Current shipping version is: 2.4 E . If your demo is older, feel free to contact support for a new disk.

Two versions of the Internet Interface are now available. One is for your clients to use, where they can access and reprint their historical information. The second is for you and your lab personnel. You can have almost complete access to ALIS via the Internet. Imagine being able to add samples, approve reports, nearly everything you could do at your desk is available to you. This is available at no extra charge to ALIS licensed users.

We have released version 2. Some of the things to look for in the new release include integrated faxing and cover sheet creation (no more need for WinFax), native PDF creation for your reports, easier Print-to-File abilities, print to html, rewritten 'Query by Example' capabilities, querys on certain browses that will allow you to search using combinations of factors to show only the requested info, easier exports to Excel, better graphing capabilities, an improved ALIS Internet Interface including the ability for the lab to redefine most of the text that your users see, XML reporting for SEDD and the like, greater audit capabilities, more user customization of browse windows (hide,rearrange, expand columns, etc), better appearance in Windows XP, rewritter manuals (nearly three times as much info), additional A/V tutorials, um, the list is rather extensive.

Spring 2004 - Track weather conditions by client's fields. This includes temperature, wind, barametric pressure, dew point, highs, lows and average, etc. Import routines allow you to easily import localized data from extension services or state weather stations. Track actual vs. recommended fertilizer applications and compare to the yield goal for research or for consulting with clients.

Winter 2003 - Increased user flexible design, expanded feeds/forage module, yes, including expanded antibiotics residue, vitamin and Prion testing. Many of the features that will be 'officially' released in version 2 have already been incorporated so that testing can be done, and to allow certain labs to have immediate access to these features. This has slowed the alpha testing, and slightly delayed the beta testing. We still expect Beta testing to be May 2004.

Summer 2003 - We have been working on expanding the Feeds, Compost and Water modules so that they are ready for your lab. We try to watch the changes that are occurring within these industries and keep the LIMS package one step ahead so that you never have to worry about it yourself.

February 2003 - Big News! We've let loose the Release Candidate 2 of the brand new Agri-labs Information Systems Internet Interface! You can set this up in ten minutes with your current ALIS installation, and within fifteen minutes you can have your clients accessing their own data (and only their own data, in read-only format) from your server via the Internet. Imagine not having to dig out last year's reports for "Farmer Jones" so that he can see whether his soils are hitting optimal levels of nutrients. Let him look for himself on a secure Internet application. Imagine being able to send an SMS (short message service) message to a client's cell phone automatically alerting him to the fact that the samples he brought in yesterday are done and the results are available to him immediately via the Internet. All without ANY additional work on your part. That's what we're talking about! And it's available to you right now. Those who have obtained a license for any version 1 release of ALIS will receive this ability with no additional cost. Universities with researchers will appreciate the idea of using the additional version that allows select people read-only access to all data in your files. You can try this new service at http://www.agrilabs.net Understand that this is just running on an old AMD K6-2 that I use for testing, so it ain't fast. <G>

January 2003 - Expanded the soils, tissues and waters modules to further fill the needs of a major new client, expanded soils to include county and county extension agent (for land-grant colleges). Added the ability to make corrections and recommendations based on plant tissue tests, per a major university. Fixed a regression in the compost module that would block reporting of minor elements. More business reports added, including samples turnover (average days to completion). Spent a week onsite in preparation for another university to go online with ALIS.

December 2002 - Added SMS notification capability. You have the option to send a text message to wireless devices to alert your client that he/she has a new report freshly approved and ready for viewing via the web. Preliminary coding on Internet interface. This will allow you to give select clients immediate access to their information via the web. Currrently this is being developed with Internet Explorer 5. and higher compatibility, but will be expanded to Netscape and it's kin soon.

November 2002 - Expanded user defined variables for regional information, set up user definable default soil sample depths, fixed regression in on-screen history browse, much of month spent working on preparing for major installation.

October 2002 - Version 1.8b - Browse screens can now be sorted by holding down your Control key while left-clicking on a column header. Further expanded regional information for soils labs, as well as expanded soil type and information. Further increased flexibility in creating fertilizer recommendations for soils (added rotations). Increased flexibility for comment and add-on product triggers. Several browses have been drastically speeded up to enable large amounts of data to be sorted and displayed in a decreased amount of time.

September 2002 - Fixed several regressions. Expanded regional soil information, expanded options for crop fertilizer recommendations. Lead Programmer spent several weeks out of the office. Expanded company and client file information in preparation for Internet options. ALIS now allows more than just twelve groupings of tests per module. You still have the radio buttons to select a group, but you also have an auto-completing entry box where you can start typing in a group name to select multiple tests for a sample.

August 2002 - We have released version 1.8 . New to this version is the ability to automatically send reports to interested and appropriate parties other than just your client. Thus, if an extension agent, or a fieldman, or a co-op should get a copy of a particular client's reports, it can be automatically sent. Within your client file, click on Contacts and add a record for other interested parties. Indicate whether the contact should receive the report via e-mail, print or fax, and now when you send the main client a report, the contact gets it too. There is a limit to how many contacts can get a copy, but we doubt that you will need to send a single report to more than 2 54 contacts... Also new in v1.8 is an Air module...

May 2002 - Check out the new "What If..." in the Soils module. This new function allows you to take a client's soil report and try different crops, different yield goals and different possible crop values to calculate different potential gross profits. Put in the costs of fertilizers and ALIS will calculate different recommendations as you change the above factors, and calculate the costs, profits, and net of the two for you. Great for labs that do client consultations and want to offer a helping hand to farmers needing help making money.

April 2002 - Most of the month was spent squishing little glitches, and cleaning up the user interface. Also spent a great deal of time working with compost module for a new client .

Mar. 2002 - Fixed a bug in the soils edit routines, added an additional soils report format. Various cosmetic fixes to resizing of screens, forms, etc.

Feb. 2002 - Busy Month! Graphically rich client reports can now be automatically e-mailed as easily as text reports. Uses Outlook Express as transport mechanism. Added explanations of fertilizer recommendations in soils approval screen. Hit the blue question mark next to the recommendations to get a brief explanation of how the number was arrived at. Fixed regression in faxing. Winfax again automatically faxes reports to those clients that you set as requesting faxes in the client file. Exposed additional variables for the lab to use when creating soil recommendations. Exposed additional variables to use in the products recommendations triggers.

Jan. 2002 - Finished a fifth public report style for soils, cleaned up cosmetic issues with windows resizing. Added a tutorial on soil recommendation creation. Fleshed out the Compost module. Cleaned up an issue with lab sheet printing. Rearranged Client Report print routine to speed up the sorting and printing.

Dec. 2001 - ALIS has now has a Products section that allows you to define circumstances where you wish to automatically suggest a particular product that the client should consider using to improve the sample he brought you. In soils this might be a particular brand of fertilizer that has the best micronutrient mix, in feeds and forage this might be a particular suppliment that will improve the overall balance of the rations, etc.

Nov. 2001 - ALIS has now been recompiled under 5.5g compiler which incorporates workarounds for bugs in Microsoft's XP operating system. The fertilizers module has been expanded to incorporate Compost products, Organic fertilizers or Chemical fertilizer testing.

Oct 2001 - ALIS has been now re-compiled under the new 5.5f compiler. Several small bugs in data entry have been removed, much of the month has been spent in improving various file utilities.

Sept 2001 - Released imaging support. ALIS can now acquire and store images of nematodes, plant pathogens, water samples, etc from supported equipment. The image is tied to the sample for easy retrieval and use. The image can be either a still, or .avi (motion video) file with sound support for your comments.

August 2001 - Reworked the waters, feeds and manure module to allow greater flexibility in equations, user defined variables, and related functions. You now define the variables, then use your variables to create your equation to tell ALIS how to take the pieces of raw data and produce the final reported values. Feeds variables and equations are defined per feed type, ie legumes, silage, etc.

July 2001 - Added scheduling module. Allows you to not overwhelm your lab staff without warning (grin). Used with the special projects/bidding module, this allows you to have a better idea of your busy and idle times, so that you can deliberately schedule large projects. If a project is going to exceed your defined capacity, you will have an on-screen warning. Later, this will be tied into the jobs costing module of the accounting section.

June 2001 - Added quotes and special projects routines. (Will be used with job costing in internal accounting module.)

May 2001 - Added Timeclock functions, internal messaging, graphing to assist with fertilizer recommendation formula creation. ALPHA release of internal accounting available. Context sensitive help files expanded and updated.

April 2001 - User can add additional analytes to modules. Multiple client report formats are available from within ALIS. Added import/export routines, added ability to import test results from data files. Added user-modifiable feeds formulas to feeds module. Added nice graphing to plant tissue report format #2, soil report format #3 and feeds report format #1.

March 2001 -Adams/Evans Lime Requirement now has a user defined target pH. Added spreadsheet style results entry screen for those who prefer an unguided and quick data entry screen.

February 2001 - Changed samples' editing to more conventional and convenient format. Added multiple crop fertilizer recommendation capability. Changed graphing of analytes to use user defined ranges.

January 2001 - Incorporated selectable table or formula creation of fertilizer recommendations. Finished and incorporated a much more flexible interface to the Quickbooks accounting package. Also finished and incorporated user-defined test groups' packaging. You define your groups of tests and assign your own price, whenever you want.

December 2000 - Reference materials results are being recorded. This allows ALIS to calculate standard deviations on demand and to eventually create your QC charts. This should prove to be quite a time-saver for all who have been keeping manual logs augmented with information entered into a separate program to create your quarterly or annual graphs.

November 2000 - Standards used for calibrating equipment can now be automatically printed on your lab sheets. Query-By-Example is now available on select data, for the research-inclined.

October 2000 - v1.0.2 Lab sheets now show ranges for acceptable values on reference materials, set to the mean, plus or minus two standard deviations. (ALIS continually monitors the warning control limits outside these values up to three standard deviations, which might indicate an impending problem and the action control limits beyond those parameters alerting the user to an immediate problem.) Speed of samples entry and printing routines has been greatly improved through new file access coding. Windows NT Server data glitches have been documented, along with registry entries to fix NT, on all distribution CDs. Automatic data file repair has been implemented, as well as a File Management menu selection.

Sept 2000 - We have released version 1.0.0 . This version is stable, functional, for trusted day-to-day use. Lab sheets are functional, with reference materials' means printed and titled with user-set values on the rightmost column. Reports now fax properly, and are transmitted, to those clients desiring it, via e-mail without additional human intervention. Soil density can be set as a fixed value, by region, or tested on each soil sample individually, with that value being used for nitrogen value conversions automatically.

July 2000 - We have released Beta 2. All modules are now functional to various degrees. Soils, Grids, Plant Tissues and water are ready for production labs, manures lag behind a bit. (Done - See above.)

February 2000 - We have released Beta 1. This release does soils, grids, and plant tissue well enough to be used in day-to-day lab work. Other modules will follow shortly. (Done - See above.)