November 3, 2009
The latest patch for 3.14.7 is now available and being installed at client sites. This patch fixes some known issues and bugs in 3.14.7, including a calculator bug affecting pro-rating of payments for contracted providers where the schedule and payment both start mid-week. There is also a change to the sibling reduction logic in this release.
There release notes are attached here for reference… I will break out each of these items in a separate blog over the next week or so. As always, if you have questions on any of these, drop me an e-mail or phone call and I’ll get answers for you!
3_14_7 patch 10_28
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Posted by Rob Bowlin
October 2, 2009
The schedule verification process is launched from the Family activity Schedule page. In the lower left hand corner exists a dropdown with a ‘Verify Schedule’ list item (shown below).

This check is to verify the validity of the schedule period based on child enrollment and blackouts. By clicking the ‘Go->’ button to the right of the dropdown list, the system performs the following checks:
Child Blackouts: The system checks if any blackout days exist within the schedule period of care. Blackouts are entered via the Special Period button on the Schedule page. If a child/schedule blackout exists, the system will display an error with the corresponding blackout period.
Family Blackouts: The system checks if any family blackouts exist within the scheduled period of care. Family blackouts are entered into the system by setting the family status to Term Pending. If a blackout exists, the system will display an error with the corresponding blackout period.
Child Enrollment Status: The system checks the child history to ensure the child is enrolled throughout the entire scheduled period. If the child is not enrolled for the scheduled period, the system will display an error with the date of the first un-enrolled day.
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Posted by Rob Bowlin
July 6, 2009
Now that we’ve had the blogs online for a while and have officially announced its existence, it’s time to get everyone involved. If you have something that you would like to contribute to this blog, you can participate in a number of ways.
1) E-mail me and ask to be a contributor. Contributors can then login to the site and post their own blog. Controltec will review and publish it to the site for all to read and comment.
2) Comment on an existing blog. You can start a discussion with other viewers on the site by clicking on the Comment link under each topic. Make a comment or add a contribution/take to the discussion for everyone to review and respond – you can even add relevant questions to your comments.
3) E-mail a topic, question or request that you would like discussed in the blog. I will review the topics received and create a new blog topic if appropriate.
Also, note the “Agencies” box to the right of the blog text. We can add a link to your agency’s web site in this area so that other users can review and communicate with your agency through your agency web sites.
Help me make YOUR blog better… let me know what you want to talk about!
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Posted by Rob Bowlin
June 17, 2009
Have you ever printed a timesheet and seen this at the top instead of the barcode…

What is that????
That, my friend, is your computers way of saying it’s missing a font. The barcode of the paymentID, which should be shown instead of the image above, is generated on your local system when you ask KinderTrack to launch the timesheet so you can print it. Because your local system doesn’t have the font installed, your computer substitutes a font that it does have instead… and you get hieroglyphics.
So, how do I solve that? Well, I’m glad you asked….
To solve this, you simply have to install the font on your computer. To do this, first you have to have administrator access to your workstation. If you don’t, be sure to contact your internal IT to technical department and refer them to this blog for installation instructions. Once you have that, click on this link here:
http://www.controltec.com/support/files/waspFonts.zip
When the dialog appears, click SAVE (note that you may get a security warning prior to the save option) and save this to your local workstation. When the download is complete, find the file and double click it to ‘unzip’ the compressed file. Once that is done, go to the start menu, click on Control Panel and click on Fonts. Drag and drop the 2 files that were unzipped from the download into the Fonts folder. Your system will register and configure the fonts as necessary for future use.
That’s all there is to it. Now print that timesheet and revel in the beautiful lines of the barcode!
As always, if you have any questions or need help with this, contact the Controltec support group and we’ll walk you through it all.
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Posted by Rob Bowlin
KT Release Process – QA
November 3, 2009So, we’ve talked about the versioning, design, build and unit test phases of the release process… what’s left? Well, only the most important step in the process… Quality Assurance… or QA. The QA process is a step where we give the application to someone other than a developer to review and… in all honesty… try to break. While QA will follow the test steps defined during design and implementation, they will also push those buttons that should never get pushed. QAs job is to try to find all the bugs before the release goes out the door. Now, let me assure you that this is almost an impossible task. Look at Microsoft, for example… how many times do they release a new operating system and then a service pack follows almost immediately? That’s because, inevitably, as soon as QA gives it the stamp of approval and you put it on the first client’s machine, someone finds something that everyone missed.
At Controltec, we have taken great steps to improve this QA process. We put the code, calculator and database on a completely “neutral” server – one that doesn’t have any development environment or tools installed. We take a “clean” database – one that can’t be updated or modified by developers and we run through the upgrade process as if we were upgrading a client. This process tests the upgrade scripts to ensure that they will run on client machines without issue and the prepares the QA site for testing.
Once the site is updated, QA can begin testing by running through test scripts and general “smoke tests”. Depending on the version of the build, regression testing is also performed. For instance, if the release is a patch that fixes 2 procedures, then a small bit of regression testing is done – add a new family, create a payment, etc. However, if the release is a full release, such as 3.14.8, then a full realm of regression testing is done throughout the entire system. We attempt to “touch” every page and every scenario. As we continue to strengthen our QA department and testing, these regression tests are being automated and new tests are continually added to enhance the test suite.
Of course, if anything fails QA, then we push the release back down to development where the process starts over with the build, goes to unit testing and then back to QA again. We continue this cycle until everything passes and we have a valid release candidate.
So, that’s QA… in a nutshell. It’s no easy task, let me assure you! As you can see, there is a lot involved in this process, which is why a lot of these releases take time to get out the door. As we speak, 3.14.8 is 2 SPRs away from going to QA… so it’s getting closer! Meanwhile… see the next post… where the next 3.14.7 patch has been released and is being installed.