What's New.
We are delighted to announce the rollout of Smartt version 4, now well underway since January 2006.
Smartt v4 builds upon the previous 3 versions of Smartt, and is a major development for us as it incorporates the vast majority of all the "special" and non-standard features that our many users have requested over the eleven years of Smartt’s life.
In the past we have provided many effectively “bespoke” version of Smartt to cater for local differences of approach and peculiarities not found elsewhere, which whilst ideal for those meals services, provided something of a headache for our support team as the number of variations grew.
Accordingly it was decided that with effect from version 4, there would only be a single master edition of Smartt, and where necessary local variations are enabled by way of a number of new parameter settings, allowing us effectively to configure each installation so as to emulate the features previously available in each site's present software, whilst still allowing the optional future addition of all the other features and enhancements added for other users over the years.
The benefits of this are manifold in terms of the new programming functions open to Smartt Software by use of the new most recent host database manager ( Equinox 4 ), including the recent web-server and mapping modules, which are only available on the version 4 platform.
As our existing Meals Service users grow and develop their own new needs and as more and more other new users “get Smartt”, it will be very easy for us to add further new features and enhancements as optional parameters, for use as and when each service requires to use them.
Installation of future upgrades has also become much simpler than before, with the new option of using our own web-based update facility which enables meals service administrators to download updates for themselves when convenient using a web-browser, and then install the update when convenient, using a simple procedure built into Smartt itself. Of course, where supported clients prefer that Smartt Software continues to manage installation of such updates for them, then naturally we will be only too happy to continue to do this as before.