FAIRCOM server

[vjhaley]

Does anyone use the Faircom Client user for their practice?  We have found this to be a very fragile and have had multiple crashes over the years if not shut down specific to directions.  Is the Faircom still a necessary product?  We recently upgraded to a new server and have issues with slowness and our computers going into a spin mode and then finally coming back to reality.  Needless to say staff are extremely frustrated with the computer lags.  Our IT Team have spoke with Carestream Softdent multiple times and we can't seem to get the problem resolved.  Any ideas? 

[iexplorer]

hi how are you! faircom saved us back in 2008 before that we were dead in the water, took hours to get anything done    however it must must must be programmed correctly!  call carestream and discuss with sales support etc.  get your training rep if need be they will have someone log in and fix it or come to your office    i have no better answer they came to my office and spent two days

then it was good

[vjhaley]

Just heard from our IT company that we are already configured as a Domain.  So back to the drawing board. 

[tallarob]

Have you been bumped to a higher tier of tech support?

[vjhaley]

Yes, I learned a long time ago to request a Level II tech or Development. I am now requesting a Developer get involved.

Vicki Haley

Office Manager

Des Moines Pediatric Dental Center

office:515-225-0066 fax:515-226-0998

www.dmpdc.com

vicki.dental@hotmail.com<mailto:vicki.dental@hotmail.com>

[uniondental]

Does anyone have an update about the Faircom server??  We have 23 workstations and our current server is lagging behind in general overall slowness.  We are willing to upgrade to a high performance server but these issues with Faircom gives me pause.  Thank you for any help.

[tallarob1]

We have been using the Faircom server for many years and have, I believe, finally found out what was causing many of our problems.  First of all, it needs to be shut down properly at the end of the day.  This was always somewhat of a problem for a couple of reasons.  One big problem is if I wanted to access Softdent from home on my office computer, I couldn't because Faircom was closed.  Also, with 3 doctors and their associated staff, someone typically would not close out their workstation properly.

Now, we have this all setup to be done automatically.  I can't tell you exactly how, but Softdent can set you up so that it, first checks to see if all workstations are closed and, if not, closes them.  It will then close Faircom.  We have this done around 11:00 pm and then all of our backups run.  Faircom is then started up automatically around 6:00am and is good to go when we get into the office.

The thing that has helped us the most is making sure we have enough licenses.  We have something like 18 workstations and had 20 licenses, which I though was plenty.  Only recently did I find that this was not enough.  Going into Electronic Services requires another license.  If someone, accidentally, logs in twice, this requires another license.  I can't remember, but I think there is one other instance where a license is required.  If you attempt to exceed you allotted number, certain services are locked and you will start getting error messages.  One we saw on a weekly basis was a zip.dat DBM error.  Also, we would find that our Practice Central would not open.  I updated to 23 licenses and we have not had the problem since.

I didn't want to spend the extra money but it was a great investment.

[mwon]

How much does faircom cost? Thanks.

[uniondental]

You would have to check with Sales because it is based on your number of workstations.  We paid a little over $3000 and that included a hefty discount. 

[uniondental]

Thank you this information is very helpful. We have about 25 workstations and bought 32 licenses. Hopefully this will cover us for any of those little "issues". We install end of the month so I will report back after some time in use.

[tallarob1]

You should be good.  I didn't believe it until I bought the extra licenses.  I thought I could just be real careful and make sure we didn't have too many sessions open - but it never worked out.  The extra cushion has made all the difference in the world.

[tallarob]

I have been using Faircom for at least 15 years.  I never quite figured out what it does but it seems to work.  To me, it seems like somewhat of an antiquated technology but, for the most part, we don't have a lot of problems.  I know when we first installed it, it really sped things ups.  I have been told that it is important to close it down properly at the end of the day.  Make sure everyone is out and then close Faircom.  

That being said, we have recently been having problems where everything is running very slowly.  After multiple calls to Softdent, we were escalated to a tier 2 tech and between him and my local IT people we determined that my server was having issues and also we were not configured properly which can easily happen when you gradually expand over time.  We were setup as a Workgroup instead of a domain.  I'd like to tell you I know what the difference is, but I have been told with an office out size (17 workstations) we should definitely be setup as a domain.

Next Friday, I am getting a new server and having everything reconfigured as a domain.  I'll let you know if it helps!

[vjhaley]

Thank you for your response.  I will pass this along to our IT Team and see if Workgroup vs Domain could be an issue.  We installed a new 2012 Server January 2018.  Initially it was as a 'virtual' server set up but way to many issues so after many conversations between our office, IT and Carestream it was determined to load Softdent directly to server.  (not that I am understanding all that IT lingo.)  The problems were less however we still are having issues with our workstations going into the spin mode, parts of the screen blanking out, it all eventually stops and comes back but can be frustrating with the amount of stop - spin - start again episodes. If I take my mouse and click on my screen I can get pieces of the screen to appear slowly.  We currently have 16 workstations and are in the process of expanding with 2 to 3 more. Initially we found Faircom made a difference in speed and I am sure it likely still does.  If it isn't closed down properly we have found it is a glass slipper that crashes and then we are down. We do not shut down each night we don't want to run the risk of coming in the next am and because something was still running in the background we have once again had a crash.   Please do keep me informed how your new server install goes.  Vicki H

[enspire]

We just upgraded to faircom and our speed is awesome.  We have a couple of errors we are trying to work out, but overall we have been happy.  I am sorry that is happening to you.  It is frustrating when you experts cannot seem to resolve the issue...

[bigsky322]

Faircom saved us!  The only errors we get now are if the computer has been sitting idle for too long.  It happens once a month or so.  We were having dozens and dozens of errors a day before Faircom.

[iexplorer]

i have been using faircom for around 15 years and it saved us the speed is better and the system works great been happy ever since we upgraded. 16 workstations.