Virtual Enrollment Party

As you're entering new young people into the Blue Ribbon program, you may find that your drop-down menu with the schools listed either isn't complete, or is TOO complete!! You can't type directly into that list from the member screen, but you can edit it. Enrollment time is the best time to do this, because you're going to be looking at each member's record anyway, so if you delete a school (spelling, probably) that was assigned to a kid, you can just assign a new one when you re-enroll him/her.

Under your File menu, you SHOULD find an option for School Codes. When you choose that, you'll see the screen shown below. You can type in the fields, add new records, and delete duplicate records (caused by spelling the same school name two different ways).

Posted by Becky at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's the latest addition to our Blue Ribbon family! Trystan's proud mommy, Amanda from Greene Co., is just now returning to work after spending some quality time getting to know him! What a cutie--he sure looks happy to be here!

Posted by Becky at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Why it happens:
When Blue Ribbon is running, there are some temporary “lock” files that are created that keep two concurrent users from accessing and changing the same record at the same time. Two people can use Blue Ribbon at the same time, you just can’t be in Johnny Smith’s record at the same time. Normally, when the last (or only) user exits from Blue Ribbon, those files are deleted automatically by the program.

However, sometimes funky things happen with computers. They creatively decide to shut themselves off, the lights go out, Blue Ribbon locks up and you ctl-alt-delete out of it, the auto-update thing happens, whatever. If BR doesn’t get shut down in the “normal” way, sometimes those files are not deleted. At that point, nobody can get into the program.

How to fix it:
This is lots shorter than the explanation. Go to your Data folder, and open it. Look for any files that end in “.lck” or ".net"—there may be 2 or 3 of them. Delete those files only. Once the files have been deleted, BR will work normally again.

Posted by Becky at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why it happens:
There are 3 reasons this could happen...
You're using a member ID number that's been used in the past and still exists in the system somewhere.
You're trying to add the same project to a member for the second time.
(most likely) The Parent ID on the parent screen has been used before.

How to fix it:
Change the member ID at the top of the member screen if that's where the problem is.
Check to make sure you're NOT adding the same project twice.
(most likely) Change the parent ID at the top of the parent screen, ESPECIALLY if what you see is "NEWID" in that box. That's the default value that BR adds in each time you create a new parent record. It works really swell the first time, but not after it's been used once already.

How to prevent it:
Everyone should go to Utility>>Preferences, and on the Default Parent Entry tab, check "auto entry". That way the computer will search for an unused number for each new parent record you add. Preferences are computer-specific, so it has to be done on each BR computer in the office, AND (the most common mistake) on all NEW computers that are brought in and loaded with Blue Ribbon.

You can also go to the Default Member Entry tab and set those numbers to be auto-entry as well, particularly if you are not one of the counties who believes that the 5-digit Member ID should begin with the 3 digits of the primary club ID.

Posted by Becky at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why it happens:
Inside the Blue Ribbon Data folder, there are numerous data files (think of them like they’re Filemaker databases, all related to one another). Those files end in “.db”. For each data file, there’s a corresponding “index” file (.px) whose purpose it is to keep track of changes to the files and speed up the sort and find processes. (Well, that’s the general idea, anyway…) Sometimes the data file and the index file decide not to play nicely with one another… they don’t “match” any more.

How to fix it:
This is another one of the magic Datafix solutions--very easy to do. With Blue Ribbon NOT running, go to your Start menu, Programs, Youth Enrollment, and select Datafix. Set the parameters on that Datafix screen to be "By Alias", Rebuild All, and Pack Tables. If your data is on your S: drive, it could take approx. 5 minutes; on the C: drive, it's much quicker. When the program has finished, just exit out of it, and re-start Blue Ribbon--life should be swell!

Posted by Becky at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why it happens:
The primary cause seems to be copying your entire Data folder from the S: drive to the C: drive, or vice versa. It's nothing you can avoid, or that you did wrong. It's just a "thing" that evidently happens when those files are transferred from a server environment to a local environment.

How to fix it:
This is the simplest error message to fix. With Blue Ribbon NOT running, go to your Start menu, Programs, Youth Enrollment, and select Datafix. Set the parameters on that Datafix screen to be "By Alias", Rebuild All, and Pack Tables. If your data is on your S: drive, it could take approx. 5 minutes; on the C: drive, it's much quicker. When the program has finished, just exit out of it, and re-start Blue Ribbon--life should be swell!

Posted by Becky at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)