CRIS Forms News December, 1997 CRISFRMS VER. 6.5 -- REQUIRED UPDATE! WEB FORMS AND CHECKLISTS -- ON BOOKMARKING ! AD-416/417/662 WEB FORMS WEB FORMS NEWS -- HINTS WEB FORMS NEWS -- REPORTING ERRORS ====================================================== Web Site: http://ctr.uvm.edu/cris CRISFRMS VER. 6.5 -- REQUIRED UPDATE! IF YOU ARE USING CRISFRMS AND HAVE NOT ALREADY UPGRADED, PLEASE DO SO NOW! AND REMEMBER, with CRISFRMS 6.5, you must now send 3 files to CRIS for AD-416s: CRIS416.DAT, CRIS416.PJO, and CRIS416.CST. Likewise, you MUST NOW SEND 3 FILES to CRIS for the AD-421s: CRIS421.PRO, CRIS421.TER, and CRIS421.CST. If you don't wish to upgrade, you may use the Web Forms instead. No file transfers are necessary with the Web Forms. If you are unable to obtain the upgrade from the Web site, contact Pat Downer (pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu) for diskettes. Bug discovered in 6.5a... sorry! The regional project number was not correctly translated to the CRIS416.CST file. That is now fixed in CRISFRMS 6.5b. IF you already have 6.5a and you will be sending any AD-416s for Regional Projects to CRIS, you will need 6.5b. To update from 6.5a to 6.5b, you only need the file COPYFRM1.EXE. Your data will not be effected in any way by upgrading. The current version is called 6.5c, but 6.5b is the same... you do not need to upgrade from 6.5b to 6.5c. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. As always, you can still use older versions to collect and manage data, but you MUST USE 6.5 to generate the 3 files that are sent to CRIS! However, at the point that you experience problems using older versions, you must upgrade! It becomes increasingly difficult to justify providing support for older versions. Therefore, if you call for assistance with older versions, we may not be able to help you. You can get CRISFRMS 6.5 on the Web site by choosing the "Program Update" link under "Using CRISFRMS". Again, if you need diskettes, contact Pat Downer, pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu with your agency code, name and address. WEB FORMS AND CHECKLISTS -- ON BOOKMARKING ! If you are a Web Forms participating site or if you are just using Web Forms for your checklist, you MUST NOT bookmark any page that contains the name "iris.uvm.edu" or "aster.uvm.edu". There are 2 reasons for this; first, iris and aster are the Web servers that run programs and store data for you, but all those programs need information about your site which is passed along to each successive program. You can't just jump into the middle of a program without this information -- if you do, you will generate an error. The pages with the name "iris" and "aster" are called "virtual" Web pages -- they don't exist anywhere, they are generated "on the fly" as you run programs. The other reason is that we will be switching from time to time between aster and iris. The only server that will remain the same is ctr. So feel free to bookmark any URL with the name "ctr.uvm.edu". Those are all "static" web pages -- documents that actually exist on that server. DO NOT BOOKMARK any "iris" or "aster" pages, even for data downloads; if you do, you may not be getting your "live" data. Please go through the appropriate pages starting at "ctr" to download data. This is good practice of all Web sites -- you should only bookmark home pages (the starting page for any site). AD-416/417/662 WEB FORMS You may now use the AD-416/417/662 Web forms to collect and submit data to CRIS if you are a Web forms participating site. If you have any problems, notify Pat Downer (pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu) immediately. WEB FORMS NEWS -- HINTS WHEN you become a Web Forms participating site, the FIRST thing you need to do is Review the Administrative functions, and "Edit your Site Information". This is where YOU decide when your site will appear on the list of sites for the AD-421s and/or the AD-416s. Until YOU enable activity at your site for those forms, your site will not appear on the site selection list. This is one way that you can disable use of the Web forms by individuals at your site when you are not actively collecting this information, or when you want to prevent further editing of all forms by individuals (for example, while you are conducting a review, you don't want narratives to be changed). You can also mark projects complete to prevent editing. Check "Frequently Asked Questions" for helpful hints. We try to explain all processes in the text on the pages that you see, but sometimes we don't always make it clear. We have to learn from your feedback. Please let us know whenever a problem occurs... we can't fix it if we don't know about it. WEB FORMS NEWS -- REPORTING ERRORS If you have a problem using the Web forms, don't call CRIS, contact one of the addresses you see on the screen or at the bottom of this message. You might want to pass this information along to others at your site that will be using the Web forms. Whenever a problem occurs, please report it immediately. Copy and paste the message screen that you see into a mail message to pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu, or whatever email address you see on the screen. Then we will see the complete text that you got as well as the time it occurred. (If you do not know how to copy and paste, take a few moments to learn this most basic skill.) If you see the "500 Server Error" message, this probably was not caused by anything you did, but we still need to know the time that you received it. You will not get a reply from us unless we need more information, but it does help to know whenever this happens. All other errors can be traced and fixed, but only if you give us the complete error message. It would also be helpful to know what text you had entered just before you got the error, so again, copy and paste the text you entered on the previous screen by using your "Back" button, then copy and paste the screen into a mail message for us. If you also paste it into a file (wordprocessor, Notepad, or even a mail message to yourself) then you won't lose any work ... you can paste it back into the form when the problem has been fixed. pdowner@zoo.uvm.edu slang@zoo.uvm.edu