We experienced an embarrassing problem with our mailing program a couple of days ago when we were mailing out the latest PhonePad News. For some reason it kept losing the SMTP connection about every 10 or so emails. The problem was, when it lost the connection it would just start again, from the beginning of the list.

The end result was about 10-12 mailing list subscribers received the same email up to 146 times before we realized what was going on and killed the mailout. I’m sure we weren’t their favorite people that day.

Everyone else on the list received nothing because it didn’t get that far. We’re not sure what happened to the SMTP server as it seems to be working fine now.

The mailing program has worked flawlessly for the last couple of years. This is the first time? we have had a major problem like this occur with it. We have mo dified it so that it now keeps track of which emails have been sent so that, if it restarts, it will skip the emails already sent. Now that it’s working correctly and back online, we are sending PhonePad News again so you should receive it today.

A User Reference Guide and Admin Reference Guide for PhonePad are available for download. These are not the user and admin manuals that are currently being written, but are PDF versions of the PhonePad help files. They have been formatted as printed manuals so you can download them and print them out. These will be replaced with the full manuals when they are released.

PhonePad 4.05 Build 3 (4.5.0.3) fixes two problems with PhonePad in Receptionist Mode. On startup, the Inbox would show the wrong messages until you clicked on the User List. Also, the message counts on the status bar were incorrect. Both of these problems have been fixed in this build, which you can download now.

We have revised the way we do releases of PhonePad so that we can get fixes out quicker when required. In instances where we need to get problems rectified quickly, we will be doing build releases rather than make you wait for the next minor release. Of course, if the minor release is due out then the fixes will be incorporated into that release.

Build releases will be in the form of PhonePad x.xx Build x (x.x.x.x), eg. PhonePad 4.05 Build 2 (4.5.0.2), to distinguish them from previous releases of the same version (a minor release is Build 0, eg. 4.5.0.0). I hope this isn’t too confusing.

We use a product called PHPBB for our
Knowledge Base, FAQs and Support forums. Unfortunately some low-life
decided to hack our PHPBB installation last night and locked everyone
out, including us. We have upgraded PHPBB to a more secure version and
have restored most of the data. There are just a couple of articles,
settings and usernames left to restore. Please note that none of our
other systems have been compromised.

Sorry for any inconvenience you may have
experienced when trying to access these systems. We aren’t too happy
about it ourselves as we have spent several hours on this when we could
have been working on the new features for PhonePad that are currently
under development. Everything should be back to the way it was within a
day or two.

PhonePad Version 4.05 has been re-released
due to a problem with the In-Out Board. We made some changes in 4.05 to
improve database security but the In-Out Board didn’t receive all of
these changes, which means it is unable to connect to the PhonePad
database. This has now been rectified. If you have already installed
4.05 you can either download the re-released version or just download
the updated In-Out Board. Both of these are available from the
PhonePad download page.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have
caused.

PhonePad Version 4.05, which has just been
released, fixes the HTML Help file problem with PhonePad. Click
here to download Version 4.05. For more information about this problem,
please refer to this knowledge base article:
Help Files Don’t Display Correctly.

We are pleased to announce the release of
PhonePad Version 4.05. This version contains some new features as well
as bug fixes. Here are the new features:

* Help file problem caused by Microsoft
Security Update 896358 has been rectified. Help file installation is now
configurable allowing help files to be installed on local drives.

* Message list report added to PhonePad
Admin. Also added ability to export report in CSV format.

* Popup caller phone lookup dialog in
phone messages has been improved (now includes 8 different phone
numbers) and now allows phone numbers to be edited.

* New subject prefix option added.

* Default subject when no subject
specified.

* Phone message title bar now displays
caller’s name. This makes it easier to identify message when you have
multiple messages open.

* Address Book tabs now filter entries by
either caller’s name or their organization.

Please refer to the
PhonePad announcements section of our forum for more information.

You can
download it now!

Back in October we mentioned a problem
about HTML Help on network drives. As you may recall, Microsoft released
a Security Update that prevents HTML Help files from displaying on
network drives. We have posted a Knowledge Base article on this,
including solutions:
Help Files Don’t Display Correctly.