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Fairport News

Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
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JULY 2008

IN THIS ISSUE

» Welcome
» Roger's Ramblings
» Staff Matters
» Product Updates
» In the News: gpMapper
» Fairport Support
» Dealer News
    » FarmTek Australia
    » AgIT
    » Booth Technology
» In Closing

A wintery welcome to all our new and old clients and especially those of you reading the Fairport News for the first time!

We continue to be very busy here with developing customized features in PAM for our PAM Enterprise clients. We have continued to add features for Landcorp in NZ and AAco in Brisbane, Pacific Seeds in Toowoomba and also Saratoga Holdings (Australia's largest Macadamia enterprise) in NSW, QLD and South Africa. At the same time we have been adding a few new features for the rest of our PAM users.

PAM Fixes & Features: If you haven't already noticed, there is a new view of all the new features and fixes within PAM and PocketPAM on our web site. There are links to this list on the Support page and also the Upgrades page in www.fairport.com.au. You will see that we have been quite busy! Other products (Max, MaxPro, Grape Forecaster etc) will have product fixes and features web pages added shortly. The list is updated nightly. If you have experienced a problem in PAM and want to know if it has been added or fixed, check this list to see if it has already been reported (and fixed).

The Individual Animals section of PAM is now extremely close to completion. Before the year ends there will be two modes of operation for the IAR section of PAM. The traditional mode being animals linked to PAM mob codes and the new mode which we are calling “IAR Pastoral Mode” which will enable you to keep individual animal records without having to link them to PAM mobs. This is being developed for the huge AAco enterprise with it half a million head of cattle. IAR Pastoral Mode will allow you to take advantage of the fact that you have all your animals identified – using data from scales to streamline and automate the collection of mob data.

While on the subject of IAR, I would like to thank those six to ten of you who have been helping us by trying out the new IAR features while this section of the program has been in pre-release mode. They have been extremely patient. The IAR system has been almost totally rewritten over the course of the past two years in preparation for Landcorp to move their 100 plus farms from mob-based recording to IAR recording with electronic tags. This move will also include moving their 30-odd dairies, several sheep studs, cattle studs and deer studs from a set of five different stud or individual animal programs into PAM's new IAR system.

As those of you who have been watching Fairport for the past few years will know, we have been focusing a huge amount of our efforts on improvements in the livestock section of PAM. I would personally like to thank those who have helped us by providing feedback and bringing to our attention the glitches in the new livestock section of PAM. We had been testing this new system for 18 months before releasing PAM 6.0, however, we were not fully aware of the potential damage that old PAM 1.0 – 5.99 livestock records would cause our new processes. We are confident now that all these issues are behind us and urge all Fairport Club members to ensure they have the latest version.

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Since our last newsletter our longest serving software engineer Ben got married to Natasha. We all congratulate Ben and wish them both a lifetime of happiness. Ben and Natasha spent a few days in Thailand for their honeymoon.

We welcomed back Edward to our support team in early May. Ed had wandered off for six months or so… but is back now and back up to speed with all the latest developments and ready to take your support calls.

Mikhail has gone back to Russia for a short time, working remotely on the FarmStar and Mapping systems. He informs me that PAM runs well in the Russian version of Windows and he is showing it off to all his mates. Mikhail has been involved in the small but growing precision farming industry in Russia since (and before) we first met back in July 2001. His associates are very closely associated with the precision farming activities up there and are extremely interested in what we are doing with FarmStar. President Putin has been pouring a lot of the oil and gas royalties money into brining Russian agriculture forward and I read recently that John Deere have built a huge tractor factory near Moscow, so it won't be long before the Russian farming practices catches up.

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Each release of PAM contains a few new features, as of version 6.4.4 we have added the following:

• PAM QA Plus users can now choose to carry over perennial crops from actual records into budgets.
• To aid in inventory entries, the date label now changes for new purchases, transfers or adjustments.
• Shearing costs are now displayed in the Livestock Diary as a cost per head.
• Shearing and crutching reports can be found under the Livestock Treatments reports option. The activities themselves can be seen in the livetock diary as a new activity type also.

PocketPAM has also undergone some changes:

• You no longer have to select the ‘editable' farms when syncronising livestock, all farms are now ‘live' concurrently on your desktop and handhelds.
• For the short-term to ensure correct livestock tallys, if you sync livestock data you will need to rebuild your stock numbers within PAM in between two sync steps. We are currently working on an automated version.
• When synchronising a chemical or fertiliser spray application without entering machinery hours, PAM will calculate the hours using the spraying hours entered in the weather details for the job or will use the default Ha/Hr value automatically.

MaxPro, Fairport's advanced machinery and vehicle management program, has been given a minor overhaul and several user suggestions are being added. For more information about MaxPro visit our website: http://www.fairport.com.au/MAXPro/.

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In April, the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) released a report comparing farm mapping software in Australia. Fairport's gpMapper was one of the software selected for evaluation and comparision.

The researchers recognised gpMapper as “one of the oldest and most widely used Australian mapping software programs on the market” and this is evident in the survey results where more than 30% of respondents used gpMapper over the competition.

Key outcomes of the report show that “because of its maturity it has a wide range of functions, especially in relation to the range of data that can be imported” and the researchers were “impressed with on-the-fly projection” functionality.

For more information about gpMapper please contact Fairport or your local distributor. To read the full report please visit http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/EFM/08-038sum.html.

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Office Hours
We are happy to announce that we have increased customer support hours from the Fairport offices to 8:00am to 5:30pm (WST) each weekday (excluding public holidays). Our support staff are available to assist with queries on any Fairport software.

For local support or more information on Fairport's full range of software, our distributors around the world are happy to help. To find your closest agent please visit http://www.fairport.com.au/agents/.

Fairport support can also be contacted at any time via email: support@fairport.com.au. Please include as much detail as possible and attach a backup of your data if the problem is data specific. Your query will be responded to ASAP.

Remember… current Fairport Club Members get free support during office hours, including contact via an Australian toll-free number, free upgrades to new releases, and discounts towards other Fairport software.

Remote Assistance
Fairport's customer support staff have been trialling remote support software called GoToAssist Express. This program enables us to remotely access client's computer through the Internet using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and 128-bit Advance Encryption for complete security. Our aim is to resolve any issues you may be having as quickly as possible.

Online Training
In addition to offering remote support, we are also exploring the option of offering small-group training over the Internet using GoToMeetings. Current Fairport Club Members will receive free priority access. Topics and dates will be announced and advertised shortly.

Website Changes
Have you ever wondered what has changed with the latest release of PAM, or if a problem you've encountered has been fixed already? Well you can now visit http://www.fairport.com.au/Changes/changes.asp for up to date information.

Our website is constantly evolving, and following customer feedback we have created a menu item at the top of our website to take you directly to the current upgrade page. The product page for PAM with FarmStar has also been completely updated, to find out the latest about our precision farming software visit http://www.fairport.com.au/FarmStar/.

Feedback and Suggestions
If you have any suggestions or feedback regarding the website or if there are features you would like to see in your Fairport software please contact Allison via email (support@fairport.com.au).

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FarmTek Australia VIC - SA - TAS

With the finalization of the FARMBIS funding the scheduling of training has slowed. However we are still available for on-farm 1:1 or group training. Costs start from $550 plus travel. If you have an interest we can always try and schedule a run in your area.

To register interest for a training session in your area use the online form at http://www.farmtek.com.au or http://www.fairport.com.au .

In August we will be at the Mallee Field Days held at Speed with Drenko Business Solutions. COLIN BOOTH from FAIRPORT will be on site running information sessions on the new and improved features of FARMSTAR.

So please drop in and say hello. Colin is keen to catch up with PAM clients.

Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia
Ph 1300 553 446
Email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au

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AgIT - NSW & QLD

We have seen some great interest, and also some new clients, in the new PAM Central software and also corporate clients taking up the PAM Enterprise software.

The new PAM Central software is a great investment for many Agribusinesses and corporate growers to manage production record keeping. Give your managers the ability to enter production records via the Internet to the PAM database located in the main office. If you would like to have a chat on whether PAM Central will benefit you, please call 1800 658 998 to discuss.

Don't forget that Ag IT is open for the Eastern Australian time zone and are happy to help out support members with any of the PAM issue they are facing.

All the best for the winter season and we do look forward to hearing from you.

Paul Olsen
Ag IT
Ph/Fax: (07) 3802 1458
Mobile: 0419 727 086
Sales & Support: 1800 658 998
email: paul@agit.com.au

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Booth Technology - WA

Unfortunately Ben Coman left us in June. As yet, due to the current low employment rate in WA, we have been unable to find a replacement. If anyone has any support issues please contact Colin on his mobile 0408944006 or Fairport are helping out at the moment (08) 93675814. We will let you know as soon as the situation changes.

For further assistance please call Booth Technology on (08) 9383 4443 or email: sales@boothtech.com.au .

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Tip of the month: MultiClient users can use personalised logos…
Go to - Configuration / Customise your PAM program / Settings (2). Tick the check box next to “Use Custom Report Logo”.
Save your logo as a bitmap file with the name ‘reportlogo' (you can use Microsoft Paint to save in this format) and place your logo into the PAM installation directory.

Farewell from the Fairport Team

... Until SEPTEMBER 2008!

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