RecChat: Opening Outdoor Facilities - 04/01/2021
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
Join Zach Malloch, Michael Cianci, Cullen Barber, Ross Tenaglia, and Brett Alarcon as they discuss strategies when opening up summer locations. The conversation includes updates to VIC, adjusting for covid protocols, tracking attendance, and a host of other questions from an active audience.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:10
And welcome to RecChat everybody. Today's edition is about getting your outdoor facilities ready for the next season that might actually have people showing up. So that's pretty exciting. We've got a stack panel today I'm joined as always by Bret Alarcon and director of municipal support services Cullen Barber, as well as Mike Cianci and Ross Tenaglia. How's everybody doing today, guys?
Cullen Barber 0:33
Doing Great. How about you?
Zach Malloch 0:35
Not to bad.
Awesome. So, Mike and Ross are going to be our primary presenters today, going through some of the stuff that we like to have people get ready for a little bit early. It seems like this season, we always have people that basically go outside to get their facilities ready the day before things start working, and they call in for support. And that's what everybody else is doing at the same time, it's kind of hard to get into the queue. So we just want to make this aware or make awareness of this so that everybody can get a little bit of an early start on it. And so I'm going to hand it over to Mike and Ross, how's it going today guys? Actually already asked that question. You already said it's good.
Michael Cianci 1:12
Fun with the snow. I don't know if anybody else is getting snow, but we're getting snow here. So it's always
Zach Malloch 1:18
funny April Fool's joke.
Michael Cianci 1:20
Yeah, Exciting. So I guess I can start, you know, Ross, you know, feel free to, you know, join in whenever you feel like it. But, you know, kind of like, what we're talking about today is just getting out in front of everything, you know, making sure that you guys are ready, when it comes time to be ready, kind of what that entails is just going to be you know, making sure your computers are working, you know, the computers are, you know, when you plug them in, they turn on, you know, make sure that you know, Windows is up to date, process through your Windows updates, you know, and just kind of roll through everything that you need to to make sure that your computers are working. Once you get those computers working, you know, it's a good idea to test out, you know, your peripheral hardware, we'd want to make sure that your peripheral hardware, you know, like your receipt printers, you know that you can print test pages through windows, we want to make sure that, you know, your cameras can take pictures in Windows, you know, make sure you got VIC installed, if it's a 31. And you know, just pretty much flush out everything you need to before you hop into RecTrac, it's gonna help a lot to make sure that you know, like all your peripheral hardware works in Windows, that everything's kind of, you know, up to date and ready. So that way, when we get into RecTrac, we know that those items are already working. And it's not a RecTrac issue or that it is a RecTrac issue. And you know, just not a, you know, a hardware issue that we're really, you know, dedicating time to look at in Windows and looking in RecTrac. And going back and forth to figure out where that issue is a lot easier for us to pinpoint and help when it you know, we've pointed it down to like an issue with RecTrac. So that's a great place to start.
Zach Malloch 2:54
And just you mentioned updating the Windows computers and we all want to make sure that everything's on Windows 10 right now. Considering that maybe people didn't open up last year, or there was a limited opening, maybe not every computer was brought online. If anything's still on Windows 7, Microsoft's no longer supporting Windows 7 so we're not supporting Windows 7 either.
Michael Cianci 3:14
Right? And Ross, correct me if I'm wrong, I think New VIC can only be laid down in Windows 10. Is that right?
Ross Tenaglia 3:20
Yep, that's, that is right. And, you know, to note, you know, a lot of people are getting new computers set up, like with Windows 10. And you know about the hardware. One of the things we get a lot and we feel bad. But you know, with a credit card hardware, if it's like a brand new computer for ETS, and CardConnect. Those initial hardware installs for the actual pin pads, you need to work with the credit card provider for those installs first, ETS especially depending on their models. And generally once you know it's working confirmed if you're CardConnect. It says bolted. If you're in bolted interface, USB, they have a tokenizer test. You want to make sure those are working with them first, because unfortunately, we're not really able to set it up. They're provided from the providers and need to work with their implementation team if it's like a brand new computer or in effect, a brand new one. And then once it's working, it's just really Profile setups. From there, we have documentation as well. That pretty much outlines everything you know, so you know the first start with the brand new computer, you know, most of the time people open up a case with us, but we're kind of at a standstill until the hardware is working with the credit cards.
Zach Malloch 4:45
And I'm just creating a real quick poll poll that I think might be a little bit interesting to see everybody's response. So let's see if Yeah, is curious what percentage of our people are are planning on reopening their outdoor facilities? And whether or not you're actually opened last year as well? Looks like not as many are opening, but it looks like everybody is basically planning on opening at least something this year. That's pretty exciting.
Cullen Barber 5:18
Ross I was wondering, can you explain a little bit about kind of the Old VIC and the new VIC for the 3.1 customers in hardware, just a little bit of a difference between the two and why somebody may want to, you know, use the new VIC versus the Old VIC.
Ross Tenaglia 5:32
Yeah, certainly. if you're doing new computers, like Mike said, Windows 10 Only for sure. actually worked with a customer this morning. And the we're doing other stuff with access control, which naturally, whoever uses it knows it's a little bit more, more of a setup. But for the past weeks, just been giving some information to customers about switching to the new VIC. And it could really be a very quick process. It's a it's a Windows Installer executable, as opposed to the one Click installer through you know, running Internet Explorer as admin go into the Profile, laying it down. And then all of it that gets involved with that with the new VIC, you just grabbed the exe, drop it on desktop, right Click Run as admin, keep hitting next and you're done. That's really the extent of it. And then the nice thing with the two Vic's if you have old computers, or they're brand new, but you still have Old VIC out there, the two vics can coexist so you can get the new one installed on all your computers. And you can we have a guide that kind of tells you how to do that. So it's very quick, I think it's maybe a couple pages PDF as as well as our typical topic doc help that goes over the entire process of installing VIC. And then once you got it all installed, pretty much just swap the profiles on the default level and you know, nine times out of 10 it will connect them unless you know, there's just profiles linked accidentally to higher levels that you know got missed. Or the the VIC local host certs not there if you're hosted our secure connection.
Cullen Barber 7:15
In the Old VIC, the service was susceptible to getting kind of blasted by a Windows major Windows updates, right windows 10 updates.
Ross Tenaglia 7:26
Yup, that's so pretty much every major windows 10 update. I think windows seven still does it too for that people are still hanging on it. I know the big may update came out I updated my computer to it. But yeah, if you're holding off on the big may update that you can actually update right now. And you use the legacy VIC as a service. Consider it gone.
Zach Malloch 7:54
it's clearing the way for you to install new VIC. So it's it's a feature not a bug.
Cullen Barber 7:58
Right. That's right.
Zach Malloch 8:02
We did get a real quick VIC, question from Meghan. So they are getting a notification daily that a new VIC version is available, VIC will update and in a few moments, depending on your configurations, you may need to restart your RecTrac session. They're running latest RecTrac version and have also updated. VIC, are you aware of / Have you heard anything like that before us?
Ross Tenaglia 8:21
Yeah, they're on. Say, for example, you're on 07, which is the latest version. The latest version of VIC is 3.1.7. So in that case, you might, if you actually see 3.1.7 on your computer, you most likely aren't getting that I've seen where it was still hanging out on 3.1.6. And that's actually due to a back when you potentially originally set it up. There's a VIC update txt file on the server that needs to be updated. And that could explain why VIC isn't updating on the local computer. There could be a couple of other things, but we might have to look into it more. But that's been the most common cause for that.
Zach Malloch 9:16
All right, thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Cullen, I saw you about to ask
Cullen Barber 9:20
it was kind of along the same lines. And I know we we've had a couple of reports from it with a new VIC that their antivirus software is not liking part of the process of how the new VIC updates so we're looking into that. So if you happen to think you're getting the new update in the VIC kind of breaks on the new VIC, we have a workaround. Essentially you can repair or reinstall the VIC on that unit, but we're kind of got a bead on to what's happening so our dev team is looking into you know why the antivirus is not liking that script that runs to do that, that new update. So stay tuned, I'm sure we'll have an update on that in the coming weeks.
Zach Malloch 10:12
Great. All right. And I know that we have a checklist that we're going to be putting up with this RecChat also. And that has a convenient, it's kind of like talk or goes through everything that we're talking about here. It has links to various knowledgebase articles. And I'll also point out that we have a sort of our FastTrac videos, if you go to the Vermont System support site and you log in, you have the chat bot, and from there, you can get directly to FasttTrac videos. And those are some quick kind of self contained and I think the longest one is maybe 10 minutes, or I think I don't think we quite got to 10 minutes on any of them. But they're all short. They're they're single topic, very focused. And we just did a new one for background visit processing. So that'll be in the checklist. And it will be available on the chat bot before too long. And so if anybody's wanting to set up background as it processing, so you can use one workstation for visits and still do other transactions and the like. And you happen to have a Honeywell 7580G scanner, then you've got a video that helps you go through that configuration pretty easily. And the other the other FastTrac videos can be very useful as well for getting some of your your work done faster. And yeah, so Cullen just pasted some of the FastTrac videos in the chat. So if anybody wants to access that you can get a little bit of a preview for although this one doesn't have the background visit yet. It'll have it probably by tomorrow, I would imagine. And we have another question that just popped up. So Cole is asking, does RecTrac have any templates to assist with creating pool reservation systems, many pools are able to open but have capacity parameters in place facilities that I've talked to you are in the process of creating reservation systems for members and non members. So the first thing I'll mention is that we have a RecChat in the archives. So every RecTrac we do we record it, and we have RecChat archives so that you can get back and watch any of the previous sessions. And from was it June last year? I want to say it's June of last year. Yeah, June 4, we have a social distancing RecChat that kind of goes over a couple of ways to do some of those limited capacity reservations. But Mike or Ross, did you want to speak to that at all?
Ross Tenaglia 12:35
Yeah, I personally haven't set up too much. Because I really don't work in that area. But um, exactly like Zack said, we do have RecChat that goes over it, even for 10.3... But yeah, it's you can actually use facilities, I think we can also use Trips or tickets, it really comes down to base off of exactly how you want to play out facility like actual facility reservations may not be what would work best in that particular scenario. Where trips, works very well, in that limited capacity, almost like a time frame time block setting where everyone who's worked with facilities know, that facilities is more like an open ended reservation process, where Trips or tickets, you can set up alright, only five people can, you know, buy this slot for an hour. And that's it, where facilities you know, when someone books that they have that time slot, you know, if it's just them, but you say you want 4 other households to be able to get in there. So I'm pretty sure that videos show that it is Trips and tickets primarily for something like that.
Cullen Barber 14:00
We've got a couple of customers that have also used activity enroll by day to handle that. Particularly if it's been more of a long running indoor pool Type situation. We've had a couple that have been successful with that as well. So a couple different options like cross set has several ways you can approach it depending on what your what your capacities are and limitations and rules and things like that.
Zach Malloch 14:25
And speaking of by day enrollments, I'm double checking, but I am pretty sure that we have a virtual symposium on that topic for anybody that's a subscriber that might be curious about that. Just double checking.
Cullen Barber 14:44
We have a question that came in from Peggy. Peggy says we're having trouble with our credit cards we can take credit cards manually, but the pin pad does not recognize a transaction. We are using a Verizon MiFi as this is an outdoor facility, could this be the problem? Peggy, we might need a little bit more information. As far as like, which interface are using, is it like a CardConnect interface or ETS? It'd be good to know who you're using. But most of those units, as long as they're communicating, it shouldn't matter if it's Verizon, or, you know, a standard, you know, Wi Fi. Okay, ETS. So, good question. I don't know, I guess I need to know what unit it is... I'm not aware of Wi Fi unit. Do you guys know, Mike, do we have an ETS Wi Fi unit that interfaces directly with RecTrac? I'm not aware of one.
Michael Cianci 15:51
So some people use like the Ethernet ones. But that's like fairly uncommon, you know, like, we don't have a lot of collateral on the Ethernet ones, we have a lot more collateral on the USBs. But since ETS uses transwell, to process those transactions, it kind of I don't know how you're trying to take it. But if you generally you can process a manual transaction through like an iframe, it pops it prompts you can process through it. If you're just trying to use like an iPad that doesn't have VIC or anything, you're probably out of luck, and it probably won't work. Again, we probably need some additional specifics, because they're generally with RecTrac, there's a way to get something done. And you can probably do it. But without you know, like exactly what Type of hardware you're using and exactly how you're trying to do it like ETS is a little less flexible with some of the processes that they use to process transactions. So
Cullen Barber 16:42
right, yeah,
Michael Cianci 16:43
hard maybe.
Zach Malloch 16:44
And actually, so the next question I see here is from Charles, and he's saying that they're on VIC 3.1.92 is a manual process when we upgraded to RecTrac, three, one and 2020. Is there an easier process to install the new version? Or that version? I'm guessing you're asking about the old version there, Charles?
Ross Tenaglia 17:05
Yeah, so the old version, we're gonna say no to that. But with the new version, since it's a Windows installer, it comes with an MSI file that, you know, whoever's, you know, on the it end or infrastructure team is privy to using group policy or s SCCM. I forget the acronyms one of them. Or, you know, whatever mass deployment you have on your network, it says any old MSI file, so it's not intrinsically unique. So you're run of the mill Group Policy distribution, is a means to use to install on all the computers as needed. And like I was saying earlier, I had a customer today they did that no problems. Unfortunately, it's something that, you know, we don't get directly involved with, because that's, you know, Active Directory configuration. And, you know, that's kind of out of our wheelhouse. But the MSI files, it's there. If you've used it before, it's pretty much no different than any other program.
Zach Malloch 18:11
Yeah. So this is, this is the VIC Profile. And I actually just updated this this week, so that I could do the video that I was talking about the background visit processing. And if we Click on the little (i) icon, we get to our help, if we scroll up to the top of that Screen, we get to our topic dock for VIC installation using Windows Installer. And then this tells you that there are a few things that we need to change. Like if you're using a local Certificate, it's there. But it would basically instead of using 6500, we started using 5500. So we have to update a few numbers here. But then on the second tab, so we update those two numbers, and we update this number. Then on the second tab, if we scroll all the way down, we have our windows VIC deployment server URL. So you need to make sure that your RecTrac server is entered into that Field. It'll just be server name if you haven't been here since the new version was available. And you Click Download VIC installer, and then that is downloading the the Windows version of the VIC setup. exe. And then if I tell that to run, so I already installed it. So it's giving me the options to modify or repair. So let's try and modify. And then this is what Ross was talking about with Megan's question is initially when you're installing it, you're installing VIC, and hopefully the updates... well Ross, you're talking about an update file on the server not this question.
Ross Tenaglia 19:35
Correct
Zach Malloch 19:36
Okay. Well, this is the way that we recommend doing it so that you have VIC installed and then you also have the way the service so that you can update VIC Menus hit Next goes through installs and it took me off about five minutes earlier today. Just want to give that context to people. All right. And Meredith has is asking if there's a report, we can run at the pool over the summer to see at any given time how many people are in the complex.
Michael Cianci 20:08
So that's more of an open ended question. It's easier if you're tracking swipe ins and swipe outs. But like, again, it really depends on how you're doing that, like, Are you kind of like we discussed earlier? Are you using tickets? Are you using, you know, like, enrolled by days to allow for people to, you know, sign up for those slots. And if you are, you could certainly just report on those, you know, report on, you know, almost like a Roster report to be able to tell you, but if you're tracking, you know, like visit processing, there's also a way, but you have to be tracking, swipe in and swipe out to get an accurate number. So it really depends on your setup, and then the reporting for that setup. So again, yeah, doable. For sure. I think
Cullen Barber 20:53
you can see on your Screen too, right Mike? If you're doing swipe in and swipe out, the folks at the pool can actually see the current attendance.
Michael Cianci 21:01
Yeah, right, through Visit Processing
Cullen Barber 21:03
Yep. Yep.
Zach Malloch 21:04
Yeah. So what they're talking about with the capacity, so we have our location code, I mean, visit Profile, we have our location code. And then we have our capacity settings. So if we enter a number into this capacity, then when we go to our visit, swipe Screen, we'll see the total number available of space that we can have people swipe into. And then if you have a station where you actually swiping out..., so first time somebody swipes, they'll swipe in second time they swipe, they're swiping themselves out. But a lot of times people don't actually have scanners set up for swipe outs, it's hard to get customers trained to do that consistently. So instead, we often do these generic swipe out Button options. So these just give buttons to the clerk so they can kind of monitor they can see when people are leaving through the doors, they can say, Okay, two people just left five people just left. And then that's so as people swipe in, you're going down from 400, in this example, and as you're clicking those swipe out buttons, you're making more space back up to 400. And, as Cullen and Mike were saying, if we go to our visit processing Screen, there it is, we see our capacity, and we see our remaining capacity. And every time I swipe somebody in, it's going to reduce that number by the number of people that swipe in. And so I have 399 remaining spaces for this visit.
Cullen Barber 22:31
And you have your buttons to the right of that, right that if you wanted to manually swipe them out.
Zach Malloch 22:35
So I swipe out one and I'm back up to the 400. And so these are generic swipe out. So there's no way that this ties back to the exact person who's leaving, obviously, but it kind of goes from the first person that swiped in, when you hit swipe at one, it's going to remove the oldest swipe in record and then you know, go from the bottom back up to the top basically. Okay, yeah. And Merideth, it's the same, ifthey use key fob. So that means past visit, I would assume. Yeah. So if you don't have that capacity on your past visiting Screen, Meredith, then that's where you're going to want to go into your visit Profile, and update that. And then you have your capacity group down here. So you need to make sure you have a location set. And then you can Type whatever number you want for the capacity. As long as there's any number in here, then you should start seeing that Field when you open up your visit processing.
Cullen Barber 23:31
Oh, we're not able to see your Screen Zack, just as a heads up
Zach Malloch 23:33
Yep. Normally just pop it up real quick, But yeah, I took it down. Alright, so this is our once again, the visit Profile, then down here under the capacity settings, as long as there's a number here, you should see that Field on your visit processing Screen. If this is a zero, then you won't see that it just kind of assumes that you're not using it. So hopefully that helps. And so Melissa is asking this, does doing the swipe out also clear any record of the swipe in? And the answer is no, it's not like deleting anything. It's just adding a swipe out record in addition to the swipe in record. And then, you know, if you're actually having people swipe out where it's tied to the exact same record, so you have them swipe their pass on the way in there swipe their pass again on the swipe out, then you start getting extra data like how long is the average person actually using the facility between the swipe in and swipe out point? With the generic it's harder to tie that stuff together. All right, got some more questions going on. So Peggy says that they can process on RecTrac. That's back to that ETS credit card question from before.
Cullen Barber 24:46
We may have to circle back with Peggy on the support side and dig into that one a little deeper, I think.
Zach Malloch 24:54
Yeah. Let's see we've got... oh Terry's asking if that option is available in 10.3, I kind of think that it was but I don't have a 10.3 environment to bring up in front of me right now.
Cullen Barber 25:07
Rings a bell?
Bret Alarcon 25:09
I think it was. Yeah, we did have the swipe in and swipe out.
Cullen Barber 25:13
Yeah. And add the generic buttons too, I think, didn't it?
Bret Alarcon 25:17
yes, it did. I think it's on pass maintenance where you can tell it, swipe and swipe out and also visit device, I think something was in there too.
Zach Malloch 25:25
Basically the analog for that capacity setting in the visit Profile. All right, and then David is saying that they use POS codes for general admissions throughout their pool, can you write a rule to limit the number of those you see that you sell for a given timeframe? Like how many of them can you sell within an hour?
Ross Tenaglia 25:46
That one, I don't believe so that's really where as we were kind of answering another question earlier about, you know, Trips, in tickets, you set up your, your capacity blocks, beforehand, or even, you can probably finagle passes to do it. But if it's just like a Point Of Sale Service Item, service items are just inherently I guess you can call it low tech, and they're a means to an end to collect money. If you want to get more utility out of them. You got to kind of have to specialize a little bit more with the other modules.
Cullen Barber 26:29
Yeah, I agree. I think we had a couple of folks that tried that last summer Ross. And I think they got it to technically work. But when it really came down to it, it wasn't efficient. And I think towards the end of the season, they actually got into some issues with how it worked online, the efficiency of the rule checking. And it wasn't really a good solution that I think they ended up kind of punting and circling back to the other options you mentioned. So I think they might have gotten it to work technically. But it wasn't a good solution. They quickly realized there was some limitations with it. And it wasn't the best performing online when they did so.
Zach Malloch 27:14
And so Cole's asking, again, is asking if the capacity option can be set according to time blocks, and unfortunately, not, at least not in the visit Profile. If you're talking about just regular facility reservations, we could configure some rules that would allow different headcounts capacity at various times during out throughout the day. But that doesn't tie into the visit processing piece.
Cullen Barber 27:36
You could do it online, right? You could allow like a reservation by capacity, right? So you could say, Okay, we only allow so many people into the area, based on a certain time. But it was still be a little bit of check and balance once they got to the actual location. Right.
Zach Malloch 27:56
Yeah, and that's a good point. Because with, we're talking about making a Facility Reservation, that would be a single Facility Reservation where you can have a different top level of headcount for a certain time block. And that actually goes to Eddie's question where in facility management is location to allow more than one reservation for a specific facility. And facilities do not allow multiple reservations, there's no double booking in the facility module. So in the case where you have like a green space, most people would kind of divide that green space up into the the effective areas that you could use the green space for. So maybe have like green space area 1 - 10, if you could have 10 reservations happening at the same time. But yeah, facilities do not allow double booking at all, there's no setting that we can change for that. Unfortunately
Cullen Barber 28:48
Yeah, you'd have to use, like the Rental module or like Trips, tickets or the activity to kind of accomplish that. That Type of multiple people in the same spot, same time.
Zach Malloch 29:01
Exactly.
Michael Cianci 29:03
Zach, I'm gonna jam out of here it is 228. I'm going to do a shameless PayTrac plug. If you are unhappy with your credit card gateway, we have PayTrac vermont systems. It's our credit card gateway, reach out to sales for more info. Shout out to my people in chat that have switched over. Kay, I see you out there. All right. I will see you guys next time. Have a great day, everyone.
Cullen Barber 29:25
Thanks. Bye.
Michael Cianci 29:26
Bye, guys.
Zach Malloch 29:27
Bye. And I think Cullen is going to have to jump off pretty soon also.
Cullen Barber 29:33
I've gotta join Mike and the PayTrac onboarding for another customer. But I got a couple of minutes I'll hang out. Any more questions?
Zach Malloch 29:42
Yeah, so I think we are wrapping up but I see Terry had one coming in. So for cash paying Walk ins or people who don't have an account already. How would they feed into the swipe and swipe out feature?
Ross Tenaglia 29:54
Well, for something like that, past daily visits or sorry daily passes You can do the same thing. So if there's someone that's not in this system don't have like a, you know, a formal member membership, you know, ton of customers use it, you sell a daily pass to a generic household, you can always add a visit fee, you know, on the daily pass, you would create a fee, transaction Type would be visit, not purchase, but visit. And then when you technically pick that daily pass and swipe it in, it will charge the fee. And because it's a daily pass, it acts no differently than a regular pass. And it will still take in effect, a capacity slot, they can't really sign out as you would if you had a key fob or pass or just a name lookup. So you would have to utilize that Zack showed earlier those generic, you know, swipe outs.
Zach Malloch 30:56
Exactly. So we're down to 398, I swiped this guy in and then I did a swipe out, then I did two daily visits. And then that reduced our capacity by those two slots there. Right. And so Peggy is asking if they could switch from ETS to RecTrac's PayTrac. And that is exactly it. And all of the ETS customers are going to be invited to a session about PayTrac and PlugnPay will as well. So look for that in the next coming months or so. And I think that's going to bring us to the end of today's RecChat. So thank you all very much for participating. Go ahead and stop sharing. Ross, pleasure to have you here. As always, thank you for your expertise and information.
Ross Tenaglia 31:44
No problem.
Zach Malloch 31:45
Brett, thanks for helping out with all the chat and the questions and everything like that. And yes, I see Peggy you're looking for more information, we have logs of all the questions that have been asked here. So we will be able to get that. And like I said expect more more communication from Vermont Systems on some of those topics if they apply to you in the near future. Next week, anybody that subscribes to the virtual symposium, we are going to be doing drop in visit processing and activity attendance posting. So tying activity and the past module together and all the settings that are involved in that. So anybody that's interested in those things, look forward to that if you're interested in subscribing to the virtual symposium or buying an individual admission to just that one session, you can contact sales and we'll be able to get you in there for that. I think that's about it. Brett, any closing words?
Bret Alarcon 32:36
No, just thank you for showing up and listening to what we have to say.
Zach Malloch 32:40
Okay, well, you're fired. (April Fools) See Everybody soon.
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