Documentation
The EasyLink for Windows software is a complimentary product for the
customers of Whitley & Siddons. EasyLink is used to process the data files
that you, as a customer, can download off the Whitley & Siddons BBS or
corporate Web site (www.WhitleySiddons.com). Once the data files have
been downloaded, or copied, onto your computer, this software allows you
to view, print, scan and manage the data.
Some types of data allow
conversion into spreadsheet format as well as exporting out to popular
estimating software packages.
Published by
Whitley & Siddons
Highway Construction Information Since 1932
Page 2 of 20
Installation
EasyLink can be installed most easily by a floppy disk provided by Whitley & Siddons,
or off our web site.
From Diskette
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Windows 3.X
To install EasyLink for Windows onto a Windows 3.x platform, start
Windows.
From Program Manager, choose the File Menu.
Choose Run.
When the Run Comand Dialog appears, type A:Setup16 where A: is the
drive that the floppy is in.
The setup program wizard guide you through the rest of the installation.
It is recommended that you accept all the defaults in the installation
program.
Windows 95
To install EasyLink for Windows onto a Windows 95 platform, start
Windows.
From the Start Menu, choose Run.
When the Run Comand Dialog appears, type A:Setup32 where A: is the
drive that the floppy is in.
The setup program wizard guide you through the rest of the installation.
It is recommended that you accept all the defaults in the installation
program.
From the Internet
Log onto our web site with your Account # and Access Code. You will be
presented with a list of files that match your subscription. Scroll down the
list until you see the section for Windows Software. From here press the
Download Button
next to the ELW16.exe file for Windows 3.1,
or the ELW32.exe
file for Windows 95, to initiate the download
of the software off
our website onto your computer. From
Internet Explorer choose the option to “OPEN” the file. If using Netscape
and your given the option to “RUN” or “OPEN” the file, then do so. By
opening (or running) the application, you will launch the installation process
automatically. That is, the download will be transparent to you, and the
installation will start after your internet browser downloads the file.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 3 of 20
If you cannot “OPEN” or “RUN” the application, then simply “SAVE” it onto
your hard disk. When the download is complete, you will have to then run
this file using from either Windows Explorer (Win 95) or File Manager (Win
3.1). It is recommended that you accept all the defaults in the installation
program.
When the installation is complete you will have either a “Whitley & Siddons”
group on your screen (Win 3.1) or a “Whitley & Siddons” folder in your Start
Menu (Win 95).
SETUP
The first step when setting up EasyLink is to setup your preferences and
inputting your company information.
Company Information Page
The company information page is where you not only type in your name and
company, but also your account #, which is needed by Easylink to access the
BBS. The Company name is also used if you convert the TxDOT Advance
Notices into spreadsheets.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 4 of 20
Communication Page
Here you set your modem’s communication port and setup strings. The
defaults likely will work fine, but can be fine tuned here. Set the Baud Rate
to your modem’s speed. If you are having connection problems, then set this
to the next slower speed.
Phonebook Page
The Phonebook holds all your phone numbers into the Whitley & Sidddons
BBS. You can edit these numbers to add any dialing prefixes or suffixes.
Directories
Data Directory
Setting up the directories (or folders) is a very important step before
downloading data files for use in Easylink. If you already have a data
directory to hold you downloads, then select that directory here. To create a
new data directory names “\Data”, press the associated button. This will
create a “\Data” directory on the current drive. Easylink will then download
all files into this directory for processing. If you download off the
Internet, then you will want to download into this directory.
Spreadsheet Directory
The Spreadsheet directory is where the spreadsheet files are created. You
can either select the same directory as the data directory, or choose your
spreadsheets data directory (i.e. for Excel or Lotus).
Estimating Directory
If you use Easylink to create files to be imported by your estimating software,
then select the proper directory here. Easylink currently supports import
into Hard Dollar and HCSS estimating packages.
Program Options
Auto Clean-Up of Temporary Files
By leaving this option checked, Easylink will automatically delete the
temporary files used during execution, mainly the unzipped text (.txt) files. It
is recommended that you keep this checked.
Print Tabulations Landscape
The TxDot tabulations are fairly wide, and this will automatically print them
in landscape format.
Print Advance Notices Landscape with Alternate Units
This option allows you to print the TxDot Advance Notices with the alternate
units to the right side of every bid item. For Example, if the job is bid with
metric units, the english units and quantities will be printed to the side. You
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 5 of 20
can disable this feature on single jobs by selecting “Print Setup” from the
print dialog box and choosing “Portrait” mode. To disable this feature for all
printed TxDot Advance Notices, then uncheck this option.
Toolbar and Tool-tips Options
The toolbar is the list of icons just below the menu items. If you only use the
menu items, and not the icons, you can disable the toolbar to gain more
screen space. Tool-tips are short text descriptions the display when you hold
the mouse over the icons, and in certain windows.
Filter Bid Items in both English / Metric
When the Metric bid item numbers were established by TxDot, many were
the same number as the English equivalent, with a “5” replacing the “0” in
the center of the bid item number. For Example English bid item number
“1110222” would become “1115222” in Metric. By checking this option box,
the scan filters will ignore the “0/5” digit in the middle of the bid item
number. So, by scanning for “1110222”, the filter would also find “1115222”.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 6 of 20
Communications
There are two ways to access and download the data files that you subscribe
to. The first is through our BBS (bulletin board service), in which Easylink
will handle all the communications, and via the Internet, in which your
internet browser software will handle the communications.
BBS
To access and download (copy onto your computer) your data files, press the
“BBS” button or choose the “System/Connect” menu item. You must first
have setup your communication and company information in the
“System/Preferences” menu item. You will then be given a dialog box to
choose your phone number to dial. You can also edit the phonebook here as
well. The dialog box will look like this:
To choose a different phone number, press the “Select” button. To edit the
phonebook, press the “Edit Phonebook” button, and of course to have
Easylink dial the BBS, press the “Dial” button. At this point you will be
asked for you Access Code. This is like a password that has been assigned to
your account by Whitley & Siddons. If you do not know your password, then
please contact us. It is not case sensitive.
As you type in your access code, asterisks will
appear to indicate the number of characters
you have typed. This access code will be
matched with your account number entered in
the program setup (“System/Preferences”). By
pressing “OK”, Easylink will attempt to
connect to the Whitley & Siddons BBS. The
dialing status will display in the bottom righthand corner of the screen.
If the connection fails, you may have the wrong communications port or baud
rate selected in the System/Preferences/Communication menu option.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 7 of 20
When you are connected to the Whitley & Siddons BBS the first screen you
see will look something like this:
Notice the tabs near the bottom of the screen. The above picture represents
the “Information” tab. The next picture is of the “TxDOT/Regional Files” tab.
The files colored in yellow represent files that have already been downloaded
onto your computer. That is, they have not been updated since you last
downloaded them.
Downloading
To download a file, simply double click it. You can also tag all the jobs you
want to download, by clicking the box next to each file. At this point you can
right-click your mouse button, which will bring up a “popup” menu. Select the
option to download all the tagged data files. The downloaded data files are
being copied into the data directory you entered in your setup options. If you
have an error when trying to download, make sure you have selected a data
directory that is valid and is not the root directory of a drive (“C:\”).
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 8 of 20
Current Software
If you want to see the last time we updated the Easylink software, you can
access that information here, as well as download the update if so desired. To
update the Easylink software, double click on the appropriate version to
download it. For Windows 3.x download “ELW16.exe” and for Windows
95/98/NT download “ELW32.exe”.
Directories Tab
The Directories tab allows you to download either individual jobs, or archived
information. For instance, instead of downloading all the advance notice jobs
for a given highway letting, you could download just a single job in Lotus or
text format. Be advised, that by downloading individual jobs, you yourself
need to unzip (uncompress) and process that file. Easylink is only setup to
deal with the files downloaded in the TxDOT/Regional tab section. Through
the directories tab, you can also access archives of TxDOT Tabulations,
Lowbid sheets and data from our Regional services.
Hangup / Disconnect
To hangup simply press the “Close” button, or right-click and choose the
hangup option.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 9 of 20
Processing the Data Files
To begin actually using the data that has been downloaded, or copied, onto
your computer, press the “Open” button. This will bring up the dialog box:
The dialog box opens with “Advance Notices” as the data type. To change
this click on the arrow next to “Advance Notices” for a drop-down list of data
types, such as:
From this point
simply choose the
data type you
desire, and the
appropriate data
files that have
been downloaded
will show in the
right panel. For
this example you
could double click
on “an-apr98.zip”
to open that data
file. The file will
automatically
unzipped, or
uncompressed, and a directory will be displayed of the jobs within the data
file. The directory for this file looks like this:
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 10 of 20
There would normally be a column for “Project #”, but I have that column
heading turned off in the “System/Preferences/Program/Adv. Notices” menu
item. The tag list is initially sorted by “County”, but that can be changed by
simply clicking on a column header, such as “Contract”. The columns can
also be resized by holding the mouse over the column divider until the mouse
character changes, then drag the column divider to the width you desire.
Status Column – This shows if the TxDOT Notice changed (*) since the
previous update, which is generally on Wednesdays, or was added (+) since
the previous update. For the Regional Notices you have the same (*) and
(+) indicators plus a caret (^) designating that we have not only a job heading
but also bid items for the job. We also show how many addendums have been
issued on the job (i.e. 2). The Regional information is updated daily.
Bidders Column – If we had merged list of bidders into this TxDOT Notice,
then there would be an “X” in each Bidders box where a match was found
between the List of bidders and the Notice.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 11 of 20
Changing the Font Size in the Tag List
There are three font sizes available when viewing the tag list and when
actually viewing the job data. To toggle between these three font sizes,
simple click on the “FONT” button to select the font that best fits your
computer screen resolution
Viewing the Data
To see the data, simply highlight the job by clicking anywhere on the row,
then either double click, or press the “View” button. This will bring up a
screen that allows you to tab to the data you would like to see. For this
particular example above, the view would look like the picture below.
Notice the tabs for
Header Information – Just the job header, if there is one available
Items – bid items if available
Job Notes – notes specific to the job.
Bidders – list of bidders if they were merged when opening file
Full Job Editor – full job view with editing capabilities
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 12 of 20
Full Job Editor
The job editor is a way to see the raw data. Since this is now and editor, you
can copy/cut/paste with the Windows clipboard and you can highlight a
section of the job and just print that selection. These options are available by
right-clicking in the editor window.
To actually change (edit) the text, you must right-click and turn off the
“Read-Only” attribute. To print the editor text, you MUST print by rightclicking and choosing then editor’s print option. If you print with Easylinks
“Print” button on top, you will see the job formatted as Easylink wants to
print it, not as you may have changed it in the editor.
Saving the job text to a text file
To save job information to a separate text file, you can choose the “Save As”
option by right clicking in the editor window, or press the “Print” button and
choose the “To File” option. Either method will ask you for a file name. The
job will be saved in the Easylink “Data Directory” if saved to file from the
“Print Button”.
Close Job Viewing
Press the “Close” button to close out the current window, or right-click and
choose the close option.
Printing
To print either the directory of jobs, or the jobs themselves, simply click on
the “Print” button on the top of the Easylink window. At this point you will
be shown a print dialog box similar to :
Note: Not all the
listed options will
be available every
time you print.
Notice the top left
box. This enables
you to choose
whether to print the
directory of jobs, or
the jobs themselves.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 13 of 20
The “How?” box allows you to customize your printouts. If you had tagged, or
checked, several jobs in the tag list, then the options to print “All Tagged
Jobs” and “Form Feed after each Job” will be shown. When printing multiple
jobs you can select whether you want each job on a separate page (Form Feed
checked) or to run all the jobs concurrently without a page break between
each job.
The “Job Header Only” limits the printout for each job to just it’s header
information, with no bid item or related information printed.
“Only Tagged Items” is available if you have a scan filter active and allows
you to print the job header and just the data that matches your scan filter.
For example if you scan filter text was “CONC” then all the concrete items
with the text “CONC” would be printed under the job heading, but if the data
did not contain the text “CONC” then the item would not be printed.
“Print Alternate Units” allows you to print the TxDOT Advance Notices with
the units of measure converted between English and Metric. The English
jobs will be converted to Metric and vice versa.
“Include Bidders” When processing the TxDOT Advance Notices you are
asked whether you want to merge the List of Bidders or not. If you are
processing the Advance Notices for July and you
have also downloaded the July List of Bidders,
then by answering “Yes” to the merge question,
the list of bidders will be available while
processing the notices. The default option when
printing the TxDOT notices is to also print the
associated bidders list below the printout for
each notice. For example, if you print a TxDOT job for Dallas county, the
notice information will print first, and then the associated list of bidders will
be printed below the bid items.
“To File” allows you to print the data to a disk file instead of your printer.
Printing TxDOT Notices
When printing TxDOT Advance Notices, the default way Easylink will print
them is in landscape format (sideways on the page) with the alternate units
(English or Metric) printed to right of each bid item. If the bidders have been
merged, then the bidders list will print below the job. If you do not desire
this alternate style of printing you can disable it for the specific job by
clicking on the “Setup” button in the Print Dialog Box and choosing “Portrait”
style printing. To disable this feature permanently, uncheck the option box
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 14 of 20
in the “System/Preferences/Program” titled “Print Adv. Notices landscape w/
alt. Units”.
The Bid item and Bidders sections looks something like the following
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ITEM DES
S.P
APPROXIMATE
ALT NO. CD. NO. ITEM DESCRIPTION
UNIT
QUANTITIES
ALT UNIT ALT
QUANTITY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------666 0535 019 REFL PAV MRK TY II (W) …
LF
786,683.000
m
239,781.450
666 0536 019 REFL PAV MRK TY II (W) …
LF
945,994.000
m
288,339.539
666 0556 019 REFL PAV MRK TY II (Y) …
LF
786,683.000
m
239,781.450
666 0557 019 REFL PAV MRK TY II (Y) …
LF
416,063.000
m
126,816.252
Bidder
..
City
..
Phone
..
Fax
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A.S.C. PAVEMENT MARKINGS, INC. IRVING
(972)399-8095
(972)259-2145
AMERICAN PROSERVE, INC.
BATTERSON, INC.
HOUSTON
(713)862-5433
(713)862-3755
C & D MAINTENANCE, INC.
JACKSBORO
(940)567-3731
(940)549-5846
DARREL VAUGHN.
BLOSSOM
LECTRIC LITES CO.
FT. WORTH
(817)831-0961
(817)831-0968
STRIPING TECHNOLOGY, INC.
TYLER
(903)595-6800
(906)597-7473
TRAFFIC MARKING & STRIPING CO. FARGO, N.D.
(701)293-7325
(701)293-9468
Printing while viewing a job
If you have double clicked on a job within the tag list, then Easylink will
show you the job in the job editor. By clicking on the “Print” button at this
point you will not be able to select the print options to process “All Tagged
Jobs”. You will only be able to print the specific job you are viewing at that
time. To print multiple jobs from the tag list, simply click on the tab on the
bottom of the Easylink window to take you back to the tag list. From here
you can print multiple jobs at once.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 15 of 20
Filtering / Scanning
One of the most powerful and useful features Easylink is the use of scan
filters. These filters can be used to search the Notices for the bid items you
are interested in, to extract certain data from jobs for printing or conversion
into spreadsheets, or to search the Bidders lists for certain contractors. These
filters can be customized and fine tuned over time and saved on your
computer for repeated use. To begin the filtering process simply press the
“Filter” button on the top of the Easylink screen. Initially you will be give the
options of “New” or “Open”. Once a filter is active (in use), then you will also
have the options of “Modify”, “Apply”, and “Close”.
The ”New” and “Modify” options bring up the filter input screen:
Initially all the Counties and Districts are checked. This section of the filter
only applies to our TxDOT data files, since the Regional data files are not
categorized by county. Easylink really does not filter by district, but by
county. By tagging/untagging various districts, the counties on the left are
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 16 of 20
tagged automatically. You could also ignore the districts and tag just the
specific counties you are interested in.
Text / Bid Items tab
This is where you type in the data you actually want to scan for, such as
“CONC” or bid item # “4285001”. By scanning for TxDOT bid item # “420”,
you will get all the item 420’s.
NOTE: Easylink will scan for EXACT matches on the text, so if you put in
“CONCRETE” in the filter, but TxDOT has “CL C CONC (ABUT)” as a bid
item, the filter will not find it, since the whole word of “CONCRETE” is not in
the bid item. To be safe, put all the possible spellings for the item you want
to filter for, one per line.
If scanning for certain contractors names, you may want to put in a text filter
for “ABC Construction”. The filters are NOT Case Sensitive.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 17 of 20
Misc. Options tab
The TxDOT Advance Notices and Tabulations allow you to filter the jobs by
dollar amount, so the above criteria would only look in those jobs between 1
and 10 million dollars.
Close / Save the Filter
To close out this filter either right click your mouse and choose the close
option, or press the “Close” button. You will be asked whether you want to
save this filter, meaning save to disk for future use. You do not have to save
the filter to disk to use it in this session, but you do have to save it if you
want to call it up at a later time.
Open Filter Menu Item
This menu option allows you to recall a previously saved filter
Modify Filter Menu Item
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 18 of 20
Once a filter has been either “opened” or activated, it can be modified. Use
this menu option to customize your filters. Be sure to save the modification if
you want to use it in the future.
Apply Filter
If a data file is already open when you exit the filter menu items, you will be
automatically asked if you want to apply that scan filter. If you answer “No”,
but later want to apply that filter, you can choose this menu option.
Close Filter
This filter “Close” is to disable a currently active filter. You may have a filter
scan for concrete items in the advance notices, then you close the advance
notices and start viewing the list of bidders. Obviously the concrete filter will
not be relevant to the list of bidders, so you can “Close” the filter.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 19 of 20
File Menu
Under the File menu option you can unzip/view misc. files, as well as convert
various data files into Spreadsheets (like Lotus), or export your data for
importing by your Estimating software.
Unzip Misc. File
This menu option allows you to unzip any *.zip file you may have downloaded
off the Whitley & Siddons system. It would mainly be used if you are
accessing individual jobs, instead of the recommended way of downloading
the files containing all the jobs. You will be given a file open dialog box to
choose the file you desire to unzip. You can select multiple files by utilizing
the ctrl and shift keys while selecting your data files.
This box shows 2 import zip files selected. They will be unzipped into the
data directory.
View Misc. File
You can view any text file on your computer with this option. You would
mainly use this to view a file you may have unzipped with the “Unzip Misc.
File” menu option.
Conversion / Export
If you want to export your data into a Spreadsheet, or to an estimating
system, this is the way to do it. Choose the type of conversion from the
conversion dialog box:
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com
Page 20 of 20
The “Normal” and “TxDOT” formats
will convert certain jobs into Lotus 123
(*.wk1) files. These can be used not
only by Lotus, but by Excel and most
other spreadsheet systems.
The “TxDOT” format are for the
TxDOT Advance Notices only, to format
the spreadsheet to TxDOT
requirements.
The “Import” format converts a
TxDOT Advance Notice into a text
format suitable for importing into certain estimating systems.
“Hard Dollar” format will create a text file in your Estimating Directory,
that is formatted out to the Hard Dollar estimating system. These files can
be directly imported into their system.
“HCSS” format will create a text file in your Estimating Directory, that is
formatted out to the HCSS estimating system. These files can be directly
imported into their system.
“Include Conversion Section” When converting TxDOT Advance Notices
into spreadsheet format, this will add a section to the right of the job with all
the English / Metric conversions for each bid item. You could use this section
to bid the job in the units you prefer (i.e. English) and then copy the
converted bid prices back into the main part of the spreadsheet. The user
is responsible for checking all the converted bid prices for accuracy.
“Convert All Tagged Jobs” allows you to convert many jobs at once, that is
all the jobs that have been checked in the tag list.
Whitley & Siddons, P.O. Box 164047, Austin, Tx 78716 * (512) 477-9491 * Fax (512) 481-1983
Highway Construction Information Since 1932 * www.WhitleySiddons.com