halFILE 4.0 Release - July 17th, 2012

We are very pleased to announce that we will officially be releasing halFILE 4.0 tomorrow morning.  At the end of day we will have 50 desktops functioning with the new version.  Many thanks to our Beta testers both internal and external that have provided feedback on the new release.  We hope you enjoy the new features and hope to continue to add new functionality based on your input as we continue to grow with this new version.  Don't forget to prepare your desktops for 4.0 by going to http://update.halfile.com and installing the prerequisites.  This will greatly assist us in migrating you to the new release.  Be sure to e-mail James Tabor if you want to get on the list to obtain 4.0.

halFILE 4.0 Prerequisites

Get an early start on your transition to halFILE 4.0.  Just click here: http://update.halfile.com and you will be able to install the prerequisites on your workstations in preparation for the upcoming release of halFILE 4.0.  This will be a required first step for anyone wishing to upgrade to halFILE 4.0  If you would like to get on the list of early adopters please email support@halfile.com and let us know.

Spring Road Trips!

Greetings... April and May have given me the opportunity to visit with some great people.  Here's a summary:

Tehama County (Red Bluff), CA

On April 18^th Richard Hahn and I visited with hal System clients in the Tehama County Tax Collector and Assessor offices. They took time away from their demanding schedules to meet with us and allowed us to observe their workflow. We answered some questions, made a few recommendations, and came away with some great ideas.

On the following day, the Tehama County Recorder’s office graciously hosted a meeting.  Patrick Honny (Executive Director with CeRTNA), Richard and I spent the day with hal clients from 6 northern CA Recorder offices.

We began with a tour and e-Recording demonstration.  Tehama County has been beta testing the hal-CeRNTA G2G interface over the past several months, beginning with electronic submissions from the CA Board of Equalization, followed by the Department of Employment.  The demo illustrated how much time electronic submissions save.  The Recorder's office is looking forward to adding more government submitters followed by full ERDS.

During lunch the group shared and compared how halFILE is being utilized within various county departments.  Afterward we focused on some of the new features bundled into CountyCashier 3.5 and halFILE 4.0 followed by discussions on troubleshooting and ways hal Systems can further facilitate daily duties and improve response time.
 

West Des Moines, IA

On Monday, May 7^th, I was an exhibitor at the Iowa Land Title Association’s annual convention in West Des Moines.  The welcome was warm and the weather was perfect (and gas was only $3.39 per gallon!). 

halFILE is used to maintain title plants in 17 Iowa counties.  Many clients attended the conference. It was great opportunity to check in and catch up.  Everyone is staying busy and eager to see version 4.0.

The agenda was packed with interesting speakers.  The Association generously allotted each Exhibitor with 15 minutes in front of the group on Monday afternoon.  I used the time to provide an overview of hal Systems’ software and services.

Congratulations to John Eisenman!  John was named Title Person of the Year at the banquet Monday night for his numerous contributions to ILTA and his community.  John, along with his partner Mark Mallicoat, own Abstract and Title Guaranty with offices in Clinton and Maquoketa.  They have been valued clients for over 12 years.

I’m headed to Rapid City in June for the South Dakota Land Title conference.  Come see me!

Happy Birthday, hal!!

Yes today, April 12th, is hal System's 38th birthday. Our longevity is rare and it's because of great employees, great products, and wonderful customers. Thank you everyone!!

Update on halFILE 4.0

Hopefully by now everyone knows the release of halFILE 4.0 is on the horizon. We are very excited about the release and appear to be on schedule for release in June 2012. We continue to work closely with our Beta Testers to resolve as many issues as possible before the final release.

The initial Beta release did not include support for Kofax (the optional free viewer) viewing or scanning. We have released and are currently testing the Kofax viewer so that those of you that wish to continue to use the Kofax viewer will be able to. We are currently in the process of converting the Kofax scan module so that will be available as well.

The huge number of rows that the new system can return when searching continues to be one of the favorite things reported by end users. From an administrative perspective it’s going to be great to have a single Crystal Reports version and installation so no more hunting down that Crystal cd for us.

So you might be wondering what you can do to prepare for the release of halFILE 4.0. We are currently in the process of updating our website and soon there will be a number of workstation pre-requisites available athttp://update.halfile.com. These include .NET 4.0 and the Crystal workstation components. .NET 4.0 can take quite some time to install so we are hoping to make the pre-requisites available to you so you can prepare your workstations for the new version. We hope to include a program that will run on any workstation currently running halFILE 3.0 and will report what items you may still need to install. Hopefully the web-site will be simple and easy to use.

Reminder – your halFILE 4.0 upgrade will be available to you at no charge as long as you are a customer currently on maintenance. We are excited about this release and will keep you posted as the release date approaches!!!

HUG prospects for 2012

We are now formulating our halFILE Users Group schedule for 2012. We hope to have a California event, training classes in Dallas and, with positive response from you HUGites out there, a full conference in the Fall. We are also exploring web-based training, still in the early stages.

But we need to hear from you to learn what kind of halFILE events you would like to participate in this year. Send a note to Karen Duncan and let her know!

Countyrecords.com saves the day!

This week a long-time halFILE user learned the advantage of putting their land records on Countyrecords.com. This is a single server site and, unfortunately, that single server crashed. They thought they had a backup but there was none to be found. So they completely lost their core business database, their Title Plant, data and images.

But that's where Countyrecords.com saved the day.

As our partner on Countyrecords.com, they were automatically uploading their Title Plant data and images once a week to our server. Essentially, Countyrecords.com became their backup. So today, hal Technical Support reinstalled halFILE and reloaded their data. Tonite, we are overnighting about 500,000 images to them. Once those are copied to their system, this company will be back in business.

Oh, but wait! I guess they really were ALREADY back in business since during their down time, we provided them with a user login to Countyrecords.com so they could search their Title Plant records.

Can't put your records up on Countyrecords.com? You can still subscribe to the halFILE Backup Service. All the same backup features as above at a reasonable fee. Don't let your business go up in smoke! Take advantage of these great off-site backup services from hal Systems Corporation.