The UniPress Blog

We were recently reminiscing here about the old days and did a Web search on the history of domain names. We learned that our name 'unipress.com', which we got on July 13, 1987, is the 80th name ever registered!! (http://www.chrisabraham.com/2005/10/the_100_oldest.php
for more info.) TRW is the 79th and Dupont is the 81st, so we are in good company. The list of the first 100 domain names is at the bottom of this article.

I knew that we had been Internet users for a long time, but didn't realize that we were such trailblazers. We started using the Net soon after we opened our doors in 1983, before there were domain names.

I remember a give-away we made for a Washington, DC tradeshow in winter
1984 (at least I think it was 1984). In those days, to send an email to a person on a different computer than yours, you had to specify the full routing between your computer and the recipient's!! Typically, your site (if you were on the Net) had a connection to a local university, and hopefully so did the recipient's, because that was the only way to send and receive email. As example, if I wanted to send a message from UniPress in Edison, NJ to our UK agent (who had a link to Cambridge University) the 'To' field of the email would be something like: cambridge!columbia!rutgers!john@UnipressUk. (Note: it's been a long time since I had to address any mail like this, so I may not have done it exactly right.)

Back to the give-away at the tradeshow ... To help the community, we made a map of the worldwide Internet backbone. It was on sturdy cardboard stock and the map was very popular at the show since you really did need something like it in order to know how to route your email. During the conference a blizzard blanketed Washington, DC under more than 15 inches of snow. I made a paper hat out of one of the maps and used it for cover. When other people saw my hat, they swarmed our booth and took all the rest of the maps for the same purpose. Hopefully the hat was able to help people with their email communications too.

So, the Internet has come quite a distance since 1984!!

Writing about the Internet makes me think about Al Gore. Was he the inventor of the Internet? Did he claim to be? I did some Googling.
Here's what I learned.

(http://www.perkel.com/politics/gore/internet.html . The text below is from that page.)

---------------------------------------
In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

But the real question is what, if anything, did Gore actually do to create the modern Internet? According to Vincent Cerf, a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom who's been called the Father of the Internet, "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Look at http://www.sethf.com/gore/ for more on the Al Gore story.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

At UniPress, we happily used our Internet domain name for more than a decade without any trouble, but in 1999 we were contacted by another company, the Unipress Corporation of Tampa, FL. Since the 1920s (as I recall) that Unipress has been making laundry pressing machines. At the time, they demanded that we stop using the 'unipress.com' domain name since their company is older than ours, and they trademarked the name 'Unipress' in the 1950s. We told them that we had the right to our domain name which we had obtained in 1987, and further that they had no need for our URL -- they could get one of their own, perhaps 'unipresscorp.com.' They completely refused to consider anything except us surrendering the URL to them.

To make a very long, costly, and unpleasant story shorter, I'll tell you that after a few years in court we got undisputed possession of our domain name, and the laundry people named their Web site 'unipresscorp.com,' which was the name we had suggested to them that they use when they initially contacted us.

Justice did finally prevail, at least, although the cost for this victory was more than one year of my son's college tuition.

----------------------------------------------

Here are the first 100 '.com' domain names and their dates:

03/15/1985 SYMBOLICS.COM
04/24/1985 BBN.COM
05/24/1985 THINK.COM
07/11/1985 MCC.COM
09/30/1985 DEC.COM
11/07/1985 NORTHROP.COM
01/09/1986 XEROX.COM
01/17/1986 SRI.COM
03/03/1986 HP.COM
03/05/1986 BELLCORE.COM
03/19/1986 IBM.COM
03/19/1986 SUN.COM
03/25/1986 INTEL.COM
03/25/1986 TI.COM
04/25/1986 ATT.COM
05/08/1986 GMR.COM
05/08/1986 TEK.COM
07/10/1986 FMC.COM
07/10/1986 UB.COM
08/05/1986 BELL-ATL.COM
08/05/1986 GE.COM
08/05/1986 GREBYN.COM
08/05/1986 ISC.COM
08/05/1986 NSC.COM
08/05/1986 STARGATE.COM
09/02/1986 BOEING.COM
09/18/1986 ITCORP.COM
09/29/1986 SIEMENS.COM
10/18/1986 PYRAMID.COM
10/27/1986 ALPHACDC.COM
10/27/1986 BDM.COM
10/27/1986 FLUKE.COM
10/27/1986 INMET.COM
10/27/1986 KESMAI.COM
10/27/1986 MENTOR.COM
10/27/1986 NEC.COM
10/27/1986 RAY.COM
10/27/1986 ROSEMOUNT.COM
10/27/1986 VORTEX.COM
11/05/1986 ALCOA.COM
11/05/1986 GTE.COM
11/17/1986 ADOBE.COM
11/17/1986 AMD.COM
11/17/1986 DAS.COM
11/17/1986 DATA-IO.COM
11/17/1986 OCTOPUS.COM
11/17/1986 PORTAL.COM
11/17/1986 TELTONE.COM
12/11/1986 3COM.COM
12/11/1986 AMDAHL.COM
12/11/1986 CCUR.COM
12/11/1986 CI.COM
12/11/1986 CONVERGENT.COM
12/11/1986 DG.COM
12/11/1986 PEREGRINE.COM
12/11/1986 QUAD.COM
12/11/1986 SQ.COM
12/11/1986 TANDY.COM
12/11/1986 TTI.COM
12/11/1986 UNISYS.COM
01/19/1987 CGI.COM
01/19/1987 CTS.COM
01/19/1987 SPDCC.COM
02/19/1987 APPLE.COM
03/04/1987 NMA.COM
03/04/1987 PRIME.COM
04/04/1987 PHILIPS.COM
04/23/1987 DATACUBE.COM
04/23/1987 KAI.COM
04/23/1987 TIC.COM
04/23/1987 VINE.COM
04/30/1987 NCR.COM
05/14/1987 CISCO.COM
05/14/1987 RDL.COM
05/20/1987 SLB.COM
05/27/1987 PARCPLACE.COM
05/27/1987 UTC.COM
06/26/1987 IDE.COM
07/09/1987 TRW.COM
07/13/1987 UNIPRESS.COM
07/27/1987 DUPONT.COM
07/27/1987 LOCKHEED.COM
07/28/1987 ROSETTA.COM
08/18/1987 TOAD.COM
08/31/1987 QUICK.COM
09/03/1987 ALLIED.COM
09/03/1987 DSC.COM
09/03/1987 SCO.COM
09/22/1987 GENE.COM
09/22/1987 KCCS.COM
09/22/1987 SPECTRA.COM
09/22/1987 WLK.COM
09/30/1987 MENTAT.COM
10/14/1987 WYSE.COM
11/02/1987 CFG.COM
11/09/1987 MARBLE.COM
11/16/1987 CAYMAN.COM
11/16/1987 ENTITY.COM
11/24/1987 KSR.COM
11/30/1987 NYNEXST.COM

Until next time,

Fred
fhp@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 09:24 AM | Permalink

I was thinking about the Hosting service we offer that has helped so
many people. It lets customers run a full-function FootPrints system
on a computer which we maintain for them. The customer doesn't need
any servers or any IT infrastructure. We do it all. (Some customers
from larger companies which have IT capability choose Hosting anyway,
so that they can take care of their own needs without utilizing -- or
paying for -- their in-house IT services.)

One customer had no IT department so they could not have any helpdesk or
issue tracking system until they found the UniPress FootPrints Hosting
service.

Another customer had a large installation of FootPrints being used for a
CRM Service Desk running on a corporate server. Their IT Department
was charging them a lot of internal funds for using the equipment, and
furthermore they had a lot of outages. They turned to UniPress: The
Hosting fees were a lot less than their own company was charging them,
their uptime was substantially better once they switched, and they got
faster response time. This customer inputs more than 50,000 tickets
per month!

We have dozens of customers, and they are happy with the service. They
each get a full FootPrints installation, so they can have multiple
projects, they can be system administrators, etc., and we have
developed an installation 'cookbook' to get them running very
quickly. We do the setup for them (at no charge!), so they can be
installed and running without being FootPrints experts.

The more I think about the Hosting service, the more I believe that it
can be a great help to small organizations who don't have the in-house
IT capability but whose operation is complex enough to need a powerful
issue tracking system.

These customers typically are not using FootPrints for IT-helpdesk
purposes. They use it for many other 'issue tracking' needs, such as
customer service, HR, facilities management, etc.

One wonderful use of FootPrints is as the communication 'nervous
system' for a multi-location organization. The system can be run
through web screens, or FootPrints will send emails (including any
attachments), automatically record replies (including any
attachments), can act as a reminder/tickler system, and much more.

Until now, we have been 'offering' the Hosting service more than
'promoting' it. I am sure that the FootPrints Hosting Service can help
many more organizations than it does presently. We are going to start a
more active effort to promote it.

- Fred Pack, fhp@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 11:47 AM | Permalink

My partner Fred Pack came running into my office today. He had just
upgraded his Palm to a fast broadband connection and wanted to show it
off.

Since his Palm can now send and receive email and work with Web pages,
we discussed how FootPrints could take advantage of this device as well
as other PIMs (personal information managers), like my BlackBerry. We
talked for a while and I realized that this is both a general topic for
service desks and other applications. So I thought I would describe PIM
integration within the context which I know best, FootPrints.

There are three specific areas where FootPrints and similar
applications might want to integration with PIMs. They are:

1. Synchronization between the Service Desk's Calendar, Tickets
and Contacts and the PIMs Calendar, Tasks and Contacts. This can
be done without a wireless Internet connection.

2. Accessing tickets dynamically on the PIM, including viewing
issue lists, updating tickets, looking at the details of tickets
by sending and receiving email. This does require a wireless Internet
connection to the PIM.

3. Accessing tickets dynamically on the PIM, similar
functionality as #2 above, but via the PIM's mini Web browser.

I'd like to talk about each of these.

Synchronization
---------------

Wouldn't it be nice to synchronize your calendar appointments, tickets
and contacts in your service desk to those in your Palm, BlackBerry or
Outlook?

In FootPrints 7.5, now in Beta Test, you can do just that.

You can choose to synchronize an appointment with your PIM (or desktop)
by simply checking the "Synchronize" box when creating or editing your
appointment. And you can synchronize tickets to handheld or desktop
tasks (typically My Assignments but you can choose any other search
criteria), and send contact lists down to your handheld or desktop by
choosing which contacts to send.

While this synchronization is static -- the update is done while the
Palm or BlackBerry is attached to a desktop PC -- it is very convenient
to be able to synchronize events, tasks and contacts with the PIM.

Dynamic Ticket Access via Email
-------------------------------

FootPrints, as well as most other service desk products, have the
ability to send and receive emails to create and update tickets, get
details on them, and even show lists of tickets -- like My
Assignments, so that when you are in your PIMs email client you can
manage your support desk tasks.

In addition though, you might want to manage tickets through your
handheld's email client. This is not a simple step though, since the
footprint or screen of the handheld device is so much smaller than
that of a typical email client.

If the service desk sends out the same email for Outlook, for instance,
as it sends for your Palm, the Palm email would not be very readable.

But this problem is not too difficult to surmount:

In FootPrints, the Email setup page, which defines the formats,
fields, headers and footers that are sent to Agents, Customers
and CC's, also has a column for Wireless devices. This setup
assumes that the footprint of the Wireless device will be narrow,
and it creates emails which will fit on the typical handheld.

How does FootPrints know which email address is a Wireless
address? First, you can specify in an Agent's profile which email
corresponds to their Wireless/Handheld. Second, you can specify a
class of email domains which are Wireless/Handheld. Both of these
Wireless types of addresses will get the narrow, custom email
messages.

Dynamic Ticket Access via Web Browser
-------------------------------------

While the Email access for Handheld/PIM devices is excellent, a better
method would allow the mini browser of the handheld to display the
Web pages of the service desk application.

We are just starting design of this now.

What does this method require?

We will need to create server pages in FootPrints which are
custom made for a small Web browser and which a) are single
frame; b) are small enough to fit on the handheld's small Web
screen; c) encompass enough information to be generally useful.
This last point means that while a mini-homepage is useful (in
one frame), as is seeing details and editing, no admin screens
will be done in this mode (at least for version 1). It also means
that the main FootPrints pages will need to know which browser is
being used, and in the case of a handheld browser, adjust
accordingly.

Let me know your thoughts on this, especially thoughts on the Web
browser access to FootPrints for PIMs.

Mark
msk@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 10:07 AM | Permalink

I've been waiting to write about Japan again in my blog, knowing that I was going to visit again this spring. I have only been off the plane a few hours and decided to capture my thoughts before the jet lag really kicks in.

I visited our UniPress business partner in Japan, Macnica Networks, in Shin-Yokohama (30 minutes from Tokyo) and went to several meetings in Tokyo. I then attended the first Japanese User Conference for FootPrints in the Shinagawa Conference Center in suburban Tokyo.

I had a great trip. First, I got to see so many of the Macnica people who I had met before, as well as some new faces. I had technical meetings with Macnica’s FootPrints programmers and support people. We discussed some language issues with supporting Footprints in double-byte kanji, and also discussed the future direction of the FootPrints product line.

While in Japan I also met with various System Integrator partners of Macnica. These are large companies who sell products such as FootPrints, and include various services like customization, training, and integration with other applications. Often these System Integrator partners manufacture or distribute other product lines which can be used successfully with FootPrints.

In one case, I met with the division of a large partner who is the developer of the largest Network Management system used in Japan, and they are planning to integrate FootPrints with their tool; so their 10,000 customer sites can get the benefit of both products working together.

The User Conference was the high point of the trip. Macnica gathered 100 customers and prospects into the Shinagawa Conference Center. I spoke about using FootPrints for Compliance and Change Management. This is a big topic in Japan, as the government is planning a J-SOX compliance law for business, comparable to the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) law here in the US. People are very interested in how to use FootPrints to keep track of issues using approval processes, and of course, with an uneditable audit trail. I got a very nice reception at the event, and my sense is that the people were appreciative of learning how FootPrints can help them address compliance and change management initiatives.

Several customers gave talks as well. They talked about how FootPrints helps their companies and how useful it has been to them. Macnica also talked about novel uses of FootPrints, which is always interesting to me as I get to learn how people are configuring and customizing the system to address all types of activities and projects.

I was very happy during the cocktail party on Friday night when several current customers -- unsolicited -- got up to say how much FootPrints helps their companies.
You might wonder how I could understand anything. Yes, a majority of the conversations were in Japanese, and I only know about 50-75 words. Macnica provided me with a person who could do simultaneous translation. This not only helped me to understand the talks, but also helped me in one-on-one discussions with customers so they could communicate with me.

If you ever go to Japan, here is a useful tip: Business people have a formal way of exchanging business cards before doing anything else. They turn the card 180 degrees so the recipient can directly examine it as it is presented with both hands. They introduce themselves. "Hello, my name is Kawahara, glad to meet you," for instance.

You should do the same: "Hello, my name is Krieger (note the last name reference), glad to meet you." Even better, here is a useful Japanese phrase, it puts people at ease: "Hello my name is Krieger, 'hajimeymashtey.'" -- phonetically, that means 'nice to meet you' in Japanese.

Of course I had wonderful food in Japan. Whether it was sushi or tempura or a bento box (a box with various delicacies) or beef or shrimp, the food was wonderfully prepared and beautiful to look at and delicious.

My hosts at Macnica were so thoughtful, they even took me to the Sumo matches which were going on in Tokyo last week. What an experience! First, the color in the Sumo stadium was unbelievable. I've seen Sumo on TV, but actually being there was very different. The vivid colors stand out in the outfits that the referee wears; the outfits worn by the people who sweep the ring; the advertisements which people walk around the ring between matches; the banners and paintings of past champions on the walls. All of this was very colorful and interesting.

And the Sumo wrestlers themselves are giants. It's not only their girth, yes, they are large in the middle -- I resist calling them fat, because they are not. But they are also very tall. They tower over everyone else, and the foreigners who've reached the top of the Sumo ranks, including wrestlers from Mongolia and Eastern Europe are 6' 6" and taller, and weigh 350 pounds of muscle or more. What a sight.

All in all, I had a great time. I learned a lot, and hopefully gave some helpful tips and hints to my hosts and their customers and prospects. As always, I enjoyed the great hospitality of the Japanese people, and look forward to going back soon.

Sayonara,

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 12:17 PM | Permalink

I've been thinking about technologies which are important to the Service
Desk, especially in integrating with the organization's existing
infrastructure.

One of the most widely used and accepted methods today for centrally
managing Address Book contact information is LDAP or Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol.

LDAP allows any organization to record, in one place, all Address Book
information about their employees or customers, and use this information
in a variety of applications. Since there is one data store for this
information, and since this data is generally managed by one group in
the IT department, other applications can generally use this LDAP in
read-only mode.

This protocol is so important that Microsoft, SUN, Novell, Lotus, and a
variety of other vendors have made the LDAP server a centerpiece of
their respective offerings. In Microsoft's case, Active Directory, which
is their LDAP product, is an integral part of Exchange. And login
services are a part of LDAP, since a user's password is stored in LDAP.

So what's this got to do with Service Desk?

Every Service Desk needs to have an Address Book of employees and
customers. It needs to have some way of logging people in and tracking
activity relevant to the Service Desk interactions. Therefore, if the
organization as a whole has an existing LDAP repository, the Service
Desk would be very remiss to not use the existing LDAP data, either for
login or for Address Book, or for both.

Here are some of the benefits I was thinking about when the Service Desk
tightly integrates with the LDAP service:

1) Customers and Agents both get the benefit of having one userid and
one password if the Service Desk can authenticate through the LDAP
authentication system.

2) Customers get the benefit of having their contact data
automatically put into the ticket when they use self service to
create a Service Desk ticket.

3) Agents get the benefit of quick lookup of customer data when
filling out a ticket, directly from the LDAP repository.

4) Everything is always up to date if a Dynamic lookup of LDAP data
queries the actual LDAP repository, not a copy – eliminating
manual data synchronization processes

What are the technical challenges to implementing this kind of LDAP
integration?

1) LDAP authentication calls to/from a database need to be dynamic --
a call to the LDAP service needs to be at the heart of the
integration, so that the current userid and password are used in the
Service Desk authentication, not a two week old version of this date
which was imported then.

2) LDAP Address Book lookup needs to be dynamic too -- a call to the
LDAP Address Book lookup needs to be at the heart of this
integration, so that 'importing' LDAP data into the ticket (or
listing Address Book data) is done via a dynamic call to the LDAP
server.

Importing data from LDAP on a regular basis might seem like a good
idea, but the work needed to setup an import, and the likelihood that
the data is out of date are serious flaws in a real 'import' of the
full LDAP database.

3) Setting up the LDAP authentication and the LDAP Dynamic Address
Book lookup have to be easy from an Administrative point of view. And
making changes to the setup has to be easy too. Having an excellent
LDAP integration, but one which took 3 months and cost an extra
$30,000 (plus additional thousands whenever a change is needed) is
not a good solution.

4) The LDAP integration should work for a lot of different kinds of
LDAP servers.

The good news for you FootPrints users is that we've implemented the
FootPrints to LDAP link as a true dynamic integration, for all LDAP
servers which we've tested against (and we were given an Open Group LDAP
certification), and it is very easy to setup. It can take a few minutes
or hours through a Admin Web page without any programming required.

What interesting LDAP projects are we thinking about?

First, we sometimes hear about writing to the LDAP address book (it is
an infrequent request). I think that most organizations do not want
'other' applications to write to their LDAP address book: The owner of
the LDAP is responsible for writing it, not the Service Desk. But if this
requirement grows, we will implement it.

Second, we occasionally hear from a site who wants FootPrints to manage
a single address book consisting of two or more separate LDAPs at
different locations and with different LDAP 'urls.' We are thinking
about this one. It might benefit more than just a few people, but there
might be LDAP methods outside of FootPrints to give two or more LDAP
sources a single access point. We'll see if this can easily be done.

I'm really glad we did a fine LDAP integration. It is so helpful to our
customers and provides additional capabilities and possibilities for the
Service Desk. Let me know if you have comments or questions, I'll be
happy to answer.

Mark
msk@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 03:13 PM | Permalink

The ability to integrate email into the Service Desk is such a useful capability that I wonder how we were ever able to live without it.

When I think back to FootPrints versions 1 and 2, I remember how many customers requested variations on this 'integrated email' theme, some with simple requirements and others with much more complex needs. This business requirement, which essentially allows a customer or agent to create or edit a ticket via email - in addition to the web interface - is just so important.

First, obviously, you want to be able to email a ticket into the Service Desk and be able to receive confirming emails back. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Email integration and management offers so much more, including:

- Correct threading of a response to the corresponding ticket: When you reply to the email confirmation of a ticket, you want your reply to appear in that ticket, not create a new one.

- No duplication of text: You want to cut the text which is repeated out of the update to the ticket, so the same words do not appear over and over, once per email response.

- Ability to update fields: You want to update not only the general description of the incident, but also the ability to update specific fields of the ticket which is created or edited.

- Perform queries: You want email to allow queries of the system. Like 'list my current assignments.'

- Different emails for different people: You probably want to have different rules for what different types of roles (customer versus agent) see in the email messages. So you need to be able to customize emails per role.

- Different emails for different devices: You also want different devices to see different email message text, perhaps based on device size. So a pager or email-enabled phone receives a reduced email template, since the screen is so much smaller.

- Having customizable escalation and change management emails, based on role and escalation or CM rule.

- Allowing files attached to an email to attach to a ticket automatically.

But these featureas and capabilities are also just the tip of the iceberg. Once someone starts using email as a primary access mechanism for the Service Desk, even more functionality is mandated. Just this week, I was reviewing some new features for some upcoming releases, here are some excellent examples:

- "I want to be able to update time worked on a ticket from an incoming email."

- "I want my agent to submit email as if they were the customer they are helping."

- "I want to turn off replies to an agent or customer when they have submitted the issue."

Especially as more and more people in the field need the full capabilities of the Service Desk via email, more and more of the advanced Service Desk function is needed to make email a comprehensive and powerful channel. Thus, functions like escalation, change management, service level agreements (SLA), etc, need to be triggered automatically by email services in the Service Desk.

Every time we review functionality for a new FootPrints release (discussed in my last blog entry) email functionality is near the top of the list: Email integration is so vital that as more and more people adopt for their agents and customers - and especially field force personnel - new features are always near the top of our consciousness. We have always been at the forefront of email management and I look forward to pushing the envelope and making it even more useful and transparent to the Service Desk and everyone who interacts with it.

Write to me at msk@unipress.com with your comments.

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 09:52 AM | Permalink

Customers often ask me whether a feature they've requested will go into the next release of our FootPrints product. Sometimes they ask as a follow-up how we plan releases. I thought I'd say a few words about this today.

First, UniPress Software uses FootPrints to track development changes. We broadly classify issues in this FootPrints development project as Bugs, Feature Requests, and Design Flaws. When a customer or UniPress team member finds a bug, or when someone asks for a new feature, or if we determine that a feature which was done earlier was incomplete or could have been done better (a design flaw), we track it in this "Development Project."

The Development Project becomes the development team's repository for all future releases, and tickets in this project are carefully reviewed as new releases are planned.

New releases usually have a few large important features, chosen by UniPress and by customer 'vote' - when a number of customers ask for an important feature. In FootPrints 7.5, due out this Spring, a popular feature that was highly requested by customers is the FootPrints Sync Add-on, which will allow FootPrints synchronization of calendar appointments, tasks, and address book entries to third-party applications and devices such as Palm, Outlook, Blackberry and Lotus Notes. Many customers asked for this. Those of you at the FootPrints User Conference will remember the rounds of applause when I announced we were planning to do this feature.

How do we plan? First, the Development Project has a field called Projected Release, the drop down choices include the next two releases (e.g. 7.5, 8.0) and a catch-all "Future Release." When new tickets are entered, an initial determination is made on when we'll make the change. Furthermore, as we gain more data - perhaps ten customers tell us that a specific feature request is getting more important - we can move the ticket up in the release schedule. Or down.

This release determination is being done all the time, as features, design flaws and bugs are moved from one release to another.

(By the way, really custom requests, useful for only one customer for their specific installation are entered into the Development Project, but we note that this is likely a customization which will not be in a future release unless it is done as custom work.)

Also, once tickets are scheduled for a release, and developers estimate the time needed for doing the change, we can estimate the release schedule better, and we can always search and report on where we stand in getting the release closed. Once the release work is closed, we use this project to manage the test phase: Tickets are changed from Open to Testing status by a developer doing the work and then from Testing to Verified (or back to the developer!) when tested by QA engineers. This workflow process, by the way, is fully supported by the built-in customization and business rules features of FootPrints, which makes it easy to manage our development activities.

So in closing, every version of FootPrints - large and small - is directly related to the feedback from our customers and the feedback we gain throughout our support processes. This helps us keep pace with our customers changing needs and ultimately build better software.

I hope this is useful information. Email me if you have any thoughts or questions.

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 11:39 AM | Permalink

A few months ago, we discussed buying a "company" BlackBerry to test the FootPrints Sync feature that we plan to release this spring. I volunteered to get the BlackBerry, do the testing, and learn how to use it in the process. To do so I decided to make it my everyday phone and handheld device.

I had a few reasons. First, I wanted to see what all the excitement was about BlackBerry. Second, I carried around a nice small Motorola phone, and a Palm, but both were getting a bit outdated. The Motorola, while excellent, was bought just before Bluetooth was becoming popular, and both my wife's car and my car are Bluetooth capable, so I wanted to upgrade the phone to work with both. The Palm is OK, but it is old, and to use the phone and the Palm, I need to carry two devices around. I also wanted to become very experienced with using the new FootPrints Sync feature. Lastly, I hoped to experiment a bit with getting email via BlackBerry.

Late last year the nice new BlackBerry arrived. I was unimpressed at first when I saw that the legal booklet was dozens of pages long (in multiple languages) and the "Getting Started Guide" was 8 pages, but I realized that RIM might be gun-shy about legal issues. Since then the RIM/NTP lawsuit has been settled . The BlackBerry was easy enough to use, and the Guide was easy to follow, changing my initial skeptical impression.

I switched phone chips with my old phone, thanks to Cingular. That worked great. And I added the Palm data to my BlackBerry, thanks to Julie, our System Admin, who helped me with the import and export. With the BlackBerry, I now have one integrated phone, address book, appointment device, handheld task manager, etc. as well as access to email (more to come on this).

What are my current impressions?

I like the BlackBerry as a PDA. The keyboard and wheel are "different" and take some getting used to, but it is not difficult after some experience with it. But I now have dozens of contacts, appointments, and other info at my fingertips and it is very useful.

I like the phone, especially with the car integration. I just get into the car, it syncs with the phone, and I can call without touching the phone, just by using one button on the steering wheel and voice commands. And it is well designed as a standalone phone too.

I am about to start using the email, probably within about 2 weeks. I am a little concerned about this, since I receive and answer so many emails every day (and night and weekend), that I might use the BlackBerry and never get away from my email. But I think it will be worthwhile. I'll post something once I get some BlackBerry email experience, and keep you posted on the new FootPrints Sync integration.

Until next time!

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 08:37 AM | Permalink

Call Center Magazine just gave FootPrints it's Product of the Year
Award for 2006.

In addition, the Forrester Research Wave report on Service Desk chose
FootPrints as a Market Leader in the Small Enterprise category and as a
Strong Performer in the Large Enterprise category.

These awards have a lot to do with the strength of the product, but they
also have a lot to do with our product philosophy and company philosophy.

Here's what I mean:

- You can download and install a FootPrints full-strength demo in just
a few minutes with all the FootPrints functionality. You can set it
up yourself using the "Getting Started Guide" and you can start using it
in testing or real-life mode immediately with little work.

This was a guiding principle when we wrote version 1: Download
demos, ease of install, ease of admin (and of course with no
loss of functionality in the demo version).

I sometimes get an email from a new customer, it goes something like
this: "I wanted a Service Desk solution, but I am very hands on, I
wanted to download it, set it up myself, manage it myself, and make
a decision based on what I saw. I just bought FootPrints without ever
talking to a UniPress person."

- You can integrate FootPrints with other applications with little or
no programming. I'm thinking here of the Dynamic LDAP Address Book
Link and the Dynamic SQL Link. No programming, but direct access to
other databases to integrate information into FootPrints. You can
also integrate FootPrints with your XML Web Services enabled application
with little programming -- and I know customers who've cut and pasted
the Web Services client examples in the FootPrints documentation (for
java, C#, perl or php) and had their integrations done in minutes.

Our philosophy has been to make it easy yet powerful. I am
pleased with the success we've had with this.

- You can host FootPrints yourself or we'll host it for you. This speaks
about our company philosophy more than anything: When customers asked
us to host the FootPrints they'd purchased or were thinking of
purchasing (usually, they've had limited IT resources), we jumped in,
set up a hosting service, and gave them what they needed.

Forrester noted this as one of FootPrints' high points.

It's a great start to 2006. Write to me at msk@unipress.com, I'd like to
hear from readers.

Posted by Unipress at 04:06 PM | Permalink

Hi. I'm Fred Pack, VP and Co-Founder of UniPress Software.

We had the idea to create a web-based help desk product in 1994 when the World Wide Web was barely in its infancy. We believed that the Web was the ideal base for a help desk / issue tracking system. Version 1 of FootPrints was launched in 1996, so our program (now 7.0) is in its 11th year of development.

From the first days of its design we knew that we weren't really
making a 'helpdesk' or 'CRM' system -- we were making a
general-purpose 'issue tracking' system -- the issues being tracked
could really be about anything.

But we also knew that the term 'helpdesk' had a meaning which people
would understand, while 'issue tracking' was much more vague and
harder for people to relate to, and in marketing the fundamental
necessity is to build a connection with the potential buyer. No
connection, no sale; no sales, no company. We needed sales of our new creation to make the effort worthwhile.

So we decided to promote FootPrints as a 'helpdesk', and this was
clearly a wise decision because our product gained market acceptance
and has prospered, bringing happiness to many, many users.

But from the first days I have had a frustration: Our program is SO
MUCH MORE than merely a helpdesk (or CRM) system. It has VERY WIDE
APPLICABILITY. Gratifyingly, many of our customers who have purchased
it as a helpdesk/CRM product have come to realize by themselves that
they can use FootPrints for much more, and they are doing so.

To encourage expansive use of FootPrints, we designed the solution to accommodate an unlimited number of "projects", which allow customers to expand the scope of their service desk, and accommodate other business needs. We also provide more than a dozen project templates to make it easy to create projects for numerous different types of business tasks. And for years we have marketed the product's versatility as a key capability that can be used widely within any organization.

In addition to help desk and CRM, there are templates in FootPrints for change management, HR purposes, facilities management, purchase order control, software development and bug tracking, asset management, and much more. FootPrints can help you track and manage just about anything, and the great news is that you don't need to be a programmer to customize it to do so, nor do you have to pay extra to create as many projects as you want. The entire setup is done via simple web screens. And you can always make your own fully custom projects - you don't have to use one of our templates.

So while we have 2,200 customers successfully using FootPrints for many types of business-critical applications, I know there are thousands of other organizations that can use this powerful tool. The possibilities are endless. We simply (but it isn't so simple!) have to continue to spread the word, and those that get it will quickly become fans.

If you are a FootPrints customer, I'd love to hear how you are using the system in interesting ways. If you are not a customer, please take a closer look at your organizational problems and see if FootPrints can help you take care of them. It probably can!

Fred Pack
fhp@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 11:38 AM | Permalink