Lennox Computer

132 Virginia Avenue
Hawthorne, QLD 4171
Phone: +61 7 3395 7733
Fax: +61 7 3395 7732
http://www.lennox.com.au
doug@lennox.com.au

Software Design

Installation & Support

Innovation

Newsletter June 2013

The end of Financial Year approaches. 2012 - 13 has been a tricky period for Australian businesses with the high dollar and on-going political uncertainty making life hard, especially for the manufacturing sector. Lennox Computer have been especially busy however with a number of new clients and significant growth with longer term client relationships.

LILAC Software Development

eCommerce & Web Technology

A lot of work has been directed in the expansion and functional richness of the WWW support in LILAC achieving powerful easy to use WYSIWYG web content management and eCommerce integration. The LILAC server computer can now fulfill all the needs of web and ecommerce operations in-house with tight and seamless integration between the internal LILAC data and external presentation of web-pages, catalogs and shopping basket facilities.

Verity Document Technology

Clients with more recent LILAC software releases will have noticed the introduction of new menus in the LILAC Client window providing access to Lennox Compter's Verity Document module. The aim of these facilies is to enable flexible formatting of presentation documents by the user for use in tight integration with LILAC in myriad ways.

Documents developed by Verity Document can be instantly rendered in several alternative forms including PDF and HTML.

The HTML capability is the crucial interface that permits Verity to be used as full web-site content management system with strong eCommerce integration.

Recent additions to Verity Document funtionality include:

• Rich Text Support - as in this example rich text provides word by word formatting for more presentation oprtions.

• Drop Down Menus - using HTML select/option support for better presentation on tablet computers (iPad & Windows 8)

• Simple Menu Links - easy creation of HTM Links to other Verity Document web-pages for easy content organisation.

• Embedded Files - any kind of file (e.g. PDF, XLSX, DOCX, etc) can be dropped into a Verity Document and will be presented in the web-page as download link.

• Image Excellence - Any kind of image may be dropped or pasted into a Verity Document and then subject to appropriate manipulations such as scaling and resampling to the desired size and resolution for the application. While any image type is supported PNG images are preferred for web-site use with their strong loss-less compression, and Verity Document can convert any other image to type PNG for small size and efficient transmisson.

Report Generation

The reporting infrastructure in LILAC continues to grow apace, On average we add two or three new reports to the package each week and the flexibility offered by Drill Down, Microsoft Office integration, PDF and Web integration is being added and refined continuously across the board.

We have recently added a third button to the standard Report Parameter document layout called "Schedule" which permits the establishment of set of parameters selections and a time and/or date for automatic schedule invocation of the report, together with an optional eMail address to specify a recipient for a PDF version of the report output.

Manufacturing Software Package

Lennox Computers LILAC software package has had a long association with manufacturing activity including metal, plastics, automotive and many other markets.

Often a manufacturing accounting software implementation can present as a large, complex and daunting project only suitable for larger (and richer) enterprises.

To address this concern we have packaged the important elements of a manufacturing accounting suite of software functions under the banner of LILAC MIDI Manufacturing Package.

The MIDI package has most of the general stuff like Bill of Materials, Work Orders, MRP, Scheduling without prejudicing the technical nature of the manufactured product, and provides for a excellent starting point for a growing manufacturing enterprise which may later add more specific functionality for their own products.

Hardware Networking Servers & Workstation PCs

Lennox Computer continue to offer to supply and install hardware operating systems, networking and support. Our latest offerings for server and workstation platforms tend to be "maxed out" in capacity terms with Intel i5 and i7 chips, 16 Gb RAM and 1 Tb of hard disk.

We are using Windows 8 on workstations and Windows Server 2012 on server platforms now. The radical change in the user interface this represents causes some groans, but the benefits outweigh the pain. The result is a modern user interface but with 25 years of development depth in the Windows API.

After 1st July 2013 we will no longer guarantee LILAC workstation operations on any version of Windows prior to Windows 7. It is not reasonable to hold back development of the software to suit the idiosyncracies of machines 8 to 10 years old.

So if you are still operating Window XP (or god forbid earlier) PCs contact us soon for low cost upgrade options.

Fees & Charges

Lennox Computer conduct and annual review of fees and charges in June each year, taking into account CPI movement, demand, and business conditions in general. In the present environment we will be applying a typical average escalation of about 10% to our pricing effective 1st July 2013.

Expansion & Relocation

Lennox Computer's level of activity is increasing as time goes by, and we will be needing expanded staffing in the near to medium term which in turn will require expanded accommodation.

We anticipate a relocation of our activities in the six to twelve month time scale.

This will also allow the installation of an upgraded Internet (fibre-optic) service and related facilities allowing expanded offerings for server hosting, and "Cloud" style operations.

This document was created with Lennox Computers Verity Document technology and may be viewed on Internet