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 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.

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.

We’re pleased to announce the release of our new version: PIRform Beta 6.  This is available now from our download page.  The exciting news is that this is the last beta version before we release PIRform for sale. 

The new version will expire on the 11th July 2010 and it is very close now to how it will be will be when it’s available for sale.  Read on to see what’s changed:

Important Licensing Changes

After you download PIRform, a licence serial code will be sent in an email the email address registered against your web site account.  When you start PIRform it will now ask you to enter the licence code before you can continue.  This will be how the full version will work.  Every time you buy or renew your licence, we will email you a code that you can enter into PIRform.  You can also get this code from your own private account area in the PIRform website (see next section).

Website Changes

We’ve updated our website to add a new account area where you can access details associated with your account.  From here you can change your details and password.  You also have access to all your licence codes, so if you do not have access to your email for some reason, you can still get to your licence codes.

Visual Condition Report

We have added the Visual Condition Report, which gives you the full four reports available in PIRform Lite Edition.  Remember that each report covers domestic, commercial, industrial and any other flavour you like (like a Fixed Caravan Periodic Inspection)!

Archived Certificates and the PIRform Recycle Bin

In the above picture you can see sections called Archived and PIRform Recycle Bin.  When you delete a certificate it does not get deleted immediately but goes to the PIRform Recycle Bin.  From there you can either restore it again or you can delete it permanently.

The archived section is similar, it’s an area that you can use to store older reports so that they do not clutter up the main sections that you use every day.  You can also restore any certificate that is in the archived area and it will move back to where it came from.

Natural Order of Boards

Boards now stay in the order in which you enter them and do not reorder when renamed.

When we are ready for sale you will be able to move boards up and down.

Supplied Boards Always Visible

PIRform has always shown you the names of the boards that a circuit supplies in the circuit designation. 

We now show this in both circuit and board designation.  This will appear wherever you see the board or circuit.  In the screen shot below we are selecting the supply for DB2.  You can see that DB2 supplies DB3 from the Circuits and Test Results page.  For each board and circuit in the Supply Selector you can see which boards they are supplying as you make your selection.

 

Lookup List Improvements

All lookup lists now have a blank value at the top so that you can clear any selection.  You can also use delete or backspace on the keyboard to clear the selected value.

We have improved the way the lookup lists respond to the keyboard too:  The tab key will select the current value and move you to the next field; the Enter key will select the current value and keep you in the same field.  Try using the tab key to select values when working in the circuit grid.

Tip: press the Alt key together with the down arrow to open up a lookup list.  (This is the standard key combination to do this in Windows.)

Circuit Charts Now Print Separate to Certificate

You can now access the circuit chart separately from the main certificate.  To do this, click on the app menu button at the top left of a certificate, then select Print Preview Circuit Chart from under the Print menu.  This will open the Print Preview page showing the circuit chart for the current certificate.

Note that this is the only way to access circuit charts – they no longer print along with the main certificate.

Various Other Changes

As usual there have been a number of other smaller tweaks and fixes.

Change: insulation resistance fields can take the value LIM.

Change: added an Open Certificate button to the home screen ribbon.

Change: renamed a title in Minor Works to CPC CSA.

Change: minor changes to the printed reports (like margin sizes).

Change: polarity check text now uppercase in Minor Works.

Fix: prevented board and circuit intelligence value changes being changed while the intelligence is still in force.

Fix: YES was printing as PASS in reports.

Fix: application would crash when circuit lookup selections modified and then reapplied an existing intelligence statement.

Fix: insulation resistance was not greyed on Visual Condition.

Fix: changes to engineer’s default instruments were not saving.

Fix: number and type of live conductors fields lost its value when changing a means of earthing value.

Tell Us What You Think

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 released an update to Beta 5 that fixes two small issues that users have reported.  As usual, you can get this from our download page.

The two small fixes are:

Some of the fields in the new Minor Works would not allow the full stop key (two keys right of the letter “M”) to be used to enter a decimal point - you could only use the decimal point key on the number pad.

The hyper links in the new version dialog were not opening the website when clicked.  They now work correctly.

Please get in touch with us at any time - you can comment on this blog, use our forums, find us on Facebook and Twitter, or use our contact details on the website.

We’re happy to announce the release of the latest version of PIRform, Beta 5.  This version is packed with new features, the biggest of which is the ability to produce Electrical Installation Certificates and Minor Works.  Full details can be found here.

You may have noticed that we had released this a few days ago and then made it unavailable (more details here).  We removed the previous release as we noticed that some users with existing data were experiencing problems when upgrading to the new version.  PIRform has automatic error reporting built in which let us see that there was a problem and we acted swiftly to stop more users becoming affected.

Quality Commitment

We are committed to quality and want you to have a very smooth experience with PIRform.  We believe that PIRform should make your life easier and not give you more problems!  This commitment stands even though PIRform is not yet ready for sale.

Community Help and Lessons Learned

We are very grateful to one member of our user community who worked with us to help us identify the cause.  This has enabled us to both fix the problem and to identify why we had not picked it up in our testing before we released it the first time.  As a result of this we have now improved our software testing process so that it will pick up any similar issue in the future.

We hope you enjoy the new version and please do get in touch with us to let us know what you think.  You can add a comment on this blog, use our forums, or find us on Facebook and Twitter, or use our contact details on the website.

We’re pleased to announce the release of our new version: PIRform Beta 5.  This is available now from our download page.  We’re pretty excited with this new version as it’s nearly ready for sale.

The new version will expire on the 10th June 2010 and contains new features as well as a number of changes and fixes.  Read on to see what’s changed:

Electrical Installation Certificate and Minor Works

You now have Electrical Installation Certificates and Minor Works in PIRform.  Note that this covers domestic, commercial, industrial and any other flavour you like!  In PIRform you don’t have to choose the type before you start the report either, just tell PIRform the type whenever you like.

External Companies and Engineers

You can now store external companies and engineers in PIRform and use them in EICs.

The engineer selection controls have also been changed and allow you to select the company and engineer.  You can also select the engineer by double-clicking on them.

Performance Improvements

We’ve done a lot of work under the hood with this release and we’ve made PIRform faster to use.  If you have tried one of the previous beta versions then you will notice a big improvement in performance.

Max Zs 80% and 100% Multiplier Values

You can now tell PIRform whether to use the 80% or 100% multiplier values for the max Zs.  For each type of report you can set which you want to use:

You can also change your mind half way through a report, changing the values for the current report only (when you change the multiplier, PIRform recalculates the existing Zs values for you):

How’s that for flexible!

Internet Updates

From now on PIRform will check the internet and tell you when there is a new version available.  This will help you make sure you are running the latest version.  PIRform will do this automatically, but you can also ask PIRform to check any time you like:

Various Other Changes

We have made various other tweaks and changes to PIRform, as follows:

New: licence keys can now be entered from inside the application:

New: limitations are numbered and shown in reports.

Change: various tweaks to the intelligence and the printed reports.

Change: circuit polarity check now accepts failure values:

Change: you can now enter Zs values when the board is connected to the origin:

Change: upgrade messages are now shown on the splash screen:

Change: lookups have been removed from the home screen:

Change: the home screen now shows the certificate type:

Change: made changes to the default values on page 4.

Change: removed unused items from menus and ribbons.

Change: review engineer position is now shown in the PIR.

Fix: engineer signatures now show against boards on printed reports.

Fix: installation extent and circuit designation both now allow unlimited text.

Fix: the casing of circuit column headers is correct for ring final impedances.

Fix: changing the inspection date now updates board inspection dates only where they match the old date.

Tell Us What You Think

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.

Two days ago on Friday evening, we released Beta 3.  This version had some major internal changes to the way that the certificates were stored.  Over the weekend we got some reports from people saying that they could not see all of their certificate details.  When you opened up PIRform you would not see all of the certificate details.

We’ve just released an update which fixes this issue.  You can get it from our downloads page.  If you have already installed Beta 3 then please make sure you download and install this updated version.

As always, thanks to the people who have gave us the feedback.  It really does help us to find the problem and get the fixes out as early as we can.

We’re pleased to announce the release of our new version: Beta 3.  We have not added many new features in this release but have focused on changes to the internal structure of PIRform as well as making installation and error reporting easier to work with.

This version will expire on the 22nd February 2010 and you can work with it fully until then.  (In fact, we’re planning to have a new version ready in the next couple of weeks which will include circuit charts among other things). 

Read on for details about the changes in PIRform Beta 3…

New Database Structure

We’ve made some big changes to the way that PIRform stores its data in this version.  When you install beta 3, PIRform will pick up your existing certificates and thoroughly restructure the way they are stored. 

The goal is that you do not notice anything different with this change.  It should just work like it did before.  Well, okay, you should see a progress dialog like the one below, but that’s all!

We PIRform now also makes an internal backup of your data before it makes any changes.  this is just in case anything does go wrong your certificates will all be safe and sound.

Automatic Installation of Dotnet Framework

Previously you had to have a Windows component called Microsoft Dotnet Framework installed before you installed PIRform.  I wrote about how you could install this component here.  Now the installer does all the work for you – if your machine needs this component, we go off and get it from Microsoft’s website and install it automatically for you.  What you will see is this:

Then this will appear and do its work for a while.

It’s worth saying that this whole process can take a long time depending on the speed of your internet connection and how fast your machine is.  Worth considering a cup of tea if you see this!

Simplified Error Reporting

We have made it even easier to send us the automatic error reports after PIRform has encountered a problem.  The new dialog looks like this:

We will soon let you tell us your email address so we can contact you about any problems that you have if you want us to.  Also, we have now fixed most of the problems that you have told us about using the error reporting.

We have also updated the way that we handle any error reports when you send them through to make sure that we can track down the cause easier than before.

Other Changes

As well as a number of little fixes and bits of polish here and there, we have changed:

Company and Engineer
We’ve added some polish to the way that company, engineer and test instruments come through into the certificates.  This includes filling in information that hadn’t come through in the previous data upgrade.

Supply Circuit Text
You can now have text in the designation of a circuit that is the supply to a board (previously it replaced your text with “supply to DB…”).

We hope you enjoy using PIRform Beta 3!

We’re pleased to announce the release of the next beta version: Beta 2.  We’ve added some new features that we were already planning to do.  We’ve also made changes based on the feedback that we’ve had from you - our users - in the last three weeks or so. The main features of this release are:

• Adding new intelligence that covers even more of BS7671.

• Adding company, engineer and test instrument information.

• Printing company and association logos on the reports.

• Printing engineer signatures on the reports.

• Making it easy to set the test engineer against each board in the inspection.

We’ve already written about some of the new features and the new BS7671 regulations that we’ve built in (see here and here for details), but it’s worth putting all the new changes down in one place for reference, so, here they are.  We hope you like it!

New Features

New Rules from BS7671
PIRform has the regulations built into it and we’ve now added some new ones too.  There are more details here, so check that out if you want to know more.  They’re pretty exciting to say the least.  

Company Information Now Added
You can now add company, engineer and test instrument information, including company and association logos.  This was by far the most requested feature from everyone who came to see us at the ELEX show at Sandown.

The logos automatically carry through onto the printed reports (association logos not shown here!).

As an extra bit of polish, when you install the new version you should see any engineers or companies brought through from the reports that you have already done.  We hope this makes it easier!

Engineers Have Default Test Instruments
You can set the default test instruments for each engineer. 

These will appear against each board that the engineer tests.

As you’d expect, the engineer's signatures also carry through to the printed reports.

Of course, the engineer’s signature also appears one page 1 too!

Easier Working With Multiple Engineers on the Same Report
You are building a report from data supplied by more than one engineer.  You could have two or you could have ten engineers on that job – or even more!  PIRform now makes it easier to be accurate.  First, you have seen that each engineer has their default instruments, so each board that you create will have those instruments.  Next, if you want to change the default engineer half way through then you can.  Just go into Certificate Options:

From there you can the report details.  If you change the default engineer then all new boards will have that engineer as the inspection engineer, along with the instruments that you selected (which default to those that you set as the engineer’s defaults!). 

Last, but far from least, we’ve added a feature that’s going to be most useful for those of you that work with complex reports – those with either many boards or may engineers, or both!  The Board Manager let’s you work with the boards in the report in one place.  Not only can you change the engineer or the instruments that they used, but you can also set the board designation and location from here. We’ve even let you change the board supply using the same tool you use to select the board supply on page 5.  The only difference with the Board Manager is that you can now deal with it all in one place. 

Unset Values Now Clear on Printed Reports
The report should be clear and unambiguous in all ways possible.  PIRform now shows makes it clear that a value has not been set in the printed report by showing "-" where nothing has been set.  This simple measure helps to prevent any misunderstanding.

Page 4 Controls Now Easier for Keyboard Users
Some people prefer to use a mouse, some people prefer to use a keyboard.  Another excellent suggestion that we got from ELEX at Sandown was to allow page 4 values to be set using the keyboard.  The first beta version only let you use the mouse, but now you can use the keyboard too.  (This part will only make sense if you are mainly a keyboard user…)  If you are on page 4, press Tab to move to the next control, then just press the first letter of the value that you want to enter to set the value (P for pass, F for fail, etc.):

Alternatively, hit the space bar to set to blank:

If you can’t remember the options, then hit the Enter or Return keys to see the menu that appears when you click it:

Changes to Existing Features

Updated Printed Report Format
We have updated the printed reports to fix a number of issues with them and to make them more clear.

Updated Max Zs Rules
The max Zs rules have been updated.

Observation Text Fixed
The text of observations is now fixed by the application. 

This is how it should have been before, but you can still either enter your own observations if PIRform does not enter them for you from the regulations.  It’s just the ones that PIRform enters that are fixed.

Date Values in Reports
Date values now appear correctly in the printed reports.