We are pleased to announce the release of a new version of PIRform Lite is now available from our download area. This version has been a long time coming, but it’s certainly worth the wait.  here are a lot of improvements and new features along with fixes to a number of issues in the previous version.  I recommend you all update to the new version as soon as possible.  The big improvements in this release are:

• Three Phase Circuit Handling

• Google-Style Find Facility 

• More Performance Improvements 

• Drop-down List Manager 

• Integrated Data Backup

 

Read on for more details of these and other improvements in this new version.

Three Phase Circuit Handling

PIRform now automatically numbers three phase circuits.

There is a new menu in the ribbon that lets you merge or unmerge circuits in a three phase board (note the shortcut keys that are shown on the menu too):

This lets you do things like this:

If you want to, you can also enter your own numbering for the circuits – whether the board is three phase or not.  If you enter your own numbering then PIRform will stop automatically renaming the circuits.

However you number your circuits, this is available when selecting a supply:

You can also set the default board phase for new boards in PIRform Options and in Certificate Options.  The default number of ways has also been changed from 8 to 9.

Google-Style Find Facility

We have added a search facility throughout the software that lets you find what you want to find quickly and easily.  Just type what you’re looking for into the find box and PIRform will do the rest.  Let’s say you’re looking at a board like this one:

And you want to see all the lighting circuits.  Just type “light” into the find box above the circuit grid and you get this:

Very simple, very powerful!  We’ve even put it into the board selection tool to help you when working on big jobs:

If you want to hide the find box just press Ctrl + F, then press Ctrl + F to bring it back again.

PIRform is Faster – Again!

We made PIRform faster in the last release.  We’ve done it again in this one!  On most machines you will see very noticeable improvements of 20% when opening PIRform, loading, previewing and copying certificates.  Users who are using PIRform on very low power machines like netbooks should see PIRform load a whole lot quicker too.  (Note that we recommend that you use something more powerful than a netbook – a dual core processor with at least 2GB of RAM is the recommended minimum).

Lookup Manager

You can now edit some of the lookup values using the new Drop-down List Manager:

At this time you can change the circuit conductor CPC, installation extent and report purpose values.  We will be putting out another release soon that will let you change more values.

Integrated Data Backup

We’ve added a button to the Home Screen that lets you take a backup of your certificates.

Taking regular backups and saving them somewhere safe – like online storage or an external hard drive – will help prevent you losing your certificates if your computer suffers a disaster.  Note that this feature only lets you backup your data, we do not support restoring from a backup unless under the direction of PIRform Support.

Report Updates

All reports have been improved.  You should notice that the layout is now clearer and more efficient.  Installation extent field now carries over onto a continuation page and we’ve fixed an issue where page 2 did not grow properly.

Other Changes

The Home Screen grids are now laid out in a much clearer fashion.
The Home Screen certificates are now ordered by when they were last changed.
Copied certificates now have a new certificate number.
Copy certificate now copies limitations and observations.
Added missing tool tips in the Certificate Form.
The circuit move controls now disabled if a circuit cannot be moved.
OPD rating can now accept decimal values.
Improved error reporting.
Better information is provided when a licence validation fails.
Removed the clear button from board selection drop-down.

Fixed Issues

Fix: start page now does not close the program if it fails.
Fix: could previously enter more text than the database field size in various locations causing a crash.
Fix: un-posted circuit data was duplicated when moving a circuit.
Fix: extent of installation continuation pages were not being shown.
Fix: bad numbering of intelligence limitations after a manual limitation.
Fix: spellchecker was reverting changes to words in grids.
Fix: incorrect tracking of user changes to circuit names that caused changes to be reverted.
Fix: incorrect numbering of new circuit/board when adding new after one has been deleted.
Fix: crash after deleting a new certificate from Home Screen to PIRform Recycle Bin.
Fix: bad scrolling in New Certificate Dialog.
Fix: crash when removing observations from intelligence.
Fix: error dialog saying “access to disposed object”.
Fix: both double click and enter now opens certificates from the All Certificates grid.
Fix: corrected spelling in recycle bin confirmation dialog.
Fix: confirmation now shown after copying activation code.
Fix: fixed alignment of start page links (component defaults changed in new version).
Fix: start page now correctly handles ellipsis characters.

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.

PIRform stores all your certificates in a database on your PC.  We have a small tool that lets you take a backup of this database so that you can be sure your PIRform certificates are stored in a safe location of your choosing. 

Suitable backup locations would be an external hard drive, a USB key or online storage such as Windows Live SkyDrive (http://www.windowslive.co.uk/skydrive, which is free too).

To take a backup of your data download and run the PIRform Backup Tool from here:

www.pirform.co.uk/support/pirformbackuptool.exe

When you run this program you will see this:

The options work as follows:

File Name

If you choose to let the tool set the name of the file for you then it will create a new backup file each time you take a backup.  The name of the file includes the date and time of the backup to ensure that you do not overwrite a previous backup.

If you specify the name of the backup file then it will ask you whether to overwrite any previous backup of the same name.  You can elect to always overwrite by checking the option next to the backup file name.  Note that existing files are sent to your Windows Recycle Bin before a new backup is made.

Backup Location

Select the folder where you want the backup to be saved.

Backup Data

When you have chosen your options, just click the button marked "Backup PIRform Data" to take a backup.  After the backup has been taken the folder with the new backup file in it will open.  Note that you must close PIRform before you take a backup.

In our last release, along with new features we also fixed a problem that caused the database file to grow larger than it needed to be.  PIRform checks its database after it opens and updates it if needed and the last release contained an update that had quite a lot of work to do and which could take a minute or more even on a powerful PC.  When this update was run on a database file that had grown too large, some user’s machines were unable to complete the upgrade and failed showing the standard Windows error reporting dialog.

This was not a good position and we apologise if you were affected by this.

Our mission is to produce high quality software and, when we don’t get that completely right the first time, we want to provide the best support that we possibly can.  So, when we started getting reports of problems we set about getting our users up and running again as quickly and smoothly as possible.  PIRform has automatic error reporting built in to help us find and fix any defects in the software.  This looks like the screen show below and, if you choose to allow it, the error report gets sent to us across the internet.

However, for this problem the automatic reporting was not yet loaded by PIRform and we first heard of this problem from users on our forums here.

The Fix

Usually when things go wrong, we release an updated version that fixes the issue.  However, in this circumstance the problem was caused by a combination of the bloated database file and the user’s PC not managing to get through the upgrade.  The large database file size problem was fixed in this new release, so that won’t happen in the same way again.  But, that was “too little, too late” for users who were already affected by the problem!

The best we could do here was to process the user’s data for them and then send it back so they could carry on working.  So that’s just what we did and along the way, we made a few improvements to the way we work so we would be able to respond even better if anything like this happens again.  What were the improvements?

The Support Tool

We updated our Support Tool – a small program that we use when helping users through support problems.  It looks like this:

Specifically, we added the facility to compress the certificate database and then chop it up into chunks so they could be emailed to us for processing.  This let us get around email providers limiting the size of email attachments.  We also built in a facility to help replace the data once we had sent it back.

The Helpdesk Software

During this time we began to use some now helpdesk software so that we could keep better track of user’s problems.  This was really useful and proved its worth in the initial flurry of problems soon after release.  If you send an email to support@pirform.co.uk then this gets routed to the helpdesk and is managed by the helpdesk software until the problem is solved.

We will be making some of it’s features available on our website in the coming months, so watch this space for more details.

The Website Improvements

It was clear that some users were having problems attaching multiple files to emails and we wanted a way to make this easier.  So, we also added a feature to the Client Centre on the website to allow you to upload files and to download files that we send back.

To get there, just go to our website and click the Client Centre link near the top:

Then go into the section marked “My support files”:

You then see an area that lets you upload and download files:

The Upshot

Although we work very hard to make sure we get things right the first time, I am sure that there will be another time where we don’t quite manage that.  However, I do hope that these changes will improve the service we give and help us to keep your copy of PIRform working as smoothly as it should.

An updated version of PIRform is now available from our download page.  This update fixes an issue that prevented some users with data from previous versions from upgrading to 2010.2and a problem when saving certificates containing a board that supplied a large number of other boards.

We are pleased to announce the release of a new update of PIRform Lite is now available from our download area.  This version contains a lot of changes and fixes a number of issues in the previous version and I recommend you all update to the new version.  In this release we have improved the overall performance of PIRform, introduced a spell checker and added a the new PIRform Start Page to keep you up to date with us when PIRform starts.  We hope you like the new version, read on for more details of what’s changed.

PIRform is Faster

We have made some good improvements in PIRform’s performance.  We have removed some of the lags when you first opened a certificate and the print preview now appears a lot faster than before.  PIRform still loads things up when it first starts and those of you with slower computers may be more aware of this start up delay than those with faster machines. 

To help us make PIRform faster, we have updated it to use a more recent component that is installed with Windows.  If this component is not already installed then the PIRform installer will install it for you.  There’s more details in the section called Installer Changes below.

Spell Checker

To make your certificates even more accurate, we have added a spell checker.  PIRform now checks the spelling for you as you type and indicates words that may be spelt wrong in the familiar manner with a squiggly red line:

If you right-click over a word that has one of these lines, the menu that appears will have quick-fix options for the particular word.  You can also access other spell check options from this menu:

There is also a button on the ribbon that will perform a full spell check of the whole certificate:

PIRform Start Page

When you open PIRform, you will now see the PIRform Start Page.  This is a page on the Home Screen that gives you easy access to the certificates that you have recently opened, lets you quickly access the PIRform website and shows you the latest news from our blog.  It looks like this:

To open a recent certificate just click on it.  To go open a link just click on it.  To read the full news article - you guessed it - just click on it!  To close the Start Page you can just click the arrow at the top left or press the Esc key on your keyboard.

New Copy Certificate Feature

You can now copy certificates to make another certificate with the same details as the one being copied.  All the details of the previous certificate are copied with the exception of the test results.  To copy a certificate first select it in the Home Screen and then click the Copy Certificate button in the ribbon.  After you confirm the copy the new certificate will open for you to make changes.  If you do not want to keep the copied certificate then just close it without saving changes.

Shorter Reports Option

We’ve added an option to not print the guidance notes with the printed certificate.  You can access this option from Print section in PIRform Option:

We will be adding the option to print the guidance notes separately to the rest of the certificate in a later release.

Installer Changes

As mentioned above, the installer now updates a Windows component to it’s latest version before it installs.  This component is called the Microsoft Dotnet Framework and PIRform now needs version 4.0 of that to be able to operate.  If you do not have this installed already, then PIRform will download this from Microsoft and update your computer before it continues.

If this happens on Windows Vista or Windows 7 you will require administrator privileges to be able to install.  The PIRform installer will detect that this is needed and will ask you for the appropriate privileges before it continues.  If your computer is controlled by your IT Department then you may need to contact their service to install this component.  If the component is already installed then PIRform just install normally.

While the PIRform Installer is downloading the Dotnet Framework 4.0 you will a screen similar to this:

Please note that the whole download and install of this component can take a long time, depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Intelligence Updates

When you change a value, PIRform waits for a short while before updating the certificate based on BS7671.  This is slightly different to the previous version which waited until you moved to another field before doing any updates.  We have also fixed a problem where you could manually set a value that had been previously set by intelligence and we have included 61008 RCD tripping time intelligence on circuits.

Report Updates

We have made some adjustments to the margin settings and general layout of the printed reports and corrected a couple of spelling mistakes. The margins are consistent now across all pages. 

Other Changes

Added an associated RCD to the Minor Works.
Added RCD types to Minor Works.
PIRform no longer stays on top of other programs on your computer.
Database file size is now automatically reduced after each upgrades and periodically when used.
Updated internal components and the installer to the supplier’s latest versions.
PIRform now informs the user when an unrecognised file format is selected as a logo file.

Fixed Issues

Fix: suppressed statements was preventing value changes.
Fix: prevented modification of observation and limitation numbers.
Fix: prevented PIRform window from obscuring other windows when using the Windows Taskbar to select.
Fix: margin warning no longer appears when printing reports.
Fix: preventing changes to values that are set by the intelligence now works as in all circumstances.
Fix: resetting numeric field to zero dis not revert applied intelligence.
Fix: text/number controls now allow entries that start with a decimal point.
Fix: crash after selecting UNKNOWN or LIM in Main OPD on page 3.
Fix: board inspection date is now set by default.

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 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.

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.