POLYTROPE CM Assistant: Support

Upgrading to CMAssistant 5.x

This page is mainly addressed to our old licensees who are still using CMAssistant 3 or 4 (or EXTRA!) and are thinking about upgrading to the latest version of CMAssistant, version 5.x (where x = the latest rev number in the version 5 development cycle). We start with a little history, explaining what changed from 1999 to 2002 (that is, from EXTRA! versions 1 and 2 to CM Assistant versions 3 and 4), and then discussing what changed between 2003 and 2007 (which brings us up to CMAssistant 5.8, the current version as of 5-1-07). At the end of the page you will find information on what you need to do to upgrade.

 

Why upgrade? History, part 1: From EXTRA! to "CM Assistant"

EXTRA! version 1.0 was released in 1999. It was initially developed in response to specs provided by the New Times organization, in particularly close collaboration with the Houston Press and the Dallas Observer. By mid-2000, all the New Times publications were using EXTRA! and we were starting to sell to other publications as well. With every new licensee, we learned more about the circulation of alternative news weeklies and began to make changes to accommodate different needs. EXTRA! version 2, released later in 2000, provided a level of flexibility that was not there in version 1.

But as we dealt with publications outside the New Times group, we learned that EXTRA! had some structural problems. It didn't handle multiple publications at all, and it did not handle restock deliveries well - indeed, EXTRA!'s handling of restocks was so awkward that many licensees simply treated restocks as if they were primary deliveries, a subterfuge that worked in one sense but made getting accurate circulation stats nearly impossible. So, in 2002, we rewrote the application completely and released the new application with a new name, "CM Assistant" (with a space in the middle). However, we gave that first release of CM Assistant a version number of 3 to show that it was the replacement for the earlier programs and built upon what we had learned earlier.

CM Assistant 3 took a fresh approach to certain difficult problems that we had not solved especially well in EXTRA! Here are a couple details:

  1. CM Assistant 3 added support for the distribution of multiple publications, including publications on different delivery cycles (say, a monthly as well as a weekly).
  2. CM Assistant 3 finally handled restock deliveries very well, treating them for the most part simply as normal deliveries.
  3. CM Assistant 3 added a variety of analytical features, including "smart adjust", which helped users identify drops that were performing especially well or especially badly and make adjustments semi-automatically.
  4. CM Assistant was much faster at performing key operations than EXTRA! For example, in EXTRA!, if you printed master and route sheets and then realized that you needed to make a change to a single stop, you had to reprint the master and route sheets from scratch; but in CM Assistant, it was possible to reprint just the route that contained the change without having to reprint everything. And printing route and master sheets in EXTRA! took a long time - up to 30 minutes for some licensees (depending on hardware); the same operation in CM Assistant took only a couple of minutes.
  5. CMAssistant 3 had a completely revamped user interface that was more attractive and much easier to use.

Those are the highlights. There were also hundreds of smaller changes including improvements in the kinds of reports built into the program.

 

Why upgrade? History, part 2: From CM Assistant 3 & 4 to CMAssistant 5

In 2005, we rewrote the program from scratch one more time. The new release - version 5 - once again involved a name change, albeit a slight one. We removed the space in the midle of "CM Assistant" to produce CMAssistant.

CMAssistant 5 was/is revolutionary, or as revolutionary as this sort of thing can be. It took advantage of revolutionary changes in the development platform that appeared in FileMaker Pro 7. Here are some of the key changes from CM Assistant 4 to CMAssistant 5:

  1. CMAssistant 5 consists of just two files. One file contains all of your data; the other file contains all of our programming. This means that it is now possible to provide frequent and easy updates to CMAssistant - fixing bugs, adding or improving features - and it's a snap for you to install them. One of the reasons licensees did not upgrade EXTRA! was precisely that doing so was so very difficult. EXTRA! consisted of more than a dozen files, in which your data and our programming were commingled. Even minor updates required that you send your files to us so we could transfer your data from the old files into new files - a process that took us hours, causing you to be without your files for a day or two. Easy, frequent updates are a major advantage of CMAssistant 5.
  2. CMAssistant 5 provides much better support for multi-publication distribution than its predecessors did. Versions 3 and 4 accommodated the distribution of two or three publications satisfactorily, but we have licensees using CMAssistant 5.8 to distribute two dozen publications.
  3. Due to significant enhancements in the capabilities of our development platform (FileMaker Pro 7 and 8), CMAssistant 5 now supports printing all reports (including master and route sheets) to PDF files, which means you can print a 300-page report and review it without wasting a single sheet of real paper. When you have reviewed the PDF and everything looks right, you can send the report to a traditional printer with confidence. And you can save the PDFs permanently on your computer. So if you want to reprint last July's route sheets, you can do so and you will get exactly what you printed last July, even if the format of the report in CMAssistant has been modified in the meantime.
  4. In CM Assistant (3 and 4), there was always just one "current" issue. It was all but impossible to reprint an old issue's master and route sheets, and planning ahead for vacations was also difficult. In CMAssistant 5, on the other hand, while there is still only one most recent issue (which by default is considered "current"), as a practical matter, any issue that you wish can be treated as current and you can print reports, including master and route sheets, for any dates that you desire, at any time.
  5. In CM Assistant versions 3 and 4, current deliveries were stored in a special table by themselves. That made it impossible to get statistics, say, for recent issues that included the current issue, because data for old issues was stored in a separate "History" table. In CMAssistant 5, on the other hand, deliveries are deliveries and they're all kept in the same table, meaning you can get any totals you want at any time.
  6. CMAssistant 5 added support for carrier payments. There are no accounting features in CMAssistant 5, but you can now quickly calculate what you owe your carriers each week based on a flexible set of payment criteria.
  7. CMAssistant 5 sports a revamped user interface that is easier to learn and use than ever, and much more flexible, too.
  8. CMAssistant 5 has more and better reports than any previous version, and we're improving its reporting capabilities constantly. In particular, CMAssistant supports tracking your data according to "distribution channel" - making it easier than before to get the data you need when you prepare for your circulation audits.
  9. Again, because of major improvements in FileMaker Pro database technology, CMAssistant 5 is far less likely to crash than ever before, and if you do experience a crash, odds are that it will not damage your files.

Again, these are just the key improvements. And CMAssistant has been getting better every month.

We should also mention that, as you upgrade your computer hardware and OS, it's generally a good idea to upgrade standard applications. CMAssistant 5 currently runs in FileMaker Pro 8.5 or 9; FileMaker Pro 9 is the latest version of FileMaker Pro as of the end of 2007. If you stick with CMAssistant 4, which runs in FileMaker 6, sooner or later it's going to stop running on your computers. For more information on the reasons to upgrade, contact Polytrope Support.

What's involved in upgrading from "CM Assistant" (or EXTRA!) to CMAssistant 5.x?

If you already have an old license for EXTRA! 1 or 2, or CM Assistant 3 or 4, here is what's involved in upgrading to CMAssistant 5.x.

  1. Your CMAssistant maintenance contract must be up to date. Ask us about this. If your contract has lapsed, we'll tell you and send you a bill. The maintenance contract provides both full support for CMAssistant and also access to upgrades.
    NOTE (1): We may change our policy in the future without notice, but in the past we have never charged a penalty for renewing a lapsed contract. We renew you at the current cost of the contract. If you are upgrading from a version of CMAssistant or EXTRA! that runs in FileMaker Pro 6 or 5, there will be a small additional fee to offset the technical problems involved in converting your data from systems that are five years old.
    NOTE (2): Getting upgraded is a part of the service dimension of the maintenance contract, and we will only upgrade old licensees to the current version, so if you choose not to upgrade while you are covered, you will not be able to upgrade after your contract expires to a version that was released while your contract was current.
  2. If you have not done so already, you will need to arrange to upgrade your FileMaker software to FileMaker 8 (required) or 8.5 (better) or FileMaker 9 (strongly recommended). You'll need one upgraded license for each workstation that will be used to access the CMAssistant files. If you share CMAssistant using FileMaker Server, you'll need to upgrade your license for FileMaker Server, as well. The latest version of FileMaker Server as of December 2007 is 9, but you can share CMAssistant using FileMaker Server version 8, as well. (There was no 8.5 version of Server.) Note: Upgrading to FileMaker Pro 8.x may require improvements to your hardware, as well. Please carefully review the hardware specifications for running FileMaker Pro 8.5 on FileMaker Inc's web site.
  3. You will need to arrange to get your old CMAssistant files to Polytrope Support so that we can transfer the data into the new version of CMAssistant.
    NOTE: If you are upgrading from EXTRA! (version 1 or 2) there may be a small service fee to offset the cost in this difficult upgrade.

That last step is the hard part. The file structure of CMAssistant 5 is very different from the structure of all previous versions of CMAssistant and EXTRA! And because there were several different versions, every upgrade has to be done by us by hand. This process takes several hours. As a practical matter, we ask to have your files for at least 48 hours, and usually we ask to have your files from about Thursday to the next Monday. During that time you'll be without the master copy of your data. The data-transfer part of the upgrade is done by appointment only. After we've upgraded your files, we'll deliver them to you, as usual, via the Internet.

We recommend that you pick a time to upgrade when your circulation business is stable and slow. In other words, don't upgrade to CMAssistant 5 the week before your annual Best Of issue, or just before splitting all your routes in two. If you've gotten good with an earlier version of CMAssistant, you will not find it hard to figure out CMAssistant 5, but you should give yourself a week or two to get your sea legs.

Do not uninstall FileMaker Pro 6 from your workstations when you upgrade FileMaker Pro 8. Wait until you've got FileMaker 8.5 and CMAssistant 5.x running satisfactorily and until you know that your data has been transferred successfully. However, do be aware that, while you can run FileMaker Pro 6 and FileMaker Pro 8.5 at the same time on the same workstation, you cannot run FileMaker Server 5.5 and FileMaker Server 8 on the same server hardware, because they compete for the same I/O port on the computer. If you need to keep FileMaker Server 5.5 around in order to run other legacy databases, we recommend that keep it on its old hardware and install FileMaker Server 8 on a different, newer machine.

Note that CMAssistant 5.x will not run under FileMaker Pro 7. It will run under FileMaker Pro 8.0, but some features won't work. We require FileMaker 8, we strongly recommend FileMaker 8.5 and your safest bet is to get FileMaker Pro 9. As for the version of FileMaker Server, Server 8.0 will work, but FileMaker Server 9 (current as of December 2007) is strongly recommended for a variety of reasons. If your network administrator is not ready to upgrade FileMaker Server from 7 to 8 just yet, you can still use CMAssistant 5.x by installing FileMaker Pro 8.5 or 9 on the one or two workstations that will run CMAssistant. It is possible for a FileMaker network to have some workstations running FileMaker 7 and some running FileMaker 8, 8.5 or 9. FileMaker 7, 8.x and 9 all generate and manage files in the same file-structure "generation" (.fp7).

And what happens when FileMaker 9 comes out, probably in early 2008? More upgrades!

 

This page last modified: December 18, 2007