Hurricane Irma may have put a damper on things for the DSLUG conference in Tampa. But Catalina did their Deep Dive presentation ONLINE. This is a recording of that deep dive in case you missed it.
Hurricane Irma may have put a damper on things for the DSLUG conference in Tampa. But Catalina is still going to do their Deep Dive presentation ONLINE.
Since many of you cleared your schedules during the week of the 12th, for the conference, we are going to do our Deep Dive as planned (but Online).
Join us for our ONLINE Deep Dive on Sep 12, 2017 at 3:30 PM EDT.
Register now for free!
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3306754117949755393
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Deep dive on Integrating SL with CRM, Ecommerce, Helpdesk, Time Card Entry, IoT (Internet of Things) integration with Dynamics and other systems, online billing portal for your customers, and more.
Catalina’s Online Bill Payment allows you to get paid quicker by your customers, allowing them to login to a portal and pay their invoices. There is also auto-pay, which will automatically pay invoices, as they are generated. All of this using a PCI compliant secure system that minimizes your risk since you never handle credit card information.
Showing our IOT integration to Dynamics and other systems
Many of you may already have (or thinking about) an IOT (internet of things) initiative. Catalina will be showing our latest customizable IOT devices and how you can monitor your equipment, properties, construction sites, etc. (or your customer’s), and then automatically route data to your CRM, field service, dispatch, or other systems to take action or store auditing data for reports and more.
Integrate to existing proven solutions!
Learn how to get quicker return on investment by enabling Dynamics SL to integrate to existing proven solutions like: Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM, Zendesk, and more for your CRM, Helpdesk, Time Card Entry, Ecommerce, etc.
More Information: https://blog.catalinatechnology.com/?CTAPI
Integrate to existing Solutions
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Dynamics SL Modules
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Catalina Technology is a proud sponsor of the Dynamics SL User Group again this year. Visit us at booth #18.
Deep dive on Integrating SL with CRM, Ecommerce, Helpdesk, Time Card Entry, and IoT (Internet of Things).
Come visit our deep dive on Tuesday, September 12th at 3:30PM.
Catalina’s Online Bill Payment allows you to get paid quicker by your customers, allowing them to login to a portal and pay their invoices. There is also auto-pay, which will automatically pay invoices, as they are generated. All of this using a PCI compliant secure system that minimizes your risk since you never handle credit card information.
Showing our IOT integration to Dynamics and other systems
Many of you may already have (or thinking about) an IOT (internet of things) initiative. Catalina will be showing our latest customizable IOT devices and how you can monitor your equipment, properties, construction sites, etc. (or your customer’s), and then automatically route data to your CRM, field service, dispatch, or other systems to take action or store auditing data for reports and more.
Integrate to existing proven solutions using Catalina’s API for Dynamics SL!
Learn how to get quicker return on investment by enabling Dynamics SL to integrate to existing proven solutions like: Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM, Zendesk, and more for your CRM, Helpdesk, Time Card Entry, Ecommerce, etc.
More Information: https://blog.catalinatechnology.com/?CTAPI
Integrate to existing Solutions
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Dynamics SL Modules
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Integrating IOT to your Dynamics ERP, Dispatch, Service, CRM or other system allows you to act quicker to your customer’s service needs
Cloud Enabled SolutionsDevices communicate through gateways to the cloud and routed to your ERP, CRM, Dispatch, Helpdesk, or other system |
Custom Form Factor DevicesSensors and actuators can be customized to fit your requirements!
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I have recently been experimenting with my X-Carve CNC router and 3-d Printer realizing that manufacturing and the supply chain will change drastically as these technologies mature. You can see some of my experimenting here:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR2UFy9f93Y]
I have a feeling that this decentralized fabrication could really disrupt traditional manufacturing. Where the “scarcity economy” will no longer be relevant when you can make anything you want from recycled feed stock through 3d printers, wet printers (for meds, food, etc.), and other fabrication devices. If you covet a shirt that someone else has, just take a scan of it and print it. No need for going to the store or even Amazon for that matter.
You may say that someone needs to supply the 3d printers. Well, even printers today are often made with parts that were printed on a 3d printer. Just like robots can fix and build other robots, 3d printers can print new printers.
If we, the consumer, can start to manufacture the products we now buy from others, what will happen to the actual manufacturers? What happens to the Mattel Toys or Lego who makes billions off of selling plastic toys that can easily be printed in ones own home? (NOTE: I used to work for Mattel in the early 90’s) Will there be a compensation model for the R&D work that these companies typically spend a fortune to create and protect. Could it become just like the music industry, where they fought and litigated against kids making mp3 equivalents of mix tapes?
Or maybe products will just be licenses that are paid for but then manufacturing is done locally? Or will it evolve into something more like an open source sharing economy? Where individuals create, share, barter, and sell their ideas with each other without the need of monolithic corporations?
In the 90’s, we saw the internet as a democratization of information, communication, and commerce. Where small entities and individuals could operate without a lot of central control. But eventually large companies rose out of that and dominated (Facebook, Google, Amazon). Maybe there will be someone who figures out how to capitalize on this and become the Facebook in the world of home-fabrication.
All I know is that this is an exciting time for someone who likes to make things. I don’t know how this will affect the economy of tomorrow. What I am hoping is that this decentralized model of manufacturing continues, giving us all more control over what we consume.
Effective June 30th, 2017 Paypal will move their systems to require TLS1.2 for all transactions.
This means that if you are using payflowpro for creditcard or check processing with any Catalina Technology Application (OrderCentral, SalesCentral or AccountCentral) you might be in need of an updated build. If your system is not updated, credit card transactions on your system may start to fail effective June 30th.
If you require an update for your Catalina ecommerce, online payment, or order entry systems, please contact us [email protected]
There are times when you just cant get RDP/Terminal server access to your servers to access the Dynamics SL thick client. Like when you are on a tablet or remote. That is where Catalina’s Sales Central for Dynamics SL comes into play. This allows you to access Dynamics SL Order Management, Customer Management, Inventory, and other modules through a cross-browser, mobile-enabled solution.
Sales Central allows you to do the following
Below is a demo we did at one of our webinars that does a brief walk-through of Sales Central. If you have further questions or would like to have a more in-depth demo, please contact us at [email protected].
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCqwx2gvxKo]
Last week I showed a demo on how you could print invoices, checks, etc. automatically From Dynamics SL to our professional cloud based printing and mailing solution. (See Dynamics SL demo here) Since the Catalina solution isn’t specific to what feeds it, this post is how you can do the same thing through Salesforce.com. I will be showing other ERP’s and how we can do the same thing over the next few weeks (Dynamics GP and CRM, Intacct, Excel spreadsheets, SQL queries, and others)
Even today, in the highly connected world, we are still faced with customers, vendors, employees, sales opportunities, and others either requiring or preferring printed communications like invoices, checks, etc. We have been able to automate a lot of things, but exporting data, merging it, printing it, stuffing into envelopes, and mailing it can still be quite a laborious and costly process. This is where Catalina’s cloud-based printing and mailing solution can come in to automate the integration process and outsource the printing and mailing portion.
Here is a brief demo on how this can work with Salesforce.com. Not only does this demo show you how you can have cloud based printing and mailing of your invoice and other documents, but also how you can integrate with Nodus’ PayLink payment processing solution that allows your customers to quickly pay their invoices online through a PCI compliant payment solution.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXYCSGjtoQQ]
We will be posting other demos and tutorials on how you can add this to your ERP, CRM, helpdesk, or other back-office system.
Many of us still have customers, vendors, employees, etc. who require printed invoices, checks, letters, or other documents to be mailed to them. This is a hassle to do. Extracting and formatting the data, mail-merging, printing, folding, stuffing envelopes, postage, and mailing takes time and costs money.
Catalina Technologies’ Cloud based printing and mailing solution automates this process and merges data from your ERP, CRM, helpdesk, or other system and prints and mails these documents for you.
How does this work? We merge your data into a customizable template, print it, and mail it. All on the Cloud! It is just that simple!
(NOTE: You can jump to the end of this post to see a demo of this in action!)
To make life easier, you want your ERP, helpdesk, CRM, or other system to automatically feed the cloud printing and postage so that you don’t have to do manual steps to get your data out of your back office, merged, printed, and mailed. Catalina Technology has a full set of integration tools that allows you to integrate from most ERP’s, CRM systems, Helpdesk, or SQL Query, Excel spreadsheet, CSV, etc. Catalina also has a front-end to Quick Query that allows you to define Quick Query filter definitions that can have custom mapping rules. These Quick Query filter definitions can then be saved and scheduled as automated jobs.
Templating is an important part of a printing solution. This allows you to be able to customize how data is merged into the output document to any format you want.
These can then be printed as:
Here is a quick demo we did on one of our recent webinars showing how we can receive data from Dynamics SL, merge it into invoices, and then send it out to be printed and mailed to your customers.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGuq5id7pM]
For more information contact Catalina Technology: [email protected]
OK, this isn’t a normal Catalina post about programming and how to integrate things. This is one of our side projects in gardening. One of the things that we are very passionate about is local farming and trying to figure out how to create economical farming that produces high nutritional value food, reduce water usage (we are in Southern California), and get food to people who need it.
I used Sketchup to design a simple rain gutter garden (Inspired by Larry Hall and the great folks at the Rain Gutter Grow System Page on Facebook Link to Group Page)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er5iDGn3OIo]
If you want the file I did to create this model, you can download it here: Link for Sketchup file for rain gutter garden
If you don’t know what Sketchup is, you should. It is a great 3D tool that helps you design and explain ideas and designs to others with a simple to use interface. You can see more here Sketchup Website.
Here is the actual system in action:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXAdNOYUuuA]