We sent an email last week to all clients to announce the availability of a new version of Correio AVS. If you are a Correio AVS client and you did not receive the email (or if you are still running a version of Correio prior to 2.1.4), please call us at (951) 696-9715, extension 0, and ask for Correio support.
Correio AVS 2.1.4
September 16th, 2009How to know if Correio has been installed correctly
July 28th, 2009As posted previously, we recently provided a new version of Correio to all Correio clients. They say a picture says a thousand words, so here is what Correio should say to you after you install the new version.
If any of the highlighted areas above do not match what you are seeing on your Correio PC, please call us immediately at (951) 696-9715, Extension 0.
New Correio Available for Download
July 20th, 2009The new version of Correio is available for download at http://files.me.com/cutek/nvf0xq. The password is in the letter shipped with the USPS database DVD or CDs. If you have any questions or problems, please contact us at (951) 696-9715, extension 0.
New Corrieo Build is Coming
July 16th, 2009The USPS has notified Cutek that the current cycle L API used by Correio version 2.09 will expire on July 31, 2009. If you are a Correio client, this means that your copy of Correio will cease to function and must be upgraded by the end of this month. Fortunately, the upgrade process should be fairly quick and painless.
We have been testing a new build of Correio that uses the new Cycle M API and we expect to finish testing and deliver the new build for all Correio clients by early next week. We have received new Cycle M AMS database disks from the USPS and we are shipping these to all Correio clients.
The new Cycle M AMS database disks will not work with Correio version 2.09 and you should not try to update Correio 2.09 with these new disks. Instead, you should wait until you receive both the new download link for the new version of Correio as well as a new Cycle M DVD. If you are a Correio client, you will receive upgrade instructions next week in the mail along with the new database disk(s).
Please note that you will not need to change any specfiles on your Symitar host to use the new version of Correio; your existing specfiles will work with the new Correio build the same as they have in the past. However, we will be providing enhanced specfiles, with an expected delivery in August, to take advantage of several new features in the Cycle M builds. We will provide further details on these enhancements when the specfiles are available for download, but here is a short list of some of the more important enhancements we have planned:
- Abbreviated Address support
- Abbreviated City Support
- Blind-post without the need to grant additional privileges to your users
- New ADDRESSCHANGE form with additional fields
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
Thanks,
Ray Pennisi – Correio Product Manager
SMUG Meeting Next Week
February 10th, 2009Dawn and I will be at the SMUG meeting next week in Detroit. I’ll be demoing our Fee Management Console as well as teaching the Interactive HTML (post-back) class on Thursday and Friday. I am looking forward to seeing old friends, making new friends and enjoying the bone chilling weather of Detroit in mid-February. (OK, maybe not so much on that last one.)
Hope to see you there!
Happy Turkey Day!
November 24th, 2008Cutek will be closed both Thursday and Friday this week for Thanksgiving. We wish everyone a happy holiday!
Correio Updates
November 20th, 2008This post is for our clients that use the Correio AVS software.
We recently sent out the October USPS database disks to all clients and some clients have experienced difficulties loading some of these disks. If you are affected by this problem, please try the following workaround:
- Create a new folder on your PC
- Insert the DVD or one of the CDs and use Explorer to view the files on the disk.
- If you have CDs, select all the files in the root of the CD and copy these files to the folder you created on your PC. Do not copy the subfolder and repeat this step for the other two CDs, copying all the files to the same single folder on your PC
- If you have the DVD, open each subfolder (they should have names that are variations on Commercial, DPV and LACSLink) and copy the files in that subfolder to the folder you created on your PC. Don’t copy the dev kits folder or folders
- From Correio, choose File, Update Database and select the folder on your PC. The program should copy all the database files and install them
If the above workaround does not work, please call us at (951) 696-9715 so that we can send you new disks before the old ones expire.
Speaking of calling Cutek, I, Ray Pennisi, now handle all Correio support and I can be reached at extension 157. If you have an emergency and you can’t reach me, dial 0 for the operator. Don’t call Doug because we’ve locked Doug in a room to work on special projects.
I also wanted to point out that we are always looking for ways to enhance the Correio AVS product and, to that end, we’ve added the following enhancements to the ADDRESSCHANGE form that ships with Correio:
- By popular request, we’ve added an option for a signature line on the form so you can send the signed address change to optical
- We’ve added an option to place a Recent Address Change warning on the account when you change an address
- We’ve added an option to expire the Bad Address Warning and reset the Statement Mail Codes when you change the mailing address for an account
- We’ve added dynamic validation of the Country and Country Code for your foreign addresses
- We’ve added an option to disallow PO Box addresses in the Primary Name record
- We’ve added code to catch APO or FPO addresses that have been mistakenly set as foreign instead of domestic
- We’ve added an option to set (or not set) the Address Verify Date field when you change an address.
- We’ve added an option to add a toolbar control to allow your users to selectively override Correio’s address corrections.
- We’ve added an option to display a dialog box asking who authorized the address change and we can then store the answer in a Note record.
That last bullet point addresses some of the Red Flag issues that our clients have been concerned with, but we do plan to offer a version of ADDRESSCHANGE in the future that integrates these options into the form itself.
If you want to bring your Correio specfiles up-to-date to take advantage of the enhancements above, just call us and we can tell you how to get the files. Or, if you’re not yet a Correio user and you want to take advantage of all the things that Correio can do for you, call Dawn at extension 113 and ask for a quote today!
Post-Conference Thoughts
September 8th, 2008The following ramblings are the ramblings of the author and are in no way indicative of the positions of Cutek, Symitar or any other company or person… unless they are.
As always, it was great to see old friends and make new ones. The “I Hung with Trace Security” party was a lot of fun, as always, and the “I’m Not Angry 2008 Tour” t-shirts were a hit with Jimmy’s picture on them were a big hit. (“It’s not anger, it’s passion!!!” – J. Guarnotta)
I heard some rumbling from other vendors (who will remain nameless) about how the new JHA-imposed rules regarding how and when they may entertain clients really reduced the amount of face-time they got with clients; some vendors even said they might boycott the conference next year if the rules stay the same. “We’re paying all this money….” was a common refrain.
I was personally happy that the products I developed myself (CAMS Alert Proccessing and Fee Management Console) went over so well at the conference, not to mention all of our other products that also went over well. I’m looking forward to remaining busy for the rest of the year (except, of course, for my vacation next month!)
It was also nice to hear that Barbara Fraire gave a shout out to Cutek and our Correio Address Verification Server during her presentation on the Name and Address Enhancements in Release 2008.00 and 2008.01. We got a lot of visitors to our (newly enlarged) booth right after that session asking about Correio and how it could help them prepare for the Name merge, which was also nice. And actually, Barbara wasn’t the only Symitar employee to have good things to say about us (in public, even), which is always satisfying. As we see it (and have always seen it), by helping clients, we’re helping Symitar as well.
All in all, it was a good experience and I look forward to doing it all over again next year.
It’s almost party time!
August 20th, 2008In case you’ve been living under a rock, next week is the Symitar client conference and Cutek will be there with a bigger booth with all your favorite Cutek employees. Even the ones that were banned from the conference last year will be here this year! So, be sure to stop by, say hello and learn about all the new products we’ve come up with.
And, of course, you don’t want to miss out on the party of the year, the 4th annual “I HUNG WITH TRACESEUCRITY” event, with special guests, William Hung and Renaldo Lapuz. Everyone is invited to this event and you don’t even have to be registered for the official Symitar conference to attend.
If you want a taste of what to expect….
Deep Thoughts
August 1st, 2008Symitar shipped Release 2008.00 of their Episys software recently and now that I’ve had a chance to play with it, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about it. Here they are:
It’s nice to see online pubs as a single file again, even if it’s still a CHM file and even if they’ve decided to change the name again to eDocs. Personally, I think the name just serves to confuse people — Helpful person: “Did you check eDocs for the answer?”, confused client: “What’s eDocs?”, Helpful person: “it’s the new name for the combination of the Admin online pubs and Finance online pubs”, really confused client: “there are two online pubs? I only have something called ‘Episys Online Pubs’”, helpful person: “oh, that’s the old online pubs before they split it and then put it back together again.” Yeah, I think it would be better if they just called it “Symitar Episys Help”, just like most application help files.
Support for combination fixed and variable loans is a major enhancement for Symitar, but it also means a lot of work for existing clients that want to take advantage of this new feature. You pretty much have to review every specfile in your database that looks at loans to make sure those specfiles will work with the new loans before you try to use the new features. Luckily, if you don’t plan to use the new features, you don’t have to worry about them. But it’s still a pretty cool enhancement with a lot of potential.
I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes between Jack Henry, Symitar and eFunds, but I don’t like the changes to the ChexSystems interface in this release. Perhaps Jack Henry and Symitar had no say in the matter, but the fact that the ChexSystem information is no longer stored in Cred Rep records means that a lot of previous functionality and interoperability between Symitar and ChexSystems is gone.
I was still at Symitar three years ago when my friend Frank Wilms started working on the name and address enhancements that are just now seeing the light of day and I remember being very happy that I wasn’t given that beast of a project. The sheer scope of that project is mind-boggling, to say the least. I completely understand their reasoning behind splitting this project up into several parts over several releases and I look forward to the final product. So far so good on this one and props go to my old team and the product development department and everyone else at Symitar involved in this project.
Symitar home banking… in case you need a road map:
- At some point on or before 1994, Symitar starts to refer to their audio system as “MemberConnect”
- Symitar releases “MemberConnect-PC” in 1994. It requires dedicated phone lines and members must use their modem to dial into the system (this is pre-www technology) and navigate through an all-text interface.
- Between 1994 and 1996, Symitar works on a Windows application that is meant to provide a GUI for MemberConnect-PC. This project is eventually abandaned in favor of a web-based solution.
- In 1996, Symitar releases MemberConnect-Web, one of the first web-based home banking application for financial institutions. At the same time, Symitar announces the release of the SymConnect interface and, around the same time, announces a partnership with Digital Insight to support their home banking product which uses SymConnect. At this point in time MemberConnect-Web does not use SymConnect but instead uses the old audio-based MemberConnect interface.
- Clients and Symitar both start referring to MemberConnect Web as MCW and the audio as MemberConnect Audio. For a few years, there is also a MemberConnect Kiosk product.
- Around 1999, Symitar starts transitioning MCW to use SymConnect in what eventually becomes “the SymConnect version of MemberConnect Web”
- Jack Henry & Associates acquires Symitar in 2000. JHA has their own home banking platform that they brand “NetTeller”.
- Sometime between 2000 and 2003, the marketing department at JHA decides to rebrand MemberConnect Web as NetTeller MemberConnect or NTMC, even though the two products are complete separate applications with different code and different functionality.
- Some clients on Symitar start to refer to NTMC as just NetTeller, even though NetTeller is a separate product from NTMC.
- In Release 2008.00, JHA/Symitar announces the availability of “JHA NetTeller Online Banking Solution” for Episys clients, which is still completely separate from “Symitar’s original NetTeller MemberConnect (NTMC)”.
- In summary: MemberConnect Web equals MCW equals NetTeller MemberConnect equals NTMC, but just plain “NetTeller” is also a Symitar home banking application but it is completely separate from the original with much different functionality.
- Also in summary, Cutek can customize the first product for you in almost any way you can think up, while noone but JHA/Symitar can customize the brand new NetTeller.
Finally, Symitar expands the user number range again. Due to a shortsighted employee that made an arbitrary decision several years ago (and who will remain nameless), you can expect the user number range to continue to expand every few years until your specfile arrays all explode. As the release notes state, this is done “to accommodate the corporate environment”, which means corporate credit unions. “Let them eat cake.”