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 Introducing PTWin32 |
By
Peter K. Bruck, Building Inspector, Have you ever wondered if there was an
easier way to get all of the PTWin32 reports into a simple format that you could
just e-mail to everyone? I happened
to have stumbled onto something that works great, and also opens the door for
other possibilities. Most of you are familiar with Adobe Acrobat
Reader. Well, there’s more to
Adobe than just the reader. When you
buy the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you then have the ability to create pdf
files. Anyone who has a windows
operating system usually has the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
So, getting your reports into pdf will make your reports accessible to
anyone with Acrobat Reader. Adobe is
not the only company that has software for generating pdf files.
Look on the Internet and you’ll find several of them.
(Check out http://www.jawspdf.com/) Once you have installed your pdf writing
software onto your computer you’re essentially set to go.
Open up your PTWin32 report, click on the Printer icon, and then select
your pdf software as the printer. It
will then ask you where you want to save it, (be sure and remember where you put
it) and … voila! Now here’s the fun part.
You’ve got all that great data in your PTWin32 database and you want to
get it out on the Internet so everyone can access it.
However, you don’t have the $125,000 it takes to get set up with one of
these big Web outfits to get you going. So what do you do?
You use your pdf file. If your jurisdiction already has a web site,
you can check with your I.T. person to see if she’ll let you have access to
allow you to upload one or more of your PTWin32 reports in pdf.
That’s what we’ve done in our jurisdiction.
(If you don’t have a web site, you can get one for as little as
$12/month. Try Hostways.com to get
you going.) I’ve created a PTWin32 report that
displays the status of all our plan checks.
I’ve been given a password to access the City’s web site, and at the
end of each day it takes me less than 5 minutes to generate my report from
PTWin32, save it into pdf and upload it to our site. If you want to check out what I’ve done,
go to http://www.rpcity.org/,
click on “City Services”, click on “Building Department” and then click
on the “Plan Permit Status” link. Right now this is the only report that we
have displayed. But, if we wanted to
generate a report of all our permits issued with their issue date, final date,
etc., we could do that, too. The
possibilities are limitless.
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