Office Tracker Version 9 Changes
Many great new features and changes have been made in Office Tracker version 9. From the redesigned interface and toolbar designs to the streamlined Administrative tools. We think you will be quite pleased with this upgrade!

Click here to take a quick tour now to see the new client design changes and some of the new features.

Office Tracker Server Administration Features

Persistent TCP/IP Connections
This improves the overall client/server communications so everything runs optimally, as fast as possible with less bandwidth.

New Client Setup Page on Server
Now you can let client users access an Install page from their web browser to install Office Tracker across your network onto their machine. No need to transfer the physical installer from one machine to the next - VERY convenient and much easier for your end users.

E-mail Integration for Notifications and Reminders
No need to configure MAPI. Now it's easier than ever to integrate your Office Tracker notifications and reminders with e-mail. E-mail reminders and event notifications are sent via the Office Tracker Server and should work with most SMTP compliant e-mail applications. This means users can create reminders for appointments, meetings and personal commitments that will be sent automatically to the recipient's e-mail from the server -- which eliminates the necessity of "remembering" to send them. A great automated method to ensure there are fewer "I forgot" mishaps.

Administrative Alerts and Updates via E-mail
Keeps you aware of many regular administrative tasks of the Office Tracker Server. For example, you can receive an e-mail update each time the Server is stopped or started, when backups are made or when someone changes the password. You can also get alerts if the backup failed, your demo expired or when you reach your maximum number of users. This gives you added peace of mind and keeps you in control even if you must be away from the office.

Server Log Improvements
Improved logs let you choose what you want to see in the log, reduces logging time, and improves usability of logged information by narrowing down what is actually saved in the log files.

New server log format lets you view Information, Warning and Error messages in groups.  Change format of log messages to include type of message, Info, Warning,Error, EmailInfo, EmailWarning, EmailError to allow Perl script to process and display user selections.

Connected Users List
Improved connected users list shows the most recent active and inactive time instead of the first connection time, giving you a more accurate view of how many users are currently logged in.

Improve Find Open Time
Now it's faster and much more streamlined for optimal performance.

New Sharing Privileges
Many users have asked for a way to allow schedulers to change just the label/keyword of an event, or maybe just the description, but restrict them from  changing other aspects of the event. Now you can! In fact, ten new levels of event editing have been added to the Sharing Privileges to make Office Tracker more flexible than ever. This makes it easy to allow your schedulers to do things such as  confirm or cancel an event, or change it's location or priority, without compromising any of the other important event information.

Everyone Owner or User now removes all permissions, even a name or group on itself.

E-mail Improvements
Java e-mail client has been added to the Server so MAPI is no longer required for e-mail integration of reminders and notifications. Some features that were part of the MAPI system may no longer be included in the new e-mail system.

Office Tracker Desktop Client Changes

Lively New Toolbar Buttons
Save More Clicks!  - Instant access to View Preferences, Date Palette, Report Printing and Today with new buttons in the on screen tool bar, saves more clicks, saves you time.


New Planner Views on Desktop Client
Names Down the Left, Times Across the Top!
Office Tracker's great new Planner view option lets you view groups of people with names down the left and times across the top - in a traditional "planner" format. You can choose the number of days to view from an on-screen menu and all of the Preference options let you customize your planner views to meet your specific needs.

10 New Sharing Access Levels for Events
Many users have asked for a way to allow schedulers to change just the label/keyword of an event, or maybe just the description, but restrict them from  changing other aspects of the event. Now you can! In fact, ten new levels of event editing have been added to the Sharing Privileges to make Office Tracker more flexible than ever. This makes it easy to allow your schedulers to do things such as  confirm or cancel an event, or change it's location or priority, without compromising any of the other important event information.

Date Information Moved to the Top of Each Schedule View
Now you can have multiple schedule windows open and see the date range clearly at the top of each open window. This provided more room in the toolbar area which now includes a Print button and Date Palette button.

New Find Open Time Options
Find Open Time now lets you find one or mroe available names/resources out of any number of selected names you choose, then you can choosse to schedule only those names you want with a simple click.

In addition, you can restrict the search to the original method and only find times when ALL names are available such as for a group meeting. 

This added flexibility means you can find times for one room out of several or find a few people or resources from a larger list. Great for staff scheduling, resource allocation and many other scheduling needs.

Optional On-screen Display of Total Resources/Names
See at a glance how many people, resources or contacts are involved in any event. On screen and print report includes total number of contacts and total number of attendees as optional items for additional reporting. This is great for training schedules where you may have a maximum/minimum number of seats to fill or for meeting and event planning where you need to see how many people are involved.

Reports Include Total Resources/Names and Total Contacts
Need a report to show exactly how many attendees were at the last training session? Want to see how many people regularly showed up for staff meetings over the past few months? This new feature is geat for tracking staff schedules, resource utilization, attendees for training sessions or other group events.

Improved Find Lets You Create Call Lists and Find Upcoming Appointments w/Contacts
Now you can find all contacts with appointments scheduled during a particular day/time and easily create your "confirmation" or other call lists for the day.

Improved Contact Linking Function
Prior to vs. 9, contact information could be linked, but once it was, it could not update in both places at the same time  (event description and Contact Record). Now, Contact records are linked in the same way as Attendees/Resources (now called "Names") and contact information is displayed in the event block as an option under Preferences. Contact information stays updated this way and keeps users from inadvertently editing it in two places.

Notice for upgrade users: Older linked contacts will still be stored with the contact info. in the Event Description area and will not auto-update unless you relink the contact.

Delete Events from Edit Event Window
A new delete button has been added to the Edit Event window. Now users can delete events that are linked with contacts from the Contact Manager window. (No need to go to the schedule and "find" the event first to delete it.)

Automated Alarm Settings
Users can now set preferences to default to a particular Alarm setting and make it easier to turn alarms on by default to save the step of creating individual settings for each alarm. For example, you may choose to have a default Alarm setting: "Remind me 1 day before"  for all events you create. In addition, you may choose to have an alarm created automatically for every event, in this case it would be for 1 day before each event.

Easier Access to Common Settings
Deleting Events: A new "Delete" button in the Edit Event window makes it easier to delete events and allows you to delete an event from the Contact Manager window as well, saving several steps.

Preferences window has been improved for faster, easier and more intuitive access to specific types of Preference settings. A drop list lets you choose which view "Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Planner" and settings change to correspond to that view format. A new "Font" tab has been added to the preferences window as well to make it easy to find and change font settings for your events, headers, etc.

Preference Ability to show Labels on Monthly but not on Daily/Weekly

Improved e-mail reminder layout.

Mouse scrolling for your desktop schedule views!
Now you can use your mouse button to scroll the schedule views up and down for added convenience.

Green "indicator light"
New time range indicator lets you see visually exactly what time you are about to click - even when you are in the far right side of a large group view. Very handy, reduces errors.


Office Tracker Web Client Changes
(Some of these features are also described in the Desktop Version above)

Find Open Times
Find Open Time lets you search selected names and see which names are available, then schedule only those names you choose with a simple click. In addition, you can restrict the search to the original method and only find times when ALL names are available such as for a group meeting.  This added flexibility means you can find times for one room out of several or find a few people or resources from a larger list. Great for staff scheduling, resource allocation and many other scheduling purposes.

Printing Reports
Now you can print several attractive reports from the web client in Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Report formats

See on screen the total number of attendees or contacts in any event. Great for training sessions, and other team events as well as for professional offices requiring a minimum number of resources for appointments.

Improved Find Lets You Easily Create Call Lists and See Upcoming Appointments Customers
Now you can find all contacts with appointments scheduled during a particular day/time and easily create your "confirmation" or other call lists for the day.

New Sharing Access Levels for Events Give More Flexibility Than Ever
Many users have asked for a way to allow schedulers to change just the label/keyword of an event, but restrict them from changing other aspects of the event. Now you can! This makes it easy to allow your schedulers to do things such as confirm or cancel an event, or change it's location or priority, without compromising any of the other event information.

All Day Button Now Works as Expected
Now the "All Day" button uses the current schedule view's hour range to determine the duration of the event.


Important Notes for Upgrade Users

Contacts Linking
Contacts linking has been improved. Prior to vs. 9, when contacts were linked to events, the contact information was included in the event name when you used the Preference "Use Contact Info for Event Name". In version 9, when you link a contact to an event, the contact info. is stored as a separate item from the event name, and will display as other event options like labels, keywords and Names (formerly Attendees/Resources). You can choose in your Preferences to show linked contact info. in your event block or not. It is on by default.

This change is an improvement in that when a linked contact record is edited, the event now updates to reflect the contact changes automatically. Older linked contacts will not update the text in the event name as part of the upgrade process so this new feature and functionality will only work with contacts linked after version 9.

Receiving Contacts from Server
The server now sends contact records in bulk, speeding up the process especially for larger lists of contacts.

New Window Designs and Layouts
Most noticeably the Names (formerly Attendees/Resources) windows are changed and the Find Open Time, to display the Names you can choose from on the left and the names selected on the right.  Several other windows have been improved to reflect better user interface.

Find
Find window and functionality has changed to allow for searches that previously could not be done such as finding all contacts with events scheduled for a certain date/time range.

Other Changes
There are several other changes to the interface and functionality that you should consider prior to upgrading.