The UniPress Blog

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

I just learned that I'll be going to Japan in mid-May to visit our
Japanese Distributor, Macnica Networks, during their First FootPrints User
Conference. I'm pretty excited. While I've gone to Japan many times over
the last 20 years, it's always an adventure.

I thought about "Lost in Translation. It is brilliant, not only in how it
depicts the relationships between the characters, but also in how it
depicts the effect of cultural differences on an overseas business
traveler. I could personally identify when I saw Bill Murray traveling
from the airport to his hotel. Very, very tired, but overwhelmed and
excited by the lights and the action on the Tokyo streets. So much in the
movie caught the interesting nuances, from the Karioki, to the late night
sleeplessness, to the crowded streets day and night, to the more formal
nature of the people.

I've seen and experienced a lot of interesting things in Japan over the
years myself. I saw Prince Charles and Princess Diana on a state visit to
Japan, driving through Tokyo in a motorcade. Quite a sight to behold, and
yes, I waved the little Japanese and British flags they gave us, just like
all the other people.

I learned that you have to scream your location at the cab driver or you
never get started on your trip: "GRAND PALACE HOTEL" works, but "grand
palace hotel" doesn't.

The days can be very long. You work all day and then meet with business
associates for marathon dinners at night. During dinner, one can drink
many, many little bottles of sake. We most certainly did. And the Japanese
seem to take notice as they quietly peer in to see how the Americans are
handling their drink of choice.

The Japanese market for service desk software is growing. Like us here in
the US, it is paramount for Japanese businesses to effectively manage
internal and external customer relationships. And they are using
FootPrints to do this. Macnica is doing a great job for us and I look
forward to meeting the users in May.

I love Japan. I love the people, the atmosphere, the hard work, the
excitement, the great food. Japan is a great place. More on my Japan trip
when I return. Stay tuned.

Posted by Unipress at 09:07 AM | Permalink

We all know that the web is fantastic: Think of life before google, yahoo,
mapquest, vacationstogo or expedia, cnn.com --- versus now. The differences
are so obvious that no case needs to be made for the web being great. But I
was thinking about how the web has made life great for someone in my
position helping to manage a company with a web-based software product.
The web -- and web-based software -- offers many benefits.

Let me explain:

--- The most obvious is that a 100% web-based software product can be
deployed at a customer site by installing it on one central organizational
server. No client software is needed as all functions are accessible via
the user's standard browser. Why is this great for a web software company?
It makes the job of deploying the product to a local company or a global
company the same:

Just put the web-based software on a webserver, and anyone with the
appropriate privileges, anywhere on the web, can access it. No client
software is needed.

This is a big deal for my product's users -- which makes it a big
deal for me.

--- The software can be demo'd to many people at once. This is what got me
thinking about this topic: We did a 'webinar' a few days ago to 250 people
interested in helpdesk automation. Webinars are displacing its predecessor,
the seminar. Years ago, you needed to rent a big room, send out invites,
serve lunch or coffee and donuts - and you might sometimes get a
reasonable audience. Managing an event like this was difficult and very
expensive, but it was always possible that no one would come (:. Webinars
have changed this. Nowadays, prospects can come to this week's webinar, or to
next week's webinar instead if something important comes up.

And what if a good thing happened -- too many people came: In the old days,
there would chaos and standing room only. Webinars allow you to scale, all
while reaching people in the comfort of their most convenient (and comfortable)
office environment.

--- Web software can be easily demo'd *custom* to anyone, anywhere. Last
year I gave a demo to a group of people from one company -- some of them
high-level executives -- at a company in North America, Asia, and Europe --
simultaneously. They logged in to a Live Meeting session from their
desktops, we got on a shared phone line, and I showed them a customized
demo on how to use the product for their needs. This was set up in minutes.

Again compare this to the old days:

We would have flown out to some central location, had to have been there
when they were all in town, and given the demo in person. Coordination,
cost, and time lost were all way larger.

A corollary to this is that the need for traveling salesmen and demo-givers
is greatly reduced. This means that the cost structure of the software
manufacturer is less than it used to be, which in turn means that the prices
charged for software can be less than in the pre-web days. So the customers
can pay less, which also allows companies who could not afford the product
in the bad-old days to buy it. Volume goes up for the software manufacturer;
Everyone wins!

--- The software can be run at the customer site or hosted anywhere. In the
pre-web days, the software had to be installed on each and every machine at
the customer premises in order to provide users with access to the
application. There was no other way to do it. Now, customers who are not
part of the IT Department, and who need the software as a service, can have
it hosted anywhere. This allows software developers like me to host their
web-based applications, eliminating the hard costs of purchasing the related
IT infrastructure as well as respective expense to install, set-up and
maintain them. This is a tremendous benefit.

--- Checking stuff out can be really easy from anywhere. I went on a
wonderful cruise during the first week of January. From the ship, which had
Internet service, I could read my email from the web, read support issues --
looking for anything which needed my personal attention - read development
issues too, commenting as needed, all via the web interface. In just a few
hours during the week, I could see what was going on, and in a few cases I
could even help - all while being in the middle of the ocean and far away
from the office. Again, if I contrast that to years ago, the web has made
life way easier, and we are more efficient, all of us.

In every case, our costs have gone down, we are more efficient, and we and
our customers reap the benefit. The Web is great.

Mark

P.S. If you have comments on this or any other blog entries, please email me at msk@unipress.com

Posted by Unipress at 10:43 AM | Permalink

People sometimes ask me, "How did you get started with FootPrints back
in the late 90's?"

I had a chance to think about this last week while I was away on
vacation for a few days in a nice warm climate.

The story goes back to the early 1990's, when I was approached by a 'friend
of a friend' who had written a Source Code Manager for Sun Unix called
'SCM.' For those of you who use Unix or Linux, SCM was like SCCS or RCS,
but with many more features to manage multiple people working on source
code. We looked at SCM, liked it, and decided to work with the author
to package it for multiple Unix machines (in addition to Sun), and to make a
professional package out of it. The author had originally written SCM for
one of his own clients. After a while they asked him to provide a
Modification Request (MR) system, to track changes - outside the source
code - in a separate database. This MR system had commands like mrRegister,
mrList, mrDetails, mrChange, etc. Sound familiar? If you've looked in the
binary (bin) directories of FootPrints, you will still see commands with
names like this, even today, although over the years we have almost
completely changed them.

Both the SCM and MR systems were very useful, but sales were not great.
There were a lot of reasons: They were primarily commandline tools, with a
very minimal X-Windows frontend, and no Windows support. The Source Code
tools available from other software companies of that time for Unix and
Windows had gotten very sophisticated. It was a crowded market. And Unix
was also starting to lose significant developer marketshare to Windows
(and later Linux). And while UniPress was doing well selling our other
tools and products, we were disappointed that these excellent tools were
not taking off.

Skip forward to the mid 1990's. The Internet was starting to emerge.
We wanted UniPress to become seriously involved in what we knew would
become a world-changing trend -- the web. The big question, and it was a
VERY BIG question, was what web-based application should we create?

After a short period of reflection, we decided to make a web-based
helpdesk / issue-tracking system. A web-based helpdesk would be an ideal
way to utilize the benefits of the Internet in conjunction with a
critical organizational application: The system would offer
instantaneous, worldwide comunication AT NO COST TO THE USERS, could
permit collaboration, and be designed for extreme ease-of-use. It could
even have an 'end-user/customer portal' for self-service.

We could use the MR programs we already had to do the database backend,
and would create the necessary screen-oriented programs to handle the user
interface.

We chose Perl as the language to develop the Web frontend, and to handle
everything but the database backend. If we used Microsoft tools we wouldn't
be able to sell to the Unix Webserver market (which was very important
at that time), and if we used java from Sun we wouldn't be able to sell
to the Windows Server market. We wanted our application to run on the
widest possible array of platforms. A Perl compiler was available on all
platforms, and our Perl code would need only modest changes for different
platforms.

We started work in early 1995, and Version 1 of Footprints was completed in
late 1996. While very basic compared to Version 7, it was very useful, it
was 100% web based, and it was a great base for future development. Many
early customers used it for general issue tracking of all sorts, but it
became clear early on that most people who tried it were looking for a
Helpdesk. So much of our development was put into features for that
direction, even in Versions 2 and 3.

Most important, we made a few basic decisions in that first release
which have turned out to be excellent in retrospect: Administration
is done via web screens, not through programming. Multiple projects,
allowing people to create different applications in FootPrints, are
builtin to the base product. And one code base in Perl for Windows,
Unix and Linux versions gave us cross-platform capability for all
types of Servers.

Would we have done some things differently if I could roll the clock back?
Certainly. But the strategic and architectural decisions made in the early
days in have held up well.

Posted by Unipress at 03:00 PM | Permalink

I was recently thinking about XML and FootPrints, and how confusing the whole XML thing can be for so many people. There are so many buzzwords: XML, Web Services, SOAP, .Net, to name just a few.

A lot of the confusion is made worse than it should be by some of the marketing hype around product announcements. So when Microsoft announced the .Net framework (aka ".Net Web Services") a few years ago, I was really confused. The announcements made it sound like Microsoft had invented a new way to develop, and that it had something to do with XML, and something to do with automatically allowing products to integrate without programming. Wow! But reading the fine print, I found mention of the C# language, some discussion of XML and SOAP (I knew what those were), and even a note about Active State Perl being part of the .Net framework. Looking even closer, I realized that this was Microsoft's adoption of existing XML and Web Services, with the addition of development tools to create applications and make them integrate well in Windows.

Microsoft CRM 1.0, was the "posterchild" of .Net applications, so I expected it to have appropriate XML linkages for integration. MS CRM appeared to me to be an affordable sales tracking tool, so I wondered if UniPress could make an integration between FootPrints and MS CRM which would give Microsoft customers expanded service desk functionality.

Well, what a disappointment! MS CRM did not have much of a .Net interface. Furthermore, people weren't very excited by the product itself at the time, so we put the integration effort on hold. Fast forward a couple of years.... customers began asking UniPress to integrate FootPrints with various sales tracking tools such as Salesnet and Salesforce.com. They wanted a web-based service desk to work with these solutions to manage all aspects of the customer experience. What capabilities did they request? They wanted sales people to be able to pull up support incidents associated with customers, and agents to access customer account information from the sales tool. They also wanted support engineers to share the existing sales Address Book (like FootPrints can share an existing LDAP/AD or SQL Address Book).

Well, the pulling up of incidents turns out to be a relatively easy job. We simply inserted a hyperlink into the sales tool which points to a FootPrints URL written to do that. Reading the contact list is more complex, but Salesnet and Salesforce.com have Web Services interfaces, and both allow reading of contact data dynamically from their hosted servers.

Here's what we did (I even wrote a little of this code, to learn it firsthand): We got the PERL SOAP module, which is called SOAPLite (it's not really 'lite,' so I have no idea why they called it that). We got their XML specs from Salesforce.com and Salesnet, then wrote some calls to the Web services on the respective tool's server, using SOAPLite to transport the data over the HTTP port. These calls get a contact's information, or a matching search list, just like the FootPrints LDAP and SQL calls.
Once we knew how to do this, we could put this code into FootPrints. These calls allow a FootPrints administrator to turn on Salesnet or Salesforce.com integration - and the FootPrints agents can then dynamically access customer information from the sales repository, on a read-only basis. Total work on this was less than a month. So not only did we get some interesting experience, but a cool new feature.

A couple of interesting notes about this: Just by coincidence, the Microsoft engineer who assisted us on the effort is Alfred Broderick, who used to be with UniPress. Al wrote interesting Microsoft articles (on MS Technet) on integrating different languages -- like PERL and C# -- in Web Services calls, and we used these articles heavily during our work. Al also gave us personal attention to our questions, which was excellent and helpful.

Another interesting note: Salesnet was creating a Web site around their XML Web Services -- to help customers and partners understand how to do integrations, and give success stories, etc. We got our implementation done very quickly, which I shared with the Tech Director at Salesnet, so they posted our story on the integration as their first XML success story.

Obviously, making Web Services clients TO other tools is only solving half the puzzle. We've since created the FootPrints XML Web Services Server, for those who'd like to make calls FROM other applications, on any server, to FootPrints, to create, edit or query service desk tickets or other data in the system.

One very useful feature of that implementation, which we learned from our sales integration experience (as the client): We created sample clients for many languages, so that if you are writing C#, JAVA, PERL etc. on your client application which wants to communicate to FootPrints, you can simply cut and paste one of our samples.
Earlier this week, spurred on by the example from one of our customers, the University of Akron, we completed an example client set for the PHP language in the next release.

And what ever happened to our MS CRM integration efforts?

We finally did that integration, but since it still has not gotten any easier to call the MS CRM .Net server interface, and since MS CRM keeps its contacts in SQL-server, you guessed it, we decided not to implement this integration in XML, rather we read MS CRM Address Book entries using the FootPrints Dynamic SQL Address Book Link.
It took about five minutes, and it works out of the box.

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 01:52 PM | Permalink

It seems like only yesterday that we brought FootPrints to market. Hi, I'm Mark Krieger, President and co-founder of UniPress Software, developer of the FootPrints line of service and support automation software. I started UniPress with Fred Pack more than 20 years ago, and what a time we've had -- especially since 1996 when we launched FootPrints.

I want this blog to be a forum to share thoughts about perspectives on key technologies, company growth, interesting customer deployments, the service and support marketplace as a whole, and other random musings. The blog can also be a window into UniPress and how we go about developing products based on the feedback from our customer base of more than 2100 organizations around the world.

The focus on this installment is our recent user conference. It's been two months since the Second Annual FootPrints User Conference took place in Las Vegas. What an interesting week! Spending time again with some of our long-term customers (and meeting new ones) is always the highlight for me, as it helps us refine our strategic vision and shape future product development.

We are very fortunate to have such a great group of customers. I love seeing everyone, and spending time with them and hearing about how they're using our products. I also take their feedback to heart and constantly update our product team with what I hear. And spending time outside NJ with our staff is also a highlight; it is a rare treat to spend time with the team outside the office. Fred and I are very proud of the great job they did in preparing and running the event.

To give you an idea of the range of customers in attendance, they came from Boeing, the US Supreme Court, University of Michigan, Toshiba, Los Alamos Labs and elsewhere. Companies of all sizes and across many industries were present. They all seem to have a common goal to deliver top-quality service and support to broad bases of customers.

Las Vegas is a phenomenal place for a user conference. It's very convenient, has tons of good restaurants, excellent hotel rooms, and of course the non-stop entertainment. (Given the venue, I was surprised to see so few attendees trying their luck at the tables. I certainly did. I love to play poker myself, although during the conference it is very difficult to find the time.)

The event had some great speakers. John Ragsdale from Forrester Research once again offered some thought-provoking insight on the service and support scene. He is smart, witty, and a storehouse of intelligence and knowledge. His opening remarks about FootPrints certainly got the User Conference off to a great start. And everyone loved Eric Rabinowitz of DEMA Education. His talk about "The Donald" was a show stopper. Not only the information, but also the energy and the style.

It's informative to see what was on people's minds: My session on XML Web Services was very well attended. So were the others on ITIL, which continues to emerge as a best practice framework across many of our customer's service desks. Both of these themes were not even on our customers' radar a couple of years ago, but things are moving fast in our industry.

Another key theme of the User Conference -- change management -- was of great interest:

I spoke to numerous people who told me about how they were using FootPrints for various change management initiatives within their organizations. We also used the event to unveil our new FootPrints Change Management tools which are being used for many types of compliance and related tracking such as Sarbanes Oxley. We are delighted that our move into this area is being so welcomed.

Each year, we get floored by our customers' creative and interesting uses of FootPrints. The product's flexibility allows customers to automate typical service and support operations and also a wide range of other applications, such as facilities management, software development tracking, HR and more. Customers find new, innovative ways to use FootPrints to solve their varied business problems.

Another pleasure for me -- people wouldn't stop clapping when I announced the forthcoming FootPrints two-way calendar sync with Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm, and BlackBerry in my "future plans" talk on the last day of the event. The good news is that this is on schedule. I saw an early version last week.

Flying back from this year's event, it struck me that a recurring theme continues to resonate from our customers -- exceeding expectations. Customers kept telling me that FootPrints and the company as a whole, consistently exceeds their expectations. I look forward to continuing to wow our customers in all facets of our operation, and with the team we have in place I am extremely confident that we will.

Off for now, see you next time.

Mark

Posted by Unipress at 10:10 AM | Permalink