MS Office Integration module and Client Costs Liability Schedule
We are currently finalising our new Client Costs Liability Schedule and Client Criteria programs. The Client Criteria screen has been updated to enable detailed costs estimates to be recorded. The CCL Schedule replaces the original Client Care Letter and makes use of MS Word mail merge fields to include the information entered in the Sovereign LAW Client & File Record screens.
The Tab Enquiries program has been updated to include a new 'Billing Info' screen and also a new MS Office integration module. This provides a link to MS Word (document production via mailmerge) and MS Outlook (emails/tasks).
Further updates to Civil CMRF and Crime CDS data screens to enable all LSC data to be stored in Sovereign LAW and electronically bulk uploaded to LSC OnLine.
On return from our R5 developer training course at Sage, we have successfully put our existing ScotLAW system through the R5 convertor. ScotLAW had already been designed and written in such a way that it would be ready for R5. The latest R5 v11.1 tool does contain a number of improvements.
Curat Lex have received R5 v11.1 from Sage!
Now with the R5 tool, we are in a position to re-vamp Sovereign LAW. Firstly, we want to change the data structure and improve the functionality of the client/file database. We can then use the R5 tool to produce the new “R5 Sovereign LAW” version. We are currently assessing the R5 tool.
Curat Lex will be attending R5 developers training course at Sage on 15th/16th February 2007.
Sage announce release of MMS v4.0 (February 2007) which includes new Project Accounting module.
Scheduled for release in September 2006, Sage R5 v11.1 (COM) introduces support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Microsoft XP look & feel.
Sage R5 .NET is on it's way in early 2007, and with it you'll be able to convert a Retrieve 4GL application into a Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2005 project.
Sage confirms that the forthcoming Sage R5 v11.1 (COM) will be compatible with SQL 2005.
The Sage MMS product roadmap continues to develop. Sage MMS v3 was launched at the end of October 2005 - the culmination of a huge effort in the Sage Research and Development organisation. Hot on its heels is v3.5, released at the end of April 2006.
Sage MMS v3.5 is built on the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 giving Sage a flexible foundation from which they can integrate solutions more rapidly and add new features in a more agile manner.
We attended a Sage Business Partner forum when a report was given on the current state of progress on Sage MMS version 3, which is the fully .NET successor to Line 100 with a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 datastore. It is currently being tested on one 'hand held' site and will then go out for further testing before general release, which is scheduled for autumn 2005.
Sage MMS version 3 will be the financial ledgers side of things; Sovereign LAW itself will be converted using the Sage R5 conversion tool and run in conjunction with the Sage R5 System Manager. Sage R5 has used a SQL datastore since it was first developed, but the MMS v3 compatible version is not expected before early 2006, so the timescale we are looking at for being able to offer our customers an upgrade to Sage MMS v3 and Sage R5 Sovereign LAW is the late spring / early summer 2006.
An updated version of Sage R5 has been signed off and we are expecting it to be released imminently. This will allow integration with the Sage Report Writer, which is the report production engine for both Sage Line 50 and Sage MMS.
We appreciate it has been a long time since we produced the R5 version of our ScotLAW
product, but since then R5 has been acquired by Sage and has been undergoing substantial
further development; also our experience in Scotland was that it did not really make
commercial sense for sites to have to purchase SQL Server merely to run the Sovereign LAW
side of the accounts package, with the Sage ledgers remaining in the Line 100 database.