Stonefield Query for AccountMate 7.0

We are pleased to announce the release of version 7.0 of Stonefield Query for AccountMate. There are lots of new features in this release.

• Multiple license types are now available. This allows you to decide what set of features you would like to have.

• You can now evenly spread the columns across the page in a quick report by turning on the Auto-fit to Page setting. This setting adds extra space between the columns so the fields take up the entire width of the page.

• You can now sort a cross-tab report by a data field. This can be used to, for example, show customer sales by country and product with the largest customers (by sales) at the top and smallest at the bottom.

• You can now specify the number of columns to display in a dashboard. If the total number of cells (rows multiplied by columns) is less than the number of reports, the reports are cycled through in sets at the specified interval. For example, if you specify two rows and two columns, only four reports can be displayed at a time, so if the dashboard contains six reports, the first four are displayed, then the next two, then the first four again. The interval is now in seconds rather than minutes. Also, you can now add more than 9 reports to a dashboard.

• You can now specify the minimum and maximum values for a gauge. The goal value is now optionally shown as a goal marker on the gauge.

• Fields containing HTML and rich text (RTF) content can now be displayed as formatted text.

• The performance of outputting a report with a large number of records (tens of thousands) to Microsoft Excel Data-Only (Fast) was greatly improved (90% faster) and produces smaller XLSX files.

• You can now format a field to display negative numbers in parentheses rather than with a minus sign (for example, (123.45) instead of -123.45).

• You can now specify the title settings for the right axis in a chart that has a field plotted on the right axis.

• You can now create a stacked chart when there is no series field but there is more than one value field.

• You can use the new built-in variable ChartTotal to display the total of a chart, such as in the title of the chart.

• A new type of formatting is available for date fields: Day, which displays Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.

• When you compare a field to another field in the Filter Condition dialog, the drop-down list of fields to compare to now includes fields from other tables in the report, not just the ones from the selected table.

• You can now drill down from a report using an aggregate date (such as Month/Year) to one using a filter on a date range.

• You can no longer sort a chart by values if there's more than one values field or if there's a series field because the chart doesn't support sorting on more than one set of values so the sets don't match with the x-axis.

• The Select Values dialog, which appears when you click the Values button in the Filter Condition dialog or the Expression Builder, now has a Search option so you can search for values.

• The value for a filter condition can now be used in the custom description of the condition.

• The Preview window has new zoom levels: 1000%, 800%, and 500%.

• Expression builder buttons are now available for the header and footer of a report and for the subject and message of an email, making it easier to enter expressions for these things.

• The GetValueForField and GetValueForParameter functions now accept a parameter indicating which value for "is between" and "is one of" conditions is returned.

• You can no longer schedule a report to output to any Microsoft Excel format other than Microsoft Excel Data Only (Fast) or any Microsoft Word format because the other formats require running Excel or Word behind the scenes and they cannot be reliably run from a scheduled task as Microsoft themselves admit.

• The Format function can now use < and > as delimiters for placeholders in addition to { and }. This allows it to be used in expressions, which use { and } as the expression delimiters; for example, {Format('<0:c2>', MyValue)} works but {Format('{0:c2}', MyValue)} doesn't because of the confusion of the two uses of { and }.

• The default Add Missing Values setting for date fields in a chart is now turned off.

• You can now include commas in values passed to filter conditions in a parameters file by escaping them (prefixing them with a backslash); for example, <value value="My Company\, LLC"</value>.

• Cross-tab reports now use weighed averages rather than average of averages when Average is used for a data field.

Stonefield Query for AccountMate 5.1

We are please to announce the release of version 5.1 of Stonefield Query for AccountMate. There are lots of new features in this release.

• AccountMate 9.3 for SQL is now supported.
• Several changes were made to gauges. First, the gauge has a new, more attractive appearance, including an option to show the current value using "digital" digits like a speedometer. Second, the performance of gauges on some systems was dramatically improved. Third, there are several new settings: you can specify that the goal comes from a specific value rather than a field, saving you having to create a formula for this purpose; you can specify the font and color of the gauge labels; you can specify band end values as amounts instead of percentages; and you can specify at what percentage the goal value appears. Also, the "distinct" setting in the Customize Wizard is now available.
• You can now edit labels using the Advanced Report Designer, allowing you to move fields around or tweak the layout.
• The new Grid Bars option for charts draws alternating horizontal bars in a chart, making a more attractive chart.
• The new Scheduled Tasks function in the Tools menu allows you to display the status of your scheduled reports, including last run date and result, and edit or delete schedules.
• The new Find Reports Using a Field and Find Reports by Name functions allow you to see which reports include a particular field, either in the report itself or in the filter conditions for the report, or to find reports containing text you specify in the name.
• A new Summary option for grouping formulas, Combine, allows you to combine the values of a field from several records. This is useful, for example, to create a formula that lists all of the products purchased by a customers in a single record rather than one record per purchase.
• The Formula Editor has a new code editor button. This button allows you to create and edit custom functions without having to put code in RepProcs.prg and without having to exit Stonefield Query every time you make a change to the code.
• The Formula Editor also has a new security button. This button allows you to indicate which user groups can see the formula and which can modify or delete the formula. The Formulas dialog now only displays formulas the user has access to and only enabled the Edit and Remove buttons if the user is in a group that has those permissions.
• The Formula Editor also has a Default Summary setting. This allows you to determine if numeric fields are automatically summed, averaged, or summarized in some other way by default.
• The Formulas dialog can now filter the list of formulas to only those in a certain table or Module. It also has a new Reports button showing you which reports use the selected formula.
• The report wizards have a new Save As button that allows you to save the report as a new report rather than having to first choose Copy and then edit the copy.
• You can now turn on the Ask at runtime setting for a filter condition using an expression as the value to compare to. In that case, the evaluated value of the expression is displayed as the default value for the condition in the ask-at-runtime dialog.
• The Filter Condition dialog no longer has a More button; the dialog is always expanded so the options in it are more discoverable. Also, there are new Ends With and Does Not End With operators and a new Custom Description setting.
• You can now select the direction (ascending or descending) of the sort of a group in the Advanced Report Designer.
• You can now indicate whether a header row of field names is included when outputting a report to Microsoft Excel data-only, comma-delimited, or text files.
• You can now specify the starting month of a fiscal year in the Options dialog so dates displayed as quarter use the correct quarter number for your fiscal year.
• The Maintain Users and Groups dialog now has a spot for the email address for each user. This address is used to send emails to technical support if the user hasn't filled in the settings in the Email tab of the Options dialog.
• You now get a warning when running a dashboard if any of the reports are missing.
• Temporary files more than a week old are now deleted when you close Stonefield Query to keep your temporary files folder from getting too full.
• You can no longer enter an email address formatted as "Some Name <somename@somecompany.com>" because that causes a scheduled report to fail.
• The Automatically sum numeric fields setting in the Options dialog was removed, as it's now controlled on a field-by-field basis.
• You now get a warning if you schedule a report to output to or email a file on a mapped drive, since drive mappings don't work well in scheduled tasks.
• Step 2 of the report wizards no longer has Add All and Remove All buttons, since those were were rarely used and accidentally using them causes changes you likely didn't expect.
• Turn on the new No message if no records setting for dashboards to not display a warning if there are no records for a particular chart in the dashboard.
• Importing a report containing an updated formula is now easier. In previous versions, if a formula was edited (for example, the expression was changed) at another site and a report containing that formula was exported and sent to you, importing the report didn't update the formula at your site. Instead, you had to delete the formula before importing the report. Now, when you import a report containing an existing formula that's different than your copy of the formula, you're prompted if you want to replace your formula with the one in the report.
• Importing an update to an existing report is also now easier: you are prompted if you want to replace the existing report with the one being imported. If you choose No, the imported report is given a new name (the same behavior as in previous versions).
• You now get a printer dialog when clicking the Print dialog in the Preview window for a chart.
• The dialog displayed when you click the Email button in the Preview window now has the same options as the Output page of the Reports Explorer.
• If another user is logged in with the same name, the application doesn't terminate but instead redisplays the Login dialog.
• You can now specify a width greater than 1000 for a chart, which is helpful if it's output in landscape.
• The Schedule Wizard now remembers the user name and password in the last step so you don't have to enter them every time you create a schedule.
• The size and position of the Select Email Addresses dialog is now remembered.
• If you use an ask-at-runtime filter condition for a grouping formula, the ask-at-runtime dialog now displays the name of the grouping formula so you can tell which formula the dialog is asking for values.
• You can now choose "Expression" for the Compare to setting for a filter condition using a formula.

Stonefield Query Features Added

We added the following new features in the past week:

• Support for terminating licenses, or subscriptions. (Note that we used to call annual fees for updates and support "subscriptions" but have changed that to "software maintenance".) This allows someone to license the use of Stonefield Query one month at a time.


• Templates can now specify the paper size and source (such as a certain bin) so you don't need to use the Advanced Report Designer to, for example, output a report on legal paper.


• Support for queries involving the absense of data (internally, we call these "negative queries"). For example, suppose you want a list of all people you did not contact last year or all customers who didn't buy a certain product. Previously, you had to customize the SQL statement for the report to achieve this. Now you simply specify how to exclude certain records using the same dialog you use to create a filter on a report.


• Places in Stonefield Query that support expressions (such as the report header or footer) now support non-character expressions such as the current date.


• The Text datasource handles more types of date values.


• Bug fix: Stonefield Query wasn't respecting changes to the font style for a field in a report (for example, making it bold).


• Bug fix: the Ignore This Condition choice in the conditions list of the Link page in the Field Properties dialog acted like None (that is, you were still prompted for an ask-at-runtime condition).


• Bug fix: a data group with a name that's a subset of another data group (for example, "My Group" and "My Group 1") now works properly.


• Bug fix: the Advanced Report Designer no longer sizes a field past the right edge of the report when it automatically determines the size.