September 20, 2007

Direct Access Discount Day

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:11 am

There’s a great deal on Direct Access, one of my favourite apps, over on Bits du Jour today. 40% off. Today only. Go grab it.

Direct Access lets you assign textual abbreviations to applications and other actions on your PC. Say you want to open Microsoft Word, you can just type “word” wherever you are, whatever application you’re working on. You can also create text substitutions. E.g. you could be writing an email and type “sign” and it will replace “sign” with your signature. Of course, there’s a confirmation key so you have to hit Shift, or F12 to confirm these actions. Otherwise I’d have opened Word three times and inserted my signature twice while trying to write this post 🙂

Direct Access is a really smart tool, written by my good friend Andrea Nagar of Nagarsoft. Please do check it out. I don’t often recommend other people’s software, but I just love Direct Access.

Macro Scheduler 9.1.05 Released

Filed under: Announcements — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:08 am

Macro Scheduler 9.1.05 maintenance update was released yesterday.

– Fixed: delay on some systems when saving scripts
– Fixed: Rare issue starting trial on Win2003 Svr RC2
– Fixed: SCRIPT_FILE variable showing garbage in compiled script
– Fixed: Possible “Invalid Pointer Operation” error on windows shutdown

Download the evaluation | Registered Updates

September 18, 2007

WebRecorder Update

Filed under: Announcements, Automation — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:51 am

Today we have released an update to WebRecorder:

WebRecorder GUI: 1.73
IEAuto.DLL: 1.79

Fixed: ContainsText unable to access content of some frames
Fixed: ExtractTag unable to access content of some frames

This update also correctly reports the version number of the WebRecorder GUI and the IEAuto.DLL version number. It now therefore works better with the online update checker and should be less confusing when checking for updates! 🙂

WebRecorder Info | Evaluation Downloads | Registered Updates

September 13, 2007

September 12, 2007

Debug, Debug, Debug

Filed under: Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 10:18 am

Many support requests and forum posts I see include a script snippet and a statement like “this value is wrong” or “the if statement says false but it should be true”. So we make an intelligent guess and say “so perhaps the value you are comparing isn’t what you think it is. Use the debugger”.

Stepping through the debugger reveals answers to problems like this quickly. Another way of checking values is to use a diagnostic message box. Whack a line like this into the script:

MessageModal>%MyVariable%

And see if MyVariable is what you are expecting.

Here’s an article I wrote some time ago on how to use the debugger.

http://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2006/05/17/use-the-debugger/

Use it. Debug. Debug. Debug. Please.

August 27, 2007

Date Picker Dialog

Filed under: Scripting — Marcus Tettmar @ 1:03 pm

Here’s a little script I wrote to give you a Date Picker dialog.

Useful if you need to ask the user to select a date and want to make it easy for the user and avoid too much validation.

August 23, 2007

Macro Scheduler Success Story – Convergent Solutions

Filed under: Success Stories — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:36 pm

By Ed Authier.

I used to consider Macro Scheduler just another tool to manage the technology that surrounded me everyday in my career. But at a certain point I realized that it was the best tool I had.

Many years ago a colleague introduced Macro Scheduler to me and in those days we used to supplement the Business System job streams that could not be automated inherently; nightly reports and routines, etc.

From there it evolved into complete elimination of printed reports; then through that automation we eliminated a nightly staff position from the IT team.

I then took Macro Scheduler into network engineering with me. Macro Scheduler would monitor router interfaces and call the on-staff person in the event of an outage. I also utilized it for VPN tunnel monitoring. In recent years, I’ve tied it into the clinical systems I have been working with.

There are so many possibilities with Macro Scheduler. I have read (in the forum) recently that Macro Scheduler is for the “layman” developer, but even with VBScripting you just cannot manage all your code and compile tight executables as you can with Macro Scheduler.

The other items that many people may overlook are the updates, enhancements, and fixes. Marcus and company are very commendable in this area. MJT Net also has an excellent response to support issues.

I am now a partner in my own business and I honestly believe that Macro Scheduler has had a hand in my success thus far.

Edward Authier, Chief Information Officer
Convergent Solutions, Inc.
http://www.convergentsolutions.com

Beware of Cheap and Expensive Imitations

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 8:50 am

I just stumbled across a couple of posts in another automation product’s forum where someone was asking how to perform date calculations in their automation routines.

In Macro Scheduler you can add or subtract days to a date with one line of code. E.g.:

Sub>date,1

Or, for more advanced date calculations and formatting, you can use a few lines of simple VBScript code, right inside your macro. Here’s a link to an article I wrote on handling dates in Macro Scheduler.

The official solution to the forum post from our competitor’s tech support person was to have the macro manipulate Excel. Yes, to perform a date calculation you are supposed to write steps to open Excel, send keystrokes to it, paste in a formula, send keystrokes to copy the result to the clipboard, and then retrieve that to a variable, which must itself be created in some convoluted manner. Phew!

Imagine doing that inside a loop that iterates several hundred times. Not exactly portable or elegant, and rather prone to error. And anyway, what if you don’t have Excel installed on the computer the macro needs to run on?

Ok, so you’re thinking: “so what, this tool is probably a low end product”. Well get this, the basic version costs MORE than Macro Scheduler Std. The business edition (still with the same [lack of] functionality) costs over FOUR times more than our Macro Scheduler Pro Enterprise package.

If you’re fed up with the limitations of your automation tool and want to switch to the real deal, drop us a line and we’ll offer you a competitive upgrade discount. You know it makes sense.

August 17, 2007

AppNavigator – Empowering Ordinary Users

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 9:44 am

Received this nice email today, and just had to share it. Emphasis mine:

Dear Marcus

Having visited your web site over the past few months and analysed the on-line demo’s, I was convinced that your product would help me in shortening the time I had to spend on one particular aspect of my business, so much so that I purchased AppNavigator and Macro Scheduler primarily for this one task.

This task, meant me spending on average at least 1-2 days per month, and having just ran the same task using your product I am delighted to state that it was completed in under 1 hour with no complications – other than one small glitch (my fault) which was superbly addressed by your support team. This is all the more impressive when you consider that I am not a programmer and have never written a line of code in my life.

The task that used to take me 1-2 days a month to do manually is now fully automated at night. Put another way, from my perspective the product has already paid for itself and the savings will be ongoing.

Furthermore the time I have saved will also be productive and so produce further benefits, and this is without considering the human aspect of tedium with repetitive tasks, which should really never be overlooked.

I hate to tempt the god’s by saying this (just in case you decide to hike the pricing!) but your product is indeed excellent value for money, and straightforward to use.

I have now identified other tasks within the business where your products will once again save me time, and further enhance the “investment” in your software.

Often in life we are quick to criticise and slow to praise, so hopefully this letter of appreciation will help redress this imbalance.

In thanks and appreciation.

Yours Sincerely,
Gerry Pentleton
ERA UK

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