Sage News and Discussion

I guess IE 9 is the only safe browser to use with Atlas now?

And does compatibility mode open IE 9 up to the issues with IE6-8?

It does seem to work in Chrome now though.

It does work in Chrome though I've found some of the later articles don't render at all. Go to advanced and search on all articles created after say 12/15/12 and try clicking on any. I've not been able to use Chrome to view the content - only IE.

Make sure you limit your search to Sage 100 -- my results are showing a lot of XML type files which don't seem to render in Chrome. If you find a way I'd love to know how.

When you limit it to Sage 100 it seems to work. Then again it took several minutes while ago for the advanced screen to even open up.

Wonder if my adblock is doing something on Chrome

Login with Chrome and click here and tell me if anything comes up https://partners.sagenorthamerica.com/irj/go/km/docs/sageKM/Sage%20MAS%2090%20and%20200/Gated%20Customers/Warr_Svc_Support%20Plan/110-9000756.xml

That isn't working.

And I'm on Chrome for MAC so it's possible there's some issue there as well in terms of me viewing the link above.

The documents ending in XML don't appear to work - and it seems like they've started to use that format recently.

Not working for me either in Google /Mac or Safari

I used Firefox over the last couple of days and got to Atlas and the product updates without issue - did have to add https://partners.sagenorthamerica.com to Firefox safe sites.

@WayneSchulz have you gotten the newer articles to work yet? I can't get any article past the date 12/15 like you said to open in Safari or Chrome yet . This is crazy that they can't get Atlas to work on other platforms... My I9 is giving me issues also.... If you find a solution please let me know . Thanks !

@DianeRuth I am able to view articles but the ones you note -- past about 12/15/12 (approx) seem to be in a new format which does not work with Chrome and I've only been able to view them in IE. I'm using whatever IE ships with Windows 8 and using compatibility mode.

I am dialoging with the Sage CIO on this however it's more of the same excuses so far.

Hello Wayne, I believe we have met before; my name is Juan Rodriguez, and I am the CIO for Sage North America. I got forwarded to me a post that you made in a private LinkedIn group recently about portal browser support, software demos and houses of cards. I wanted to give you personally some color commentary on specifically the portal pieces, and I will leave the other ones alone, as they are more opinion than fact. As you know our browser support for the portals has been limited since we released Atlas. The reasons vary, but primarily this is due to the fact that we are stuck with what our vendor's technology would support for the portal. There is nothing more than myself and the rest of the Sage team would like than supporting every single browser technology under the sun for our portals, but unfortunately we have certain limitations and constraints. Recently our vendor released a version of their technology stack that supports newer browsers, like Chrome and newer versions of Firefox, which is great news. We have been working on upgrading our external portals to this technology stack version over the past few weeks. It's not a straight forward process, I can tell you that. In any case, we made ourselves a target to have increased browser support prior to the end of the year. To that goal two weekends ago we released a new portal version that supports Chrome on Windows, along with IE 8/9, as usual, in compatibility mode. Google Chrome support is something the team worked hard on to release prior to year end. We expect that we will have further browser support over the next 8-12 weeks as we complete the stack upgrade. You mentioned an specific issue regarding certain KB items that are published in xml format in Chrome. This, indeed, appears to be an issue. Our research indicates a limitation in Chrome that is not present in other browsers like IE or Firefox. In fact, this item is documented in the following Chromium issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=70088 It seems the chromium team doesn't plan to address this limitation, and as you can see in the discussion this has created certain angst by the community; their response... well, use another browser. Here is the browser flow and the differences in IE and Chrome: Search term for ""Aatrix ird"" is entered and executed for Sage 100 ERP: [cid:image009.jpg@01CDE43C.929680C0] Search Results returned: [cid:image003.png@01CDE43A.81A60670] Article for IRD: [cid:image004.png@01CDE43A.81A60670] Within the KB article, the ""Aatrix Entitlement"" link points to an XML article that is associated with an XSLT (which transforms the content in a presentable HTML format). https://partners.sagenorthamerica.com/irj/go/km/docs/sageKM/Sage%20MAS%2090%20and%20200/Gated%20Customers/Warr_Svc_Support%20Plan/110-1003783.xml These types of articles in Atlas KM render fine in IE: [cid:image010.jpg@01CDE43C.929680C0] however, not Google Chrome and all that appears is a blank screen: [cid:image011.jpg@01CDE43C.929680C0] Roughly 12% of the articles in our KB system have been published in the xml format that is having this issue in Chrome, with the vast majority of them being internal only articles. Having said that, we are investigating how we can address this Chrome limitation in these KB articles, and I am certain we will solve this soon. In the mean time if you see that you are hitting this issue constantly you should use IE8/9 for portal access. Apologies for the frustration the portal's limited browser support gives. I believe we are moving in the right direction and hopefully over the next few months this will be behind us. We also have a few other exciting things in the works with our CRM upgrade, which will bring other portal improvements, and a project to implement a new knowledge base system, which I believe will enhance the experience significantly. Thank you for your time, and please let me know if I can be of assistance. If in the future you have a question or a comment, you are more than welcome to contact me directly if you would like to discuss; I welcome the dialog. Thanks again! Juan M. Rodriguez

Hi Juan, Thanks for the reply and explanations. Can the portal at least begin again listing KB articles in HTML format? It seems like some type of change was made to XML layout around 12/15 which causes some browsers to not render newer pages (and as I'm sure you know Chrome is generally scored within the top 3 of browser share - higher sometimes depending on how much more month over month share IE continued to lose). There also seems to be problems in other articles such as tax table listing which I think use an attachment with MHT layout with similar problems with readability. I think we can agree that these type of articles need to be in some type lowest common denominator readable web format so as to prevent a lot of work down to road to re-convert them. I can appreciate and sympathize with the tremendous challenge this project has become. Thanks for your attention to this..

I met Juan at Summit and he gave the same song and dance about Atlas's failings.

This is what he was replying to - which was in the 90 Minds LinkedIn Group: When will this house of cards collapse? How can the person or persons in charge of Sage's Atlas project still have a job? To me it appears to be gross negligence to have articles in a KB which seem to only be downloadable by one particular brand of web browser. Particularly I've noticed that the IRD link which includes the link -- Aatrix Entitlement (explaining that essentially you have to be on maintenance and have an updated account number to use Aatrix) does not appear browsable in either Firefox or Chrome - though I was able to access it via IE on a customer machine this morning. And then Sage for some reason insists on including mht file extension documents which explain what has changed in the payroll tax tables. All fine and dandy but then again you only seem to be able to read this in IE and/or with Microsoft Word. It's the year 2012. Almost 2013. And we still deal with this ? Internet Explorer 7.0? Really? .....to cap it all off Sage had the nerve to show prototype mobile software (it wasn't shipping - and won't until MID 2013 -- if you haven't figured that out by now) at their partner conference. How long can this management house of cards stay up ?

It appear something changed and they started posting XML type documents. These don't render on Firefox or Chrome (MAC). Someone goofed. And, yeah, IE works but can it really be that hard to support other browsers when virtually the entire web does?

I see what you're referring to now Wayne - correct Firefox won't open that Aatrix XML doc with an XSL style sheet.

Um, yeah. Isn't that sort of IT 101 ? Who puts out a pure web based system that can only be accessed by old versions of IE which also have security flaws? And those documents that are published are not viewable by other browsers - so even if you advertise you can technically get into the KB with Chrome you may never be able to view some documents. And people in charge of these projects just stay around at Sage.

Atlas sucks

Seems that Sage might be addressing at least some issues - Juan emailed me to ask a couple followup questions. Maybe now we have more of a direct line to the higher powers....that and $1.75 will get us a small coffee.

Thanks @WayneSchulz For pursuing this issue with good old Sage.

Ha - they pursued me after someone forwarded comments from LinkedIn 90 Minds Group (we actually have a few Sage people in the group so it probably went through them).

And it isn't even quality coffee!