We had some problems with our website yesterday which resulted in it being unavailable between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening.  We are happy to say that the problem is fixed and that normal service is now resumed.  Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you.

What was the Problem?

The problem was caused by a fault in one of our internet servers - our main website server in this case.  The fault caused the server to fail completely and we then had to rebuild the machine from scratch. 

We have plans in place to allow us to recover from disasters such as these, but the time it took us to recover from this one was almost 24 hours longer than we had anticipated.  In fact, we had the new server and website rebuilt and ready to go by the end of the afternoon on Wednesday. However, we had left one small, but important, thing out of our plans.

Why the Long Delay?

Our website is a secure website that is verified by a third-party security organisation called Entrust.  Basically, Entrust check our credentials and then issue us with a digital certificate that says we are who we say we are so that you can be sure with whom you are doing business.

Your internet browser will also show you that the website is secure and that it belongs to Electratest PIRform Ltd. in the website address:

The problem was that we had forgotten to include this digital security certificate in our disaster recovery plans and we had to ask them to reissue our digital certificate to us.  To do this, they, quite reasonably, had to go through their security checks again.  Although they responded very quickly, these check are very thorough and take time to perform. 

Lessons Learnt

From when we were ready to go again on Wednesday evening, we sat around feeling like we had just rebuilt a car in record time and were then having to wait for someone to give us the key to start it up!  We have learnt two things from this:

• Our existing disaster recover plans work pretty well.
• We need to include our lovely certificate in those plans. 

As you can imagine, we have amended our disaster recovery plans and the digital certificate is now held very securely indeed!

Again, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this caused you.

It appears that the 1st Amendment to the 17th Edition BS 7671:2008, may be released on the 1st July 2011. A transition period up until 1st January 2012 will be the norm. The content of this Amendment has been met with mixed views, not to mention the enormous changes to the Schedules of Items Inspected, where it would appear that Recommendation Codes are issued at this level, rather than issuing one after an observation has been written.

The good news for PIRform, is that we will be able to make this process even easier than it is now. I don’t want to elaborate too much, but let’s just say that our proposals have been given a big thumbs up from key personnel in the industry!

Despite the IET proposing to change the name of a Periodic Inspection Report to an Electrical Installation Condition Report, the phrase PIR will live long, as EICR doesn’t quite trip off the tongue in the same way!

Alongside this major change, is a proposal to change various Regulation number formats. Just when we all got used to the new ones, we’re going to have to learn a new set. As you may know, PIRform includes hundreds of Regulation numbers automatically, rest assured, they will be changed as and when the time is required.

We aim to have both versions of the reports available, and when the first amendment comes into force, our users will still have the ability to access both sets of forms.

The IET is currently (until 6th September 2010) inviting comments from ‘interested parties’ .

The ‘Introduction to the draft’ can be downloaded here.

More information is available to read and download on the Draft for Public Comment (DPC) – BS7671/AMD 1 here. All comments on the proposed changes must be received by the IET before 6th September 2010, and must be made on the official form which can be found here

It would be great to hear your comments on these changes, I have posted this blog on our forum, where you can post your replies. I look forward to hearing from you

Rob

A new version of PIRform Lite is now available.  This version fixes a number of issues in the previous version and I recommend you all update to the new version.

Thanks to everyone who sent through feedback over the last week since we released PIRform Lite.  From your feedback, we have identified and fixed a number of the issues and are making these fixes available in this release. 

This release is what we call a “maintenance release”.  This means that it contains mostly fixes and usability improvements and that there are no new major features.  This is what’s in the new version:

Activation Fixed

Those with full licences have been having problems activating their copies.  This has now been fixed and you can now activate PIRform.

Better Copy and Paste in Circuits

We’ve improved the way copy and paste was working in the circuit grid.  You can now use Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste.  Also, the value you copy now gets copied to the Windows clipboard.

Generally, the circuit grid only lets you paste to the same column that you copied the value.  In this version you can now copy values from one insulation resistance column and paste it into another.  This works between the columns shown below using either the right-click menu or Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.

Intelligence Notification Improvements

The extra buttons on the intelligence notifications have been removed and clicking on the text will now take you to the statement in the intelligence manager.

Before:

After:

Intelligence Changes

We have fixed some of the intelligence statements that were not correctly comparing numeric values.  For example, with a main switch type of any 61009 statement 97 was being triggered when RDC operating times were between 30 and 99 – it should have only triggered for values greater than 300. 

When you suppress an intelligence statement in the Intelligence Manager, the statement changes that the statement has made should be undone.  When you reapply, the statement the changes should be reapplied.  This was not always working correctly and has now been fixed.

Zeroes in Fields

A zero appeared in blank numeric fields after you clicked into them.  This has now been fixed.

Archiving and Recycle Bin Fixes

If you attempted to archive or delete a certificate that was open, you would get an error.  This has been fixed and PIRform now detects that the certificate is open and asks you to close it before archiving or deleting.

Report Changes

We have corrected a couple of spelling mistakes in the report guidance notes.

Deletion of Main Company

You are no longer able to delete the main company, only external companies. 

Help Button

We’ve removed the small help button towards the top left of the Home Screen as this did nothing.

We Want Your Feedback

We welcome your feedback and want to hear what you think about PIRform and about the features that are important to you.  You can get in touch with us in a number of ways: you can put a comment on the blog, use our forums, or find us on Facebook and Twitter, or use our contact details on the website.

We have a minor problem regarding the activation of PIRform we are working on fixing this now.  In the meantime please just select the option to activate later when you see the screen below.  (You can also just press the Esc key to dismiss the screen).

We have had a lot of spam comments (comments with unwanted adverts embedded) in the blog.  So, to stop these we have disabled further comments for a while until we rectify the situation. 

Apologies for any inconvenience!

We are very happy to announce that PIRform is now available for purchase from our website store. 

It has been nearly two years since we announced PIRform and seven months since we made the first beta version available.  We'd like to say a big thanks to all of you who have given us feedback during this time.  We always love to hear from our user community and we love that you help to shape the way PIRform is today. 

How PIRform is Licensed

PIRform is licensed annually and the licence allows you to install and use PIRform on a single machine.  You can move it to another machine if you want, but you can only have it on a single machine at any one time. 

When your year’s licence has expired you will need to purchase another year’s licence to be able to continue working with PIRform.  If you do not want to purchase another licence you will still be able to get to the certificates you have in PIRform, you just won’t be able to create new certificates or change the details of any existing certificates.

I will write another article about how you can move PIRform between machines and what happens if you do not want to renew your PIRform licence soon.

Client Centre

The Client Centre is the area on the website that contains your information.  This area gives you access to your licence codes in case you lose the email we send.

You can get to your Client Centre by using the link http://www.pirform.co.uk/clientcentre or by using the My Account link towards the top right of our website.  If you are not already logged in, the website will ask you to log in and then take you to the Client Centre.

Trial Edition

There is a free 30 day trial available so that can try PIRform before you buy it.  The trial edition does everything that the Lite Edition does, with two exceptions: certificates print with a watermark to indicate that it is a trial edition and you will see a “nag screen” each time you start PIRform.  When you purchase PIRform this watermark will be removed from all your certificates and you will no longer see the nag screen.

To be able to download the trial edition you have to sign up on our website.  You also have to agree to allow us to offer help by email if PIRform is having problems on your machine.

Licence Codes Sent By Email

When you download PIRform, we will send you a licence code by email that let’s you start your 30 day trial period.  When you purchase PIRform we will send you another licence code that will “unlock” the full edition and remove the watermark.  You will not have to reinstall PIRform and all you have certificates will not be affected (other than having the watermark removed!).

Entering a Licence Code

When you first install and run PIRform you will see this licence entry screen:

Copy the licence code from the email and paste it into the area in the middle of the above screen.  We’ve made it as easy as possible to do this and you don’t have to be that accurate when you copy the licence code.  You can copy text surrounding the code, as long as you copy all the code we will work out the rest after you paste it in.  Read more about this feature here. 

After you have pasted the licence code in you will be able to see the licence details as below.

Click OK and PIRform will automatically restart to apply the changes.  Note that it is PIRform that will restart - your computer will not be restarted!

Changing a Licence Code

Sometime you will need to enter another licence code, such as when you have purchased PIRform after using an evaluation version.  You can do this by opening the licence screen from PIRform Options, as follows:

Click the PIRform button:

Then click PIRform Options:

Then go to the Licence Information section and click on Enter New Licence Key:

This will open the licence entry screen and let you enter a licence code as above.

Activating PIRform

When you buy PIRform you have bought a licence to use it for a year on a single machine.  To lock PIRform to your machine you need to “activate PIRform” within 15 days of your purchase. 

If you have an internet connection then PIRform can do that for you over the internet.  If you do not have an internet connection then you can can get an activation code from your Client Centre on our website.  When PIRform needs to be activated you will see this after you open PIRform:

You can click Activate Now to allow PIRform to activate over the internet.  You can choose to activate at another time or you can use the links to go to your Client Centre.  If you do not activate PIRform within the 15 day activation period, you will need to use the Client Centreto obtain an activated licence code.  (Note that this feature is not yet available, we will be adding this feature to the Client Centre very soon.)

Software Support

We are passionate about the quality of our software and we want to ensure that it works as best as it possibly can in all respects.  Because of this, we have built automatic error reporting into PIRform.  In the unfortunate circumstance that PIRform experiences an error when you are using it, you will see a screen like this:

PIRform will then shut down.  Notice that you have the option to automatically send details of the errors to us.  If you do not want to send details of the error to us then uncheck the box, as below:

If you choose to send us details of the error, then we will use this to help us identify and fix the cause of the error.  If you choose to send details of the error, then we may contact you by email to offer help with the error.  If you do not want us to help you at that time, then please just ignore our email and we will not contact you again.  The next time you send an error report to us we may again send you an email to offer to help – please feel free to not respond if you do not want us to help.

We Want Your Feedback

We welcome your feedback and want to hear what you think about PIRform and about the features that are important to you.  You can get in touch with us in a number of ways: you can put a comment on the blog, use our forums, or find us on Facebook and Twitter, or use our contact details on the website.

When PIRform starts up it checks to see if it can connect to the internet.  If it can, it looks to see if there is a more recent version available and tells you about it:

I guess that’s what you’d expect from software as intelligent as PIRform! 

The latest version of PIRform now asks you to enter a licence code before using it.  We send you the licence code in an email straight after you have downloaded PIRform.  This looks something like this:

We had some feedback from users that it was a bit tricky to accurately copy the licence code between the “lines” in the email.  So, we’ve made it easier!

The latest update to PIRform Beta 6will let you copy any area of the text around the licence code and it will find the code for you in that text.  As long as the area you copy includes all the licence code then PIRform will find that code for you.  Something like the area shown below will work fine:

Also, to make is easier to enter your code, we’ve improved the licence entry screen by:

• Adding a paste button.
• Removing the previous licence code (unless you really want to see it!).
• Giving you a way to go to your Client Centre on the website so you can access your licence code when you haven’t got your email handy.

The new screen looks like this:

Also, after you have entered your licence code, you get to see details of the licence before you proceed (handy for those who have will have multiple licences):

We hope these small changes make it even easier to work with PIRform.  Get the latest version from our download page.

The latest version of Beta 6 prints a watermark on the reports that says Specimen – Evaluation Version.  We will be releasing another version over the weekend that removes this watermark.  The watermark will be part of the 30 day evaluation version that we will be releasing soon.

Update: we've just released an update that removes this watermark.  This new version also licence entry easier (more details here).

We have just released an update for PIRform Beta 6.  This update is a fix for a problem that some of our users were experiencing when upgrading to Beta 6.

Many thanks to those of you who helped us identify the cause and get this fix out so quickly.