TOPS Home E-Zine; Issue #34 - March 2005

Welcome to TOPS Home, the web site e-mail magazine (e-zine) for the TOPS Community Web Site Service.

In this issue:

• INTRO: Welcome and Important Announcements
• SALES DEPARTMENT: Create Value While Containing Costs!
• WHAT'S NEW: New Features for Your TOPS Web Sites
• UPCOMING EVENTS: Online AP Approval Live Chat
• FEATURE TEACHER: Are You Using the Administrator's Forum?
• SUPPORT TIPS: Stopping SPAM
• CONTACT: Contact Information for TOPS Software

TOPS Web Sales: (800) 556-7852 WebSales@topssoft.com
TOPS Web Support (800) 899-5689 WebSupport@topssoft.com

Read this issue and archived issues of the TOPS Home Ezine online at: http://www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/

>> Feedback: insider@topssoft.com

I would like to take a quick opportunity to welcome Lillian Golgano to the TOPS Team. She has been working as a contractor for the past few months writing user manuals. This month, we have brought her into the fold for good, and tossed her straight into the frying pan! In addition to writing and editing our many help materials, Lillian is also taking over our monthly e-zines and our quarterly newsletters. This month marks her first time, so be sure to send her your comments if you like what you read! Thanks to everyone for all of the support you have given me during the years that I have done these projects, and I hope that you extend the same courtesy and kindness to her!

Sincerely, Andrea Drennen

SALES DEPARTMENT: Create Value While Containing Costs!

Community Officers are always looking for ways to please their residents. What better technology to offer your existing clients and new prospects than TOPS community web sites! By empowering residents with the ability
to look up their own account balance, make a dues payment online and even submit service requests twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from the convenience of their home, you give them flexibility and time for other things.

Community Officers can also benefit! Automatic data exchanges Via the internet provide access to processes such as TOPS 2000(TM) Online AP Approval twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from the convenience
of their own computer - making the bill approval process easier than ever before. Vendors are happy, they get paid in a timely manner. Staff's happy, they spends less time chasing down signatures, and fending off vendors
looking for payment.

Offering a community web site service showcases your company not only as one of the technology leaders in this industry but also sets you apart as a customer centric organization. Providing your homeowners and board
members with innovative tools that save time and keep them informed and in touch will only serve to drive new business to your company while retaining your current client base.

Manage your business growth by adding technology instead of manpower. It's a Win Win for everyone!

Contact TOPS Web Sales at (800) 556-7852 or WebSales@topssoft.com for more details!

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WHAT'S NEW: New Updates to your TOPS web site(s)

• We've been doing a lot of 'back end' fixes in the upload process this month, hunting down and solving several of the persistent upload errors that our customers have reported, most notably the creation of duplicate logins, and records uploading with a login and password of "Not Uploaded". We continue to check and improve the upload process to eliminate errors, so be sure to run the TOPS 2000(tm) Internet Updater to get the latest files.
• Properties with renters and developers will now upload to the web site if there is no primary homeowner associated with a home in TOPS 2000(tm).
• Added the ability to send email bulletins to those who haven't taken part in a particular survey yet (for reminder emails).
• Added a new eForm field type that allows delivery of the eForm to recipients based upon a selection from a Drop down box in the eForm.
• Added the ability for the the Announcements feature to be "plugged in" to the private home page just like "What's New" and "Events Calendar".
• Added the ability to log the IP address with each vote in the Survey feature to allow for validation in cases where tampering is suspected.
• Added a "Prior Day" and "Next Day" link to the daily view of the events calendar and fixed the date display at the top of that screen to accurately reflect the proper date.
• Pictures added by residents for user profiles are now custom tagged so they cannot inadvertently be overwritten by another picture loaded earlier by someone else.
• Added a security enhancement so that the header page of a private module cannot be viewed without the user being logged in with the proper security level.
• Added a security enhancement so that a private classified ad could not be viewed from the public side even ifit was previously accessed by entering the link to it.
• Extended the timeout amount for the message entry screen to 10 minutes. Communities with a large number of message board subscribers should no longer get timeouts.
• Extended the timeout amount for eForm submission to 45 minutes. Residents filling out very long eForms should no longer experience timeouts.

UPCOMING EVENTS: Online AP Approval Live Chat

We will be hosting our next scheduled live chat for TOPS Web Site Administrators on Tuesday, April 19th at 2pm EST. We will be discussing Online AP Approval. Please let us know that you will be attending so we know how many people to expect. You can email your RSVP to websupport@topssoft.com, or submit it on the site at http://www.topshome.com/admin. You must have a login name and password to access the site and attend the chat, so be sure to visit the web site and request your login info today.

Our last chat on the Custom Reports Export Utility was very informative, and a great platform for the exchange of ideas on custom reporting uses and needs. We had Dorian Drossos,a TOPS programmer and creator of the utility in attendance to answer questions.

The utility is very easy to use, as was demonstrated by a chat attendee who, while participating in the chat, downloaded the utility from the TOPS Internet Updater, then used it to export a community's data to a database complete with tables ready to use with her report generator.

The transcript from this chat is posted under Documents on the TOPS Administrator Forum.

Speaking of the Administrator Forum, we have been regularly adding to this site, so be sure to check out the Web Site Features section or the Message Board to talk with other administrators. To learn more about it, read on! This issue's Feature Teacher is all about this great new resource. If you've never been to the forum, you will need to request a login. Sign up today at http://www.topshome.com/admin/.

FEATURE TEACHER: Are You Using the Administrator's Forum?

The TOPS Interactive Web Site User Manual is very in-depth on the how-to's of your web site, but sometimes there is no better teacher than your fellow administrators who have been in your shoes before. We recently released the TOPS Web Site Administrator's Forum, a TOPS community web site devoted to a common forum for any TOPS community web site administrators. The site was created to give you and your fellow administrators an area to discuss web site administration tips and tricks of the trade.

Perhaps the most useful area of the site is the message board, where any administrator can post questions, suggestions or requests. TOPS Web Site Support regularly monitors the message board to look for new ideas or frequently asked questions by administrators.

A question we are frequently asked is "I want to sell classified ads, but how much should I charge?" There is no set rate at which to charge for ads, but having some guidelines helps. Please feel free to suggest rates in the message board or ask your fellow administrators how much they charge. We also have a Classified Vendor list that is very useful in looking for vendors who may be interested in buying an ad for your site.

Approximately once a month, we also host a chat on the site's Live Chat feature.The chat is scheduled well in advance and it is always on a predetermined topic. We have hosted 2 chat sessions so far and they have been very successful. The chat allows you to converse in real-time with other administrators as well as members of our own support staff and subject matter experts.

If you are looking for more information about a particular feature of the TOPS Community Web Site Service, you can also check out our Web Site Features module. This area has a description of each of the features of your TOPS web site(s). It also describes the flexibility of each feature, its suggested use, default security level and whether or not it can be removed from your web site(s).

We hope you find the Administrator's Forum useful and utilize it to your benefit. To get onto the forum, go to http://www.topshome.com/admin. This will direct you to a login page. If you have not setup a login and password with the forum yet, please fill out the Login Request Form and we will setup your login within one business day. If you have any questions, please email web support at websupport@topshome.com.

SUPPORT TIPS: Stopping SPAM

SPAM. This poor 'mystery' meat product has become one of the most reviled words in today's e-savvy society. Advertisers, porn sites, drug manufacturers, and sheisters of all kinds have joined together to do their darndest to get their message in your face, whether you want it there or not! The battle to combat SPAM is sort of like trying to stop a tidal wave and still let a few shiny shells through. In other words, REALLY tough!

For those of you whose email is hosted with us, you will be pleased to know that we have been working this month on improving SPAM controls on our servers. Hopefully, you have seen a reduction in SPAM due to some of the controls that we have added. We have subscribed to several real-time black lists (RBLs) which are databases of known spammers. These services are constantly adding to their lists to try to keep up with and block the glut of spammers that are out there. In addition to RBLs, we have implemented several server-side controls to keep certain types of emails from coming through,
for example if the person sending the email is attempting to hide their email information or blank out identifying information in the emails they send.

Unfortunately, even with these controls, we have found that there is simply no method of global SPAM control that we can implement that will stop all of the SPAM coming in to our customers without also inadvertently blocking legitimate email.

Therefore, I would highly encourage you, whether you are using TOPS to host your email or not, to invest in a locally installed SPAM control program. There are a number of free or very cheap programs that you can install that can be trained to recognize legitimate email from SPAM. Another popular type of SPAM control program uses a system called Challenge Response, which will intercept all of your email and ask people to click a link to confirm that they are a real human being. You can find thousands of SPAM blocking programs online, but be careful! Some of them are just the spammer's email collection
tools in disguise. I recommend that you go to a trusted download site, such as http://www.tucows.com and search for SPAM Control. Then read the reviews that people have posted, and decide on the best tool for you.

Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free
community web site  CD demo?  Follow this link to apply for your free demo today!

 ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

Here is a list of some of the most common contact data for TOPS Software:

Department	Contact	Email	Phone
Software Sales	Nicole Sezov	sales@topssoft.com	800-760-9966
Web Site Sales	Susan Sanders	websales@topshome.com	800-556-7852
Technical Support	Jeanne Plennert	support@topssoft.com	800-899-5689
Web Site Support	Brandon Kelley	websupport@topssoft.com	800-899-5689
Accounting	Cande Estrella	billing@topssoft.com	301-869-8144

Designed by TOPS Software, LLC. Copyright© 2005 TOPS Software, LLC, 364-C Christopher Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 2879. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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