04.17.2010 Lizzy™ Update
20 Apr2010
I know it’s been a while since my last update so I wanted to take a few minutes to catch everyone up on the overall project. The first thing worth mentioning is that we posted another release last weekend that added a bit more functionality to Lizzy™ as well as fixing a few minor things that have come up for some of you. You can view this release here..
Warranty claims are finished for the most part and we’re working on getting them posted into account receivables so that you can process the credits that can later be used in Payables. The next thing on the warranty plate will be to have Lizzy™ automatically submitting the claims for you, or at the very least, putting the claims into a format that can easily be uploaded to the vendors websites.
F&I processes are nearing completion and we’re spending most all of our time on creating the forms for the different States. We’re approaching most of this work on an as needed basis and adding the forms as we add dealers. I’ll keep you up to date on this part of the project as it progresses but so far things are looking really good. We’ve had a number of meetings with new and old customers and have worked out most of the kinks that we’ve been told about so far. I’m sure more will come up as we add more dealers but we’ll address them as quickly as possible as they come to light.
As you can see from the release notes, we’ve been spending a good bit of time tweaking things in different modules and adding new features as we move forward. We’ve added more reports to the system that some of you have requested and we have even more on the way.
Its getting harder and harder for me to make these posts because so much is happening so fast that its hard to keep up with. I’d suggest reading and keeping up with the release notes as a great place to start tracking us in more detail. They cover every important aspect of a release and the different tickets that are completed along the way.
Lizzy™ is really shaping up to be the product we’ve all wanted but could never quite reach far enough to obtain. The extra functionality that is available to us because of being on the web is tremendous and opening many new doors that we had never considered before. Within the next week we’ll be releasing a new SDK that will allow web stores and other 3rd party software vendors to interface directly into the heart of the system. This is going to allow things such as real time inventory requests, customer lookups, invoice processing and more, that is much more difficult on other Dealer Management Solutions. We are on our way to having Lizzy™ be the standard everyone else is measured against.
Well, enough blab. You guys have a great week and we’ll hopefully be speaking with you again soon.
–glenn hancock
- In: Lizzy™| Release Notes
Latest Lizzy™ Release Notes
9 Apr2010
I’m not sure how many of you have noticed but on the main login screen for Lizzy there is a link that was added a few months ago that will display the latest release notes for the system. Depending on how quickly releases come out there could be multiple releases showing at the same time. This week is a good example. We were able to get quite a bit done this week and as a result there are two sets of release notes currently available to view there.
Release 2.1.1.10 was released last Friday and contains a major release with lots of new and updated features.
Release 2.1.1.11 was released last night and contains a minor release with a good bit of items completed within the last 5 days.
One of the reasons for the latest release being so quick was that some of the features that were added are going to save quite a few of you time when it comes to setting up the application and we felt it was important enough to kick it out now rather than making you wait for us to finish the full version release that could be a few weeks away.
So thats all I wanted to cover for now. The release is posted and available to all, so have fun and keep up…
–glenn hancock
- In: Lizzy™
Lizzy™ mentioned on Dealer News.com
8 Apr2010
I just wanted to point those interested to a writeup recently brought to our attention at dealernews.com talking about a few of the products seen at this years Indy Expo 2010. Lizzy was among those mentioned and they even included a few screen shots of the system.
More on Cash Drawer in Lizzy
1 Apr2010
In the last post on cash drawers we went through installing Java and Lizzy’s™ Java modules. If you did not read that post or need to review click here. After you get the modules install come back here and follow the instructions posted below.
Now that you have the modules installed, it’s time to discuss configuration files. The Java modules for Lizzy™ support both USB and serial interfaces on the MMF cash drawers, and the modules you installed in the previous post came with USB support enabled. If you have a USB drawer and it’s configured as drawer 0, then your done. If however you have a serial drawer or you have a USB drawer that cannot be configured as drawer 0, you will have to download a different configuration file. Listed below are some configuration files, these file are configure to support various serial and USB ports. The downloaded file is called jpos.xml and you can just drag it to your windows directory, usually C:\Windows. When you copy it you should get warning asking if you want to overwrite an existing file, just click “Yes”. The download links below correspond to the port to which you cash drawer is connect or assigned; i.e. if your serial cash drawer is connected to com port 1 then click the “Com Port 1″ link, if your USB cash drawer is assigned to drawer 0 then click the “USB Drawer 0″ link.
Make sure that you right click the link you need and select Save Link As.
Serial Drawers:
USB Drawers:
- In: FAQ
Label Printers and Cash Drawers
10 Mar2010
We have had several request to add support for Zebra label printers and cash drawers to Lizzy. Well I have some good news for you, we are testing both right now and should be release those functions soon.
In order to use these functions you will need to install latest version of Java. If you don’t have Java installed or are not sure that it’s up to date, please visit http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp, and click the “Verify Java Version” button. The Java site will let you know if you are ready to go, and guide you through installing Java if you are not. Go ahead and do the Java install now and come back to this post when you are done.
Now that Java is installed, let’s setup your label printer. If you have not installed your printer drivers, please install them now. If you do not have the drivers for you label printer, you can download them at http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/drivers_downloads/drivers.html. Once you have the drivers installed we will need to rename the printer, to keep things uniform Lizzy expects the label printer to be named Zebra; to rename the printer, double click on the printers icon in Control Panel, then just right click on the printer and select rename and type Zebra.
If you don’t use a cash drawer that connects to your computer then your done. If you do use a computer connected cash drawer, you will need to install another module and configure Lizzy. First you will need to download a special driver from http://www.nizex.com/downloads/LizzyCashDrawerDriver.exe. Once the download completes, go ahead and run the installer. That is all that is need for now. I will be posting again soon with instructions on how to configure the cash drawer and Lizzy.
-Noel
- In: FAQ