about this newsletter

On Track is a publication for users of Advanced Tracker solutions. Its goal is to provide news, tips, and information to help you be more productive.

In this issue:

• Year End Specials
• New Employee Tracker Documentation
• Where's Waldo?

Information is more valuable when it is shared, so feel free to forward this newsletter to other people. See the end of this newsletter for subscription instructions.

order now and save

Year End Specials

• 25% off list price for SQL upgrades. Orders must be placed before January 31, 2006.

• On-site audit and Q&A session and User Certification. Audit includes:

  • operational review,
  • procedures review,
  • performance assessment,
  • follow up actionable items report and recommendations,
  • user certification guidelines.

  $500.00 flat fee for the day. Must be booked by December 31, 2005 and delivered by February 28, 2006.

• 50% off employee self-service inquiry modules (web based or standard edition). These permit the employees to scan in and out, as well as review their scan times, schedules, time banks, etc., from their desks, a lunchroom PC, and from home over the web. Orders must be placed before December 31st.

To place an order, or for more information, contact your account manager at 1-888-531-3774.

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recommended reading

New Employee Tracker Documentation

The newest notes and documentation for Employee Tracker are available for download. The notes are included with the software, and are also available separately. Topic include:

• premiums,
• split shifts,
• time banking,
• scheduling,
• support for Provincial labour standards,
• reports,
• and more...

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just the FAQs ma'am

Where's Waldo?

by Erik Christensen

One of the most common types of support calls we get at Advanced Tracker is the "Missing Employee". For whatever reason, a User cannot find a particular employee in the Employee List. This means that the User cannot adjust the employee's Time and Attendance records, export payroll, update the schedule, or do any of the fun stuff that Employee Tracker would allow you to do with this missing employee. This missing employee can be harder to find than that funny-looking Waldo in the "Where's Waldo?" books. So, with apologies to author Martin Hanford, here is my guide to helping you find your own Waldo!

1. Is Waldo included in my Employee Specification Buckets? Every screen in Employee Tracker that shows a list of employees also gives you access to the Employee Specification Bucket (which I will call the "Bucket" from now on). This screen allows you to select which employees to include in your current session. You can use this to see if Waldo has been excluded from your view. Find a button that has a picture of a Filing Cabinet drawer, and click on it. Starting from the top, click every button that says "Include All", right down to the very bottom one. If any employees were previously excluded they should show up on the bottom right or bottom left box. Use the "Rolodex" button and type either the employee code or the employee name to see if they show up. (What is Waldo's last name, anyway?). If Waldo shows up in either box, congratulations, you've found Waldo! If not, move to the next step. For info on using the Employee Specification Bucket tool, see the online help at http://www.advancedtracker.com/TrackerHelp/ETP/SetupInfo/Setup/Buckets.htm.
2. Have I recently added a new Shift, Department or Status code to the system? If so, and if you assigned any of these items to Waldo's Employee Profile, then you might need to restart Employee Tracker in order to get visibility. This is because Security Settings for all users (including Master!) is run only once, when the program is started. So it is a good policy to restart Employee Tracker after adding any of these items. This also applies to changing an Employee's Supervisor status code, as it affects the list of Supervisors that is displayed in the Bucket.
3. Is Waldo included in my Security settings? Security in Employee Tracker allows the administrator to limit the employees you can see based on the same criteria that are used in the Bucket. It is possible that Waldo is in a department, shift, status code or supervisor to which you do not have access. Check with you administrator to see if this is the case. If you are the administrator, log into Employee Tracker using the Master log-in ID, and repeat Step One. For more help on Security, click http://www.advancedtracker.com/TrackerHelp/ETP/UtilitiesInfo/Security.htm.
4. Is Waldo's Department, Shift, Status or Supervisor missing from the system? Similar to the Security issue, it is possible that one of the Bucket categories has had a record deleted from the system altogether. This has the same effect as that item not being included in your Security settings, because you can't include an item that doesn't exist! Fortunately there is a way to get the program to check for these missing items. It is called Integrity Check, and it is accessed from the Utilities menu. If you do not have this item in your menu, you will need to Log in as Master, or see your Administrator. To run Integrity Check, simply click on the menu item labeled Integrity Check, and the program will automatically start searching through all the databases for missing records. If it finds any, it will add them to a list. You will be able to see the code for the missing item, as well as the category it belongs to (e.g. Department, Shift, etc.). Note: this process also looks for other types of items, such as Position, Premium, etc. If there are items in the list, check any that you think might apply, or else Click on the "Click All" button; then click on "Repair". This will tell the program to go ahead and add back into the system any of the items you have checked. Once this is finished, restart Employee Tracker and repeat Step One.
5. Database error? Sometimes it happens. Maybe an importation of employee records was faulty; maybe a program upgrade misinterpreted some information. Sometimes this does not cause problems until something else is changed in the system. An example of this would be turning on the Supervisor status for an employee when no one had been a supervisor before. At any rate, sometimes the program will get confused if the employee records are missing information certain fields. In this case, it is best to arrange with Tracker Support to have the data fixed. Simply call the support line (extension 226) to speak with one of our techs, and we will help you get your data fixed, and help you find Waldo!

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jokes from our accountant

An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor. "Doctor, I just can't get to sleep at night."

"Have you tried counting sheep?"

"That's the problem - I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it."

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