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The RISC Upgrade Path - What's New in RISC?
There have been significant enhancements made to RISC since version 1.0
was released in March 1995. Below are the major improvements included with
each major upgrade of RISC.
Improvements from RISC v1.0 to v2.0 (1996)
- The RISC Form Letters Module
- Ability to mark contacts as
'Confidential'
- Ability to enter back-dated contacts
- Read Only Access switch
Improvements from RISC v2.0 to v3.0
(1998)
- Customized Data Export Facility
- Searching and Reporting by Date
Range
- Automatic Data Rebuilds
- Smarter Clear Form Control
- Full Millennium (Y2K) Compliance
- Better Network Support
- Table View Size increased to 999
records
- All contacts can be displayed in
Table View
- Table View can be sorted by Student
Name
- Utility to check for and repair Data
Corruptions
- Roll Class (Home Room) imported and
displayed on RISC form
Improvements from RISC v3.0 to
v4.0 (October 1999)
- Contact Reports Module
- Spell Check Facility with UK and
Custom Dictionaries
- Status field name can be
user-defined
- Auto Data Backup Facility
- Ability to append multiple search
results into one Table View
- Database expanded to 64,000
contacts
- Parent Contact and Home Phone
fields enlarged
- Export/Import routine for New
Zealand's MUSAC Pupil Files system
- Export/Import routine for
Victoria’s CASES system
Improvements from v4.0 to v5.0
(April 2001)
- RISC Shortcut Lookup for
Description & Action fields
- User selected Date from pop-up
perpetual calendar
- Student Record Report added to
Table View
- Import of Grade/Year from
School’s Admin system
- Searching and Reporting by
Grade/Year
- Refurbished data import facility
with new comma-delimited import format
- Officer renamed to Teacher and
updated to allow for 18 characters and full name entry
- Creation of a U.S. version of
RISC with U.S. dictionary and standards
- Upgrades and New Sales of RISC
delivered electronically via Internet
- Major update of RISC website to
coincide with release of v5.0
Improvements from v5.0 to v6.0
(February 2004)
- The HTML-based RISC Help
System - updated for v6
- A RISC Virtual Tour was added
to RISC and the RISC website
- RISC Student Database Editor
utility
- Total rewrite of RISC to
optimise for Windows XP and 2000
- RISC v6 is the fastest and
smallest release of RISC ever
- Fully integrates MS Word 2000
or later for Form Letters and Contact Reports
- Interfaces directly with MS
Excel 2000 or later for reports and data exports
- Better Calendars
- Table View size increased to
1,999 contacts
- Better, faster Table View sort
process
- Better error trapping and
problem resolution
- Redeveloped and simplified
CASES21 (Vic) export/import procedure
- Easier standalone and network
server installation
- New workstation Setup utility
- UNC (Universal Naming
Convention) Network Path support
- Better support for Novell
Netware 6 and Windows 2003 Server environments
- Better support for Network
printing
Improvements from v6.0 to v7.0
(February 2006)
- Increase total Form Letters
stored from 100 to 200
- RISC MailMerge facility
included to allow for multiple form letters to be printed for
selected student groups
- Copies of merged and sent form
letters can now be saved and stored electronically
- RISC PhotoCapture! allows for
student photos to be taken with a simple USB WebCam and attached
automatically to student records
- Parent details and home
address now shown with each contact record
- Import of Student ID, Gender,
Date of Birth and parent Mobile Phone included
- An additional User-definable
and searchable Contact Category field included
- New Contact Descriptors in the
form of "smiley" faces to quickly tag a contact record as
positive or negative
- New Tally by Contact
Descriptor, Gender and Category2 field
- Main data form had a facelift
to streamline and better define the data layout
- New contact navigation tools
added to main form
- Updated HelpDesk and Virtual
Tour
Improvements from v7.0 to v8.0
(February 2008)
- The Print This Form button has been
split into two separate buttons: "Print Form on A4 Page" and "Print Form
on A5 Page". The first button is the same as the original button,
producing the output on a single A4 page. The new button allows the user
to cut A4 pages in half (to A5 size) and put them into the laser printer
tray to print the form in reduced size, saving paper. This format is
perfect for using RISC to produce Late Notes. The A5 pages should be
inserted as if you were printing in Landscape format. Thanks to
Moorebank High School for this suggestion
- You can now Mail Merge directly from
the RISC Table View and all students listed in the table view will have
a user-selected customised form letter merged and printed with record of
the form letter automatically added to the Contact Action field
- The Set Date Range function can now
optionally use the Actual Contact Date OR the Updated Contact Date.
- The Print Table View function now
produces a more neat Table View printout in landscape and includes the
Contact Category 2 field.
- Includes an updated OASIS Export
Report to export Mother's Mobile Phone instead of Emergency Contact
- Includes the RISC Batch Photo Import
Tool
- New View Saved Letter button wherever
a contact record is displayed where a form letter was sent and a copy
saved in the RISC database This button opens the letter in MS Word for
viewing/editing/printing
- Reintroduces the minimize button on
the main RISC form (this has been missing since v5)
- New "RISC Quick History" window to
quickly show the last 25 records of the selected student on the screen
- The Student's Photo can now be merged
into a Form Letter, extending the use of the form letters module for
other purposes
- If a rebuild is required by RISC, it
will now perform one automatically
- New splash screens and new Marillion
Designs logo introduced
- New Privacy Note prominently displayed
on the RISC main form
- Updated HelpDesk and Virtual
Tour
RISC System Specifications:
Computer Platform
Minimum PC Configuration
Recommended PC Configuration
Operating System
Supported Network Operating Systems
Supported Printers
Disk Space Required (programs)
Disk Space Required (data)
Disk Space Required (photos)
Max No. of Contacts per database
Max No. of Contact Databases
Max No. of Form Letters
Max No. of Contact Reports
Max No. of Teachers
Max No. of Contacts Shown in Table |
: WIntel-compatible
PC
: Any PC that runs Microsoft Windows
: 1.4GHz Pentium 4 or better with 384MB RAM or greater
: MS-Windows 2000/XP/Vista or later
: will run on Apple iMac with Real PC/Virtual PC/Parallels
or Bootcamp
: Novell Netware v4/5/6 or later
: Microsoft Windows NT4/2000/2003 Server or later
: Peer-to-Peer MS Windows 2000/XP/Vista
: MS Terminal Services or Citrix Winframe/MetaFrame
: Any Win-compatible Laser or Inkjet (local or network)
: 10MB Disk Space Required
: 1MB per 845 contacts registered
: 3KB per photo (approximate)
: 64,000
: 11 ( 1 x Current, 10 x Archived - annually)
: 200
: 1 per saved contact
: 110
: 1,999 |
RISC Millennium (Y2K) Compliance Statement
The Millennium or Y2K 'bug' that faced the technology industry
was one of massive proportions. Affecting both software and
hardware, the vast majority of technology in use at the time
felt the impact of the year 2000's arrival greatly. The problem
stemmed from the fact that many computer hardware and software
date clocks use only two digits for the year component of the
date. This meant that
when the year ticked over to 2000, computers and much software
registered this as '00' and any date computations involving date
ranges from the previous century would provide negative results
causing many unforeseen problems. To compound this, the BIOS of
many computers knew nothing of the year 2000, and when that time
actually came, they reverted to 1980 or whatever year they were
built.
And this problem also affected
servers, from which most workstations synchronize their clocks.
Many software and hardware vendors worked furiously to correct
the problems inherent in their systems regarding Y2K. In any
case, it demanded that consumers upgrade both their equipment
and affected software.
RISC v4 was updated to ensure Millennium Compliance. This meant
that the RISC application itself would work up to the year 2000
and beyond. Although RISC does only show two digit years, the
application prepends the appropriate two digits when performing
any date calculations. But RISC will always get the current date
from the workstation's BIOS (which may in turn get it from a
server), so unless all components of your computer system are
Millennium Compliant, it will mean that RISC or any other
Millennium Compliant software package may have problems in
operation. This is essential as many schools running RISC
have archived databases dating back to 1995.
If you have any questions about the Millennium problem please do
not hesitate to contact us via our e-Mail or Fax Support Lines,
or call your local computer supplier or department's technology
section.
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The Register of
Individual Student Contact (RISC) is developed & distributed
by Marillion Designs.
Copyright © 1995-2008 Marillion Designs. All rights reserved.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
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