• Tweaks to UI experience with adding a purchase unit.
• If key in a reference that already exists, do not replace make/model/type with details from existing unit if these fields have already been keyed in
• Fix for add similar unit. Was behaving strangely if unit being copied was as described above
• Spares Point of sale complete
• Show an obvious 'f8 show profit' button
• Pressing hotkeys in complete screen would not work immediately. Now fixed
• Job card - print a footer prominently showing unit type and job description. Also print scheduled mechanic
• Workshop. Ability to set scheduled mechanic in new job or in any of the view job tabs. (Previously could only do it in schedule view tabs)
• Reports - print date/time, & report name at very top margin of report.
• Only on reports, not invoices or barcode sheets.
• Does not export on save as CSV
• Prints on upmost margin. So if your printer is unable to print immediately after the first 1/4 inch of a page  will not work.
• Can be disabled in setup on a per terminal basis. Enabled by default
• Bug fixes
• on version 4.279 view unit/rebates button logic was accidently deleted.  The button no longer does anything when you click on it. Now restored.
• View/change part (F6). Would not fetch/display last order sent/received details properly. Now fixed.
• Website : add one button option to map all second hand units onto website

c9 online websites with fiche diagrams categorize diagrams into different sections. i.e. 'Rear Wheel', 'Wiring Harness' etc.  C9 does this by looking at the name of a diagram and matching it against a rule to figure out what category it is.

The rules built into c9 are tuned originally for Honda and KTM early 2011 but little work has happened since then and there is no consistency across suppliers.  Result is as of time of writing this, of the 1.2 million diagrams hosted on c9 powered websites, 15% of those diagrams are located in the 'Uncategorized' section on the website.

Managing mapping of diagrams is tedious work, which is why we created tools in c9 so that you can do this task :-). Read on for more

Read more...

• Workshop UI tweaks
• Select job. Visual changes to make it more obvious what job is currently highlighted
• Complete/Pickup job : display purchase date of the unit. But only if unit was purchased from the dealer
• View/Complete/Pickup:  history buttons allow you to quickly access job history for the given customer or unit
• Sell parts from spares to workshop. Display more info about the job, not just this job number in F10 complete
• Website Settings. Configurable email footer was limited to 1k of text which is not alot. Increased to 16k.
• More tweaks to Toro duplicate part behaviour. If you key in a part that is duplicated, c9 will display all part numbers matching the duplicate.

Toro part lists have a interesting feature that no other supplier we have dealt with in the last 20+ years have.  Toro contains duplicate part numbers which are sensitive to location of dashes. For example:

C9 can now support such setups.  Read on for more details

Read more...

Bugfix with prior version of c9 : 4.279.  Typing/scanning superceded/barcoded part number into point of sale would fail with part not found. But if you F2 then keying part number it was okay.  Now fixed. Relates to changes made to better support Toro part numbers.

This version includes database changes. You will be forced to log all terminals out during upgrade

• Units + Web
• Redesigned UI on multiple unit screens (i.e. view/modify unit, add purchase unit) so web publishing details/images are more easily accessed and managed.
• Added ability to configure web details (text + pictures) at point of purchase/add unit
• Added check to publish to aussiebikefinder.com.au
• Added ability to publish to bikesales.com.au (backoffice support not yet written. Still work in progress)
• Spares Point of sale : GST component was being rounded on a unit cost price basis. This could cause inaccuracies for selling cheap high volume items. Fixed by calculating GST on line item basis and using higher level of decimal accuracy during GST calculation
• Web order email notification. Now possible to configure custom email footers via business -> website -> settings.
• Import Toro price files.   Toro part numbers are sensitive to position of dashes!  e.g. the following part numbers describe two completely different parts: 325-11 and 3251-1!  Modified price file import to cope with this, but at same time preserve c9 behaviour of being able to keyin part number without spaces or dashes remain intact.  On a per franchise basis is a new checkbox 'Parts from this supplier are sensitive to dash location'. If set then new logic on price file import applies. At the moment this switch can only be toggled if franchise name contains 'toro' in its name. If you key in a toro part number that is duplicated, it will return part already on file prior to this upgrade.  To access duplicated part, press f2, you can see both parts in the list.  For anyone that installs a toro franchise after this fix, then keying in a duplicate part number should yield 'part not found'. You will have to press F2 and select the appropriate part. For Toro parts, approx 2% of parts are duplicated.
• Point of sale. Optimized database operations that handle stripping leading 'P' infront of Polaris parts.
• Online backup/Sync
• if database link was down, c9 messenger would eat 100% of CPU trying to constantly reconnect to the database.  Now fixed by switching into 'pause' mode and checking DB every 5 seconds or so
• Under some circumstances, web orders would not sync from web server to c9 correctly. Now fixed.
• Tuned online backup so it should backup images in bulk alot faster with much less bandwidth  (i.e. on import catalog).
• Do not auto-start messenger on login if database is not c9 database. Prior behaviour could potentially cause problems for dealers that periodically restore old databases who use online shopping. Web orders could inadvertently sync to the archived database.

• Print Unit invoice. Print changeover/deposit more prominently. Config option in setup to switch back to prior format
• F7 buy/sell bug fix : was not displaying receive invoice number
• Import .csv/Excel price file.  Improved logic so that empty columns are only 'hidden' if number of columns exceeds 10.  Makes it it easier to deal with certain file types
• Import harley price file.  Add ability to set daily buy price % markup. Defaults to 10%
• Include new version of Harley KPI reports under business reports.
• Cash Till : debit notes incorrectly appearing as cash taken from till (should be cash entered into till)
• Import catalogs from KTM. Broken, now fixed.
• Reason: KTM website is encrypted with SSL. Looks like they recently got a new cert issued by a Cert Authority called 'COMODO'; sometime between 26th March 2012 and 4th April.  This cert is not recognized by Java so java refuses to connect to their web server. To fix I disabled Cert Verification for dealernet.  Wire encryption is arguably unnecessary here anyway, for catalogs at least;  as there is no compelling attack vector for MIM interception. Most other suppliers don't bother encrypting catalog access.

Some operations in c9 require more memory than c9 may have available and are very memory hungry.  i.e. importing and processing high resolution Harley catalog diagrams.  Normally, java's default behaviour in terms of memory is more than ample for c9's relatively modest needs.  Though there are exceptions.  You only need to worry about contents on this page is c9 support have explicitly directed you here.

Firstly, to check how much memory c9 allocates. Select From top menu, Terminal and the System Monitor.  A window will appear in bottom left. The second number indicates amount of memory allocated. e.g.  from below ~ 450  MB.  c9 will comfortably run with 50Mb.  Most terminals will have java allocating itself approx 120Mb or 240MB: which is more than what c9 needs for normal day-to-day usage.

To run c9 and specify amount of memory. First make sure java is not running by selecting File - > Exit and Restart java. Then put following on command line. 512m means 512 MB. Substitute this with amount of memory you want to allocate.

c:

cd \c9

java -Xmx512m -jar startup.jar

After restarting. Select system monitor to ensure memory change was applied.

Read more...

Modified networking architecture of the service responsible for receiving backups, SMS/Email, and back channelling weborders etc to use non-blocking IO.  Previous version was limited in number of simultaneous connections it could handle to only a few hundred whereas new system should be able to handle thousands of simultaneous connections.  Which is not a pressing issue because typically there is only one connection from each shop. But I want to eventually modify c9 so all terminals sign into the web server, and remove the messenger altogether.

More modifications of backup service.  Fixed regression with multiple messengers running.  Fixed bug causing all backup streams nation wide to serialize to a single thread of execution (poor performance and could trigger replication race conditions).

• Spares Alter Deposit.  Allow alter deposit on reserve parts
• Freeform reserve parts where not appearing on reserve. Now fixed
• Web site : web content was constrained 3k - which typically is only a few paragraphs of web content. Increased to 32k
• KPI reporting : internal technical changes to make it easier/faster for barney to build complex KPI reports. No functional outcomes yet (HD work in progress)