Changes and Improvements in Timekeeper 97
15 November 2000
This document describes the extensive changes to Timekeeper
released as Timekeeper 97 version 1.35 in November 2000. This
is a major upgrade from Timekeeper version 0.81. Some users have
versions from 1.3 to 1.36. The changes and bug fixes to these
versions are described in Version 1.35
Changes and Version 1.36 Changes.
There were versions from 1.1 up to 1.3 but they were quite experimental
and are only covered here.
Changes Made to the Program
Member Form
A Member eMail address was added.
A Census Track number was added. A census track number is required
to be a number like 24.3.
Member Balance was removed from this form and moved to the
Member Passbook form. This was done because the balance is now
computed and not saved. The Balance can no longer get out of synchronization
with the transactions.
Organization Form
An Organization eMail address was added.
Balance was moved to the Passbook form.
Mailing Address Form
The Mailing Address Form holds additional addressing information
for Members and Organizations.
A web page address was added. This would most likely be used
for Organizations.
A pager number was added.
Site Form
A Site Phone number was added.
Change Services Form
Now allows a Member to both need and provide the same service.
Make Reports Form
Member Phones and eMail report was added.
Services with Providers report was added. This report lists
services and for each service gives all members providing the
service. There is an option so it can list instead all members
needing a service.
Match Provider Form
Same Census Track is now an option for a match.
Assignment Form
Accumulated credits are now computed from the transactions.
This required a new field in transactions to link them to assignments.
There is a function in the Utility to create this link for transactions
entered before version 1.1. This function may not always identify
the assignment so some accumulated credits may disappear from
some old assignments. This has no impact on the member passbooks.
Internal Changes
Timekeeper 97 was created using Access 97. All Timekeepers
before version 1.1 were created using Access 2.0. This means that
Timekeeper 97 can not be used on a Windows 3.1 system.
Because of the change to Access 97, Timekeeper 97 is Y2K compliant.
Data for the year 2000 entered into the Timekeepers before 1.1
which were not Y2K compliant was often entered as 00 and recorded
as 1900. This data will show up as 1900 when converted to Timekeeper
97. There is a function in the Utility which will change all 1900
dates to the corresponding date in 2000.
Many changes were made so that Timekeeper 97 will operate correctly
when several users are sharing a single Timekeeper database over
a LAN.
In order to minimize the frequency of changes to records and
therefore the chance that two users will try to change a record
at the same time, member balance was removed from the member record
and accumulated credits was removed from the assignment record.
These are now computed from the transactions. Since transaction
records are often added but rarely changed, entering transaction
data does not create conflicts between users.
The primary keys of records were changed from incrementing
to random autonumbers. This was done in case someone wants to
use database replication with Timekeeper. With luck no one should
see any consequence of this change.
Changes Made to the Utility
Timekeeper 97 Utility was created using Access 97. All Timekeepers
before 1.1 were created using Access 2.0. This means that Timekeeper
97 can not be used on a Windows 3.1 system
When the Timekeeper Utility makes changes in the database it
takes exclusive control of the database and will lock out all
other users who might be trying to use the database at the same
time.
The Custom Maintenance form was eliminated and the Maintenance
form was extended to show the location of the database and program.
If the database and program are found in their default locations
then this part of the form is not visible.
A customization function was introduced to create variants
of the basic Timekeeper program. See Timekeeper
customization for more information.
More functions to were introduced to fix problems in the data
and all the fix data functions were grouped onto one fix data
form. The most important of these fixes is one to change the 1900
dates entered as a result of the Y2K problems of the previous
Timekeepers. See repairing Timekeeper
data for information.
A method for introduced for assigning different 4 character
Identifier prefixes to each client in a multi-client Timekeeper
intstallation. This is probably only of interest if someone wants
to try to use database replication with a multi-client installation.
It is not needed even for a multi-client LAN installation.
Changes to the Database Version
The database version has been changed to 1.3. Fields have been
added to several tables as described in the previous paragraphs
about the Program. The balance field in the Member table and the
accumulated credits field in the Assignment table have been removed.
They were replaced by values calculated from the transaction records.
Other fields and a table have been added in anticipation of having
an Internet user interface to the Timekeeper data.
New file names and locations
The files used by Timekeeper have been renamed to use the longer
file names of the newer Windows systems. See Timekeeper
97 Files for the new names. The Timekeeper files are normally
installed in C:\Program Files\Timekeeper in keeping with the current
installation conventions.