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Fairport News

Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
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March 2009

IN THIS ISSUE

» Welcome
» Roger's Ramblings
» Recent Changes
» Colin's Corner
» Flood and Fire Victims
» Tips and Tricks
» Dealer News
    » AgIT
    » Booth Technologies
    » FarmTek Australia
» In Closing

Thank you for joining us for another edition of the Fairport News, especially if you are receiving it for the first time.

The Fairport developers have had a busy few months chipping away at the “wish list” of features. William, our software testing manager has been kept extremely busy checking out all the new features for bugs before the new versions go out the door.

Right now we are working on the following projects:

• Speeding up the livestock section of the program.
• Adding more features to the individual animal sections and making that section generally more robust.
• Building more and more world first features into the FarmStar module and the FarmStar Lite program – this module has been getting a lot of attention lately with courses and seminars being run across Australia by Colin Booth and others. Read more about all this in Colin's Column. Finally some rational thinking is being applied to precision farming – to what is and what isn't important (and possible). We have been lucky enough to have the help of an increasing number of people to assist us in defining and refining the functionality required from this software.
• Building a new system for importing and analysing post harvest processing data and laboratory test results for the Macadamia industry.
• Making Max Pro more robust in various areas.
• Adding some more features to Grape Forecaster for our friends at Gallo in California.
• Getting specifications ready for some very neat new features for PAM AusVit to make the tracking of costs easier and better.
• Getting specifications ready for a new livestock budgeting feature.
• Finishing off work on the new PAM Enterprise “Disconnected Desktop” system – which enables people to run PAM Enterprise on a standalone computer but reconnects and synchronises with the central (Head Office) server at shut down and start up via the internet. This is ideal for locations with poor connection speeds.

I hope you all have a good break over Easter. My wife and I will be taking some extra time either side of Easter in far north Queensland. I hope those floods have subsided!

All the best for the coming Winter – I hope it is favourable for all.

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A number of small glitches have been reported and fixed over the past three months, as well as this list of new PAM Features:

Ver 6.6.0: Harvesting

• When in the Harvest Quantities Per Area Data Entry screen, you can now specify if you want PAM to automatically allocate the Total Units for a Load over all Areas or not. This is useful if you have already manually specified some quantities and do not want PAM to recalculate. PAM will also now allow you to exit the screen if one or more Areas contains a zero quantity.

Ver 6.6.0: Mapping

• When assigning polygons to paddocks - PAM now uses your Farm Filter to list only those Farms/Paddocks which are included in your Filter.

Ver 6.6.1: Individual Animals

• A new Animal Filter – “Missing Animals” – this will display a list of animals that have just been imported but have missing data (e.g. you've got a list of animals that were supposed to be in a mob that you've weighed). PAM will show you which animals were in the imported file but did not have any trait or weight data.

Ver 6.6.1: Wool Data

• Team-3 Hauteur calculation is now included in the wool test results screen, replacing the old calculation.

Please remember that we now publish every fix and feature on the Fairport Web Site – under the Support and Upgrades pages.

It's always hard to please everyone, but we try. It has been pleasing to hear some good feedback about our support team's efforts. I know they try hard and do their best to help out whenever they can, so it's nice to hear they have been succeeding.

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I have seen the inside of a 767 or A300 more than I have seen my office in the last 2 months but it has been very worthwhile. While some of this time was spent presenting the PAM Enterprise Edition to some of Australia's large farming operations I also ran some Farmstar workshops on the pre release version of the new Farmstar software.

PAM Enterprise Edition is getting quite a few of Australia's corporate farms using it now with a few rollouts scheduled over the next couple of months. Some of these have had PAM running on one or more of their farms in the past and now want to centralise their records for better production management. Fairport is once again setting the benchmark for production management software in this segment of the industry.

The Farmstar workshops were very good in testing and getting feedback on the new version prior to it being released. Small groups of existing users gave some good feedback and a lot of good ideas for further enhancements. Everyone agreed that it looked much easier to use than the old (existing version) we will be releasing it within the next week or two after our user/testers have had another play with it. Thank you to all the testers!!

I also did a presentation to John Deere AMS Consultants in Melbourne last week, the response was very positive from them and together we have got some good sites for the testing of the GreenStar2 interface with some of these consultants. The interface is getting close to completion but field testing is required to make sure we have it right before releasing it to the market.

We have another overseas client in the wine industry they are in Argentina and have vineyards in several areas including the Mendoza wine region. They have 3,000 hectares of vineyards, distributed in different vinicultural regions and climates across Argentina. It is testament to the software that such companies are selecting us from the worldwide range of software.

I will be in Rockhampton for the Beef Expo in the beginning of May with Paul Olsen from AgIT. So if you are going to be there call in and see us on stand 80 in the Sidney Kidman Pavilion to catch up on the latest features of PAM for the cattle industry.

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We wish to extend our thoughts to all clients who have been affected by the recent fires and floods around the world.

Remember we are always around to help you get re-established with a new installation or server hosting. Please contact your local distributor.

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Backup files in Vista : Windows Vista users should remember to always run the program as an administrator to ensure full backups are generated. Right click on the shortcut icon and go to properties, then on the shortcut tab choose advanced and click the box for ‘run as administrator'.

Livestock : in version 6 you need to enter a reproductive season for all matings, pregnancy tests and births. It can be set up in the configuration menu for each livestock type.

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AgIT - NSW & QLD

For more information please contact Paul Olsen.

Ag IT | Agricultural Information Systems & Training
Ph/Fax: (07) 3802 1458 | Mobile: 0419 727 086
Email: paul@agit.com.au | Web: www.agit.com.au

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Booth Technology - WA

For more information please contact Don Silva.

Booth Technology
Phone: 08 93988707
Email: don@boothtech.com.au

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FarmTek Australia VIC - SA - TAS

It was great to catch up with so many clients at the Wimmera Field Days and run through a few things on PAMQA+ and FarmStar.

Thank you to all who attended our Special FARMSTAR information sessions in Victoria and SA. It was a great opportunity to catch up with Colin Booth face-to-face and run through the program. Thank you Colin.

We still have no funding available for rural training it is difficult to know where to run training sessions, so if you are interested in arranging something in your area please register using the online training request available at www.farmtek.com.au or www.fairport.com.au. These requests assist us in scheduling training in your area.

Wishing everybody a safe and happy Easter break; until June.

Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia
Ph 1300 553 446
Email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au

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Please contact your local dealer or Fairport for more information about all Fairport products or any item in this issue.

Until June… Farewell from the Fairport Team