The UniPress Blog

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