Shipping, Inventory and Accounting Automation Software

Endicia DaZzle crash on APO DPO FPO addresses

Posted on 09/29/2010 by admin

We are hearing reports from multiple customers about DaZzle crashing when printing an APO address.

This issue is being worked on by Endicia:

The issue should only affect printing postage label and Customs form separately for APO/FPO addresses. If the customer uses the APO/FPO integrated form layout (layout name: APO FPO Priority Mail Shipping Label.lyt), the label should printed out without issue.

When printing APO Labels if you are not using the integrated APO FPO Mail Shipping Label.lyt, DAZzle retrieves the customs forms from the USPS. Unfortunately the USPS made some changes to the customs forms server which results in DAZzle crashing.

We are working on a new release of DAZzle which corrects the problem however the fastest solution is to use the integrated APO FPO Mail Shipping Label.lyt.

In the mean time, please print APO FPO DPO in separate batches using the layout above. In Teapplix, you can use the "APO" link under open orders to pick out APO address only.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged APO, DaZzle, Endicia | 841 Comments

Site outage 9/28 around 11:15pm

Posted on 09/29/2010 by admin

We had a hard disk crash on 9/28 around 11:15pm. The good news is that our backup process worked and we only lost about 5 minutes worth of updates.

Our fancy hardware raid controller didn't help us a single bit however, as the raid "stopped working" quite a while ago and the hosting company didn't notice.

What saved us is our off-site, remote database replication. We rely on hardware raid on our server as first line of defense. However, we also do remote database replication to another hosting company off-site in Florida. Without this last night we would have been in big trouble.

What does this mean for you

1. Outbound email ship notification will be delayed for 9/28 shipments.

2. Please check your transactions, especially your PayPal transactions, from 11:00pm last night (9/28) to 5am this morning to make sure nothing is missing.

If you see any missing transactions, we recommend you turn on PayPal alternative API integration for one day so it can catch the missing orders.

Please contact us if you have any issues.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged linux, mysql replication, raid | Comments Off

Yahoo to Microsoft AdCenter Conversion

Posted on 09/15/2010 by admin

Got multiple calls to convert our Yahoo search account to Microsoft AdCenter. After 4 phone calls from several people I finally managed to convert our yahoo ads (well, most of them) into Microsoft.

I have to say the process isn't very smooth. Part of the planning you have to do is to make sure Microsoft length restrictions don't block your ads / titles. Seems like Microsoft allows shorter text.

Also, AdCenter isn't fast by any means. The rep recommended that I download and install the "Microsoft AdCenter Desktop" software.

Boy installing this software is quite an experience. 20 minutes and one reboot later, I am still just installing the "SQL Server 2008 Express Engine". That isn't even the app, just a component! At least Microsoft is very honest, their screen says "This installation is taking much longer than expected". Here's the screen shot for proof:

Microsoft AdCenter Desktop Installation

This experience is further proof of the superior nature of SaaS software like Teapplix. As you know most of our competitors are still desktop software. We were constantly reminded by customers that switched over of the crashes and installation headaches they ran into.

Well now the progress meeter just wrapped around and went back to zero, no I get to deal with that. Later...

Update, the install eventually failed. Desktop software 1, Teapplix 0:

AdCenter Install Error Code

AdCenter Desktop Install Failure

Posted in Site Updates | 170 Comments

Enhanced QuickBooks Integration

Posted on 08/17/2010 by admin

One major change in Teapplix QuickBoooks Connector is that you can now use it as an standalone service. It
no longer depends on you using Teapplix for shipping.

In addition, we added the following enhancements:
1) create customers
2) create sales orders vs sales receipts
3) automatically create needed objects like accounts, shipping & handling item and customer records
4) "build inventory" automatically for assemblies

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged Amazon, Buy.com, eBay, Inventory Assembly, QuickBooks Integration | 428 Comments

Comcast emails

Posted on 08/16/2010 by admin

We just resolved an issue where our ship notification email to Comcast email addresses are bouncing. This should not happen any more.

Posted in Site Updates | 162 Comments

Teapplix TShip Enhancements

Posted on 07/21/2010 by admin

We now group multiple item orders paid together as an single order. In addition, if an order is marked as shipped on eBay, then TShip will automatically reflect that.

Note that if you cancel an order, you need to cancel it again in Teapplix.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged eBay Order, Teapplix, TShip | 153 Comments

Custom Queues

Posted on 07/21/2010 by admin

We added 2 custom queues to our UI. You can assign orders to these queues. This can be used for drop shipping, assigning orders to multiple people to process/review, etc.

Posted in Site Updates | 573 Comments

Fix ebay custom label update issue, add sales record number.

Posted on 06/10/2010 by admin

We fixed a bug where when you revise custom label for a live listing, sales data afterward may still be showing the old custom label.

In addition, for eBay Selling Manager users, Sales Record Numbers are now displayed on the packing list.

Posted in Site Updates | Comments Off

Switch to utf-8 character set

Posted on 06/08/2010 by admin

We switched to UTF-8 as our default application character set. UTF-8 works better in showing international languages.

Posted in Site Updates | Tagged charset, international | 177 Comments

Teapplix power outage due to east Palo Alto plane crash

Posted on 02/17/2010 by admin

We want to let you know that we are without power in our office on Feb 17, 2010. Hopefully this gets resolved soon:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021703753.html

This power outage does not affect any of the Teapplix's application infrastructure. However, our development and customer support environment is currently offline.

Our main phone number is currently offline. We can retrieve email and voice mail from free wifi spots, but our response will be slower.

This may be a good time to describe a bit of our hosting infrastructure and our backup procedures.

Teapplix's main application site is hosted in Michigan. This include our web servers and our database server.

Teapplix maintains a backup hosting environment in Florida. There is a 5 second database replication between our main site and our backup site. This way the maximum data you lose will be 5 seconds in case our main site is completely destroyed.