdown boxes on the Edit Times screen. The first day in the last 7/14/28 days periods was not being selected correctly.
- The Enter Note screen has had a 30 second timer added to it. If the employee does not enter a note within 30 seconds the Enter Note window will close and the employee punch in or out will be cancelled.
by Mark Nemtsas | Feb 6, 2014 | New Releases
Just a short entry to note the release of Time Clock MTS Version 5.0.2 (yesterday) and Time Clock MTS Version 5.0.3 today. Version 5.0.2 added a check to stop users setting the employee badge number to “0” or “000” or any repeating number of zeros. It also fixed up an issue some users were seeing with deleted emails still displaying on some lists. And finally it addressed a mysterious bug one user was having with adding new employees. I am baffled as to what was causing this as simply rebuilding the software for him seemed to fix up the issue without any actual code changes being made.
Version 5.0.3 was released today, It included one enhancement which now allows emails to be added directly from the Add/Edit Email Alert Screen. This version also escaped XML excluded characters from email alerts which was stopping some email alerts from being sent correctly. And the final change was a fix to all reports where time off (vacation or sick time) was taken on the last day of the report period. This could result in the balance of available vacation / sick time to be incorrect.
