PowerTools for Power Broker 4

PowerTools offers a new user i.d. security feature that allows an administrator to choose who will be able to run PowerTools and all of the utilities built into it.
Here are some of the familiar and not so familiar PowerTools features. This can be set in Power Broker by giving the user a ‘Y’ for number 51 on their user security code screen found under the Tables tab.

The Upgrade Completion Check will ensure that seconds after applying your upgrade, that you have completed your upgrade without any issues.

If you have been using Power Broker for years, you have probably seen the message ‘Cannot reset hidden files’. These files will be dealt with PowerTools as well as freeing up any files with ‘Read-Only’ attributes.

The next feature cleans up some of the files that Power Broker needs in some of the typical day to day use, that build up after years of use, that are no longer required.

Have you ever been locked out because of too many users? Well now PowerTools allows you to run the ‘Reset User In Use Counters’ procedure and clears out all ‘Y’s located in the user tables. In the past, when Power Broker locked out all users in an office, you would have used PBMech and run a Pack and Re-index. This is no longer needed. If your a five user office or a 50 user office and the power goes out due to a storm outside, you would simply run this utility to clean out the user codes and be up and running in minutes. You would still need to run the Pack and Re-Index on a regular basis, but only to test the integrity of your databases.

Power Broker 4.0 comes equipped with a new and updated Fix Corrupted Database utility to match our Visual Foxpro platform, and PowerTools is able to launch this tool for you.

We all know the well known Pack and Re-index utility. The difference is, once the pack completes, Power Broker will now exit five minutes after being launched. Yes you heard me correctly, it will close all on it’s own after five minutes allowing your local tech to not have to worry about open files and locked users. The pack would complete, and sit on the log in screen. Should you NOT type in your password in five minutes, it will close out for you.

– PowerTools offers a few different methods of launching some of its options.

  1. You can click on the button to launch the utility…
  2. You can select a few of the utilities by check marking the boxs provided…
  3. Or you can choose the ‘Select All’ feature that check marks all of the top six features.

Once PowerTools runs it’s main six functions, the screen displays which utility is running at the current moment.

Once you reach the Power Broker 4.0 login screen, you know all is well and you can type in your password and begin to work.

If you happen to forget where your Power Broker is installed, PowerTools has a small window at the bottom that reminds you where things are. This is handy if you receive your key file and your not sure where to save your Winzip file.

Yup, and it does come with a tool that unzips your key file too.

Have you ever wondered when your last Pack and Re-index was or who did it last?
PowerTools comes with a log file that shows you who, what and when any of the PowerTools features have been run and completed. (I will tell you more what PowerNightly is in a moment)

It comes with a Log Code Definitions page so it’s easy to understand what the codes mean.

If you ever decide to add another insurer to your book of business, and need to unzip a down.zip file that has been emailed to you? You can simply click on this button to unzip it for you.

It even has it’s own basic task scheduler built into it.

Once a time has been selected, a window will let you know when it started, and how long until it starts.

To install PowerTools on a workstation, find an area of your desktop that’s blank, right click on your mouse, choose ‘New’ and then ‘Shortcut’.

Type in the drive letter where Power Broker is stored on your server as well as the folder, and the exe file:

Example: