In order to improve the service we provide we are trying to nail down a few things in order to prevent the current duplication of work that is happening. While many of you will be aware that 'Postfield' no longer exists, the current structure of things has not been covered very well and so a little update on information seems appropriate.

Enquirysolve

Many of you will still refer to the CMS system as 'Postfield', but the name we would like to promote is Enquirysolve. This will provide a banner under which all of the developments of the client management system products can be grouped. The name has been in use for 18 months now, and all of the support has been moved to this website, where it is being expanded.

While we are not using the facility fully yet, most sites have their own private support information also contained here, and [your name]/enquirysolve.co.uk will take you to that area. All of the generic information is freely accessable, but once logged in, private information relating to the site will be available, such as help files specific to your own configuration. We also hold backup copies of site setup and any locally required software, which is only accessible to authorised users. The IT department of your site will be able to access this via an administrator login, and provided interent access is avaiable on a site ( something which we still need to add on some sites ) then we can upload updates and material from anywhere in the country.

Roadmap

Currently there is something of a spread of versions in use, and this is causing a few problems with maintenance. We would like to bring everybody up to the latest version, and your maintenance agreements cover the cost of that, but we recognise that some sites simply do not require the whole gammet of facilities that the system provides.

A certain level of updating IS required, simply to keep track of changes created by windows and to support the current versions of operating system and browser. People will no doubt be aware of my own dislike of Microsoft, and the current state of play with their products would seem to do nothing to improve that opinion. Currently we are actively supporting W2k, XP and Vista on IE6,7 and 8, and Windows7 will be added to the mix next month. All of these have required a lot of effort to maintan complaince with, and some combinations prevent newer upgrades from being applied at all. As an aside, Linux has not been imune from 'feature creep', and while our in house systems have been Linux based for 12 months now, we have had to switch distributions a couple of times to retain a reliable, user friendly, system. While it will not mean a lot to some of our readers, the system runs on Apache, PHP and Firebird, and 'feature creep'

In order to plan a sensible path forward, we need to establish what your own plans are for rolling out new versions of windows ( and IE ). Many sites I know have made a decision to remain with XP, but some sites are still running W2k on many machines and have no budget to replace them. This adds to the problems with Internet Explorer, and I think that Microsoft's refusal to provide a later version of IE for W2k is simply wrong. Pressure by other parties to eliminate IE6 does not take into account those sites that simply do not hae the option to deploy IE7 (or8)! So we will contact ites individually with a simple questionare about their own plans in relation to this mess, as that really is the only word that applies.

Moving Forward

We have been talking about CMS10 for a long time now, but as yet no one has an active version running. We hope that this situation will change before the end of the year, but while CMS10 has not been in active use, we have had LLPG data from many sites now, and have been using CMS10 locally to extract current postcode tables to use with CMS9. This area of development has been working reliably for a couple of years, and we hope that we can start deploying it in parallel with your current CMS9 setups with a view to moving over next year. The main reason for 'needing' to deploy CMS10 is to remove the security problem that exists with CMS9, and to require a much more secure login to the system, given the information that is readily available within the system.

How will CMS10 look ... You are using the framework now looking at this news letter, but more information can be found on the detailed roadmap. But the new framework is fully themed, so we can tailor the design to suit your own format.