Good News

ARGUS.net brings new smarts to search and data entry capabilities

(Los Angeles, CA February 9, 2011) SydneyPLUS/Questor, makers of ARGUS, leader in collection management and automation software for museum and historical collection organizations, will present the fourth in a series of webinars highlighting the rapid development of the new ARGUS.net in late February.

The webinar series demonstrates how the Web-based product is evolving and provides clients with the opportunity to participate in and influence development by contributing their comments and suggestions. At the last webinar, the focus was on ARGUS.net's data import and export capabilities through an imagined scenario of building a fundraising database – which ARGUS.net can encompass due to its exceptionally flexible data management capabilities. The fact that ARGUS.net’s new import export capabilities could handle a wide variety of data was clearly demonstrated. ARGUS.net easily managed text, authority terms, code tables, numbers, currency, relational or non-relational data, unique data sets and even repeating terms. Based on client requests following the webinar, more import/export scenarios will be prepared for the upcoming webinar.

SydneyPLUS/Questor will also be showcasing features that have recently been completed by the ARGUS.net R&D team. These features tackle the problem of managing coordinates and dimensions, date range searches, and object ID creation. With these solutions users will now benefit from:

Instant dimensions. Input area dimensions in English/Metric units have the dimension instantly converted.

Google connector. Coordinates can now be mapped to display on Google Maps.

Smart IDs. Object IDs can now be auto-generated or manually created with unique alphanumeric IDs. These smart ID fields allow for structured ID formats, including multiple structured patterns even within a single ID field. Within each pattern (designated by a prefix) the field provides for the automated generation of the next sequence within that pattern as well as manual entry of an ID. These fields allow for a mix of alpha-numeric strings separated by some form of punctuation and they sort naturally.

Smart date search. Date searches can now understand English in free text form. They can be described in a free text form while providing a range of specific dates that give meaning to the free text. The free text is a mechanism that allows for easy human readability and selection (i.e. “19th century) while providing a real range of dates that can be used for the purpose of searching.

“The new capabilities we are adding to ARGUS.net are aimed at both raising the level of data integrity coming from manual entry, while at the same time increasing staff productivity through faster workflows,” says Alan Koop, R&D manager for SydneyPLUS International.

The next webinar is scheduled for February 24th, 2pm EST; we hope you can join us! To register for the next webinar please contact Teresa Ridgeway at 310-316-9500 teresa@questorsys.com. If you have any questions or suggestions for future webinars, please send them to Candyce McDonald at cmcdonald@sydneyplus.com.