PIRform

The Future of Pirform

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 04:33:14 +0500

There were some emails sent to Pirform users today that contained incorrect information about the program and it's future. I'd like to correct that and stop any further confusion for Pirform users. The situation is follows:

Pirform is not going away and it will continue to be developed and supported. The program is still produced, owned and operated by the same company, Atlantic Business Systems Ltd. We now sell and support directly from our own website here:

www.shineforms.co.uk

If you are a Pirform user then head over to www.shineforms.co.uk and login as usual. You will find all your licences, orders etc. here:under the My Account menu, or here:

www.shineforms.co.uk/members/portal

You can buy and renew licences here:

www.shineforms.co.uk/buy

Support is just the same as before - email our help desk here:

support@shineforms.co.uk

We apologies for any confusion that was caused!

Pirform 2014.1 Release Notes

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 23:29:00 +0500

We are please to announce a new version of Pirform is now available.

Update: changes since version 2014.1.919

New: added export of certificate list to CSV.
Change: improved vertical sizing of emergency lighting forms.
Change: printed certificates now show "amended to 2013" instead of "amended to 2011".
Fix: minor works now shows occupier address in form, preventing the printed version from being changed.
Fix: pressing enter to select in new cert dialog opened the cert selected in the home screen as well as the new cert.
Fix: changes to user defined lookups were not being saved.
Fix: after suppressing intelligence that removed an observation, the observation numbering was incorrect.
Fix: three phase circuit numbers now correct in VCR.
Fix: correct file filter now shown when exporting to Excel.

Improved Board Manager

Pirform’s Board Manager has been significantly improved in this release. It now lets you visualise how the boards in the installation are connected and lets you set a board’s supply by dragging and dropping. You can also use the Board Manager to print out a simple board diagram.

To get started, open a certificate and click on the Board Manager tab next to Circuits and Test Results:

You’ll see the familiar buttons in the ribbon to let you work with the boards. There are some new ones as well:

There are two views of your boards which you can access by clicking on Supplies or List in the Actions section. It is the Supplies view shows the boards arranged according to their supplies. The List view just shows the boards in a list, just as in the previous Board Manager.

In the Boards section you can work with the boards in the cert by adding, copying, deleting, moving or changing the number of ways. These work just the same as they do in the Circuits and Test Results page.

In the Circuits section you can find control whether the Supplies view shows circuits under the boards. Show Circuits shows or hides the circuits for the selected board. Expand All and Contract All shows or hides the circuits for all boards. Note that if a circuit is supplying another board then it is always visible.

Lastly, the Print and Export section lets you print a simple circuit chart and to export a list of the boards to an Excel spread sheet (Premium Edition only).

You can set the supply for a board by clicking in the Supply column and selecting the supply for the board. You can do this in both the Supplies and List views. The Supplied view lets you also set the supply by dragging and dropping a board onto the supply.

Setting Supplies by Drag and Drop

The new Board Manager Supplies view also lets you set supplies by dragging and dropping a board onto the supply board or circuit. To do that click and hold the indicator to the left of the board designation, then drag onto the supply board and you will see a green arrow appear showing that you can drop there:

If you hold the mouse over the board it will expand to show the circuits. Drag over the circuit to select it (or stay over the board to select the board):

When you drop the board the new supply is set:

Use the Show Circuits button in the ribbon to show or hide the circuits for the selected board, or the Expand All / Contract All to show or hide all the circuits in the Supplies view.

You can adjust the delay before the circuits are shown when hovering over a board from Pirform Options:

Reordering circuits

You can also reorder circuits by dragging and dropping them in the new Board Manager Supplies view!

Export Company Details

To make it easier to set up Pirform when you have multiple copies, you can now export the company details to a file and import them on another computer. The file contains all the information about the company, engineers and instruments along with the logos and signatures. Importing a file will replace all of those details on the target computer.

This feature requires the Premium Edition.

Print Circuit Charts with Certificates

To save printing twice you can now print the circuit charts along with the main certificate. This also means that your circuit charts are included in the PDF that you email to the customer.

This is set by an option in Pirform Options:

Operational Improvements

We’ve added some things to make it easier for your IT department or our support team to keep you running when things go wrong.

Pirform can now repair some things that are wrong with certificates from older versions.
Pirform Support can now send a code to repair common problems with all the certificates, saving you having to send your data to us for repair.
The Home screen shows whether the program can access the internet.
The Home Screen shows a warning if automatic backup is turned off.
The Home Screen shows the time of the last backup.
The program now allows you to access your certs as PDF after your licence has expired (we previously had to send you an updated licence to do this).
The licence report feature now includes the user and machine names. This makes it easier for your IT department to work out which licence is on which computer.
Licences can now send the user and computer names when they update over the internet (optional and requires the user to opt in).
The licence information display on the Home Screen has been improved and now shows the licence name when updated over the internet.

Other Changes and Fixes

Other changes and fixes in this release are:

New: can automatically set the backup to use Dropbox if it is installed.

Change: setting cert to unsatisfactory now ticks there are items affecting safety.
Change: setting there are items affecting safety now sets report to unsatisfactory.
Change: ensures export location exists before exporting.
Change: updated various internal components, improving performance.

Fix: removed binding formatting to fix spurious format error from UI.
Fix: fixed error on machines requiring Windows Performance Counter repairs.
Fix: certificate location was not showing in the intelligence manager.
Fix: licensing less liable to be broken by upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.
Fix: main form was not updating the certificate after saving when a category was selected.
Fix: fire alarm completion dates now show the entered date.
Fix: it is now possible to record the completion date for fire alarm certs.
Fix: mouse wheel scrolling now works in certificates.
Fix: installation extent was not overflowing to continuation pages in EIC.
Fix: could not select cell values using Select All/Select Blanks if cells were selected in other columns.
Fix: moved missing merged circuits fix to when cert is loaded (potential fix for memory overload experienced by some users).
Fix: last backup status was always showing as none taken.
Fix: circuit's supplied board list not cleared when reassigning the supply after three phase merge.
Fix: installer now installs desktop shortcut.
Fix: installer now associated Pirform files.
Fix: prevented time out when starting up after a database repair on larger databases.
Fix: export was not always saving to user defined export location.
Fix: incorrect expiry date was shown when entering licence using a code.
Fix: observation grid sorting causes value changes to wrong item.
Fix: EIC observations page was not the same as the EICR version.
Fix: corrected typo from "lighting" to "lightning protection".
Fix: default values overwrote user entered values after saving and opening (e.g. SELV on EIC as N/A).
Fix: was unable to add or remove deviations in emergency lighting certs.

Updated version now available – 2013.2

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:42:00 +0500

We’re pleased to announce a new version Pirform 2013.1 that is available now from our website. This is a minor release with a the changes and fixes and changes.

Pirform is the only electrical testing software on the market today with the relevant regulations from BS7671 built into the program – these include both the changes from Amendment 1 in 2011 as well as the 2008 version of the regulations.

Update: additional fixes since 2013.2.825:

Change: improved logging information for support and error reports.
Change: simplified data transfer when moving licence.
Change: now recognises three phase merged circuits by the circuit number.
Change: observations and limitations grids now show the source of each item (intelligence, schedule or user).
Change: can now enter text against "general" observations created by intelligence.
Change: observation ordering now accounts for custom locations entered by user.

Fix: ensured imported certs get all new fixes and updates.
Fix: recreation of missing three phase circuits was happening too many times.
Fix: changed text from Lighting Protection to Lighting in PIR, EICR and EIC 2011.
Fix: observation ordering did not correctly detect boards from location text.
Fix: changes to observation ordering in the certificate options was not respected.

Update: additional fixes since 2013.2.822:

Fix: crash when spell checking fire alarm certificates.
Fix: intelligence and Zs changes did not apply to copied circuits until after the cert was reloaded.

Print Observations in Board Order

Pirform now prints the observations in the same order that you have your boards and circuits. This makes the certificates easier to read, especially when there are a large number of boards and observations.

If you change the reorder your boards or circuits, then the observations will be reordered in the printed certificate too.

If you want to show the observations in the order they were added (which was what happened in previous versions of Pirform), then you can change the setting in Pirform Options:

You can also specify that for individual certificates from the Certificate Options:

Observation Location Selector

To make it easier and more accurate to enter the location of an observation you have added, you can now select the location of an observation from a list of the boards and circuits in the certificate. Just clicking on the location column of an observation to do this:

Other Changes and Fixes

Change: improved the text on the message when Pirform cannot use your internet connection.
Change: Minor Works report text changed from Line Line to Live Live.

Fix: copying merged three phase circuits now shows the copied circuit group as merged.
Fix: error when deleting a circuit with no supply.
Fix: error in 811 when checking licence at start up.
Fix: error when closing a certificate under some circumstances.

Free online certificate backup

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 20:01:00 +0500

Combine Pirform's automatic backup with an online backup service like Dropbox or SkyDrive to keep your valuable certificate data safe. That way you will never lose your certificates even if your computer is lost, damaged or stolen.

www.pirform.co.uk/onlinebackup

If you need any more advice or assistance, just contact us at support@pirform.co.uk

Certificates with large numbers of boards

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 02:03:00 +0500

There is no limit to the number of boards that you can have in a certificate in Pirform. We get to see quite a lot of real life certificates that our customers have issued, and we regularly see certificates with between 100 and 200 boards.

Recently we saw a certificate with just under 430 boards. Wow, that's a whopper!

This got us wondering what the largest certificate that has been issued by Pirform was. How big was the biggest certificate you have issued using Pirform? We’d be interested to hear what the largest certificate that you have issued using Pirform was. Let us know by leaving a comment on our forums here.

New version available - 2013.1

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:35:00 +0500

We’re pleased to say that version Pirform 2013.1 is now available now from our website. Pirform is the only electrical testing software on the market today with the relevant regulations from BS7671 built into the program – these include both the changes from Amendment 1 in 2011 as well as the 2008 version of the regulations.

Whist we’ve called this release 2013.1, the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that we have in fact been releasing a number of updated throughout 2013. In fact, we have issued 5 updates with new features already this year, and more with minor fixes (if you want to see what was in these, go and read this article). So, what’s have we been doing since then?

Copying boards between certificates

Ever wanted to copy a board from one certificate to another? Well, now you can!

The Certificate Merging feature in the Premium Edition allows you to take boards and board observations from one or more other certificates and copy them into a main certificate. Useful when you need to a break larger job up between different engineers.

We’ve now added a stage that let’s you choose which boards you want to bring across. You can choose all boards, a single board or any number in between.

Of course, as well as merging into a larger certificate, you can also use this feature to copy boards from one job into another. You can read more about how to use this really powerful feature in our Help Desk.

Using drag and drop to reorder boards and circuits

Reordering your boards and circuits just got easier with the new drag and drop features. To reorder, just click on the indicator at the left of the row, then drag and drop on the new location. This works wherever you can see a list of boards or circuits:

In the board manager:

The board selector in the circuits and test results:

And also on the circuits grid:

Observations in Electrical Installation Certificates

Some customers have asked to be able to include observations along with their EICs. There is now a setting that allows you to do that. Open the EIC and go to the certificate options

More control over the spell checker

Pirform has a built-in spell checker that helps to make sure all your reports and certificates are correct and professional. We’ve added a number options to help you control the way the spelling checker works. Just open Pirform Options and go to the General section:

Pirform works best on a reasonably modern computer (read our system requirements in our Help Desk here). However, some customers like to use Pirform on a much lower powered computers such as netbooks. To help reduce the load on these sort of computers, you can turn off the spell checking during typing from the same section shown above.

Other changes and fixes

We’ve also made the following changes and fixes:

Change: circuit designation now shown against the board supply.
Change: find feature now available in Board Manager.
Change: no additional page in minor works with long comments.
Change: intelligence update checking now records the last intelligence version that was used when checking the certificate.
Change: can now specify synching of Zs values at circuit level and force updating from cert options.
Change: suppressed errors loading start page control.
Change: now checks for updated licences each time the app starts.
Change: copied boards are now positioned under the board being copied.
Change: updated image next to the board selection control.

Fix: removing board from large certificates (over 300 boards) was quite slow.
Fix: export observations now disabled when no observations.
Fix: installation extent overflow in EIC was not correct.
Fix: comments on the installation not overflowing correctly in MW report.
Fix: crash when refreshing export of multiple certs.
Fix: circuit Zs values now carry through to supplied board.
Fix: engineer controls showed the wrong engineer until focused or the mouse was hovered (print was okay).
Fix: export observations now preserves full file name when cert number contains not permitted characters.
Fix: certs were being marked as changed when after opening and viewing boards when no changes had been made.
Fix: crash when opening an imported certificate that contained an engineer with a blank name.
Fix: circuit numbering was incorrect after merging, moving and unmerging.
Fix: three phase merged circuits were not split after changing to single phase.
Fix: could not select using space bar in export, import and merge wizard when selection column was focussed.
Fix: watermark now defaults to show in front so that it shows on all pages.
Fix: intelligence manager locations were not correctly shown in the controls when the same statement applied to multiple locations.
Fix: circuits incorrectly numbered after importing a cert with merged circuits and un-merging the circuit.
Fix: spelling checker was highlighting correct words as incorrect.
Fix: spelling error in inspection schedule item 4.6.
Fix: EICR Page 1 was missing review engineer position from printed report.

Part P changes – are you aware?

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:22:15 +0500

In April, new measures come in that will allow DIYers to make simple electrical improvements to their home, without having to spend hundreds of pounds on getting the council’s approval.

Communities Minster Don Fosters says:
"Safety remains the number one concern. The message to people thinking of doing electrical work themselves is if you are not sure, use a competent registered electrician. It’s vital government and industry keep working together to get this message out, and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak at the Electrical Industry Summit to reinforce this."

We’d be interested to hear your feedback on this, and whether you feel the changes are good or bad.

ECA and ESC announce major partnership

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:29:57 +0500

In a move which will bring the electrical contracting industry together as never before, the Electrical Contractors Association (ECA) and the Electrical Safety Council (ESC) have announced the creation of the Electrical Safety Register.

Consequently from April 1st 2013, the NICEIC and ELECSA will be operated by a brand new organisation called Certsure. The move is designed to give the industry a stronger voice to government and major stakeholders on relevant issues.

The partnership should bring many benefits to NICEIC and ELECSA registrants. The first is the creation of the Register, which the organisations hope will become the definitive searchable database of NICEIC and ELECSA registered contractors, as well as ECA members. It will be promoted to hundreds of thousands of specifiers by the trade association and the charity.

Certsure will also make major customer commitments to NICEIC and ELECSA customers. These include:

   Customers are able to display the Electrical Safety Register banner
   NICEIC, ELECSA and ECA customers will be included on the Electrical Safety Register
   Certsure will provide excellent customer service and actively promote its contractors in the marketplace

“With this partnership, the benefits to the consumer and electrician are significant,” comments Charles Tanswell, chair of the ESC. “In particular, for the consumer it means more can be done to raise awareness of the benefits of using registered electricians and we’re delighted that this partnership ensures solid industry support for the charity and its work.”

“This partnership marks a new beginning for the electrical contracting industry.” explains Paul McNaughton, President of the ECA. “There is strength in unity and this alliance unites the key electrical industry players: The sector trade association, the electrical consumer charity and the leading certification body, while providing clarity to the consumer and a consolidated voice to government on common issues.”

“We will act as the sole registration, certification and assessment body for not only NICEIC’s current customer base, but for those under the ELECSA and ECA brands too,” explains Emma Clancy, CEO of Certsure. “Over time significant cost and commercial benefits will be available to those electrical contractors registered with ELECSA and NICEIC, thanks to this partnership and we will be communicating with all our customers about the joint venture.”

To view the Electrical Safety Register log onto www.electricalsafetyregister.com

Update to Pirform 2012.2 – new features and fixes

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:51:00 +0500

Since we released the new version, we’ve released regular updates and made a couple of changes that are worth talking about.

If you haven't already, you can read the full release notes for version 2012.2 here.

Export observations to a spreadsheet

You can now export all the observations in a certificate to a spreadsheet. This gives you access to the observations for things like preparing a schedule of works or to use when costing remedial works. Just click the button marked Export Observations in the ribbon:

This will create a .CSV file that you can then open in your favourite spreadsheet software. Note that this feature requires the Premium Edition or the Certificate Sharing bolt on.

Notification of intelligence changes

If the intelligence is updated between version of the program, then it may happen that either new intelligence applies to a certificate or intelligence that used to apply no longer applies. When you open a certificate, Pirform now checks to see if there are any intelligence statements that are added or removed and if there are it will show you a summary of the changes.

If you want to accept the changes, then just clock OK and they will be applied to the certificate. If you want to keep the certificate as it was, then just cancel and nothing will be changed.

Easier management of backup and export locations

You can now move your your backup and export folders to be under a single root folder in one go. This makes it easier to set up Pirform to use cloud services like Dropbox or SkyDrive with Pirform for free online certificate storage or for free online based certificate sharing.

Three phase handling improvements

We’ve polished the way Pirform handles three phase circuits. Adding a circuit now adds a group of three, and copying a circuit now copies the whole group. If you have a board where all the circuits are merged and you add a circuit, Pirform now keeps the circuits merged (they used to become un-merged).

We’ve also fixed a couple of problems where the names of circuits were not correctly set after deleting merged circuits. The new behaviour is that Pirform renumbers the circuits. So, if you have 1TP - Hall, 2TP - Kitchen and you delete 1TP – Hall, you’ll be left with 1TP – Kitchen.

Other changes and fixes

These are the other changes and fixes we have made since we released 2012.2.

Version 746 and after

New: added shortcut key for moving boards up and down.
New: now shows current licence information in Home Screen.

Change: better handling of errors when import fails to read the import file.
Change: new board manager icon.
Change: focus now set to first control when page first shown.
Change: fixed failure writing error reports when no log file present.
Change: BS 88-2 Zs values changed for 125A and 160A.
Change: improved logging of id failures when composing certificates from export.
Change: improved error message importing a cert and the export version is not recognised.
Change: updated DX components to v12.2.
Change: can now cancel out of a spelling check.
Change: now removes spaces from licence code before applying.
Change: can now open .pirform file directly from the application.
Change: removed old licence information section in options.

Fix: spelling checker was highlighting correct words as incorrect.
Fix: spelling error in inspection schedule item 4.6.
Fix: EICR Page 1 was missing review engineer position from printed report.
Fix: autosave was failing after copying board with circuit intelligence related to circuit parameters.
Fix: pages now scrolled to top when first shown (was showing scrolled part way down).
Fix: board Idn values were carrying through to new boards.
Fix: spell check form was showing when entering grid cells.
Fix: disk size calculation was failing for large disks.
Fix: move board/circuit up/down controls were not greying out when on first/last item.
Fix: was not correctly creating export folders before auto export.
Fix: some pages were starting up scrolled half way down (MW, EIC).
Fix: handled intelligence control index out of range exceptions when opening tests page.
Fix: fixed typo in deactivation message.
Fix: date of next inspection now defaults to blank, not 01/01/0001.Fix: could not select a file other than default when exporting.
Fix: improved experience when program has been deactivated on the computer.

Version 743 - 746

New: can now collapse and expand any section when creating certificates.
New: reminders of licence expiries now built into the application.

Change: removed additional expandable sections in EIC/PIR schedules.
Change: all sections are now collapsible.
Change: rearranged EICR agreed limitations to follow standard layout.
Change: adjusted column widths in board manager.
Change: adjusted continuation size for EICR operational limitations and MW installation extent.

Fix: start page now shows the certificates in the order they were most recently saved.
Fix: if the company name was not set then other company details would not be saved.
Fix: start page now shows the certificates in the order they were most recently saved.
Fix: if the company name was not set then other details would not be saved.
Fix: sizing of EICR limitations on page 1 was bad on low resolution screens.
Fix: copied circuits did not show values after using copy to blanks.
Fix: circuit conductor live column was rounding to 1 decimal place.
Fix: error when re-opening the same certificate after an auto export.
Fix: board manager wasn't showing scroll bars properly.

Earlier Updates

New: added ability to reset the circuit numbers in a board back to defaults.

Change: added option to turn off checking for intelligence updates.
Change: added ability to check for intelligence updates from certificate options.
Change: activation/deactivation codes now only show if licence is in appropriate state.
Change: now resets supply text when a circuit or board is removed.
Change: now reassigns board supplies when a supplying circuit or board is removed.
Change: moved extent of limitations in EICR to the correct location.
Change: improved the way the selections are handled in the circuits grid.
Change: now takes a backup of the current certificates before restoring.
Change: added option to turn off the spell checker.
Change: improved performance for when the exported file location is on a network that is not connected.
Change: BS 3871 Type 3 5A MCB max Zs rated corrected in accordance with errata from BS 7671 Amendment One.
Change: improved logging during database restore.
Change: improved the way export grid shows selected certificates after opening.
Change: does not show activation code when there is no licence.
Change: now detects statements that have been added or removed as a result of intelligence changes.
Change: increased logging for certificate form.
Change: update company details now also updates review engineer.
Change: removed old insulation resistance fields from MW 2011.
Change: removed redundant Circuit Insulation Resistance Neutral Earth and Circuit Insulation Resistance Phase Neutral from MW 2011.
Change: renamed P/P to L/L and P/E to L/E in MW 2011.
Change: now only creates save locations if they are under the user profile.
Change: adjusted layout of error dialog.
Change: simplified automated creation of backup and save locations.
Change: automated creation of backup and save locations.

Fix: copying three phase merged boards removed circuits in the copy and did not set ways correctly.
Fix: boards remained attached to supply circuits after deletion. Added support command to update affected data.
Fix: updated intelligence detection was falsely detecting updates.
Fix: copying and deleting circuits was acting on three circuits even in single phase.
Fix: can now delete values in the r1,rn,r2,r1+r2 and r2 when focus is inside the control.
Fix: intelligence updated to fix string matching on numeric fields.
Fix: migration was firing more than once for some users.
Fix: auto save was firing too often.
Fix: auto save was not correctly clearing up discarded auto saves.
Fix: installation extent on minor works was not overflowing correctly.
Fix: fixed spurious format exception when opening new MW.
Fix: possible fix for image in use errors when auto saving with preview open.
Fix: would crash when clicking new certificate when emergency lighting node was selected (format error converting to decimal).
Fix: company logos changes not preserved after closing and reopening.
Fix: was not able to save changes to design and construction engineers in EIC.
Fix: possible fix for image errors after first cert save.
Fix: now removes characters that are not allowed from the names of output files.
Fix: multiple files were not shown in the import wizard.

Pirform certificates on your iPad, Android tablet and phone

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:35:00 +0500

Want to read your Pirform certificates on your iPad, iPhone or Android tablet or phone? The powerful new features in the latest version of Pirform make this easy to do. Read on for more details.

The latest version of Pirform now lets you automatically backup your certificates to popular online “Cloud” storage and sharing services like Dropbox and SkyDrive. You can, of course, also use any similar Cloud backup service, or even use your own company network instead.

The Premium Edition of Pirform will also automatically export individual certificates after each change. Not only does it export the certificate as a Pirform Export File (.pex), but it will also save the certificate as a PDF. If you want, you can also go to the PDF or Pirform Export File directly from the Home Screen by clicking Show PDF Report or Show Export File in the Certificate Actions section of the ribbon. These buttons will be greyed out if the export or PDF files is not there, in which case you can just click Refresh Exports to recreate them.

This is a really powerful and useful feature that opens the door not only to having safe, secure backups of your certificates stored on the internet, but also to having access to your certificates anywhere you are and just about whatever device you’re using.

SkyDrive is available for the iPad, iPhone, the Mac, your Android tablet and phone, as well as for your PC or Windows Phone. Dropbox is also available for the iPad, iPhone, the Mac, your Android tablet and phone, as well as for your PC (but not yet for your Windows Phone as an app, so you’ll have to use the website or an unofficial app).

So, if you’re out on site and you need to read one of your recent certificates, just open up your iPad and go to your Dropbox or SkyDrive folder where you Pirform exports the certs and open up the PDF. You can then email it to your client, print off a copy or anything else you want to do.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that that at the moment you can only use the main Pirform program to create certificates. We are going to be releasing tablet versions of Pirform next year that will allow you to create Pirform certificates using tablet devices like the iPad. Watch this space for more information.