Welcome to the Atrex 21 beta. Please take a few minutes to read through this document
BEFORE installing the beta version, as it should answer most of the questions that you have with regards to the beta.
The purpose of this beta is to flush out any bugs or program anomalies that were not caught during the development of the package. While suggestions are always welcome, please be aware that Atrex 21 is in the final stages of development and suggestions made at this point in the development cycle will be logged for consideration for a future version.
Program Changes and New Features:
The changes between the latest versions of Atrex can be viewed from the following links:
Instructions for Installing the Atrex 21 Beta
The Atrex 21 beta is a "LIVE" beta, meaning that it will behave exactly like the final production version. If you install the version 21 beta on a system that already has an older version of Atrex installed, it WILL overwrite that previous installation and will automatically convert your data from the older version forward for use with Atrex 21.
The instructions for installing version 21 depend upon the type of configuration you are currently running and which version of Atrex you upgrading from:
The
beta download files are available
here.
Important Notes: (Please read ALL of the notes)
- Data Compatibility: Once data from an older version is converted forward to Atrex 21, it cannot be converted back. Make sure you make backups of your data before you install and convert your data for use with Atrex 21. If you wish to move from v21 back to an older version of Atrex, you will need to restore from a backup made in the older version prior to the data conversion to v21.
- Credit Card Processing / Signature Capture:
Credit card and signature capture plug-ins must be updated to Atrex 21 compatible versions. The Topaz signature plug-in on the main downloads page has been updated for v21 comptatibility. The updated credit card processing modules are available from your Client Center
. Please note that the credit card processing modules are stable but are still being modified for the Atrex 21 release As such, the behaviour of the card processing may change between builds, and an additional update to the processing plug-ins may be required.
- Exception Reports: The beta version may include a built in error report utility. If the beta version encounters a problem that results in a memory access violation or a memory leak, you will be prompted to send the exception report to our development team. The information included in this exception report will help us identify the specific line of code that failed. If you wish to view the information being sent, click on the details button of the exception message before sending. Please note that memory leaks are detected and reported AFTER Atrex is closed and can appear as a hung instance of Atrex in Task Manager while it's processing the leak information.
- Performance: The performance of the beta version may vary noticeably between builds due to the debugging and error reporting functionality. This may be especially evident during program startup and shutdown.
- Custom Reports: Version 21 can use almost any report created in Atrex 11, 12, 13 in compatibility mode which will be turned on automatically during the conversion . Custom reports designed for Atrex 14 and newer will work without any modifications in v21, but
once a report is modified in version 21, it is no longer compatible
with older versions of Atrex.
- Registration: The registration and evaluation functionality is identical to the standard version of the package. If you are licensed for Atrex 16 or higher, your registration information will be retrieved and used in the beta.
- Beta Expirations and Updates: All beta versions will have built in expiration dates, anywhere between 7 and 30 days, getting longer as we approach the final release. This ensures that users are working with relatively current builds, which in turn reduces the number of bug reports sent to us as they are corrected. Beta updates will be posted periodically as needed.
- Documentation: The Atrex help has been updated for version 21. The users guide has not been updated for the beta and will most likely not be updated prior to the full release of Atrex 21.
- Table Changes: There may be a few changes in the first few weeks of the beta that will require
the addition of a few new fields in several of the tables. Please run the
Batch Processing with the "Verify Table Structures" option selected after
each beta update.
- eCommerce Utilities: Atrex 21 compatible versions of the Zen Cart and WooCommerce utilities are availbale on the beta downloads page.
- Windows 7/8 Compatibility: While Atrex 21 will currently run on Windows 7 and 8, there are known issues with some components and images not displaying correctly. Millennium Software will not be performing any compatibility testing for any version of Windows older than Windows 10, nor will we be making any program changes in Atrex for Windows 7, or 8 compatibility in the event that there any incompatibilities are discovered.
- Pricing: The current Atrex pricing is available at http://atrex.com/atrex.asp. It has not yet been determined if there will be any changes to the Atrex pricing in conjunction with the Atrex 21 release. If you are coming from Atrex 15 or older, the pricing model for Atrex 21 has changed significantly, so please keep this in mind before installing the Atrex 21 beta.
Beta Support and Bug Reports:
As this is a live beta, support is available via our normal support options, but we do request that for non-urgent issues or bug reports that you use the following options:
When reporting a bug, please be as specific and detailed as possible to inform us where in the program you experienced the problem and how it can be reproduced. Insufficient information may result in the bug not being corrected for the final release.
The minimum information that we need is:
- The build number and build date of your Atrex. (Options – System Information)
- Where in the program you are experiencing the problem.
- Detailed steps to reproduce the problem
- Operating System, if the issue appears to be related to the OS .
In some instances, we will request that you send us your data in order to attempt correction of the problem.