Simon–Mailbox Rental & Mail Forwarding Management System, Version 4

Upgrade Instructions

It has been quite a while coming, I know. Sorry about that.

As a minor defense for myself, I would like to say that this upgrade was complicated. Now, that it is here, let’s get you upgraded.

Protecting Your Present Simon Application

Before starting the actual upgrade we should protect the Simon Version 3 application so that if something during the upgrade should go wrong, you can always get back to where you were before the upgrade. The easiest way to do this is to make a copy of the [Simon] folder that is located on your C drive. This is where all of the Simon files are located so it is quite simple to rename the folder back to [Simon] to get back to where you were before disaster happened.

Here are the steps you should take to get Simon protected before doing an upgrade.

Step	Instruction	More Information
1	Close Simon.	You will not be able to make a copy of the [Simon] folder if Simon is open.
2	Right click on your [My Computer] icon on your computer desktop.	A menu should appear next to the [My Computer] icon. This is called a shortcut menu.
3	Left click [Explore] on the shortcut menu.	The Windows Explore window should appear. This is a two-paned window with both right-side pane and left-side pane.
4	Click on the [Local Disk (C:)] item in the left pane.	A list of the contents of your C drive will appear in the right pane. Mostly folders will be shown and one of these folders should be the [Simon] folder.
5	Select the [Simon] folder in the right pane.	Once selected, the [Simon] word should change its color which means it is selected.
6	Using your keyboard, hold down the [Ctrl] button while clicking on the [C] key.	This will send a copy of the [Simon] folder and all of its contents to the Windows clipboard (a holding area for cut/copy/paste operations). You will not notice anything happening, but it will happen.
7	Using your keyboard, hold down the [Ctrl] button while clicking on the [V] key.	This will make a copy of the clipboard contents and name this [Copy of Simon].

Make absolutely sure the [Copy of Simon] folder exists. If you do not have a [Copy of Simon] folder on your C drive after doing the steps listed above, do it again until you have a [Copy of Simon] folder; otherwise, you will not be protected against mishaps.

Now, a little reasoning behind why we went through all of this and how you will handle Simon if something should go wrong.

The reason we went through this is so that if the upgrade to Version 4 does not work, you will be able to get back to Version 3. If you do the upgrade and it fails, the installer for Version 4 will revise some files and add a few new ones to the [Simon] folder. Since this process failed in some way, shape or form, you can now delete the [Simon] folder and rename the [Copy of Simon] folder back to [Simon]. Now, you will only need to do this if the upgrade fails. If, in fact, you are forced to do this, you will be back at Version 3 of Simon at which time you should either try to install the upgrade again starting with the steps shown above, or you might want to call us at 207-947-6583.

Downloading and Unzipping the Revision File

The next operation will be to download and unzip the file necessary to upgrade from Version 3 to Version 4. This is something that everyone has done from time to time.

I would show pictures of how to do this, but I have not created the web page to do this yet, so bear with me and follow instructions.

Step	Instructions	More Information
1	Go to our web site at http://www.bnl.com.	This should be done using your web browser of choice.
2	At the top of any of our web pages, click on the [Revisions] button.	As a part of our logo, we have several buttons which take you to different areas of our web site. You should choose the [Revisions] area.
3	Navigate to the Simon revisions area.	Simply click on links to the Simon revisions area.
4	Find the SimonUpg324.exe file.	There will be a table located on the Simon revisions page. There will be two files there. Choose the one named SimonUpg324.exe.
5	Click on the SimonUpg324.exe file.	This will bring up a dialog box (a small window that you can use to tell your web browser where to send the file as you will want to download it and place it somewhere on your local computer. Remember where you placed it since you will need to find it in one of the next steps.
6	Close your web browser once you have the SimonUpg324.exe file downloaded.	It is best to unclutter your computer desktop before installing the Simon Version 4 upgrade.
7	After it is downloaded to your local hard drive, you will want to find the file.	You made a mental note where you placed the SimonUpg324.exe file and you should use the Windows Explore tool to find this file now. Remember, we used Windows Explore in the first operation of these instructions.

At this point, you should have a 14MB, or so, file located on your hard drive that is named SimonUpg324.exe. This is the upgrade file for moving Simon Version 3 to Simon Version 4.

Warning: If you are still at Version 2, which is highly unlikely, you will need to download the SimonUpg224.exe file instead of the one listed above. Also, if you are at Version 3, please do not make the mistake of downloading this SimonUpg224.exe file.

Upgrading to Version 4

Now, you are ready to upgrade to Version 4.

Step	Instructions	More Information
1	Close Simon.	Upgrades cannot be performed if the program is open.
2	Double click on the SimonUpg324.exe file.	This should get you to an unzip dialog box. Sometimes you might have to go through a few steps to get to the dialog box with the [Unzip] button.
3	Click on the [Unzip] button.	This will start the unzip function followed by the install of this upgrade.
4	Install, as suggested, to the c:\simon folder unless you have Simon installed elsewhere.	In most cases you will have just installed Simon into the suggested folder and, therefore, you will just need to continue the upgrade without further adieu.
5	Do a [Typical] install.	During the install process, you will be given this option.
6	Successful.	If all goes well, you will get a message that the install was successful.

Warning: There is a possibility that you may get an error when installing that will end in an unsuccessful install. It has been our experience that you can try again and it will then succeed. Weird, but it does not seem to happen every time.

Now, if you should run into problems with this install, you can give us a call at 207-947-6583. If you have to do this, be prepared to be specific about what you have done and what issues you have run into.

What’s Changed in Version 4

1) Naturally, with any upgrade such as this, there will be some adjustment to Help articles to instruct on the way the new tools work and to adjust for new tool behavior. Also, we added the ability to consult our web site, bnl.com, for further information on certain topics in both html and pdf format. When you have a help article opened within Simon, there will be a PDF and a web file button. If more help is available on our web site on the topic you are reviewing, one or both of these buttons will be enabled.

2) Adding the ability to send emails from within Simon. New email connectivity preferences have been added and certain operations will be able to use email to notify clients. You will need to set email connectivity options in the General Preferences area. After you have set these preferences, you can email package notices to clients and email rent due and past due notices to clients.

You may want to test Simon to see if you can send emails with the settings you have added in the General Preferences area. Use the Package Tracking tool to do a test. Just go into the Package Tracking tool, add a package to track, add your email address as where to send the email and send an email to yourself. After you have successfully tested Simon’s ability to deliver email, you can simply delete the package you created for email testing.

3) Rebuilt box addressing to address some obvious limitations. Sure, the DMM requires the use of PMB or the # sign either above or adjacent to the street address. But, it appears, Postmasters do not always follow these rules. So box addressing (or how your boxholders will use the address at your business to receive mail) has been changed to be a lot more flexible.

4) Fixed the closed box report to only show boxes closed within the date shown on the introductory form.

5) Added the restricted mail information to the Mail Recipient (full) Listings.

6) Made some adjustments to the Rent Due and Past Due Notice Form. Seemed a bit quirky. I think I have addressed all of its issues. I have also redesigned this form as it seemed clunky to me.

7) Added some flexibility to the rental agreement. You can now change the title of the rental agreement and changed the ending area.

8) Fixed problem with [Select All] and [Deselect All] buttons on 1583 generator form.

9) Added error trapping on 'Make Rental Payments' form so that you will not be able to rent a box for a zero month rental. No point and it causes problems for Simon when closing, etc.

10) Added fields to General Store Preferences for a default Country, State, and City. This would help streamline the process of adding new clients as mailbox people by allowing the store owners to have a default city, state and country in the client address and business address areas of the add a new boxholder form.

11) Added a field to General Store Preferences so that you can control whether you want Simon to insist on boxholder ID when adding new boxholders.

12) Added a short (max 3 digits) prefix to the invoice numbering system so that it would be easier for users to distinguish Simon invoice numbers from other invoice numbers used in a business?

13) Added a new field to history to deal with user deletions of history that inevitably cause problems for users. A simple integer set to 1 for automatically set history, 2 for manually set history and 99 for deleted history. History will be held and not deleted anymore.

14) Added a 'close' field to history to note which history lines were added when a box was closed. By adding this boolean field (yes/no), we can now move appropriate history back to active from archive and delete the history created to close said box.

15) Added a new tool to Maintenance in the Simon Helper. This tool will help you to reopen closed boxes. This is a much improved way to return boxholders to current after they were closed.

16) Enhanced the Daily Work Product form so that even non-invoiced work will be added to it.

17) Added a way to eliminate old archived records. Hey, some of you have been with us for a decade and I thought it might be nice to get rid of extremely old records.

I am sure there are a few other things that have been adjusted that you might find (cosmetics, mostly), but these are the main changes that were made.

Please keep us posted if you find things that you would also like Simon to do for you. Also, keep an eye on the revisions area of this web site for upgrades. We will be adding a new Help upgrade from time to time as we add web-based articles that can be very useful to you.