Mike Robinson

Installation Video

2007-05-24T00:52:00Z

In our effort to help people use and understand OnTime better, the training department released this week a series of videos on installation and setup of the OnTime Suite. Setting up OnTime isn't hard, but there are invariably a number of questions that arise from time to time with any software installation, and these videos help our users quickly and easily find the answers that they are looking for through a slick video format.

The videos cover a number of different aspects of setting up OnTime including:

Prerequisites

What software do you have to install for OnTime to work?
What hardware do you need for the SQL Server?

Upgrading

What is the upgrade process?

How do I install SQL?
What versions of SQL are supported by OnTime?

Is there anything special with IIS that should be configured?

The OnTime Suite

What are the different executables in the OnTime package?

OnTime Windows and VS.Net

How do I install the Windows/VS.Net portions of OnTime?

OnTime Web, Portal, and Remote Server

How do I install the Web, Portal, or Remote Server?

OnTime Services

How do I install the E-mail/Alert services?

Database Setup Window

How do I tell my client which database to access?

Enjoy the videos and if you have any feedback on these videos or additional videos you'd like to see, please pass it on!

Reporting in OnTime

2007-04-25T20:34:00Z

The kind of reports that we have in OnTime have produced some questions recently from our users. Right now our reports fall into six categories:

Defect

These reports focus on different aspects of defects: as a list, in a more detailed paragraph report, by user, by status, by estimated/actual time, and fixed/found

Feature

Similar to Defects

Task

As a list of tasks or as a more detailed list of tasks

Incident

By list, detailed list, escalation level, and different periods of time

Project Summary

Two different charts showing project data, and a summary report that gives a detailed summary of each project

Work Log Reports

A list of worklogs (time entries)

This has led me to wonder what kind of other reports users would find useful when using the OnTime application. A request I have been asked more than once is a report that will show a user's currently assigned Defects, Features, Tasks, and Incidents--all in one report. This would be a great report to implement down the road.

So now I'd like to ask the Axosoft community:

What reports would you like to see included in future versions of OnTime?

Where Did My Tasks Go?

2007-04-05T01:15:00Z

One area of confusion that arises with the OnTime product from time to time is the subject of Tasks. People get confused on why tasks behave differently than our Defect, Feature, and Incident objects. So why do we treat them differently and what are the real differences with Tasks?

Tasks are treated differently than the other objects in the OnTime system because we treat them more as personal objects...much like a personal Post-It note. The idea with a Task is that any person can go to the OnTime system and leave themselves a note about anything--whether the note is about a document that needs to be written at work or a soccer game where the kids need to be picked up. Tasks are designed not from a global database perspective, but from an individual user perspective.

Creation of Tasks is an area of confusion that comes up when dealing with Tasks. You might notice under "Security Roles" that Defects, Features, and Incidents have an "Add <Object>" Security Privilege, and that this privilege does not appear for Tasks. Why? Because Tasks can always be added. It's by design. Anyone should be allowed to drop a note against any project that they can access. It's like a built-in whiteboard for every project where people can add Post-It Notes freely.

The other obstacle that people run into with Tasks is visibility. Why can some people see Tasks that you can't? There are four factors that account for Visibility with Tasks:

The "Created By" field

Whoever created the task can always see it

The "Assigned To" field

Whoever the task is assigned to can see it

The "Task is Public" checkbox

If the Task is marked as "Public", then everyone can see it

The Project in which the Task Resides

You need to be able to see the project that the task is in (project visible to the user through Security Roles)

This gives us a neat object that we can use in day-to-day operations. Here are some examples:

I have a document that Bill needs to work on, and we are the only two that need to see this task. I create the task and assign it to Bill.
I have to pick up my kids after school one day this week and I just want to mark it to myself only. I create the task, don't assign it to anyone but myself, and I make sure the "Task is Public" checkbox is unchecked.
I have a global work task that I want everyone to see. I mark the item "Task is Public" when creating it.
There is a project in my database where I want all tasks to be public. I just need to create a field template which has a "Task is Public" default value of "True" and I make the field non-editable. I can do the same thing the opposite way to keep people from ever posting public tasks in a directory

So that's a quick look at tasks and some of the key things that make them different.

How I Use OnTime 2007

2007-03-30T23:12:00Z

In my last blog, I discussed that there are lots of ways to use OnTime and that new users sometimes feel overwhelmed with the amount of freedom that they have while implementing the system. So I asked people to write about the different ways they use OnTime in our new "General Discussions" forum. The best way to get people started is to write up how I am using OnTime to track my day-to-day activities at Axosoft.

As a member of the User Education team, I spend much of my day giving demos and training sessions to our customers. One of my early tasks at Axosoft was to set up a system for coordinating training and demo sessions in an organized manner. What better way to do this than with OnTime? :-)

First, I needed to figure out what objects to track. I originally needed to track three kinds of objects:

Small Business Demos

These are given once a week to a group of users

PRO Demos

These are scheduled individually with the individual customer

Trainings

These are individual training classes scheduled with the individual customer

Axosoft University Classes

The Axosoft University classes were added more recently and track our weekly scheduled classes

To set this up, I chose "features" as my type of object and created four directories underneath a parent directory called "Professional Services".

I then began adding items underneath these directories. Highlighted below are a series of "Pro Demo" items that I have given. Each line entry represents a different demo that I have given to a client:

Next step is creating the field templates for these entries...what information do our trainers and salespeople need to access about demos and trainings? These are things like:

When is the presentation scheduled?
Who is supposed to show up?
What things am I supposed to be covering and are there any special circumstances?

After the demo/training:

How did it go?
Are there any action items I need to perform after the event?
Is there any pertinent information that our salespeople need to know about after this event?

To properly capture and display this information I designed a series of field templates. For demos, I designed three templates:

These represent the three views that a user will get about the item. Different Workflow states will drive when these field templates are used to display the demo item. Here is an example of how a demo looks as it moves through our process:

On this first screen, the salesperson enters the information about the demo itself. Here information is passed to the presenter about what the demo should cover or any other important information. Once the salesperson writes up the demo request, it is then sent over to the trainers:

You'll notice that the screen gets much larger here--this is because the presented who performs the demo/training needs to record a number of additional pieces of information. To use these field templates, I designed a few different OnTime Workflows to incorporate our different object types. Here is the one we use for demos:

There are four main states that a demo can be in. Workflows allow us to quickly search for items based on state and the state can also control how the item looks. Here is a different example that we use for our Training Workflow:

The steps for a training object are different...trainings sometimes require some additional followup action from a salesperson or tech support representative. Additionally, the "Training in Limbo" state designates if a customer has paid for a training over multiple sessions, but only attended one session and wants to save their other session for another time later. I hope this is a good example of how the trainers at Axosoft use OnTime to schedule our demos and trainings. Development and Marketing have completely different ways that it is used--this is just a solid example of our process.

So what processes are other people using to manage their flow of data? How are you running things with OnTime?

Your Company's Process in OnTime

2007-03-25T00:08:00Z

The one thing I do here at Axosoft more than anything else are presentations of the OnTime software to customers. This may include pre-sales demos or post-sales trainings. During all the time I spend with customers, the most recurring set of questions I get asked about are how OnTime can manage the process of a company. Questions in this area are usually similar to the following:

How does OnTime manage reporting the same defect from multiple customers?
When a user opens a feature, I want the user to select what kind of feature it is and then be shown certain fields on the screen based on the type of feature...can OnTime do this?
I want to get e-mails when a task reaches certain workflow stages.
What are the best ways to go about building multiple workflows?

In my last blog, several people communicated that an understanding of "good process" in OnTime is something that customers want to hear more about. One suggestion was to create "templates" of different kinds of processes that new users or potential users could examine to see exactly how OnTime can handle certain process situations. The easiest way in my mind to build such a set of templates are to start with the user community...and so I have an assignment for anyone who would like to take a few minutes out of your day to help me.

I am going to create a thread in the new "Project Management Forums" under "General Discussions" titled "Your Company's Process And OnTime". What I need from anyone who is using OnTime is to write up a post about how your company users OnTime:

What types of Objects are you using? How are objects moving around in your database? What kinds of things are users doing to enforce your process? How have you bulit Security Roles around your process? How have your build your Workflow(s)? What types of Notifications are being used?

The more information we get in this thread, the better I can track and build a series of templates for new and existing customers to explore different ways to use OnTime.

Thanks in advance for your input!

I Want to Hear From You!

2007-03-23T00:23:00Z

One of the things I hope to glean from this blog is a stronger connection with our community. As a member of the Axosoft Education Team, my job is to understand what people need to learn about our software...but just as important is to figure out what people want to learn about our software. I hope this blog will serve as a mechanism that allows people to more freely ask for better training topics, documentation, videos, and tutorials that will help people use the software better.

So let's get started! What topics do you, the community, want to hear about from a User Education standpoint? What kinds of things would you like to know? I have a series of topics that I am going to address here, but I figure that the best place to start on this blog is to immediately ask for the community's input. Feel free to comment on this blog or send me an e-mail personally: miker--at--axosoft--dot--com.

"Somewhere, Something"

2007-03-20T23:22:00Z

Greetings! And welcome to the first post in my new blog here at Axosoft. My name is Michael Robinson and I'm on the User Education team for the OnTime product. A quick introduction:

I have worked for years in a variety of software-related jobs (Tech Support, QA Technician, Application Developer, Custom Report Builder, Patch Designer, Software Trainer). My varied experience has culminated into a perfect fit at this company into a jack-of-all-trades role on the User Education team. Here at Axosoft I give demos and trainings (to the most technically savvy group of customers I've ever worked with), create web videos, write documentation, and help people understand our product through any method at my disposal. My job is to help folks implement the OnTime product and have it be a success.

The title of this blog is a nod to Carl Sagan's famous quote: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." He said this quote in reference to the universe and outer space, but I feel it applies to this blog. The goal I have here is to teach people aspects of our software that helps them in an "incredible" way. Anyone can purchase a great car or a great piece of software...but those things become "incredible" when you push them to the limit and learn how to use them well.

Here I'm going to cover topics regarding OnTime and how to use it well. Topics like setup, daily usage, reporting, SDK, custom interfaces, and training are all different areas I would like to cover--anything that pertains to our customers getting a better understanding of how OnTime works and how to get the most out of it.