Virtual Enrollment Party

Here's a new topic that will hopefully generate lots of discussion!

We've all heard about the genie and the three wishes. If I was the genie, and you could have your top THREE wishes for improvements or additions to the 4-H enrollment system, what would they be?

It's important to me not only to know what you want, but also how many people ALSO want that same thing... so just because someone else has "already said what I was going to say", don't opt out. Post your comment. This is your chance to get to help influence some of the features we are going to look/ask for in a new system, and it's sure better to know this NOW before it's a done deal, rather than trying to negotiate changes after the ink is dry!!

Posted by Becky at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's come to my attention that this is prime time for those wonderful student interns to begin! Without them, our summer, at least here in the state office, would be crazy! (Or more accurately, crazier than it already is!!)

If you have a summer intern who will be working in your office that will need access to the X drive (for Blue Ribbon data), here's the process that you'll need to follow:

1. Make sure your intern has an "iastate.edu" email address, then contact Extension IT to get that account set up with access to your county's share drive (S:)
2. After those two things are done, then send ME an email with your intern's email address, telling me that he/she needs access to the X drive. I will set that up for you--Extension IT handles the S drive, I set permissions for X.

That should do it for you... if you have more questions about the S drive or email accounts, Extension IT can help you figure that out.

Have a great summer, enjoy all the creativity and energy that these young people bring to our programs!!

Posted by Becky at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is only necessary if you have a computer that has both Blue Ribbon and Fair Management loaded on it, and you plan to take that computer to the fair, where there is no network available. This is not a problem with the program, it's just that we have a network set up and must disable it if the computer will not be connected.

Both Blue Ribbon and Fair Management use the same configuration setting for the NET DIR—the “Locks” file path. If you leave it set as it works for Blue Ribbon (X:\Winyouth\CountyLocks, where County is your actual county name), the computer will not run Fair Management when it is off the network and X: is not available.

This is a simple fix, and you should do it before you unhook the computer to load up for the fair.

• Go to your Start menu, Programs, Youth Enrollment, BDEAdmin.
• Select the Configuration tab at the top.
• Click on the Plus signs to open Configuration – Drivers – Native – Paradox.
• Click on Paradox, and then on the right hand side, look for the top option of NET DIR
• Click in the path in the right box, then use the dot-dot-dot button at the far right to browse for a Locks file.
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• Use the Drives option in the lower right to choose the C: drive. In the left side box, double click on C:, then on Program Files, then Youth Enrollment, and finally Locks. Be sure that the entire path shows up—with the last portion being “\Locks”.
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• IMPORTANT: When you come back from the fair, you will need to reverse the process and set your NET DIR back to “X:\Winyouth\CountyData”. Blue Ribbon will still run on the computer if you don’t, but you won’t be able to use the program at the same time as someone else in your office.

Posted by Becky at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All of you who are using the X drive (which is really soon to be ALL of you...) know that you don't have to do Winzip backups any more. But some of you are used to doing backups to get your data onto a fair computer, for use in importing into Fair Management.

The thing is, you can't create any new files on the X drive, so if you do the "Add to Data.zip" option, you're going to get an error message, because that auto-option wants to write to the same location as the Data folder, and it can't.

The easiest solution is going to be to copy your CountyData folder (the whole folder, not just the files) out to your C or S drive. Do be sure that you COPY, not CUT, that folder!! Once you've copied the CountyData folder to another drive, you can either use Winzip at that point, write a CD, or use a USB flash disk if you need to get the data onto a machine that is not on the network.

There is a way to create a Winzip backup and have it save in a different location "Add to zip", but for most folks, copying the folder and pasting it somewhere else is going to be easier. Winzip doesn't have a terribly user-friendly interface, kind of clunky if you haven't used it a whole lot.

Posted by Becky at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

GREAT discussion on the last question! That question dealt with input (how the data gets into the system), and now I'd like to focus on output for a little bit.

Those of you who have attended my Filemaker workshops have heard me say that all data management systems are built on the basis of input (what data do you have) and output (what do you want to do with it). When you talk about output, you're talking about not only the data (information) itself, but also the format--list, labels, summaries, whatever. Sometimes all I need is the information, and sometimes I need it in a specific way.

Thinking about Blue Ribbon, there are many pre-formatted reports available. On the parameters screen, you can select some filtering options and some format options. That allows you to choose both the set of records you want printed, and to some extent what fields are going to be included, what order, etc.

In some systems, there are unlimited filtering options--you can choose exactly which records are to be included, but fewer pre-formatted reports. After you chose the records you wanted, you would then choose what fields you want (from ALL available fields) and their order, but the data would go out to Word or Excel, and you would do any further formatting yourself. More flexible, less "canned". Advantages and disadvantages both ways.

With all that explanation, the question for discussion today is... if you had to choose your top FIVE report formats to keep as "canned" report formats, what would they be? Disregard anything about mailing labels--those are non-negotiable. I'm thinking in terms of list formats, that kind of thing. Think about ones that would be more difficult to fix up in Excel or Word. You probably have more than five you'd like to keep, but narrow it down to the TOP five. No, we won't be limited to that, but I want to see where we get some consensus, and where there are differences.

Posted by Becky at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

As you may have heard, some of us have been doing a bit of research on possibly finding an enrollment system that would allow for web-based data entry, eliminating the need for software installation. We're still looking, still thinking, and no firm decision has been made. However, in doing this, several questions are coming up, and I need to have some input from the folks who are actually going to be spending the most time USING it--that would be you guys! So, I'm going to post some "discussion questions" and I'd like to get some conversation going by using the comments feature of this blog.

The first question is about WHO does the web entry. Let's assume for now that we had two choices, all technical and privacy issues had been adequately addressed, and the functionality (reports, etc.) of the two was the same.

One of them was designed for information to be entered by county staff, with a staff-login site, adding information much the way we do now, just over the web instead of in a software package.

The other one allowed families to enter their own basic information over the web, with counties doing group enrollments and other editing to records as necessary. There would be controls in place that would not allow families to change project enrollment or whatever after county-specified dates, as well as fields that families would not see, but county staff would--like the checkboxes for health forms, for example.

What do you see as the benefits/drawbacks of each of these systems? Remember that we're not worrying right now about functionality or privacy or other things--the two options would be exactly the same except for whether families would enter their own data. What do you think? Let us know... share your thoughts... be polite, though... we're all friends here, even if we have different opinions. I figure we can all learn from each other!

Posted by Becky at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a question from MaryAnn in Webster County, and it caused me to re-think what I THOUGHT was true. Turns out I was wrong--how amazing is that?

The question dealt with the disability field on the member record. I've encouraged you to use that to record info that would be useful info for leaders & others to know, not just limiting it to identified disabilities. I thought that info did not print on any reports unless you asked for a disability report format.

However, what we found is that the info DOES print on the "complete report" format as well. And it prints whether or not the Disability checkbox is marked. The info in the text box prints next to a header of "special needs". I guess it makes sense that the info would be included on the "complete report", but in some cases, you may not want that viewed.

If it's sensitive info that you do not want in print, but do want on the youth's record, we only have one option at the present time: When you print the report, you will need to locate the page with that young person's information, white-out the section, and run it through your copy machine. No, that is not ideal, or techno-savvy, or anything else. It's just all we've got right now. Someday, there may be another solution, but not now.

Posted by Becky at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This post is a continuation of the Blue Ribbon and Vista posting earlier today.

By now, there are two important pieces of information from Extension IT that you need to be aware of. The first one is the April 15 deadline for any computers that you want loaded with WindowsXP. After that date, all computers WILL be loaded with Vista, no exceptions. The other information that's important is that Extension IT is coordinating a "bulk buy" of Filemaker 9 licenses for county use. (For more information, go to Tech News Feb. 26.)

Filemaker 7 and 8 will not run on Vista. Well, technically version 8 will sort of run, if you don't mind that the screen turns black every time you click on something, but let's assume that's not acceptable. Version 8.5 WILL work, IF you have installed a Vista update. Filemaker 9 is fully Vista compatible. The really good news is that it is also fully compatible with Filemaker 7 & 8. What that means is that if you have a Filemaker 7 database, you can open it using Filemaker 9 on one computer, then later open it using Filemaker 7 on another one. The extension at the end of the filename will still be ".fp7" as it was in both Filemaker 7 and 8.

So, why would you need to purchase Filemaker 9 this time? Only if you think you're going to have a Vista computer that will need to run Filemaker, truthfully. But remember, Vista is not going away. Not just this year's computers, but all computers from now on, will have Vista installed on them. So plan ahead. The opportunity that Mike Mauton is coordinating for you is a good one--purchasing Filemaker individually is more expensive.

Other tidbits--the state fair entry system will continue to be "runtime", which means that you don't have to have ANY Filemaker to open it. The judges database, however, will only be available in ".fp7", so if you never upgraded to version 7 or 8, now is a good time to buy a license for version 9 so that you can use that database. I'm kind of assuming the same things are true about the staff directory and the pesticide directory, but it's just a guess.

Interested in learning more about how to use Filemaker? I'm tentatively planning that I'll offer some beginner and intermediate workshops next fall. I want to have time to work with my own version 9, and see whether there are new features that I should add to the workshop. I'll send out more information about those workshops as soon as I have a definite time frame.

If you have questions about Filemaker and Vista, please feel free to post a comment to the blog! If you have specific questions about Vista only, you're going to be better off talking to somebody at Extension IT!!

Posted by Becky at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Probably by now, you've seen the messages from Extension IT, telling you that beginning on April 15, all new computers WILL be loaded with Windows Vista--no exceptions allowed. Let's talk about Vista and how it interacts with Blue Ribbon first. There is a separate post about Vista and Filemaker.

In Iowa, we are using Blue Ribbon version 2.5 because 2.6 is buggy and has not been fixed yet. Eventually I'm sure there will be a version 2.7, and I'm hopeful it WON'T be buggy. But, we don't know when that will be released. Stick with me here--this is a trickle-down explanation from this point on. Version 2.5 will not install and work with Vista. There is no work-around or fix. However, there IS a separate installation package for version 2.6 and Vista. One install package for XP, a different one for Vista. This where it gets interesting.

Version 2.6 changes the data file structure, so if one person in an office updates to that version, everyone else will be forced to do that as well. So far I'm seeing two different CDs for that office--one Vista, one XP. It gets worse. Once one county updates to version 2.6, I'm also going to have to do that in order to be able to use the data. Once *I* have updated, the REST of the counties will also have to do that... now we're looking at two CDs for every county, and a forced software update across the state, never forgetting the original problem: version 2.6 is buggy. So everyone would be doing that software update to a flawed product, instead of one that works right. Hm.

What should you do about Vista, then? If you are going to order a new computer (to run BR) this year, you have a couple of choices--if the current BR computer is running well, order a Vista computer, and just leave the old computer set up and running BR until I release version 2.7, then load 2.7 on the Vista computer. If your current BR computer is NOT functional, then you'll have to think about ordering a new computer before April 15, and asking for it to be loaded with XP. I can't guarantee we'll see version 2.7 by April. Or September even. All I know is that I'm not going to release version 2.6 because the problems are significant enough to override any benefits.

If you need more information before the April 15 ordering deadline, please email me or better yet, post a comment to the blog!

Posted by Becky at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got this information and link from a colleague in Pennsylvania last night, and thought it would be something good to share with all of you. I don't know about you, but Google is my favorite (read pretty much ONLY) way of searching for information on the internet. This "malware" (stuff that's bad for your computer and your privacy) attack has specifically targeted Google through infecting the computers of people who come to the compromised sites through a Google search.

Although the article has some techie stuff, there are some very useful tips on the second page for staying safe when you're visiting sites as a result of a Google search.

“Beginning on November 24 and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. They then employed an automated network of malware-infected botnet computers to link to those sites in blog-comment spam and other places…”

link: How to use Google and stay safe

From: www.techworld.com

Posted by Becky at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)