Christmas has come a little early for many of our PhonePad clients. After many, many, many requests from clients, I’m pleased to announce the release of MessageSender 5.  This is a complete, from-the-ground-up, rewrite of MessageSender.

So what’s so good about this new version?

Well, for a start, it runs as a Windows service.  That’s right, no longer do you have to leave your server or computer logged in to run MessageSender.  As long as the machine is on and Windows is running, MessageSender will be running too.  There have been a lot of requests for this and it’s finally here.

We have also added another SMS gateway provider, SMS Global, for forwarding PhonePad messages to your mobile/cell phones.  And more providers will be added in the coming weeks and months, providing you with even more choices.

Included with MessageSender is the new MessageSender Manager application.  It provides an easy way of configuring, monitoring and managing the MessageSender service.

You can download MessageSender 5 now.  And best of all, it’s still free for all PhonePad users.

There have been some questions recently about how caller details are selected in phone messages, so I thought I should write something about it.

The Caller and From fields have drop-down lookup lists that feature incremental searching.

With no text entered in the Caller field, the drop-down lookup list will display all entries from the Address Book.  As you type in a name, the incremental search feature will only display names that match the characters you enter.

For example, as I type in the letters “jo”, only names starting with “jo” will be displayed.  The more I type in, the less names that will be displayed in the list as the incremental search features matches the text you are entering.

As you can see in the following screenshot, the selection has been narrowed down even further.  Typing in “john” displays only names starting with those letters.  You will notice that the organization the person works for is also displayed.  This helps you easily identify the correct caller when there is more than one caller with the same name.

The From field works in exactly the same way.

If you delete some of the letters using the <backspace> key you will widen the search again, as shown below.

In both lists, the appropriate name or organization can be selected using your mouse, or by pressing the <enter> or  <space> key.  The up and down arrows can also be used to navigate the lists.

I hope that clarifies how this works if you weren’t really sure.

We have had a lot of questions asked about why the PhonePad help files don’t work.  Although this has been answered in the PhonePad Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and in the online Knowledge Base, I thought I’d also discuss it here.

So here’s the deal.  If you are running PhonePad from your computer’s hard drive, ie. you have PhonePad physically installed on your computer (which is what we recommend for peer-to-peer networks), then you shouldn’t have a problem with the help files.

But…..if you are running PhonePad from a shared folder on your network, then you probably see a screen like this when you try to access PhonePad’s help:

So why does this happen?  It’s all due to Microsoft Security Update 896358.  A vulnerability was discovered with HTML Help files (the format used in Windows XP and later) that could allow remote execution of malicious code.  In other words, it was feared that the bad guys could possibly use help files to run their nasty code.

You can follow the link and read Microsoft’s article if you like but the basic story is that Microsoft killed the execution of HTML help files located on network drives.  This security update is why the PhonePad help files (and any other HTML help file) won’t work if it’s on a network device.

What can we do about it?  Well, in the past we have come up with a couple of solutions that involved a bit of leg work by network administrators.  With PhonePad Version 4.15 we have made it much easier to get your help files working again.

Here’s how to do it:

1.  Select the Help menu.

2.  If you are running PhonePad from a network drive, you will see an option entitled Install Help Files.  If you are running PhonePad from a local drive then the option will be grayed out as your help files should already be working.

3.  Select Install Help Files.

4.  The following screen should appear:

5.  Click the Install button and the help files will be installed to your local hard drive.

Now when you access PhonePad’s online help, it should look something like this:

Problem solved.  By the way, did you know you can also access PhonePad help online?

In versions of PhonePad prior to Version 4.15, you could mark a follow up as completed even if the message wasn’t marked for follow up in the first place.

As the button for marking a message to follow up, and the button for marking a follow up as completed, were right next to each other it’s quite possible for someone to accidentally mark a follow up as being completed when that wasn’t the intention.

So we corrected this in Version 4.15.  The change meant that you could not mark a follow up as completed unless the message had first been marked for follow up.

Big mistake!

We were roasted to a crisp by some of our clients who definitely did not like this change.  They preferred the old way and wanted it back – pronto!

Which brings us to this release: Version 4.15 (Build 4.15.4.0).  We have added an option under Preferences that allows you to set your preference for follow up completion.  If you want to mark a message as follow up completed without having to mark the message for follow up first, no problem.  If you’d prefer that a message can’t be marked as completed unless it has been marked for follow up, you can do that too.  Your choice.

Hopefully this release will make everyone happy.  We have also included some minor fixes so we highly recommend you upgrade to this version.  When installing PhonePad, you can check to make sure you have this release by checking the build number on the first screen of the installer.  As in the screenshot below, it should read 4.15.4.0.

You can check the version and build number you have installed by selecting System Information from the Help menu in PhonePad.

If you are a PhonePad client then you can download PhonePad from your online account.  Or you can download it from the PhonePad download page.  As the only changes made are in the PhonePad executable, you can also download just the executable.

We have just released PhonePad Version 4.15.3.0.  This is an emergency fix to resolve the following issues:

• Sidebar icons not working.
• Error when archiving messages within PhonePad (not PhonePad Admin).
• Incremental search not working on caller lookup in new phone messages.

These problems were due to an undetected problem in the build process when the installer was being built.  This has now been corrected.  If you have already upgraded to 4.15, we highly recommend you download this fix.

If you are a PhonePad client then you can download PhonePad from your online account.  Or you can download it from the PhonePad download page.  As the only changes made are in the PhonePad executable, you can also download just the executable.

Notification emails about this update will be sent out shortly.

Sorry for any  inconvenience this may have caused.  If you experience any other problems please email support@cybercom-software.com.

Now that 4.15 is out, I think now would be a good time to have a closer look at the Follow Up Notes improvements that are in this release.

In previous versions of PhonePad, you could only have one follow up note for each message, which was added when the follow up was marked as completed.  To get around this, most users added follow up notes to the message text area of messages.

From Version 4.15, you can have multiple Follow Up Notes for each message.  In the screenshot below, the selected message has 3 Follow Up Notes, but you can have as many as you want.

Follow Up Notes can be managed using the new toolbar buttons.  If the buttons are not visible on your PhonePad toolbar then you will need to enable them using the Customize Toolbar option (select Customize Toolbar from the Tools menu).

Follow Up Notes are automatically time-stamped with the current date and time when you create a note, but these can be changed if needed.

The advantage of multiple Follow Up Notes is that you can keep a complete record of all follow up action taken, through to completion.  The notes make it easy to see where things are up to.

We are pleased to announce that PhonePad Version 4.15 has been released and is now available for download. This is a free upgrade for all licensed PhonePad clients which can be downloaded from My PhonePad Account.

New Features

• Improved Follow Up Notes – Now each message can have multiple follow up notes so you can track and view all follow up action.
• Message List Sorting – Specify whether you want the latest messages to be displayed at the top or bottom of your Inbox (and other message lists).
• Install Help Files Locally – If your help files can’t be displayed on your network drive because of the infamous Microsoft Security Update, this new option allows you to easily install your help files on your local drive.

Changes and Problems Fixed

• Speed improvements.
• Updated message printing.
• Improved handling of forwarded and replied phone messages.
• Fixed text overlapping problem during printing.
• Fixed issues with moving messages between folders.
• Minor fixes and improvements.

Downloading PhonePad

PhonePad Version 4.15 can be downloaded from My PhonePad Account under the My Downloads section: http://www.myaccount.cybercom-software.com.

Yes, we had planned to release PhonePad 4.15 a few weeks ago.  But then we decided that we would bring forward some of the features we were going to build into 4.16 and roll them into 4.15.

The good news is that we are now finishing off the help files, online manuals, etc. and going through the final testing phase.  4.15 should be about within the next couple of days.

…and annoying.  For some reason our domain name registrar didn’t auto-renew our domain name, sent us no notification or warnings, etc. and our main domain was taken off the air, despite the fact we have been with them for around 14 years or so.  As soon as we realized what had happened we got it sorted out, but it meant the website was down for at least 24 hours.  If you had problems reaching our website or contacting us, please accept my apologies.