CardScan Prophet Blog

CardScan and Prophet Blog - Links

>>Prophet Rave
>>Buzz Builder - Prophet Review
>>Getting Peer to Peer to work in Prophet with Dynamic ports
>>CardScan 800C Hardware

My Prophet Rave - In an email to a client recently I wrote the following:"At the moment we are caught up in the buzz about the Prophet CRM application that MYOB use as it’s “Client Connect CRM”. It is out of the USA by a company called Avidian. It works inside Outlook and we have already put it through its paces with an office with five users and it hasn’t missed a trick, it just works. It won’t be long before this well kept secret is out of the box and inside everyone's Outlook. At USD$199.00 to own their Advanced licence outright it gives all the big players a real run for their money and the clincher that would really upset the big guys is that it is simple and easy to use and because of that it gets used. The biggest tick for us is that we finally have a CRM that tightly synchs with CardScan straight out of the box with standard CardScan Exec or Team Software. One minute I am scanning the card in CardScan the next I am building an opportunity around the new contact in Prophet. The way it should be… please forgive the pre Christmas rave…I get way too excited about CardScan and contact management…and Yes I need to get out more.." Cheers RT, 15-12-09

Prophet CRM Software from Avidian Superior to ACT!, Goldmine, Maximizer, and Salesforce

By Patrick Galvin. When I first started shopping for CRM software, I thought choosing ACT! from Sage Software would be a no brainer. Even though I had never used ACT! in the past, I had always heard that it was the best CRM system for small businesses. Yet, when I started poking around, I found hundreds of horrible reviews complaining about buggy, slow, and ineffective software that was giving users fits. Check out the product review page on Amazon to see how ACT! is driving people nuts.

I looked at other CRM systems such as Goldmine, Maximiser and SalesForce. These systems were all more expensive than my budget allowed, and they all suffered the wrath of many users and media critics. Thanks to Google, I discovered Prophet, a CRM alternative from Avidian in Bellevue Washington. The positive user testimonials that I discovered on the Prophet website were intriguing, and I couldn't find any negative review through the major search engines. Instead, I discovered a lot of positive press that convinced me to buy the product.

Prophet is simple add-in for Microsoft Outlook which allows me to leverage my existing contact database with cool features such as enhanced contact management; a sales assistant that lets me send pre-set, timed e-mails to my contacts; a workflow engine that helps me automate sales-cycle actions and create consistent sales processes; advanced reporting options; and an opportunity-management console. I was particularly impressed with how easy it was to set up, and I nearly fell out of my Aeron chair when I called the company for assistance and a live service person answered the call on three rings and was able to solve my problem on the spot. Figuring out how to use Prophet has been no harder than learning how to utilize Outlook.

While Avidian might be newer to the CRM game than some vaunted competitors, there is no doubt that it will dethrone some of its competitors. Avidian is a quality product that is so easy to install and use that positve word of mouth is inevitable. By Patrick Galvin

Prophet by Avidian - Peer to Peer Setup with Dynamic Ports. I really can't take the credit for this solution to a problem with getting Peer to Peer working with Prophet. That credit goes to David Rainer at PC Fitness I was just his student so to speak. After installing Prophet successfully on various machines we were unsuccessful in connecting the machines to each other after Peer to Peer was turmed on. David explained that where you are using an instance of SQL Server 2005 Express there are two services that are important and need to be running on each machine these services are SQL Server itself (SQL Server (PROPHETSQL)) to be exact and SQL Server Browser which manages connectivity to the database. These services are used by applications on the local machine as well as applications on the network that need to connect to SQL Server. When we checked both these services were running so this was not the problem. David then checked what ports were being used on the local machine so that he could work out what ports were being used by these services and to check to see if the services were using the default ports that you would expect. (Not sure how he brought up the screen with these ports) The services should have been using port 1433 however when we opened SQL Server Configuration Manager from the Start/All Programs we noticed that the port number in Dynamic Ports was different (see screen shot below.

We changed this by deleting the Dynamic Port number and allocating the expected port 1433 in the TCP Port Box. Once this was done for both services we then had to restart the services. Restarting the machine will do the same thing. Changing this port was an assumption that the Prophet Peer to Peer was looking for this port to get its Contact and Opportunity sharing working. After these changes were made we need to then check that we could connect to these services locally and then from the other Peer to Peer machines.

This is where David Rainer from PC Fitness in Crows Nest Sydney Australia taught me a cool way to test connecting to services using Telnet. He opened the command prompt (DOS box) and typed in the following "telnet localhost 1433" and hit enter. If a telnet session opens you can connect to the service. (To close the telnet session hit Ctrl and ] keys" I think :-) This worked for us on our local machine we then went to a Peer to Peer machine and did the same thing however we replaced the "localhost" section with the machine name of the PC we were trying to connect to. It also worked. Then we we retried Prophet Peer to Peer it all just came to life as you would expect. BTW and an important step was that we did all this with the Windows Firewall off initially and then when we turned the firewall back on again we had to make an exception for this port in the firewall. All in all though I can't speak highly enough about David and his assistance. The world needs more guys like David Rainer from PCFitness. Written By RT from Abditech 18-12-09

Hardware Review of the CardScan 800C scanner. One of the features that impresses me about the CardScan 800C vs other

scanners is the maturity and level of sophistication they have built into their scanners. For CardScan fans it seems obvious however it is not until you see another business card scanner in action that you realise how much you have been taking CardScan for granted. "No I don't take my 800C to bed with me."

Little things like asking a customer over the phone do you have a blue light or a red light on your scanner. If you have a blue light then your PC and CardScan software knows about the unit and it is working fine if the light is red then you have a problem. If the light is purple "purple light syndrome" you can talk to me privately about a bad batch of firmware back in early 2007 where both the blue light and red light try to compete with one another. I digress....back to the LED indication light... Try doing that with a small business card scanner that does not have a LED light on it. Many of the imitation scanners don't have a light for simple diagnostic purposes. Then you take the small sensor inside the scanner that Auto detects the business card or ID Card. When you use CardScan once again you just take it for granted, you slide your card in and CardScan takes the card and scans it through, no mucking about with the software trying to click a button in your application to start the scanning process.

If you tried to build a business card scanning solution and you don't include this feature you are obviously not thinking about how people want to scan business cards. It has to be simple and painless. I haven't even started talking about the CardScan Software yet. Finally you cannot rave about CardScan without a mention of its robustness and durability. Three years ago when we started selling CardScan we were a little worried about the 2 year warranty. Think about it... 2 years of scanning cards, lugged around in a laptop bag, thrown across desks to colleagues, in and out of countless airport baggage handling systems, you only have to look at a laptop owned by an executive who travels a lot with his PC and the state of his PC after a year let alone two years. You have to ask yourself are these guys (The CardScan manufacturers) insane.

Then we started selling scanners into the hotel industry for scanning guest business cards (at least that is the principal use...amongst other things such as scanning and printing IDs to a Dymo labelwriter400) hmmm. 50+ uses a day, used by front desk staff not known for their appreciation and soft touch with electronic equipment and yet..two years later the scanners continue to churn through business cards and IDs without missing a beat. They could do with a scanner cleaning card swiped through the rollers once in a while. "Hint Hint if you happen to be a hotel front desk staff member flogging your poor 800C to death". I kid you not the only problem I have had with the 800C was when a small piece of grit go stuck in the small plastic internal cogs that drive the rollers. A small Phillips head screw driver later and a toothpick to remove the grit and I was back up and running, problem solved. Cheers RT, 18-12-09

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