onCourse 1.7 released

onCourse 1.7 is now available on our website for download.

ish onCourse is the comprehensive marketing and enrolment system designed for short course providers. Further details of the new features can be found here.

We recommend this upgrade for all users of onCourse as it fixes all known issues in 1.6 and adds a wide range of new functionality. In a previous email I mentioned the new features we wrote in 1.7 for dance schools and other colleges who need to create private classes quickly. This time I want to discuss our new export system.

Exporting data

Exporting data doesn’t sound very glamorous, but it is very important. It allows onCourse to tie into other accounting systems, provide smooth workflow through to fully formatted printed brochures, create detailed reporting analysis and much more. And of course it means that you aren’t locked into onCourse: we believe in keeping our customers because we offer the best product available, not by tying you into a database you have no access to. There are now several ways to can export and report from onCourse:

• built-in reporting system based on JasperReports which gives you the ability to create your own reports at any time and embed them directly into onCourse. You can use the freely available iReport. tool to create and edit reports.
• built-in exporting system based on XSLT which gives you the ability to create your own templates at any time and embed them directly into onCourse. The templates transform the output into into XML, CSV, tab-delimited, MYOB format, PDF, Excel or just about anything you can want. XSLT is the open standard you can use to write those templates.
• direct JDBC access to the database so you can connect Crystal Reports or any other tool of your choice.
• purpose built exporting functionality such as AVETMISS and AQTF Competencies.

Our new XML and XSLT export gives you a wealth of options to get data into other applications and into reports. With this first release of the new technology we have only a small number of export templates available, but we’d love to hear about your specific needs or take any templates you create and build them into onCourse for everyone to share and improve. Technical documentation for the export is available here.

Web site enhancements

Our recent work on the web site has focussed on search improvements. The new advanced search allows users to find classes by distance, time of day, price, tag (categorisation of any type you choose), full text through the entire description, class code, name and day of week.

More information and screen shots are available here.

Enjoy.

Ari Maniatis