Email Issues:

We have received some calls where ASW’s email system was no longer working with gmail accounts.  We do not use gmail, so we had to do some research.  Google and Microsoft are adopting a new standard to make emails more secure.  It is using oAuth, a protocol that is emerging.  We are working to find the simplest way to have you implement these changes, but both companies have made it very complex, and there are lot of “hoops to jump through”.  The bottom line is that you will end up having to do some complex work on your end to get the proper authorization codes from these companies, and to set your accounts to allow you to send emails through their services.

 

Quickbooks:

Some people are using Quickbooks for their accounting and may have implemented the interface that writes your invoice and customer data directly to QB from ASW when you close a workorder.  This was all included to work with the desktop version of QB.  Now, Intuit is moving to their cloud based system only and fully phasing out the desktop versions.  ( Of course you don’t have to upgrade away from that if you are using an earlier version ).  We decided to look at being able to output directly to the cloud version, and it really should be a simple process.  However, so far we are finding a lot of red tape, new fees, etc. that complicate the process.  We’ll keep working on this.

 

AI:

There is a lot of talk about AI, and MANY companies are providing their own products.  When you use them on their webpage, you can do some things for free, but when interfacing with them in a program, they have fee based models.  Even so, there are two implementations of AI in ASW, and we are working on a rather fascinating option to also implement on your local data.  However, please remember that AI is in it’s infancy, and you should NEVER count on it’s accuracy.  

CoPilot:  ( F3 key ):  This is Microsoft’s initial AI model built into Windows 11.  You can enter a question, it will search for answers and display what it finds.  It may be fairly limited.

Gemini: ( F4 key ):  This is newly implemented in this version, but it’s a bit more complex.  You will need to go to Google’s website and get an ID key for Gemini.  Copy it, then in ASW, under Tools -> Setup you will see AI Key.  Click on that and paste in your gemini key.  Exit ASW and when you come back in, the F4 key will give you the prompt for a question.  Be specific if you want realistic answers.

All AI models are designed for the companies to make profits so they will all be asking for money.  Also, again remember they are in their infancy, and though they may appear to be impressive, they have a whole lot to learn, and they don’t always hit the right target.

 

We’ll keep you updated as these developments take place.