POS Credit Card Swiper

For our most recent conference, we purchased a MiniMag Keyboard Wedge/USB (Model: IDT3331-12UB) from IDTECH to work with TIMSS at our bookstore. We got the USB one instead of the one that plugs in with the keyboard since we are using laptops.

Most of these types of products are programmable and will act as if you typed the card numbers in when you swipe the card. Program them correctly and you can have it put the card number, tabs (to change fields), and then the expiration date.

The user's guide can be downloaded from their website. To program this USB MiniMag you will need to download the Reader Setup Utility program.

To program it to just give the credit card number, the code is
/e/d/fv 2

To have it give the card number, tab, tab (skipping the CVV2) & the expiration use:
/e/d/fn
/e/d/fe 10
/e/d/fr \tab 20 /
/e/d/fs d1a0101B0101^ e1b02020201^ e1c02000201^
/e/d/ft 7d1a0a0a1b0c0b1c

With this, you can enter the order into TIMSS, hit the Enter Payment button, then pick the Receipt Type for the credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc) , then move to the card number field. Once the cursor is in the credit card number field, swipe the card and the credit card information will be put in the appropriate boxes. Then click on the Authorize Card button.

It will not only speed up processing, but it will be much more accurate. One of the nice things is that other card formats will be ignored (my student ID doesn't register but my ATM card does). The one problem I've seen is that if the card is swiped to quickly, sometimes the first or last number is missing.

Applies to: TIMSS5 & TIMSS6

TIMSS 6: Relationships

TIMSS 6 has different a relationships scheme than TIMSS 5. In 5, you had a single relationship between 2 customers where one was the parent and one was the child. In TIMSS 6 you still have a relationship between 2 customers where one is the "parent" and one is the "child", but you will also have a new reciprocal relationship where the child becomes the "parent" and the parent becomes the "child".

What's the advantage you ask? Well it lets you define the relationship better and easier. Easier since it's automatically created for you, and better in that you are not only defining the relationship between the child and the parent, but also the parent and the child at the same time.

For example, (families are the obvious one) I can define the relationship between a father and son. In one direction the relationship is SON and in the other it is FATHER, allowing me to find all the SONS or all the FATHERS. And I can also have a DAUGHTER relationship from another customer and see the FATHER relationship to both of them, and a MOTHER relationship with them, too. I could have done this in TIMSS 5, but I would define the relationships as "FATHER-SON", "FATHER-DAUGHTER", "MOTHER-SON", and "MOTHER-DAUGHTER". And to find all the fathers, I'd have to search for both "FATHER-SON" and "FATHER-DAUGHTER" instead of just FATHER in TIMSS 6.

The place you will really see it is when looking on the relationships tab in the TIMSS 6 application, because the description is right there on the screen spelled out (this is the customer's father, or this is the customer son). In TIMSS 5 it was not always so easy to see who was who on the relationship screen.

Now you can have the reciprocal relationship be the same as the regular relationship. For example, an employee can have a STAFF relationship with a company, and the company can have a STAFF relation back to the employee. The thing to be careful with here is that hierarchical relationship is not defined, so when you looked at the relationship between these 2 customers you would see a STAFF in each direction, so who works for whom? Well it's obvious because one is a company and has a different record type. But if they were the same record type you couldn't tell.

So you need to be careful when defining hierarchical relationships, especially between customers of the same record type as there will be no way to distinguish them. There are cases where the relationship between to customers of the same record type really is the same in both directions (FRIENDS, BROTHERS), but when it is hierarchical, you will need to define a different reciprocal relationship (a CORPORATE relationship of SUBSIDIARY and a reciprocal of PARENT COMPANY) so you can tell them apart.

Applies to: TIMSS6

ZIP100- Zip Code Upload Process

I just ran this ths other day (in TIMSS6.2.1) and it was very easy.

First you need to get the CD from the Post Office. This PDF has instructions and the order form: http://ribbs.usps.gov/files/Addressing/PUBS/AIS.pdf. Make sure you get the City State product. I just got the single CD and not the supscription because I don't think they change enough to make it worth while. However I don't think it had been done since we got TIMSS 5 years ago, so it added over 4,000 zip codes.

When you get the CD, the citystate.txt is zipped on the CD. Extract the file. It needs to end up on your TRS server in the "..\TPRO\TRS\Input\ZIP100" folder. You can either put it there youself, or on the TRS100 screen pull up the ZIP100 job and click on the Upload Input File button on the bottom left of the screen.

I ran it in TTST first, deleting the missing zips (parameter = Y) and it worked great! And took less than 2 minutes for the job to finish.

Applies to: TIMSS6

TIMSS 6.2.1: Copying Phone Information

In the 6.2.1 release of TIMSS, a new feature was added to allow a user to easily copy phone/fax/email/web information.

On the CUS001 screens, you can highlight a row in the table with that information and then right-click on the black arrow at the left-most part of the row. This will bring up a pop-up menu with one option, "Copy PHONE" or which ever communication type you clicked on. It's copied to the windows clipboard so you can paste wherever you like.

The tricks are to click on the correct row before right clicking, and to right click on the arrow on the far left.



The information copied to the clipboard is the formatted information, so phone numbers will be formatted as you have defined them.

Applies to: TIMSS6

Wild Card Searching

Because TIMSS uses the LIKE operator when searching on screens, you can use the wildcards associated with the LIKE command when searching in TIMSS.

For SQL Server the commands are as follows:

% (percent)- Any string of zero or more characters.
%Council% returns any string with the word Council in it.

_ (underscore)- Any single character.
Sm_th would return both Smith & Smyth, but not Smooth.

[ ] (brackets)- Any single character within the specified range ([a-f]) or set ([abcdef]).
[CK]ars[eo]n would return Carson, Carsen, or Karson.

[^] (brackets with caret)- Any single character not within the specified range ([^a-f]) or set ([^abcdef]).
De[^l]% would return strings beginning with De, but not Del.

I usually use the percent as most people do, but I find the underscore especially helpful when searching for batches.

For those of you on Oracle, the percent and underscore work, but not the brackets.

Applies to: TIMSS5 & TIMSS6