Configuring Elliott V8.6

After installing Elliott V8.6 for the first time, you will need to make some configuration changes. If this is the first time you have installed Elliott V8.6, the system will detect that the EL860.CFG file does not exist in your startup < ElliottRoot>\Bin86 directory (e.g., M:\Elliott7\Bin86). Therefore, the Elliott V8.6 Configuration utility will start up automatically during the installation procedure. If Elliott Version 8.x was previously installed, the configuration will default to the information from the previous version with the exception of the database information and the license key. EL860CF.EXE can be run directly from the Bin86 folder (<ElliottRoot>\Bin86) to make changes to the Elliott Configuration. To avoid NFTS security issue, please right click EL860CF.EXE and choose "Run as administrator". See sample screen below:

The configuration utility can also be launched from the Elliott Control Center. Login to Elliott 8.6 as SUPERVISOR. Then you will see the "Config" button on the top left corner of your Control Center. See sample screen below:

Click on this button and you will see the configuration utility show up as if you are running the utility <ElliottRoot>\Bin86\EL860CF.EXE through Windows Explorer.

NOTE: After running this utility, all Elliott processes must be stopped and restarted in order for any changes to take effect.

License Tab

The Elliott license key code is a 30-digit code that controls the licensing information of Elliott Business Software, such as the number of users, maintenance expiration date, add-on licenses...etc. When you renew your Elliott maintenance agreement, add additional users or add-on options, you will receive a new license key code.

Copy and paste your license key code and click "Validate" to make sure it is a valid license code.

We introduced this method of licensing control after Elliott 8.5. It is expected that all future Elliott Business Software releases will use this convention for licensing. The difference is that we will use different version numbers. For example, you can expect when Elliott 8.7 is released, that we will use the Bin87 folder. The configuration file will be EL870.CFG and the utility name will be EL870CF.EXE.

Email Tab

The information you set up here, by default, will be used by all Elliott users.  

SMTP/MAPI: If you wish to send email by directly communicating with your mail server using SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), then use SMTP. On the other hand, if you wish to send out email through your email client, like Outlook, then choose MAPI. When you choose MAPI with Outlook, it is likely you will receive security warning that another application is trying to send email on your behalf.  

You can address MAPI's security issue by following the procedure in <ElliottRoot>\Doc\OLSecUpd.pdf. Many of our users do not have the technical expertise to implement the procedure in this document.  In that case, you should choose SMTP. Elliott V7.x support MAPI only.  In Elliott V8, we support both SMTP and MAPI, and the default is SMTP.  When you use MAPI, the sent emails will show up in your email client (Outlook) sent box.  On the other hand, if you choose SMTP, the sent emails will not show up in your sent box. Instead, Elliott V8 will save the email activity in log files like <ElliottRoot>\Log\EmailLog-YYMMDD*.CSV.

If you specify SMTP, you will have the following options in the SMTP Settings group:

Server:  Enter your email server name. If the port number is not 25, enter the server name, followed by a colon, followed by the port number.

Use Authentication: SMTP server by default will require authentication.  But if this is your internal SMTP server (i.e., Exchange), you could add relay rules for your internal IP address so authentication is not required.

User Name/Password: This is the User Name and Password provided by your SMTP server admin.

Ignore Certificate Error: If your internal SMTP server uses a self-signed certificate, you will get a certificate error.  In that case, you could choose to trust the self-signed certificate and ignore the certificate error.

Enable SSL/TLS: If you wish to protect your email from eavesdropping between your workstation and SMTP server, then you may enable SSL to protect the communication.  Generally speaking, it is not necessary to enable SSL if the SMTP server is hosted internally.

Admin Email Name/Address: This is the default sent from the email address. When you use SMTP in Elliott 8, the system retrieves each user's email address information from the Password Setup screen. See sample screen below.

Options Tab

Use Elliott Deferred Processing:  Check this box to indicate that you intend to run Elliott Deferred Processor on the server console, and preferably on a 24x7 basis to serve as a report engine. If this box is not checked, you will not be able to use Deferred Processing or the new Run Now reporting feature in the printing option window.

Share Configuration Info with NETcellent (recommended): Checking this box allows Elliott to occasionally send configuration (setup) information to NETcellent. Because NETcellent wants to focus on improving features that our users actually use, this will help us with development of future improvements.

Default Printer Port: This is to specify the default LPT port for the “Raw Data Pass Through” feature.  You should leave it at “LPT1” unless you have a special reason to change it.

Country: The Canadian version is different from the US version.  Make sure you are using the right version for your country.

Display Screen Updates:  This is for changing the screen update interval.  By default, the Elliott legacy screen updates for every 50 display actions or when there is an input field or condition that is waiting for a keystroke.  For example, in Customer File Maintenance, Elliott displays all literals at one time instead of individually.  This is for performance purposes.  Sometimes, from a developer’s standpoint, when you animate a program and do not see updates as the action is taking place, it can be confusing.  This is one reason you may wish to change the default setting from 50 to 1, for example.

DDF Options: 

Require DDFs to create non-work files:  Checking this box will cause a message box to be displayed whenever any non-work file is created without a matching DDF definition. This alerts the user that a file has been created that may not be SQL compliant and ODBC compatible, and may prevent you from using tools like Crystal Reports to access the file.

When such a message box is displayed, make note of the file name.  If  SQL compliance is desired for that file, you need to obtain a DDF for it and run DDF2BTR.Exe against that file to bring its SQL definition up-to-date.

PowerSearch:

Limit To Top Records: Choose the default value to be used when a PowerSearch has the Limit to Top Records option enabled. The valid options are: 50, 75, 100, 200, 500, and 1000.

Report Desk Tab

Font Information:

Font Name:  Press the button with the ellipses (...) to search for a specific font and select one.

Point Range:  Move the sliders to set the minimum and maximum point ranges, or enter them directly.

Single Line %:  Move the slider to set the precision for selecting the point size. The higher the number, the fewer pieces of text on the report will wrap onto a second line, but the smaller the font will be.

You may press the Use Defaults button to reset the Font Information settings.

Record Thresholds:

Default threshold numbers were determined by testing several reports and noting the run times and amount of memory used. Generally, we set warning threshold defaults for reports that could take more than 10 minutes or use more than 2GB of memory. The maximum record threshold defaults were set when reports could run for an hour or more or use more than 6GB of memory. Of course, these threshold values are only approximations, and can be customized. Here are the defaults:

     Output        Warning       Maximum

     Format     Threshold        Records

   -----------      --------------     -------------

     CSV             500,000     1,000,000

     PDF             250,000        500,000

     XLSX           500,000     1,000,000 

Margins:

Margins: Change any of the margins as desired.

You may press the Use Defaults button to reset the Margins settings.

Default SQL Timeout Values (in Seconds):

Initial SELECT Timeout: This is the number of seconds initially used for the report's SELECT statement.  The default value is 30 seconds.  A timeout after this long will be followed by an option to try again with a longer timeout.

Extended SELECT Timeout:  If the report times out initially, this is the number of seconds that is used for a second attempt, if the user decides to try again.  The default value is 120 seconds.

Each report can have unique initial and extended timeout values specified by a privileged user in the Report Desk Designer.

You may press the Use Defaults button to reset the Margins settings.

Databases Tab

This tab lets you associate Elliott V8.2, V8.5 and V8.6 databases with your companies:

Before PSQL 13, the Elliott application, web services and other third party applications that needed to access Elliott data had to go through the PSQL Database Engine (DE). If you are a large organization with hundreds of Elliott users, you may find the PSQL Database Engine busy most of the time. This is especially true if your users create their own Crystal Reports and perform their own joining of tables. When joining of tables is not done correctly, it often results in poor performance and drags down Elliott's performance.

When faced with the PSQL DE server performance problem, many users chose to scale up their DE server. However, we noticed that the DE server performance does not improve much after 6-8 CPU. In PSQL 13, you now have the option to scale out. That is, you can install additional PSQL Report Engine (RE) servers to offload the burden of PSQL DE.

PSQL Storage Engine: Enter the server for the PSQL Storage Engine.

PSQL Report Engine <optional>:  Enter the server for the PSQL Reporting Engine. If not entered, the Storage Engine will be used.

Users will need to specifically define the database name to be able to use the Report Desk for a company. If there’s no database name entry defined in the EL860.CFG for the company, then Report Desk will not run for that company. A message is displayed advising the user that the database name is missing and their system administrator needs to run EL860CF.EXE.

In version 8.6, all non-indexed files can be converted to indexed files that can be accessed through the 8.6 database. Since the 8.6 database assumes the use of an alphabetic number format, this means if a user wants to convert the DAT files from the DATA folder, they must go through the database conversion to 8.5 to support alphabetic document numbers. This does not mean they have to use the alphabetic document number format. They still can continue to use numeric document numbers.  However, performing this conversion may affect their Crystal Reports, any other third party applications that use PSQL relational engine, or Elliott web services.

Elliott 8.5 databases assume all Elliott document numbers (e.g., Invoice Number, Order Number, Purchase Order Number, Voucher Number...etc.) are in string format where you can store alphabetic values.

Elliott 8.6 databases also assume all Elliott document numbers are in string format, but Elliott 8.6 also supports all Btrieve files and no “DAT” (non-indexed) files.

On the other hand, Elliott 8.2 databases assume all document numbers are numeric.

The format on the Database tab is determined using the following rules:

• The database must exist in the configuration file and EL860CF.EXE must be able to open a connection to the database. Otherwise, the format is unknown and left blank.
• If the entry exists and a connection can be made to the database, the first assumption is that is it version 8.2.
• EL860CF.EXE will verify that alpha document number support is enabled. If true, the format is set to 8.5.
• EL860CF.EXE will attempt to read the Btrieve version of the company file to determine if the 8.6 DDFs are installed. If the file is not found or the utility is able to read the company file, the version is set to 8.6.

Even though you may be using Elliott 8.6 programs, you may continue to run Elliott databases in Elliott 8.2 format as long as you don't store alphabetic values in your Elliott document number fields. See KB article to further explain the difference between 8.2, 8.5 and 8.6 DDF files: https://support.elliott.com/knowledgebase/articles/1996990-a-comparison-of-elliott-7-5-8-2-8-5-and-8-6-ddf

You may continue to use older DDF files because: (1) You want to evaluate Elliott 8.6 first while most of your users are running on Elliott 8.2/8.5; (2) It may take you time to convert third party applications like Crystal Reports or web applications that depend on the V8.2 web services to convert to Elliott 8.6 format.

Once you are ready, you can use the <ElliottRoot>\Bin86\DDF2BTR.EXE utility to convert your V8.2 databases to V8.6 format. After that, you are ready to store alphabetic values in your document numbers, and you can't use Elliott 8.2 and other third party applications that utilize the Elliott 8.2 format anymore. Please refer to Elliott 8.6 Release Notes and other KB articles on how to use DDF2BTR.EXE for this purpose.

On the Database tab, database names that are red either are missing from the PSQL Control Center or have a warning message associated with it. The database names that are black currently exist. Clicking the Create Databases button will launch the EL860DB.EXE utility where you can create version 8.6 databases with standard database names (e.g., ELI86DATA21).  

If you do not want to use the standard naming convention for any of the companies, you cannot use the utility that is launched by clicking the Create Databases button,  For those companies, you need to follow this procedure:

1. Use the Pervasive Control Center program to create or verify the database you will use for that company.  For information on how to create databases manually via Pervasive Control Center (PCC), please visit this knowledge base article.
2. On this screen, enter that database name in the column on the line for that company. When you complete the database name, its existence will be verified. If the Comment column says D/B not created, you have misspelled the database name and need to reenter it.
   

If your database has not been converted to the V8.6 format, you can change it to the V8.2 or V8.5 naming convention you are currently using. Click on the database name and enter the V8.2 name or pick it from the list

If you click on the info button, an Optional Database Properties screen is shown.

Database: Convert DAT to BTR: If the database has already been converted, this option will be checked and cannot be changed. Click on the checkbox if you wish to convert the DAT file to BTR files for the selected company. Users will be asked “Are you sure?” Click Yes to proceed or No to cancel the conversion. Users will receive a message stating that the conversion is complete.

Note: You should not convert DAT to BTR until you are using Elliott v8.6 for all your users.

PSQL Engine (PSQL 13 or 15) <Optional>

Storage Engine: If not defined, the Storage Engine from the Database Tab will be used.

Report Engine: If not defined, the Storage Engine for the company will be used. If no Storage Engine is defined on this screen for the company, the default from the Database Tab is used (which can be either the Report Engine or Storage Engine).

Password Security

Use database security: This specifies if a user ID and password are required to access the database.

User ID: Enter the user ID needed to access the database.

Password: Enter the password required to access the database.

Retype Password: Enter the password required to access the database.

Avalara Tax Integration: (Not available at this time)

Use Avalara Tax Engine: During the various areas of interfacing with Avalara, this flag will be checked first. If the feature is not enabled but the calculate taxes option is enabled in Global Setup, the user will be given a message to indicate Avalara Tax Integration is not turned on in Configuration.

Account ID: Enter the Avalara Account ID.

License Key: Enter the Avalara License Key.

Company Code: Choose the appropriate company code from the drop down list that corresponds with the company/database being setup.

Service URL: Enter the URL to access the Avalara web site admin page.

Test Connection: After entering the appropriate Account ID and License Key, press the button to test the connection to the Avatax web services.

Other Tab

Legacy Reports:

Check any of these options to alter the appearance of printed reports in Elliott.

Amigo Launching (Default)

Amigos is a term in Elliott referring to Notes, eContacts, Attributes, Events and Links.

Here you specify how your users, by default, will interact with the Notes, eContacts and Attributes lists.  When you check an option here, whenever you click on the corresponding button in the legacy screen toolbar, the list of Notes, etc., will appear in a separate process, independent of the process you are on.  This allows you to view multiple notes at the same time.

However, it takes longer to launch a separate process than to simply display the screen in the same process, and it takes more memory.  If the majority of your users have workstations that are slow or have minimum memory, you should not check these options.  Each user can override these system-wide defaults in the User Preferences screen.

CLS