March - April 2010

Liturgy Training Publications Goes Live on Advantage

Liturgy Training Publications (LTP), a not-for-profit agency of the Archdiocese of Chicago, recently went live on Advantage. Chuck Lorenz served as the LTP project manager, aided by Deanna Keefe, and John Thomas provided executive sponsorship. The go-live date was set for early January to avoid LTP’s busy season at yearend.

Eric Burbeck acted as the ACS project manager, directed by Mike Miklosovic. Barbara Smith served as lead engineer and several others, including Angie Markel, Bill Pinard and Levi Hyssong provided assistance.

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ACS Welcomes New Employees

ACS is pleased to welcome Ashley Richter and Craig Labenz to the Advantage family. 

Ashley Richter

Ashley joins the product development team led by Howie Brooks.  A native of Lake Orion, Michigan, Ashley attended the University of Michigan where she earned two degrees: a BSE in Computer Science and a BA in Asian Studies.  After graduation, she settled in Ann Arbor and took a job with an automotive supplier where she performed code maintenance and new product development.  She was there about a year, until the company folded due to cutbacks in the auto industry, and then she came to ACS. 

In her leisure time, Ashley enjoys video games, plus pen-and-paper role playing games, such as Dungeons and Dragons.  She lives in Ann Arbor, close to the ACS office.

Born and raised in Clinton Township, Michigan, Craig attended Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan where he earned a degree in Computer Science, with a minor in math. 

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Weekly Reader Goes Live on Mega Upgrade

Congratulations to Weekly Reader on the success of their recent upgrade. It was a big project, as they were migrating four versions ahead in Advantage and also moving several ancillary systems to new servers, all of which had to be coordinated and synchronized.

Marcia Smith, Vice President of IT and Fulfillment at WRC, was delighted with the success of their upgrade. On Monday, after going live over the weekend, she sent an email to everyone involved saying: “Thank you all for working together to get us where we are this morning – a truly great job!! A special call out to Susanne Goebel and Steve Petersen for their great leadership and perseverance throughout this project. And it was all done smoothly and with great communication and handoffs between the teams during the past few months, but particularly this past weekend.

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Spring Brings Webinars

Spring can’t come soon enough in Michigan, but webinars are already in full-bloom. In fact, we’ve already kicked off the season with a free webinar of the 2010R1 New Features, presented by Mona Hidayet.

Click  here to register for upcoming webinars:

• March 10th
  Web Module Interface, Philippe Rowland

• March 17th & 19th
  ARP Reconciliation, Bob Thornton

• April 6th
  Email Addresses in Advantage, TBD

• April 29th
  GL Mapping Set-up, TBD

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Philippe Rowland: Hard Work and Laughter

Mention Philippe Rowland and the first things people bring up are his ready smile and booming laugh.  That infectious laugh can be heard all across the ACS office space and you can’t help but smile when you hear it.  But although Philippe does have a great sense of humor, he isn’t all just fun and games.  His serious side comes out when he is given a project to manage and there is nothing he likes better than defining a new project and coming up with a plan to make it work.  Philippe enjoys gathering the project team and setting the expectations before diving in to the work.  He learns something from each project he tackles, because he says that each one is a little different.

“Working with Philippe on a regular basis for the last several years has enabled us to work more efficiently and productively,” says Rita Cohen of Massachusetts Medical Society. 

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More Cool New Features in Advantage 2010R1

Advantage 2010R1 is full of new functionality and cost-saving features. Read on for more info on the following new features:

• Premium Fulfillment Flow

• Customer Service Pop-up

• New Search Field

• "Customer Permissions" Feature

• Rewritten Report Viewer

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Order Inserts

By Molly Mathe
You may wish to include promotional/informational material with certain of your inventory items. For example, if someone buys a book on starting a business, you may wish to insert your catalog on small business products. You may even wish or need to tie the shipment of the main inventory item to the availability and inclusion of the insertion--and have the main item go on backorder if the insertion is out of stock. The Order Inserts feature allows you to accomplish all of this. Inclusion of the order inserts, which are created as separate Advantage inventory items, is based on rules that you maintain.

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AUG 2010 in the Big Easy

Fifty people descended on the New Maison Dupuy Hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans January 13 - 15 for the annual Advantage User Group meeting. The 41 clients representing 23 different companies were joined by 9 ACS representatives.

Although the conference officially opened on Wednesday night, three discussion sessions were planned for Wednesday afternoon for early arrivals and almost everyone attended them.

Attendees had their choice of “XML ICEDIS Standards for Academic Publishers,” led by Andy Wright of Oxford University Press, assisted by

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Advantage at Pub Expo in London

ACS attended and exhibited at Publishing Expo in London last month. 

Philippe van Mastrigt at Pub Expo, February 2010.

Dan Heffernan at the Advantage booth at Pub Expo.

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