The “licensing server” is actually a windows service running on a dedicated Windows server, that interacts with our customer database and generates license files for you.  The process we had to go through to get it running was:

1. Rebuild IIS and the secure server
2. Reinstall our customer database software (an in house written project) and restore from a backup
3. Rebuild the licensing server services (one for EstiMate 2 and one for EstiMate 2011/Desktop) and bring them back online

What we’ve done to ensure this won’t happen again is we’ve got the host making nightly drive image backups so we can theoretically get back up online within a day or sooner if this happens again.

Thanks for your patience in the process. Now we can get back to work on an EstiMate update and deploying our new website.  Keep your eyes peeled and have a super week!

So hopefully I will get that delivery over the weekend and can get the servers  back up.  In the meantime please email customerservice@estimatesoftware.com if you need help (we have the ability to manually edit license files to update the date for you).

My sincerest apologies for the trouble…

I’ve never liked the old one we used, but the new one from FastReports seems to be a much better choice.

This is a screen shot of the new report preview screen.  Note that now reports can be viewed 2-pages up.  Also note that this “Open Estimates” report using our sample data is 35 pages long – and the preview was generated in less than a second.  Using the old reporting engine the report took 5.5 seconds to generate.

(Click to enlarge)

The complete list of changes:

EstiMate 3.1.0.2

New Features:

• 33651: File attachments are now limited to 5MB in size.
• 33652: The option to exclude file attachments when making a backup has been added. This allows smaller backups to be sent to the tech support desk.
• 33550: The ability to print the material waste calculations for Wide Format and Flatbed Digital printing has been added.
• 33661: The QuickBooks link now persists the form settings (checkboxes checked, grid column widths, etc.)
• 33662: Newly copied jobs and estimates now have today’s date; jobs also have the default status flag rather than the status flag of the original job.
• 33664: Incremental search has been added to the QuickBooks export screen.
• 33669: You are no longer required to check a box verifying that QuickBooks is running before proceeding with the quickbooks export process.

Fixes:

• 33646: The left and right arrows to scroll through open estimates on the customer dashboard were covered by the customer’s phone number.
• 33659: The headers were missing from the top of the columns on the printed purchase order.
• 33660: The Screen Printed Signs and Thermal Printing plugins now show dimensions as width and height rather than width and length.
• 33654: The transactions by date report failed when sorted by customer name.
• 33655: The total lines on the Transactions by Date report were cut off on the left side.
• 33656: When copying a job or estimate that has been sent to quickbooks, the copy was still marked as having been sent and didn’t show up in the Export to QB list.
• 33665: When another network user saved a job or estimate, the open list would jump around.
• 33670: Duplicate job and estimate numbers should not be able to happen anymore. New behavior is that when another user on the network saves a job or estimate, and you are working on a new, unsaved one, you will actually see the number change on the one you are working on!

This build is still in testing but so far stable.  It will be released later this week but I wanted to give everyone a heads up if you want to get it sooner.

Download links are:

EstiMate 3.1.0.2 (29.4 mb)

EstiMate 3.1.0.2 Multi-User Server (8 mb)

The link for the Multi-User Server is for those of you who like to keep everything up-to-date; it is not necessary to update the server to use this build.  EstiMate 3.1.0.2 is compatible with all previous versions of the server.

Enjoy, and have a great week!

In the meantime, click Help > Check For Updates and download the new build.

The issues fixed in this build can be found in the release notes for 3.0.0.91.

Orders for EstiMate 2011 have been flooding in, along with little final bug reports and an insane number of trial downloads.

All in all we have closed 95 customer service cases (orders, queries, etc) in the last 24 hours, as well as done battle with a mail server that crashed for 2 hours (wonder why?)… We are one tired crew!

As for those bug reports, I just released a new build that covers the more important ones.  It turns out that if you use commas for your decimal separator, EstiMate 2011 would not upgrade your EstiMate 2 data properly… made me very happy that I built in a failsafe rollback if the upgrade failed.  With the new build you are good to go.

But none of that is really the point.

I’d like to take a moment to publicly thank Nancy and Phillip for their dedication and hard work. These two have worked tirelessly to help bring this release to fruition with me, as well as stuck by EstiMate through a lot of change and transition, and I am extremely grateful to them.  Please chime in and give them a shout in the comments!

There’s another important thank you here

And that’s to YOU.  All the people who are excited, ordering, emailing, and asking questions.  This release so far is a huge success and we are so grateful to all of you for your part.

Have a wonderful evening.  Cheers!

Time to break out the champagne!  After several thousand hours of work and revision after revision of the codebase, EstiMate 2011 is finally here!

Over the next three days we will be rolling out the serial numbers and links to our EstiMate Freedom customers and to everyone who pre-ordered EstiMate 2011.  The pre-orders have been a huge success and I’d really like to thank everyone who had enough faith to order EstiMate 2011 sight unseen.  I’m always humbled by how many people believe in EstiMate and our mission of having software that makes you money every time you use it!

So far EstiMate 2011 is making many shops very happy with all the new features and abilities.  The customer dashboard, the ability to add file attachments to quotes, purchase orders and job time sheets, and many more features are finally available to EstiMate users.

Feedback is coming in very strongly about how helpful the quick access to templates is when quoting jobs – apparently it’s speeding quoting up by about a factor of three!

Needless to say – we’re pretty tired! Next up for us is the SGIA show in Las Vegas, Nevada where we will make the public debut of EstiMate 2011.  Come out and see us – we’d love to talk to you in person!

You can download a trial of EstiMate 2011 and until this Saturday you can place a pre-order and save a bundle.

Happy Pricing!!

Get 30% Off VMWare Fusion 3 Through Friday, September 17

EstiMate is Windows software and runs flawlessly in VMWare Fusion.

As a matter of fact, EstiMate is developed on a Mac Pro running VMWare Fusion!  So we know it runs really, really well that way.

Just thought I’d pass on the heads up.

This Enterprise-level feature allows you to attach any file to customer records, vendor records, estimates, and jobs.

Now you can keep all the paperwork related to a specific client attached to their record in your database, or all the paperwork related to a specific job attached to the job itself.

Attachments to customers and vendors can be accessed through a customer’s or vendor’s record directly or on the customer dashboard.

Attachments to estimates and jobs can be accessed directly from that estimate or that job.

Have You Heard About EstiMate 2011?

If you don’t know about EstiMate 2011 yet, read the complete announcement here.

Pre-Release Sale Pricing

Read the full announcement here about our massive pre-release sale for EstiMate 2011! You can save 30-50% off EstiMate 2011 from now until October 1, 2010.

Your Feedback Is Welcome

Please leave a comment about new features as we blog about them, and let us know what you like and don’t like about where EstiMate’s new feature set is headed. Our goal is to make EstiMate the most robust pricing and shop management software the sign and graphics industry has ever seen.

In EstiMate 2011, you can group and ungroup items at will. Watch this video to see how!

Have You Heard About EstiMate 2011?

If you don’t know about EstiMate 2011 yet, read the complete announcement here.

Pre-Release Sale Pricing

Read the full announcement here about our massive pre-release sale for EstiMate 2011! You can save 30-50% off EstiMate 2011 from now until October 1, 2010.

Your Feedback Is Welcome

Please leave a comment about new features as we blog about them, and let us know what you like and don’t like about where EstiMate’s new feature set is headed. Our goal is to make EstiMate the most robust pricing and shop management software the sign and graphics industry has ever seen.