Q. How many users can access the My Clients & Profits! X web server at the same time?

There is no artificial limit on the number of users who can use My Clients & Profits! X. The number of concurrent users is limited by the performance of the computer that's running My Clients & Profits! X, the available bandwidth of your internet connection, the speed of your Clients & Profits file server, and the amount of traffic on the network. The My Clients & Profits! X server uses one user license regardless of the number of users accessing it at one time.  

Q. Will My Clients & Profits! X work with any version of Clients & Profits?

Your shop needs to be using Clients & Profits Classic 10.1, Clients & Profits Pro 10.1, Clients & Profits Enterprise Edition 10.1, or Job Tracker 10.1 before it can use My Clients & Profits! X. Earlier versions of C&P Classic, C&P Pro, C&P SQL and Job Tracker must be upgraded before installing the My C&P! X web server. For upgrade information, call Clients & Profits Sales at (800) 272-4488.  

Q. Do we need a high-powered PC to run the My Clients & Profits! X web server?

No, but the performance of My Clients & Profits! X will be better with a comparatively faster server. A practical idea would be to start off first with a Pentium 4 PC, or late model G4 or G5 Macintosh, and monitor its performance as more people use My Clients & Profits! X. As the server's volume increases you'll probably notice a slow down in performance, at which time a faster computer is justified.   

Q. How do I set up a domain name (e.g., "my.advertising.com") for our My Clients & Profits! X web server?

Contact your ISP (i.e., internet service provider) and request a new domain name that points to the IP address of your My C&P! X web server. We recommend adding the prefix "my" to your shop's domain name to identify the web server. For example, an agency with the domain name of "www.advertising.com" would name its My C&P! X web server as "my.advertising.com" Adding a prefix to your domain name is free, unlike setting up a brand-new domain name. A new, unique name can also be registered with any domain name registry for approximately $40 per year. Either way, the name you choose for the My C&P! X web server will be entered by web users as the URL to access the Clients & Profits database from a browser.   

Q. Do all Clients & Profits users automatically have access to the My C&P! X web server?

No. The My Clients & Profits! X web administrator (who will typically be the C&P system manager) needs to set up accounts in My C&P! X for each web user. My Clients & Profits! X does feature a one-click shortcut to automatically create web accounts from existing users. Once each web user account is added, its access privileges and web password need to be entered before the user can use My Clients & Profits! X.   

Q. How do we keep one client from seeing another client's jobs?

Web users who are clients are limited to seeing only their own jobs on their Client Job Status web page, based on the user's My C&P! X access privileges.  

Q. We don't want people outside the office accessing My Clients & Profits! X. Is that possible?

Yes. You can limit access to the My Clients & Profits! X web server to only users in your office -- your intranet -- by keeping the web server's IP address off the internet. One way is to assign an internal IP address to the web server. Another solution is to install a firewall that blocks outside access to the web server's IP address. With either solution, only users that are physically located within the office's intranet will be able to access My Clients & Profits! X.   

Q. Can someone use My Clients & Profits! X even if they only have a dial-in modem connection?

Yes, but the web pages they request will display more slowly. Whether it's too slow or not depends on how much work a user does with My Clients & Profits! X and if it's tolerable. If the web page loads too slowly for a user, the only option is to increase the speed of the internet connection with DSL, cable, etc.   

Q. Is the My Clients & Profits! X server secure?

No. My Clients & Profits! X does not support SSL, so it can't establish a secure connection between the server and a user.  

Q. How do we back up our work in My Clients & Profits! X?

Since My Clients & Profits! X is just a gateway to the shop's Clients & Profits database, it doesn't store any data. All of the web user accounts, preferences, and more is saved in the C&P database on your file server. So your current backup system (you do have one, right?) doesn't change. My Clients & Profits! X has an option to automatically stop the web server and close and reopen the database at a specified time. With this setting, you'll never need to manually shut down My C&P! X for the nightly backup.   

Q. Why can't we print estimates that look presentable to the client?

It's not so much a limitation of My Clients & Profits! X as it is a limitation of HTML. HTML doesn't provide anywhere close to the precision needed to print a presentation-quality estimate, invoice, or other form. HTML offers very little control over typography, line spacing, and kerning, which you'd need to produce a Clients & Profits-like form. If you look at forms from other web sites, you'll see that they're not much different than what's printed from My Clients & Profits! X. In fact, Explorer and other browsers don't do anything special to print a web page -- what you see on the computer screen is what you get on paper. That's one reason why we don't promote My C&P! X as a replacement for the regular Clients & Profits software; instead, we see its role for now simply a way to remotely access your company's database when you're out of the office. A new feature in My Clients & Profits! X has a "printer-friendly" version of the estimate that shows most, but not all, of the estimate's formatting options. It's close to the printed Clients & Profits estimate, but it's still doesn't look as good.

Q. Why can't I use My C&P! X to connect to remote offices?

With My Clients & Profits! X, you can. The new upgrade utilizes a user's cookie to identify them during their session. This allows a remote office with share one (or a few) external IPs among many users, so My C&P! X no longer sees them as the same user.

Q. What do the error messages in the log file mean?

Error message are logged whenever the My Clients & Profits! X web server encounters a TCP/IP problem that causes a communication failure with the web user's request. These messages are logged to let the web administrator manager know when My C&P! X needs attention. The TCP errors include:

-509 Web Enabler : Socket passed to command is invalid.
-522 Web Enabler : Timeout while waiting for response
-10054 Web Enabler : Timeout while waiting for response

These errors indicate a problem between the user's browser and My Clients & Profits! X, which can occur unexpectedly for various reasons (but almost always involve an incomplete request from the browser to the web server). Since all web request are automatically retried when they failure, users generally don't notice any delay getting web pages back from My Clients & Profits! X. In very rare cases the My C&P! X server will need to be restarted. If these errors are occuring constantly, it is likely another program or service is also using the same port you are using to run the My C&P! X web server -- and which will cause problems with My Clients & Profits! X (however, the port can be changed in Preferences).

Q. What do I have to do to be able to administer My C&P! X from my browser?

In order to set up users' web access to enable browser-based My C&P! X administration, you will need to check to make sure that they are set up as Clients & Profits manager-level users and their web users' ID matches their C&P user ID.

Q. When I have the My C&P! X server set to auto-start, can anyone just walk up and change anything they would like?

No. When you set up the My C&P! X server to auto-start, it start the server but does not log in as a user. This means that the My C&P! X pages will still be available from the outside, but the server settings (e.g. User access/passwords) will not be accessible unless someone also logs in on to the server.

Q. Why don't forms like expense reports print as cleanly as they do in Clients & Profits? The only way to print an expense report is to use my browser's print function, which prints the entire screen, including the fields to enter data, causing the printout to continue onto a second printed page?

You can't design HTML-based web pages with the same kind of precision as a Clients & Profits window or report, which is a limitation of the HTML language. Part of the reason is because the expense report web page is actually a form, not a report, so it's there to enter data instead of display some results. A lot of web pages get around this by having a "printer-friendly" link that prints the form as a report, removing the unneeded fields and labels. HTML was never designed to display complex reports (which wasn't needed at the time it was invented), so doesn't yet have the formatting tools that you need to produce a tight, highly-formatted report. This means all of the reports printed from My Clients & Profits! X will look a bit oversized and clumsy compared to the same reports printed from Clients & Profits.

Q. The pages in My Clients & Profits! X load slowly compared to our other web server. Is there something I can do to speed it up?

Since My C&P X is designed to be a data server, it is not optimized to serve pages with lots of graphics. Graphic-intensive web pages, such as the My C&P! X home page, will load slowly due to number of links on the page. There's no way to speed up the page other than making sure the server is adequately powered to handle the load. Also, since My C&P! X pages can be customized, you can remove or simplify the page's graphics to reduce the load on the server . This can easily be done by someone with HTML and/or web design experience.