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Most recent version of WinSyn dated 16th May 2003 this can be downloaded below from the Download Page.

Changes / improvements since previous version:

1 Reports and Mailmerge A couple of new fields have been added to the mailmerge information. These are Mobile Number and and email address. These also appear on the Custom Report list of fields.

Nov 2002 Changes / improvements:

1 Aliyot A new button has been added to the form used to update and enter a persons details. This will be active for male members who are eligible. A NEW REPORT has been added to the Printing menu to produce lists of the Aliyotees.
2 Multi-User Enhancements To remove the problems some sites were having with database locking a new version of WinSyn. Version 3. Has been created this is fully described in the release notes.


Mar 2002 Changes / improvements:

1 New Mail Merge Field A new mail merge field "Salutation" has been added. This is the name of the member in the form Title followed by Surname. e.g. Mr Cohen. This form is most useful at the beginning of a circular letter where you might have:
Dear {Salutation}


September 2001 Changes / improvements:

1 eMail Features Although it has been possible for some time to store the eMail address for a member until now there has not been much you could do with it. This release allows two important new uses for this information.
1. You can select for reports people who have / or do not have eMail addresses.
2. You can use the eMail addresses stored to create mail out lists.

Access to the new features is through the Reports / Labels / Mail Merge form. Notice the new layout of some of the screen elements. The key portion of the screen is shown in negative.



Here it is blown up:



The "Don't Care / Have eMail Address / NO eMail Address options (as you might guess) are used to specify whether you want to see members on the report who fit those criteria.

The Copy button lets you create a mailing list from the selection you have made. In other words you choose are the criteria for the poeple you want to eMail then click the Copy button. This will create a mailing list for your eMail program. You then swap to he eMail and use Paste to enter this mailing list into the "To" box.

The Delim field lets you set the delimeter (the character you have to insert between eMail addresses when mailing to more than one person). Some eMail programs use a comma others use a semi-colon. Type in the character your eMail program uses. WinSyn will remember it for next time.


August 2001 Changes / improvements:

1 Simplified Upgrade The method used to upgrade WinSyn to the latest version has been (hopefully) made much simpler.
See the section below for details.


January 2001 Changes / improvements:

1 eMail Address A new field has been added to the Household to hold the members eMail address.
Future versions will allow mass eMail mail outs - as eMail is free and immediate this could be a boon. Start collecting those addresses right away!


November 2000 Changes / improvements:

1 Gift Aid The long awaited Gift Aid release:

Whenever a payment is made into a member's account you can specify who made that payment. By default it will be the head of the household. If the head of the household did not make the payment you should select the person who did. This may be another member of the household, another member of the Synagogue or a Non-member. Whoever is chosen as the payer their status will be used when compiling the Gift Aid report. The screen shot below shows you the new payer selection on the accounts form:



The same feature is also available on the Payment form:



The information stored during the payment processing can be accessed from the Banking Sheet print facility. The form that pops up when you make this selection has changed to:



The first two options are those you have been using for some time. The last option produces a similar output to the Covenant Report but shows only those payments which have been made by a validated Gift Aid giver.
2 First Name added to Mail Merge file When producing a letter using mail merge it is friendly to address the recipient by their first name, for example:

Dear Esther

Until this release it was not possible to generate letters with such a heading. The new field (you will find at the end of the list) is called FirstName.


October 2000 Changes / improvements:

1 Various Incremental Improvements The long awaited Gift Aid release is almost ready but in the meantime some changes were urgently required:
HGS Bill enhancements.
Print orientation improvement.
Kingston Bill enhancements.
St Johns Wood Bill enhancements.


December 1999 Changes / improvements:

1 New 'Save Tags' feature If you wished to assign a whole bunch of people to a Group / Committee you had a tedious job ahead of you - find the household, bring up the member's form bring up the Committee Membership form, then add that person to the committee.
Not any more this new feature lets you move all the currently tagged records straight into a committee.
Lets say you are setting up a new group to mail out to people who are interested in music.
First go into Tools menu and choose Maintain Lists. Type in 'Music Group' and then click [Add].
Now on the front screen clear the Find letters and click [Find] this shows you all your members.
Scroll through the list and tag the people who like music (right mouse button click).
Now on the Tools menu choose Save Tags... - on the form that appears select the actual person in the household you want to add and select 'Music Group' from the list. Click [OK] et voila!
2 New DearName formats for Yahrzeit letters When you create your Yahrzeit letter templates you only had one option when addressing a member this was 'Mr J Bloggs'.
There are now 3 other possibilities DearName2 = 'Joe Fred Bloggs' DearName3 = 'Joe Bloggs' and DearName4 = 'Joe'
Take your pick.


16th November 1999 Changes / improvements:

1 New feature Notes fields The idea of this enhancement is to allow you to add information to the members record which you can subsequently search for without having to ask me for a change to the program.
An example: Suppose you wanted to record when you last saw the member you create a field in the notes either public or private.
Lets say the field is called LastSeen and the date was 12 Dec 1999 you type $d_LastSeen:12-Dec-99 you can then search on this field in Reports, Mail Merge or Labels.
2 Fixed from-to dates for Yz mail merge If you had been using the From and To dates in the Yahrzeit mail merge file you would have found that these always showed the same date.
3 Version upgrade to 2.2 Technical change
4 Receipt now produced from [Payment] Everyone has been complaining for quite a time that moneys recoded using the Payment button did not allow you to produce a receipt. This has finally been fixed.
5 New Birthday and Wedding Anniversary reports Let you print out all major birthday and wedding anniversaries in a given period.
6 Reminder letters now have A to Z as Bills To allow you print reminder letters out in batches of a few letters at a time
7 Changed Bill wording for HGS A little help for Marilyn's members to correctly fill out their cheques