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:
 

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.
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