Swiftlight Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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+Purchase & Support

1) What payment methods do you accept?

Your order can be fulfilled immediately if you pay by credit or debit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, Maestro (UK), SOLO (UK)) or by PayPal. In addition, we accept cheques / money orders, wire transfers, cash and, for well established companies, purchase orders.

2) How secure is my online order?

Your online order is secure. Our online payments processing is handled by cleverbridge AG, an online payments specialist who use Secure Socket Layer (SSL*) encryption and industry leading security measures to secure every transaction and protect your information. (*SSL encrypts the transmissions from cleverbridge’s e-commerce servers as well as from your computer ensuring that your order is secure).

3) Why does online purchasing go through cleverbridge?

Because cleverbridge are experts in online payments. They handle e-commerce for a lot of software companies providing a secure, safe and efficient service for payments over the web or over the phone. This provides you with a secure payment route, and allows us to focus on creating and supporting great software.

4) How quickly should I expect a response to my online order?

You will receive an e-mail confirmation of your order and another email with your license key, in most cases within fifteen minutes. If you do not receive these emails, please allow up to twenty-four hours for them to be delivered before contacting cleverbridge. Please also check your SPAM folder, as in some cases the emails may have been blocked and moved into your SPAM or Junk Mail folder instead of being sent to your inbox.

5) Who should I contact if I have a question about my order?

If you have a question relating to your online order, you should contact cleverbridge (see the email they sent you, or click here for contact details). If you have a product related question (e.g. about Swiftlight’s functionality), please contact us at support@torridonsolutions.com

6) What support can I get?

We are committed to providing you with the help you need, and offer support over email and phone, as well as providing self-help resources on the website. You automatically get 30 days of free support with the purchase of Swiftlight, and in addition have the option to purchase an annual Support and Maintenance Plan. Click here for more information from our support centre.

7) I’ve lost my license key.

If you have already installed and activated Swiftlight look in the menu Help > About … and the licence key will be there. Otherwise, please email support@torridonsolutions.com with your details and we will look into it and get back to you.

8) How do I get updates?

You are entitled to receive updates / patches / fixes for the version of Swiftlight that you have purchased, and you will be advised automatically when updates are available – provided we have your up-to-date details. You can also check to see if you have the most recent version of Swiftlight by using the menu item Help > Check for Updates …

9) Do you provide training?

We do provide training, both online and in-person. Click here for more details.

10) Does Swiftlight work on a MAC?

There is no Apple / MAC version of Swiftlight, but we are aware of customers who have installed and used it successfully in the Parallels Desktop® operating system on a MAC. Please note that we have not tested and do not specifically support Swiftlight on MACs.

11) Where can I get the latest release of Swiftlight?

If you are a customer or current trialist of Swiftlight, please use this link to get the latest release of Swiftlight. If you are not a customer or current trialist, please register for free 30 day trial.

+Installation & Activation

1) How do I install Swiftlight?

Installation should be easy and fast. After registering for a trial or purchasing Swiftlight, you will receive an email containing a link to a download site. Click on the link and when prompted either save the file to your computer or click “Run”. If you have downloaded the file, double click on the SwiftlightInstaller.exe file to start installation. Then, simply follow the instructions and in a few minutes Swiftlight should be successfully installed. Note: you will need administrator privileges on your computer to be able to install Swiftlight.

2) Installation is not working …

Please check that you have administrator privileges on your computer, since this is required for installation. You may need to talk to your IT department to arrange these privileges. You can check your status by going to the Control Panel > Users … (or User Accounts on Windows Vista). If you do have administrator privileges and are still having problems, please contact us at: support@torridonsolutions.com

3) Activation is not working …

The two most common reasons for an activation failure are either a typo in the licence key, or not being connected to the internet. Please double check that you have entered the licence key correctly (copy and paste is the best way to enter it), check that your internet connection is working, and then try online activation again. If it still does not work, please contact us directly and we will help you activate over the phone.

4) Is it possible to deploy Swiftlight centrally over a network?

Yes. We can provide .msi packages for group deployment of volume licenses. For more details, please contact us at sales@torridonsolutions.com.

5) Can I install my single copy of Swiftlight on both my laptop and desktop (or on my home computer and work computer)?

Yes. A single user license entitles you to install the software on two computers provided the software is for the exclusive use of the licensed user and provided only one copy of Swiftlight is in use at any point in time.

+Swiftlight Functionality.. How do I?

1) How do I share Swiftlight with others?

If the other people also have Swiftlight, then you can share files with them in exactly the same way that you would share a PowerPoint or Excel file. If they don’t have Swiftlight, then you can export outputs into PowerPoint or PDF and share the content in this form.

2) Can I manage how people have access to a Swiftlight file? (e.g. can I give read-only access)

You should manage access to your Swiftlight file in the same way that you would to a PowerPoint or Excel file, since Swiftlight does not currently have password protection or other access control features. If you only want to share a snapshot of the contents of your Swiftlight file, then you can export outputs into PowerPoint or PDF and share the content in this form.

3) How do I open two files at once?

To open a second file, either a) double click on the file in Windows Explorer, or b) double click on the Swiftlight icon on your desktop or use the program menu to open another instance of Swiftlight, and then use menu item File > Open … to find and open your file. If you try to open a second file in the same window, Swiftlight will close the current file first.

4) Can I export part of a page to PowerPoint?

While Swiftlight only exports full page(s) from each view, it is easy to crop the page once it is in PowerPoint. When in PowerPoint, turn on the Pictures tool bar (View > Toolbars > Picture), select the image of the page and use the cropping feature to select the part that you want.

5) Can I customise the colours or font in the Timeline?

Yes you can customise colours, fonts and more to align the Timeline and other outputs with your company’s branding needs or with your own preferences. Use the menus: Tools>Options and look at the customization tabs in this dialogue.

6) Does Swiftlight have dependencies functionality?

“Yes”, in the sense that if you move an Activity Group then all of its uncompleted actions, meetings and milestones will move by the same amount. “No” in the sense that you cannot create a dependency link between one Activity Group and another and see “dependency arrows” on the Timeline. However, the clarity of the Timeline display means you can visualise dependencies by either putting two or more dependent Activity Groups on the same row, or by vertically aligning Activity Groups or milestones. What users find is that for many projects (e.g. smaller, simpler ones), this visualisation is just fine, and that the Timeline is easier to read and keep up to date than traditional GANTT charts.

7) Can I move the Key Meetings and Milestones rows to the bottom of the Timeline?

No. They are always at the top – unless you select not to display them at all using the formatting dialogue.

8) Can I turn off the Swiftlight logo at the bottom of the page when I export it?

Yes, use the menu item Tools > Options … and look for the checkbox on the General Settings tab. Note that this option is not available to trial versions of Swiftlight.

9) Can I import or export data from / to Excel or from / to Microsoft Project?

Excel: you can export data from Swiftlight to Excel by using the menus File>Export to CSV in any of Swiftlight’s list/table views (Activity Group Summary, Action List, Activity Group Detail, Contact List, Issue Log). This will create a CSV file which you can open in Excel. It is not currently possible to import data from Excel, though you can you can copy and paste individual text strings

MS Project: Swiftlight does have links to/from MS Project. To find out more, use this link: Swiftlight and Microsoft Project

10) Can I export reminders to Lotus Notes?

No, but adding functionality to allow export of reminders to Lotus Notes is a planned enhancement.

11) In the Action List and Activity Group Detail, why can’t I select from a drop-down to fill out the “Involved” column?

There are pros and cons to having the Involved column as free text or having to select from a drop down. We decided to make it a free text field so that users did not have to set everyone up in the Contact List and to make it easy to copy and paste to fill this field. It seems users find there are times when this is the right approach, and others where they would want to use the drop down.

12) I added an action (or a meeting or milestone) on the Action List over Time, I can’t see where it has gone …

When the Action List over Time is on more than one page, it sometime happens that when you add or edit something on one page and then hit “enter” it moves up or down (and out of sight) to another page. Look up / down a page to see if you can find your action.

13) On the timeline, the text in some of my meetings and milestones is getting truncated …

What Swiftlight is doing is trying to fit the text into the allocated available space, based on a minimum font size. You can control the size of the space available and the minimum font sizes through the format dialogues. So if you are finding that text is truncating – you can try a combination of two things:
a) Open the page format dialogue on the timeline and select the “FONT” tab. In this dialogue you can reduce the minimum font size which will allow you to display more text. Note: if you want all the Activity Groups or milestones or meetings to have the same font size – just set the minimum and maximum font to be the same.
b) Open the page format dialogue on the timeline and select the “Meeting and Milestone Format” tab. In this dialogue you can increase the width and/or height of meetings and milestones to give yourself more room for text. Note: the wider each meeting and milestone is, the more likely it is to overlap with another one – at which point they will go onto separate lines.

+Bugs & Errors

We have spent a great deal of time testing Swiftlight, but, as with most software, it’s not yet perfect. We believe in being transparent with our customers about bugs and are committed to fixing them. We have also built auto-save functionality into Swiftlight in order to protect you and your work in the event that you to do run into bug. Be assured that the bugs we know about occur rarely and none of them significantly impacts Swiftlight’s functionality.

Overall, we are confident you are getting a great product, but if you are unlucky enough to run into a bug, you may experience some temporary inconvenience for which we apologise. Please work with us to improve Swiftlight by reporting bugs and helping us to fix them.

1) I am getting an error message, what should I do?

Errors are rare and generally not serious. First, please send the error message to us, and include some comments about what you were doing when the problem occurred so that we can better understand what has gone wrong. After sending the message, you should be able to continue with your work in Swiftlight, but we would recommend saving your file, as a precaution. If Swiftlight closes down unexpectedly after the error, when you re-open Swiftlight you should be prompted to open an auto-save file which will allow you to recover your work. Save this auto-save file with a new name and continue working.

2) When I select Print Advanced > Page Selector, it takes a long time for Swiftlight to respond

This is not really a bug – though it can be annoying. If the page selector needs to load a lot of pages (e.g. if you are printing or exporting the Action List over Time), it does take some time. For 1 or 2 pages, it should be pretty quick. Swiftlight is a graphically intensive application, which has benefits in terms of ease of use and communication clarity, but sometimes the graphics can slow down certain functions and we are working to speed them up.

3) There is a red X on my screen.

This was a very rare issue that affected version 1.0. The problem should have been resolved with release of v1.1 and later releases. Please check your version and update if necessary. The problem was identified as a display issue, the underlying data not being at all affected. If you encounter this issue in and older version, simply save your file, close it and re-open it and everything will have recovered.

4) Swiftlight has become unresponsive.

As with other windows applications, this can happen very occasionally. It may be due to Swiftlight or as likely something else going on in your machine. Most commonly this happens due to an overuse of system resources by all of the programs you have running, and it’s something that can build up over time. We suggest the following: a) close down applications that you no longer need to have open, go back to Swiftlight and see if it is now responding; b) if necessary, close Swiftlight and re-open it – you should get the opportunity to open an auto-save file and recover your work. If you think your machine has become overloaded by having too many applications open, or by not being shut down for a few days, then we’d strongly recommend you close everything down and reboot your machine.

5) I can’t enter text in the Activity Group Detail header section (Objectives, Key Questions, etc …)

Occasionally, this section of the page becomes unresponsive. Simply move to a different view (e.g. the Timeline), then return to the Activity Group Detail and it should be resolved.

6) Are there any other bugs I should be aware of?

This is a list of other, more minor bugs that you may encounter:
In the Timeline view, if you copy and paste an Activity Group whilst in Timeline Review mode, then this can lead to Activity Groups moving between rows unexpectedly. To avoid this, copy Activity Groups only when in Standard or Interlaced Timeline mode.

Some transient display issues may occur on customizing colours or fonts. These are generally resolved by navigating away from the view to another one, and then returning in order to force a “refresh” of the page. If problems persist, save the file, and then close and re-open Swiftlight.