Paragon Software International, Inc.
The CRIME system has gained a new function for printing reports call CRIME E-Reports. E-Reports is a program that runs on your Windows desktop and takes full advantage of almost any printer your PC can use without requiring any special configurations to handle the printer. E-Reports will print well formatted reports edge to edge on the paper providing a crisp well spaced easy to read report, unlike other printing solutions that bunch up the lines and use small wimpy fonts. Special fonts created at our own font foundry produce crisp bold output without confusion over similar looking characters (such as I, l, and 1). E-Reports runs on your desktop and provides immediate previews of your output and local control for deleting, saving, and reprinting reports. Reports can also be saved in PDF format for distribution through email. Another very easy to use feature is the built in redacting. Any printed output can be redacted interactively with our report previewer before printing it.
Below is a picture of E-Reports running with one of our custom skins on a Windows 2000 machine. E-Reports runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP (and soon Vista) while providing a consistent visual presence and operation.
E-Reports List of Features
ü Print preview
ü Document redacting
ü Save reports to PDF format
ü PDFs are secured to prevent alteration
ü Save and reprint reports
ü Imbedded logos and art work in reports
ü Imbedded signatures for form letters
ü Custom font for crisp output
ü Edge to edge printing to maximize readability
ü Ultra fast PDF creation
Automatic Management of Reports
Automatic management of printed reports provides the ability to reprint any report while eliminating the need to manually empty the trash. If the printer jams up you can easily reprint the report. New reports are placed in the "Ready" tab until printing is complete and are then placed into the "Printed" tab. All reports printed yesterday are placed into the trash today. Everything that was in the trash yesterday is deleted today. Any report you wish to keep can be placed into the saved tab where it will stay until it is manually deleted. You can pull any report out of the trash and either reprint it or save it. Since printed reports are not gone, simply filed under "Printed", you can also view them again later. If you printed a report and distributed it, but now want to look at it again, just double click the report with the preview option checked.
Ultra Fast PDF Creation
If you have worked with PDF files before you know how slow the tools from the original PDF manufacturer are. A 100 page report was taking over 8 minutes using the original PDF manufacturer's tools. This same report using our PDF creation tool took only 4 seconds. This kind of speed opens up many creative uses for printing large quantities of information and archiving it or transmitting it to other parties.
Report Sample
This is a close up view of a sample report so you can see the clean bold lines of the characters.
Report Preview
The report preview program will display a report if the preview check box is checked. Below is an example of the report preview program. From within the preview program you can decide to print or save to PDF. The preview program provides several tools for easily and quickly redacting information in a report.
Redacting Reports
Any information in a report can be covered up (redacted). This is very quick and easy to do and will make an excellent tool for releasing information to the public. All those situation where "White Out" or black marker is used to cover up a name or a date of birth and then run through the copier can be done using the redacting feature.
In this screen shot we see the previously shown incident (zoomed to 200% for easier viewing in this document). Redacting mode has been clicked which changes the cursor to this cross hair. Then you simply left click and drag the mouse to draw a box over the information you wish to cover up. In this example you can see the name first contacts name has a dashed box drawn over it as the mouse has been dragged to form the rectangle. When you let go of the left mouse button a grey box is drawn covering up the information (second screen). This was previously done to the phone number on this screen.
Saving as a PDF
To save as a PDF file, click on the "Save" button in the menu bar at the top of the preview screen. The cursor is pointing to the button in the following screen shot. Then fill out the save dialog screen to tell it where you want the PDF file stored.
If you wanted to save a report to PDF, but forgot to turn on preview, just click on the preview check box and re-print the report. To reprint the report, go to the "Printed" pane, find the report and double click it (or click on the report and click on the print button)
Example Reports
Here are some examples of what E-Reports can do.
This is a form letter generated with a color logo imbedded in it. Art work can be used for back grounds, letter head, or even signatures.
Here is a small sample of a standard CRIME query report. Notice the bold headings and large title. These are just standard output for the query, no special intervention is required to achieve this. The preview program automatically adjusts the window size to match the report layout.
This is a sample Weekly Statistical Report:
This is a sample state form generated using E-Reports:
Other E-Report Usage Instructions
Setting Options
To set E-Report options, click on the "Options" button on the right side.
That will present the options window shown below:
Setting the Printer
From this window you can set the printer that will be used by E-Reports. Any printer your PC can see can be used here. Click the drop down arrow to see a list of printers installed on your PC, then click one.
Other Settings
The E-Reports Location will be set by someone from your IS staff. This is an administrative item that is required to be set before using E-Reports. It requires a password to change and you have to click the edit button to initiate it.
Likewise, the "Request Password" check box should only be set by someone from your IS staff. It is only to be used when the PC is from a different domain than where CRIME is placing the reports. If checked, E-Reports will ask the user for a user name and password to use to login to a foreign network.
Implementation Requirements
The announced product or product enhancement has the following listed requirements prior to, during, or after installation as indicated below:
[ NO ] Down time required to implement.
[ YES ] Requires additional training before installation.
[ NO ] Requires modification or preparation of data before installation.
[ NO ] Requires brief unavailability of the affected module.
[ NO ] Requires modification of data after installation.
Training
Once this product is installed and setup by IS staff, minimal interaction is required. Most people will be able to learn how to use it after reading this announcement and trying out the program.
Pricing
This is where it gets tough. In this day and age when everything is priced per user or per PC, can you afford to buy this software with all these features? Yes, Yes you can, because it is supplied at no additional cost as part of the standard support agreement. It requires no additional software to run either (such as Adobe PDF software). Everything you need is built in. It is site licensed so you can run it on as many PCs as desired.
Status and Availability
E-Reports is available immediately and can be downloaded from our web site. Look for it on our downloads page under the help desk section. Click this link http://www.paragons.com/hddownld.htm to get to the down loads page if your browser supports this.