With the release of SMS 8.91 there will be a handful of new major features added to the program, as well as a slew of various bugs fixed and other non-major features that have been tweaked since 8.6. This document is to give users a brief overview of some new capabilities of the program, and provide links to the detailed pages on each of these features.

Major Features

The release of SMS 8.91 adds many new features to SMS 8.6, as well as a large number of non-major features ad bug fixes.

You may view the summary of each new major feature below, or click the link to jump to the detail page:

document_management

Every print, sign, and graphics business has to manage documents. SMS now includes integrated document management. Folders for storing all those relevant files (artwork, permits, etc.) are automatically created for each order, estimate, and customer. Those files can be accessed by all employees from the documents tab inside the order, estimate, or customer.

document_management

SMS's document_management (DM) incorporated full support for adding and deleting files, copy-and-paste, and even drag-and-drop from Windows File Explorer. Shared files are normally placed in the customer documents folder and order or estimate specific files are placed in those specific folders. Navigating to the customer's document management folder is simply a click away from within the order or estimate! SMS uses a logical naming structure for all folders, allowing documents to be accessed directly via a network share without going through SMS when needed.

spell_check

Integrated spell checking is now an integral part of Cyrious SMS 8.91. All the advanced functions you expect in a premium spell checker, like custom user dictionaries, the ability to add and ignore words, and even those red wavy lines that appear as you type!

spell_check

Estimate History Retention

In SMS 8.91, estimates have statuses just like orders. The estimate statuses are:

  • Pending - Estimates that are currently open.
  • Converted - Estimates that were converted to an order.
  • Lost - Estimates that were marked as lost (not won).

The good news is that ALL of these estimate types are available. That is, the original estimate is no longer removed when it is converted to an order. Thereby, access to the original estimate (for viewing, printing, or cloning) is preserved.

You can change the status of an estimate by opening it and clicking on the status icon on the action toolbar, the same way you can change order statuses.

Dispositions & Status Tracking

In SMS 8.91, enhanced order tracking is now possible through the use of Dispositions. Dispositions are used to indicate where the order is within the production process - between WIP and Built for example. They can also be used to break estimates down into categories like “Hot”, “Warm” , and “Cold”.

Dispositions take the place of the “job-box”. Some of the nice features of dispositions include:

  1. The ability to easily set up your departments as Dispositions.
  2. The ability to right-click on an order in Explorer and quickly change the current disposition.
  3. The ability to print the WIP report sorted by disposition.
  4. A similar ability to group and track estimates using a separate list of Estimate Dispositions.

New Password Standards

PCI regulations require more stringent enforcement of password policies. These policies are now implemented in SMS in order to achieve compliance.

  1. Users must change their passwords every 90 days.
  2. Users will not be able to reuse the last 4 passwords.
  3. Password standards are as follows:
    • Password must be at least seven characters long.
    • Password must contain at least one number.
    • Password must contain at least one uppercase character.
    • Password must contain at least one lowercase character.

Interface Updates

SMS 8.91 has been updated with modern images, icons, and home screen. Additionally, more right-click options have also been added for those power-users out there.

Other Features

There are many other features new in SMS 8.91. A few of the highlights are listed here:

  1. The SMS client now uses an application launcher “Cyrious Launcher”. The Cyrious Launcher
    • Performs a number of checks and installs missing software if needed.
    • Located the SSLIP dynamically, avoiding reconfigurations that were formerly needed if the server changed.
    • Is a very small stand-alone program that does not even need to be installed - just copy and go!
  2. New features for track monthly sales goals across multiple years was added.
  3. A new option to specify you would like invoices emailed to the billing contact by default was added.
  4. A new option in store information setup to disable pricing level pop-ups which alert you when a pricing level has been set to something different than the standard 100% was added.
  5. Additional coding to have the SSLIP automatically delete the database lock files upon loading of the software immediately before accessing the database was added to lessen the likelihood of users getting a message that the database has been locked and/or accessed from a different location.
  6. The computer name was added to the popup that appears when attempting to shutdown the SSLIP program. This will help to identify which of your employees are still in the program in the event you wish to shutdown or restart your computer.
  7. The ability to right-click a line item in order entry to jump to the product setup was added.
  8. Other small enhancements are located throughout the program.

Defect Fixes

A number of defects that existed in prior versions of SMS were fixed in SMS 8.91. These include:

  1. Re-worked internal coding of the assignment of database record ID's to lessen the occurrence of key violation errors that some stores have experienced.
  2. Corrected inability to add an extension greater than 4 digits from within order entry.
  3. Re-worked internal rules to not allow customer to be changed on an order where payments have already been applied. This was necessary to prevent problems from occurring with tracking payments, customer credit, etc. The payments must first be voided before the customer can be changed.
  4. Corrected problem where the last order date was being set to the current date if an order was edited instead of remaining the order date of the last order that was placed. This caused some inconsistencies in marketing queries.
  5. Corrected issue where the email signature was not being appended when emailing from the contact tab of a customer record.
  6. Corrected problem where the taxable and non-taxable sales amounts were not being displayed properly if the user manually overrode the amount of non-taxable sales on the order from within the taxes section on the totals tab of an order.
  7. Corrected issue where the contacts would not appear if you manually typed in the company name within activity manager.
  8. Corrected issue where the report save dialog window only provided you with a folder listing instead of providing an ability to type in a custom network path.

Backwards Compatibility

The database changes made by upgrading to SMS 8.91 are backwards compatible with SMS 8.6. If a downgrade to a previous version is required at any point, please contact Cyrious Technical Support for assistance. Naturally, any new features introduced in SMS 8.91 features like document management, encrypted credit cards, estimate retention history, etc. will not be available once you downgrade since these features are only present in SMS 8.91.