Has your team ever complained about the confusing issue submission form?

Have you had to alter how you’d like to handle certain issues due to the constraints of your software?

Do you have an issue tracking solution for facilities, software development, IT, HR, product management, and your help desks?

There are many issue tracking solutions available, but most are designed specifically to work within a certain department or group. For example, software development has a host of industry-specific solutions. These solutions can be tweaked or modified to marginally work for other teams, but inherent limitations persist due to the software’s designs.

IssueNet was developed with an object-oriented architecture that allows teams to completely customize all facets of the software to meet their specific needs. The options are endless and quite exciting when you consider the opportunities. For example, each issue type can have its own form, workflow, users, and notifications. Additionally, a single database can be used between all the solutions to allow better communication between teams, making implementation quicker and easier. Take a look at what an object oriented issue tracking can do for you! http://www.elsitech.com

Recent reports published by IDC and Gartner have outlined suggestions for big impact items that can make a huge difference in IT departments without breaking the bank. In the report, “Rationalizing the IT Support Services Budget for 2009: Three Things Enterprises Should Investigate”, the IDC specifically outlines datacenter virtualization and remote support solutions.

Why would these two items be at the top of their list?

Our guess is the quick return on investment (ROI) that can be realized after the implementation of a remote support solution. For any remote support software tool, the ROI can typically be seen in four to six months. However, for some of our ScreenConnect customers, we are seeing ROI immediately after purchase; one enterprise level customer replaced a monthly remote support solution with ScreenConnect, and the software paid for itself several times over in the first month!

ScreenConnect is a great remote support utility that provides a high ROI through its one-time purchase, flexible design, and rich feature set. Since ScreenConnect is self-hosted, there are no recurring monthly costs or hosting fees to incur. Few tools in the remote support software arena offer the features and the price tag of ScreenConnect. Remote support doesn’t have to be expensive, it just needs to work. http://www.screenconnect.com

Many global organizations are working on standardizing the best practices for workflows. One of the most notable practices is the business process modeling notation (BPMN). The BPMN provides a set of symbols and guidelines for charting the flow of a business process. In this second installment of our workflow discussion, we’ll talk about the different elements that comprise a BPMN compliant workflow.

Annotations – These are small text paragraphs that are often added by the workflow designer to explain what is being done at that stage of the workflow. Annotations can provide additional information, but they can also take up a lot of additional room on the canvas. Because annotations are not necessarily required in a workflow, there are a few modes of use:  always visible, visible if the mouse is over a particular element or icon (also known as “tool tips”), or toggled on and off as the user requires through a button or similar mode of use.

Events –Events, denoted by circles, signal “something happening,” such as an email notification, a scheduled meeting, or the end of a particular process. Icons may be present inside the circle, such as an email icon or a clock picture. Though a user will immediately know the type of an event by the icon or color of the circle, the user will not know exactly what transpired during that event. Annotations may be added for clarity, which will result in a workflow with more elements.

Activities –Activities, such as meeting requests and task assignments, are sometimes represented as rounded rectangles with small icons. However, these icons only tell the user that “something” is happening at that point; the user will not necessarily know exactly what happened at a meeting, who is involved, what was said in an email, etc. Having more information about the activities can be useful, but it creates additional design elements in the workflow.

Question:  If you are assigning the same task to multiple individuals, should workflow designers use one task element to represent this activity? Or should the designers use multiple elements?

Gateways – These are elements that take transitions from the output(s) of elements and then transition them to the input(s) of others. There are two main types of gateways: combiners (fork/join) and multipliers (inclusive decision/merge). A combiner takes multiple inputs and creates a single output, while a multiplier takes a single input and creates multiple output transitions. These elements are not required in a process. However if the goal is to show as much detail as possible about the events of a workflow, they can be very useful.

Question:  Should a gateway that has internal logic denote that to the observers of the workflow?

Swimlanes – Represented as horizontal or vertical lanes (often different colors), swimlanes help teams and designers to keep track of what work is done by which department or what category the work falls under. These can add complexity to the layout and design of the workflow.  

There are many more elements within the BPMN standard that can be added to a workflow. Again, however, we must ask the question: which elements are the most important? By utilizing a large variety of geometrical icons, will the workflow become too cluttered, hindering the understanding of the user?

The team here at Elsinore has spent quite a bit of time this past week reviewing how workflows should look and feel to users.  We thought it would be great to hear our customers’ and visitors’ opinions on workflow design usages.

For the purpose of this blog we will focus specifically on business processes, though the principles could apply to any type of organization. A typical workflow diagram will have geometrical elements (such as rectangles, diamonds, and triangles), each representing or describing some action, activity, or decision that has to be made during the process. Most of these elements will typically have a one or two word label to help observers keep track of the flow. These elements are however only a few of the possible graphical and text representations available.

The amount of detail provided by a workflow diagram is determined by the workflow designer. Workflows can be designed at a high level, only outlining the general scope of the process and keeping the layout simple. On the other hand, workflows can be very detailed, showing exactly what activities are being performed, to whom the emails are sent, what divisions are doing the work, who is responsible for scheduling a meeting, etc. The information is all available but the key is balance. When we consider these and other elements that could be represented, are they useful or do they add clutter to the workflow canvas? What elements do you think are important?  And should workflow designers err on the side of simplicity, or should they strive to display as much information as possible?

It’s a difficult philosophy to capture in a single blog, so in the next installment we’ll capture a few of the most common design elements of a workflow and discuss some of their pros and cons as graphical representations on a workflow.

Staying on top of our customers’ needs is priority number one for our team. By listening and responding to our customers’ comments and suggestions, we strive to make ScreenConnect a better remote support product. We have released nearly twenty feature enhancements, all directly related to customer feedback, in less than twelve months. In our latest build, ScreenConnect 1.6, we have improved the communication path between host and client by creating a more visually stimulating addition to the task bar; with this new feature, the host can easily determine if and when the client has joined the session. We have also improved our file transfer, chat, and IE compatibility in this latest release.

ScreenConnect is a self-hosted remote support product that provides the features of a monthly subscription service in an efficient, cost effective package. Learn more about ScreenConnect by visiting http://www.screenconnect.com.

Remote support software or remote desktop support software are applications that allow the remote access of another device, typically a computer, for the purpose of controlling the target device.  “Controlling the target device” can have several connotations; while most remote support applications do permit the control of the target computer, some only provide viewing capabilities. By using remote support software, a user can troubleshoot another user’s computer with efficiency and ease.

The method of installation can vary widely between one remote support application and another. Some remote support software applications require both the client and the host to install a small program on their machines. Other applications only require installation on the host’s machine, and the client connects to the remote support session via a web page portal. Finally, a remote support application can be entirely web-based, connecting two machines via a single web portal. 

Remote support software applications can offer a number of features to assist a client.

1. Video recording - enables a host to send a client a video file of all actions performed in the session.
2. Chat - Allows a host to easily communicate with a client while the remote connection is taking place.
3. File transfer - Permits the transfer of files easily between the host and client quickly. A typical use model would be the replacement of a corupt file or installing new software.
4. Reboot/Reconnect - When your dealing with software you will often be required to shut down the PC and log back in. This feature allows the two computers to reconnect after the reboot occurs.