Aloha 6.1.9 - Promo Maintenance 1

[zahead31]

I was recently upgraded to Aloha v6.1.9 and I am trying to make a change to one of my promotions. When I try to save any promo after making my changes, I receive the following error message:

Value must be between 0 and 100

All these promos existed prior to the upgrade, and I cannot figure what value this could be looking at. To the best of my knowledge, all required values are enetered. Has anyone seen this before?

 

[bigblok403]

Most likely an error related to a dollar amount or a percentage. If it is correct in Aloha Manager, than the index files might be messed up. Close Aloha Manager, delete all the .CDX and .TDX files in the NEWDATA directory, open Aloha Manager back up and run a refresh.

Also debout.txt might show what is causing the error.

 

[zahead31]

Thank you bigblok,

I double checked and the dollar amount discount is entered correctly. I will delete all the CDX and TDX files and try a refresh. Unfortunately, I will need to do this in the morning since we are too busy to refresh now (being busy is a good problem to have!). I will give it a go in the morning and post my results.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[zahead31]

Thanks again for the suggestion, bigblok. I tried it out this morning and I am still getting the same error message when I am trying to edit my promotions.

 

[bigblok403]

Strange. What I do to determine what it is looking at when getting the error is open the actual .dbf file itself and skim through the different fields for errors. Promotions would be pro.dbf, but it could also be a cross-linked error in a related dbf such as a categories (cat.dbf). A good free editor to use is DBF Viewer Plus.

 

[posknowitall]

I have seen similiar problems in upgrades. I always thought it had to do with a feature added to the new version somehow tweaked an old setting. Have you tried to add a new promo to see if you can save it? You may need to recreate the promo file. What about comps? Any errors in that file?

 

[zahead31]

Sorry about the delayed response here. I have actually been distracted from this promo issue for a bit. We have had some problems with our upgrade to v6.1 that needed my attention. As soon as these are wrapped, I will have a chance to try out your suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[posknowitall]

Zahead when you get the chance could you give an update on some of your issues with the upgrade? Good luck on fixing everything...

 

[zahead31]

So, I wanted to give you all a quick recap on our upgrade to Aloha v6

*If you use eFrequency or eCards, your Win 2000 and higher terms will have environment variables set. These must be removed and reentered after the install is complete. Our first site was down the entire afternoon because the terminals would not load the POS application (stuck in a reboot cycle). We removed the enviro variables and Aloha loaded fine. Once we added the enviro variables back in and rebooted, the system remained stable and our eCrds/eFreq were operational

*If you use delivery, the upgrade will not automatically upgrade the delivery database along with the POS. This had to be performed manually in both our stores. The first time by Radiant (we were without our delivery app for 2 days), and the second time our reseller had the tool to do this manually (took them about an hour after the POS upgrade was complete to get the delivery app up and running)

*Version 6 does not play nice with Win98. I don't have any specific reason why, but our Win98 terminals have become pretty unstable after this upgrade. Our purpose for the upgrade was to bypass the terminal licensing issue in Windows. So, our plan was to finally replace the Win98 terminals... just looks like we will have to do that sooner than we had planned. The RFS feature (Remote File Storage???), does not play nice with Win98 at all!!! This is the service that runs to avoid the Windows licensing issue with Aloha. My recommendation is to replace all Win98 machines the day this service is activated, or shortly thereafter. If you do continue with Win98 terminals, make sure they cannot become Master, and be sure that DCOM 95 and 98 are installed.

 

[zahead31]

My apologies for taking a few weeks to get an update here on my promo error. I believe I have found what is causing this error, and it is actually the last thing I would have suspected!

I actually tried posknowitall's suggestion of creating a new promo to see if the error occurs (star for you!). When I created the new promo, I updated one field at a time until I saw the error message. It is related to the 'Report As:' field.

For accounting purposes, we label each promo and comp with a unique identifier (different from Aloha's ID# for comps and promos). For instance, the promo I was working with was named '241 WRMN'. When I change the report as field to None, I can save the changes. If I remove the leading 241 from the promo name, I can change the Report As field back to report as the promo name, and the changes save fine.

Apparently, if you use leading numbers in your comp or promo descriptions, the number must be between 0 and 100. I am not sure why this would be. It appears that the ID# field for promos will go up to 30000.

I have this error in v6.1, but I have not seen it in v6.0.

 

[posknowitall]

Thank you for the update. That seems awfully strange though! That may rear it's ugly head in other parts of the software.

 

[zahead31]

Yeah, I am very curious where else that may show up. I will post more on this thread if I find anything further.