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Pharos Technical Support Customer Survey
Pharos Systems International is very proud of the product technical support that we provide our customers. It has allowed us to maintain an excellent customer retention rate. However, we are always looking for ways to improve. And, with that in mind, we would like to invite you, our customers and resellers, to participate in an online survey to let us know how you think Pharos Technical Support is doing.

The survey is specific to Pharos Technical Support and should take only a few minutes to complete.

In fact, we are so keen to hear what you think that we are offering the chance to win an iPod Shuffle when you complete the survey.

Customer Satisfaction Survey - Pharos Technical Support

To qualify for the iPod Shuffle drawing you will need to enter your name and email at the bottom of the survey.

The drawing for the iPOD Shuffle will be held on July 31st and the winner will be notified via email.

We value and appreciate the feedback you provide.

Pharos External Device Interface (EDI) Update: Hot Fix #2
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• Under certain conditions, the EDI service and/or IIS could fail, reporting an "overflow or underflow in GC Memory Pressure" error. The application of this Hot Fix prevents such errors.
• The application of this Hot Fix ensures that the £ symbol displays correctly at PS20 terminals.

Pharos Print Server: Hot Fix #3
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• Discount Rates were not applied when Standard Charging was used. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Discount Rate Schedules are now applied to Standard Charging.
• When Users are not identified in the Pharos database (such as when using cash cards or gateways) an Alert was raised for each print job submitted to a Spooled Queue. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Alerts are no longer raised in this scenario.
• When Users are not identified in the Pharos database, they were unable to print color jobs as their permissions could not be verified. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Users who are not identified in the Pharos database are assumed to be members of the 'Public' User Group and are assigned the permissions of this User Group.
• If all Regular Expressions were deleted from the Pharos database, usernames would be returned as empty strings. This meant that users were unable to print, with an error message: 'Unable to retrieve funds for your Logon ID'. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that usernames are returned correctly and users can print when no Regular Expressions are present.
• An Encrypt function has been added to the String class of the Pharos Scripting Language. This means that a separate stored procedure is no longer necessary if encryption is desired. The function is used as follows:

  import "String";
  new sampletext = "abc";
  String.Encrypt(sampletext);

SignUP 7.2 Nerve Center COM Surrogate Error: Hot Fix #4
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• The IIS Server could regularly display an error message: "COM Surrogate encountered an error and needed to close". The application of this Hot Fix will ensure these error messages no longer occur.
• Under certain conditions it was possible for the Nerve Center to encounter problems if more than one copy of the Nerve Center was opened at a time. This Hot Fix ensures that multiple copies of the Nerve Center can be used simultaneously.

Pharos Station: Hot Fix #5
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• It was possible, under certain conditions, for a print job to be printed and correctly charged for, but the attribute details for another job to be recorded in the transaction. The application of this Hot Fix prevents incorrect job details from being recorded for print jobs.
• If a user attempted to eject a cash card while releasing a print job, the card may be charged but the print job not printed. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that a cash card will not be charged unless the print job is released.

SignUp Server – Encrypt function: Hot Fix #6
This Hot Fix adds an "Encrypt" function to the String class of the Pharos Scripting Language. This means that a separate stored procedure is no longer necessary if encryption is desired. The function is used as follows:

import "String";
new sampletext = "abc";
String.Encrypt(sampletext);

SignUp Client Reboot issues: Hot Fix #7
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• If a SignUp Client PC loses power or is switched off during a session, the session should resume once power is restored; however, in some cases this was not happening. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that sessions resume correctly when power is cycled during a SignUp session.
• After performing an Administrator Logon at the SignUp Client, hovering the mouse pointer over the SignUp clock icon in the system tray would cause the PC to reboot. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that this problem no longer occurs.

Pharos Reports : Hot Fix #9
This Hot Fix addresses the following issue:

• Pharos Reports would only display if the Pharos Database was named 'pharos'; if the database was not named 'pharos', when attempting to view reports the following error message would be displayed:

  "Failed to retrieve data from the database. Database Vendor Code: 916."

• The application of this Hot Fix ensures that Pharos Reports works correctly whatever the name of the Pharos Database.

Popup/Notify Client: Hot Fix #10
This Hot Fix adds Windows Vista support for the Popup Client (including Notify). After installing this Hot Fix, install packages will install the Popup Client correctly on Windows Vista PCs.

Important points to note:

• The Popup Client has been tested on Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate. Other Vista editions are not supported at this time.
• Windows Vista XPS drivers are not currently supported.
• Due to the underlying Terminal Services platform in Windows Vista, application tracking is unreliable. This means that the application limiting function of Uniprint’s Color Limiting feature (controlled by the Permitted Color Applications property for User Groups) cannot be used where the Popup Client is installed on Windows Vista. Access to color printing can still be restricted, but on a per-User Group basis only. This is an existing limitation of the Popup Client on Terminal Services.

Pharos Remote: Hot Fix #11
This Hot Fix addresses the following issue:

The Job ID field was not included in the 7.2 release of the Pharos Remote application. The application of this Hot Fix restores the Job ID field to the Property fields for Printers and Spool Queues in the Print Servers context, and also in the properties shown for jobs in the Printing context.

Pharos Database: Hot Fix #12
This Hot Fix addresses the following issue:

The application of this Hot Fix provides a workaround for an issue in SQL Server 7 and 2000, which would cause negative values to be rounded incorrectly when converting string values to money values. This issue could result in transactions being recorded with a 2/100ths of a cent variation in value. For example, a print job with a charge of 0.129065 would be recorded as 0.1289 instead of 0.1291.

Pharos Station Application: Hot Fix #13
This Hot Fix addresses the following issues:

• Hot Fix 5 to Pharos 7.2 introduced an issue where it was possible to hang the Pharos Station by holding down the ESC key, when certain card readers were used. The issue is corrected in this Hot Fix.
• In certain situations, the reservation wizard would behave incorrectly. The Make Reservation button was disabled when the maximum number of Scheduled reservations were created, and wasn't re-enabled if a reservation was cancelled. The Create New Reservation button at the end of reservation wizard was enabled even when the maximum number of reservations had been reached. The application of this Hot Fix corrects the behavior of the reservation wizard.
• It was possible, under certain conditions, for a print job to be printed and correctly charged for, but the attribute details for another job to be recorded in the transaction. The application of this Hot Fix prevents incorrect job details from being recorded for print jobs.
• If a user attempted to eject a cash card while releasing a print job, the card may be charged but the print job not printed. The application of this Hot Fix ensures that a cash card will not be charged unless the print job is released.

Omega PS 150 Firmware
Release (March 2007) 2.0.1 revision 5901. The Installation and Configuration manual is also available for download.