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Frequently Asked Questions


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Who Is Daylight Research?

Founded in 2005, Daylight Research, Inc. is a small startup computer software development company located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At this time, our sole product is Daylight Explorer™.

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What Is Daylight Explorer™?

Daylight Explorer™ is a comprehensive computer database application that your church can use to easily organize all of it's data. For a more complete description, please see the Product Features and Fifty Nifty Features pages.

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Is Daylight Explorer™ an Open Source Application?

No. All coding, maintenance and distribution is done exclusively by Daylight Research, Inc.

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Is Daylight Explorer™ a Web-Based Application?

No. All currently available editions operate on your desktop or local area network. You pay no monthly or other periodic payments.

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Does Daylight Explorer™ Use a Modern Database Design?

Yes. It uses a normalized, relational database. Among other desirable things, this means that you never have to enter the same data more than once. For example, if a person is listed as a member of your church and you want to add that person to a sunday school, you do not have to do any data entry work. Instead you simply drag and drop his or her record into the People node under the sunday school in question (watch a short video). It also means that when you change some data (for example, a church member's address), your change appears in all other areas where the record in question appears thus ensuring that all data remains consistent.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that all data access is accomplished through stored procedures which provides a significant performance advantage.

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Can We Install Daylight Explorer™ Without Removing Our Current Database Program?

Yes. This allows you to try Daylight Explorer™ out while you still use your old program.

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Is There a Free Edition?

Yes. The Daylight Explorer™ Express Edition is free. There are more FAQs on the free edition here.

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Does the Free Edition Have a Time Limit?

No. Daylight Explorer™ Express Edition is a complete database program and your church can use it for as long as you want. Some advanced features are not included in this edition and the database is limited to 200 people and 80 families. For more information go to Product Editions or FAQ on Daylight Express™.

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Does the Free Edition Display Advertisements?

No. There are no advertisements or spyware of any kind.

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Does Daylight Explorer™ Integrate with Our Accounting Program?

Daylight Explorer™ does not automatically update third-party accounting systems. It keeps track of your member offerings and pledges internally and provides a comprehensive selection of convenient reports for both you and your members. If you use a separate accounting system, you can print out one of several reports that summarize all of the data you need to prepare your deposit slips and make your accounting entries.

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Is Daylight Explorer™ Available in Languages Other Than English?

No. At this time our software is available only in English.

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Is it Hard to Upgrade from the Free Edition to One of the Premium Editions?

No. If you start with the free edition and later decide to upgrade to one of the premium editions, you do not have to re-enter or transfer your data to a new database. All you do is install the new edition and it will take over working with the same database you were using in Daylight Explorer™ Express Edition.

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Will We Be Able to Export Data to Outlook or Other Contacts Applications?

Yes. You can export contacts data (addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and website addresses) to any third-party application that can import a CSV (comma separated values) file.

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Will I Be Able to Export Data to My Cell Phone?

Yes, provided your cell phone can synchronize with Outlook or some other third-party application capable of importing contacts data in a CSV file or if it can import this data directly.

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Will Our Church Be Able to Use Daylight Explorer™ to Organize Our Church Library?

Yes. There is a full-featured library module with checkin/checkout and reservation functionality. Daylight Explorer™ also has a module for organizing your church equipment.

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Will We Be Able to Run Daylight Explorer™ on Our Network?

Yes. Daylight Explorer™ Network edition will be able to run on your Microsoft network. Also, the Enterprise Edition will run on your Windows 2003 Server Domain.

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Will We Be Able to Track Data for More Than One Church?

Yes. With Daylight Explorer™ Network edition you can manage data for up to three churches. This feature would come in handy if more than one church occupied the same building or in any other circumstance where managing more than one church from one location and in one database would make sense. NOTE: This feature does not give you a license to install the software on more than one network. It is for managing more than one church on a single network. Please contact us for more information.

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Will We Be Able to Record Offerings Made to Sunday School Classes?

Yes. Just enable this functionality in the Program Options dialog (by default, it is enabled when you first set up your system) and you can record sunday school offerings just like you record them for your church. This feature is available with all editions.

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Will We Be Able to Record Offerings from Both Families and Individuals?

Yes. When you enable this functionality in the Program Options dialog (by default, it is enabled when you first set up your system), you can record family pledges and offerings in addition to those given by individual church members. This feature is available with all editions.

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Will We Be Able to Run Daylight Explorer™ on Our Windows 2003 Server Domain?

Yes. Please contact us for more information. Please include your phone number if you want to discuss how our software would fit into your system.

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Will We Be Able to Run Daylight Explorer™ on Windows 7?

Not yet. We hope to offer Windows 7 functionality by late 2010.

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What Are the Installation Requirements?

Hardware Requirements:

Minimum monitor specification: Capable of 1024 x 768 resolution
Minimum CPU clock speed: 1GHz
Minimum RAM: 512MB
Minimum initial free disk space: 400MB
Recommended free disk space (to account for maximum database capacity plus application-related file growth): 10GB
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher

Platform Requirements:

Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 2003 Server - 32-bit. This version of Daylight Explorer™ will not run on a 64-bit system.
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What is the Spam Robot Catcher?

The Spam Robot Catcher is a software component that looks for signs of malicious activity on this website. If it finds any, it will re-route the user to a different page on our site and, in so doing, interrupt the activity. It is possible for a legitimate visitor to trigger the robot catcher by making unusually rapid clicks in succession. In such a case, we do apologize but hope that our visitors will, in general, appreciate our efforts in fighting malicious web surfers. The way to avoid the robot catcher is to slow your clicking down a little. If you get routed to the robot catcher page, you can resume what you were doing by clicking the Back button on your browser. The only thing the robot catcher does is re-route. It does not run any special code on your computer or record any information.

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