With all the capabillities Sesame provides to it's users, I thought it would be great to start a discussion here to see how you are putting Sesame to use.

With all the helpful users that frequent this discussion board, including 'The Lantican's' themselves, the entire community could benefit.

Feel free to give us the details of what you are currently using Sesame for, as well as how you plan to use Sesame in the future.

Steve
(BobScott, Thanks for getting the ball rolling.)

I work for a Small Home sale Supply Company.
I am currently trying to create a program for our customers to move to a multi level marketing system at the same time control their business better and thereby buy more form us.


Will they buy it ????????


Sesame has become a great program since the upgrade

Unfortunately I'm still on the outside looking in.

Using Q&A, I had developed a very comprehensive application designed for a niche market. Although it was loaded with features, it was also designed for extreme simplicity since the people on the keyboard were always clerical types who are not computer savy. Since I sold about 100 of these apps with sales projected at 1,000, there was no way I could leave myself open to all kinds of phone support, so the programs were also loaded with Help. Since everything was self-contained in Q&A this was possible.

But unlike Q&A, Sesame is reliant on two external programs for word processing and report printing, thereby  increasing the complexity of the system to a point where I no longer feel confident of providing simplicity to the user.

However, I'd still be willing to give it a try if not for the the larger problem posed by lack of control over page numbering and column headers on multi-page reports, as my apps made extensive use of these. I'm afraid I'd be painting myself into a corner. (Typical reports are over 20 pages WITHOUT Group Breaks).

In a former post re: reports, Mark said something about how you had to make a choice between offering the printing attributes of the browser v. creating your own report printer, but I never understood why it had to be either/or, why you couldn't provide both. (Same with the word processor. In an early issue of Inside Sesame Mark mentioned that including one would take him 2 years of programming? I can understand his reluctance. But visualizing what happens on my user's side when they try to print mail merged letters gets very spooky. Even once I get a new user trained on how to set up Word, what happens when another untrained clerical type is asked to do the job? What happens when someone at their end replaces the current version? etc, etc.) Another answer I recall was that the report issue would be reconsidered based on frequency of user requests. Well, here's another one from a current post...

Quote -. "Report and Group headers - would like to actually be able to repeat on second and subsequent pages of reports"

Hammer's response - "HTML does not really have the concept of "pages" so neither do Sesame reports. I'm afraid this isn't really doable in this version. The Group Headers will repeat each time a Group breaks."

If you could simply provide the same control Q&A offered I'd be back in business. I guess there's still no word on when such a version will become available?

Thanks.

Unrelated minor request -
The next time you produce a manual could you also add page numbers to the cross-references. When I first got Sesame I think I spent about 3 days tracing them down and writing them in on my original copy. Drove me nuts.

Hi Alec

Glad to see your response to Walt.  Sounds GREAT. I am looking forward to getting the new manual.

Harley

Thanks for your response Alec.

I appreciate how much work and time goes into what you're doing. Its hard work without many plaudits.
I also recall a comment in one of the manual prefaces about the manuals being the result of three authors but it might have been good to have one person do a final review for inconsistencies, errors, omissions, etc. But please don't take this as a criticism.

"As you may be aware this is a multi-stage process and it would be very time-consuming. "

Don't quite understand "multi-stage process".
Re: "Time consuming"...The more of this you can do, the less it will require from your customers.

Bob - I meant ALL cross-references. "See..........."

For a fun book on this subject, get a copy of "Zen and the art of motercycle maintenance"