Latest Abraquest Releases

This post gives some information on the progress with recent major updates to Abraquest and what this is likely to mean in terms of further updates for this month.

Earlier this month we provided a major update to Abraquest to replace the previous automatic updater and licencing system, along with major updates to both Issue/Returns (the most commonly used part of Abraquest) and the Reporting System which were carried out in November and December but which were unavailable to a lot of customers due to the problems with the former.

I am pleased to announce that what has been the biggest update in one go for Abraquest has gone smoothly for most customers, with just one or two that have experienced problems of some kind.

The majority of these problems are related to correct installation procedure on secure networks (where the library user does not have permission to install software, so I am going to write a blog post later today, and update the documentation with correct procedures, which havn't changed as such but were inadequately documented.

I am also pleased to say that Run as Administrator, which is still required in some networks, is no longer required by Abraquest after the initial install. If Abraquest prompts you with "Do you want to make changes to your computer" when you start it, your system administrator has set run as Administrator and again the next blog post will explain what should be done about this.

Finally, if an error was to occur in any copy of Abraquest, either customer or evaluation, we receive an email immediately from the system with details of the message. We are getting a small number after all these recent changes, so in future, while we are planning a new release every month or couple of months, it is likely that for January there will be one release per week to resolve any small issues that crop up. If your system is running fine, then you can ignore these updates until the end of the month, and just update then, to save you having to update it 2 or 3 times.

I feel we are almost at the end of this stage of Abraquest development and will be shortly starting the Unattended Issue/Return release as soon as the last few remaining issues are cleared up - i.e. in the next couple of weeks.

About the author

Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson has been a software developer since 1983 and has been involved with Abraquest since 2004. He is the director of Spherical Software Limited (www.sphericalsoftware.com), the company that owns Abraquest.