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While many of us have been implementing some form of work from home practice and will continue to do so for a while, some of us may be returning to the office in the near future. I hope that this installment provides you a little bit of normalcy. Please know that all of us, The AASHTOWare Project Task Force, AASHTO staff and Infotech staff, hope that you are healthy and well and continue to be.
In July 2019, the AASHTOWare Project Task Force (PTF) launched aashtowareproject.org, an all-in-one resource site for our user community. A little under a year later, we’re launching the next big update to bring additional features and functionality to our users. It is our goal to continue improving and adding to aashtowareproject.org to ensure users have the resources and information they need to move their agencies forward.
In the February 2020 AASHTOWare Project newsletter, we posted an article about the AASHTOWare Project 4.3 Release. The article highlighted enhancement TMRs included in the release and introduced the semi-annual enhancement release plans. We continue to recommend agencies upgrade to the latest version, noting that AASHTOWare Project 4.4 is planned to be released this fall.
The AASHTOWare Project Task Force (PTF) in partnership with our product contractor, Infotech, strives to provide agencies with resources, information, and instruction to assist them in making their organizational decisions for project development and administration. It’s our goal to showcase the many ways the AASHTOWare Project Unified Database can work for you by demonstrating how other users are successfully using the software. Throughout the year, we’ll continue to update our user community about new videos, webinars, and more in our quarterly newsletter.
It’s that time of year when the birds start singing, the weather begins warming up, and when the much anticipated AASHTOWare Catalog hits the public. On Thursday, May 7th all End User Designees and Primary Billing Contacts should have received an email from Angel Williams announcing the release of the FY21 catalog. Within the catalog is the pricing for all AASHTOWare software this fiscal year, which matches the EUD notice sent in late April.
The AASHTOWare Project™ Task Force (PTF) works with Infotech as the official development and support contractor to maintain and develop our software platforms. The PTF has recently directed Infotech to implement several new policies regarding platform and version support. These changes will allow Infotech to devote the majority of their support resources to the current versions of our software, while still allowing agencies to receive help with older versions. Changes have also been made to reduce the large number of database combinations that support AASHTOWare Project software.
When I wrote the article for you last November as your new chair, I did not know what new challenge our user group would be presented with, but I find some of words are still valid now. Considering the impacts relating to the COVID-19, the Board and Idaho made the decision to cancel in-person events for the 2020 PUG Conference. Commitments had already been made by the Board and Idaho for 2020 and in the best interest of those funds, Idaho was able to work with their vendors to alter the dates of their event to 2023. The good news here is that the PUG, after a couple years of limited hosts, we now have hosts for the next three years: Nevada (21), Virginia (22), and Idaho (23).
Are you interested in getting more involved in the AASHTOWare Project community and providing your input in the development of enhancements? If so, you should consider joining a Technical Review Team, or TRT! To get started, we recommend checking out the video on how to join TRT and what your role would be, located here.
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