Update on ITSO Development Activity

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the ITSO blog, but now the holiday celebrations are well behind us it’s back to work as usual for the ITSO development team, and it’s no surprise that the new year brings with it new projects.  One of the reasons it’s been quiet around here of late is because we have been working on drafting the specs for the new product selection and research area in the IT Solution Optimizer.  We have known that this section has needed a large scale upgrade for a long time but we have always had other fires to fight, but now it’s time to finally tackle it.  The initial plans are shaping up to be encouraging and we are expecting to combine product selection with some pretty cool peer data intelligence to add even more insight for the IT project manager when deciding what products to select for any given project type.  If the project gets a final sign-off I expect a beta version within the next 2-3 months.

I’ll provide updates and we move forward and if any of you would like to take part in user interviews to help us guide this project forward with your real world experience please get in touch, we would love to hear from you.

New ITSO Build Coming This Week

A new ITSO build is on the way and should be made public sometime this week.  We are currently in testing mode and if everything goes to plan this week we will push out several of the improvements announced in previous posts, as well as a handful of new features and improvements.

Here’s a quick look at what’s in store for this week:

1. Improved Content library content:  We’ve made a great deal of improvements to the search results returned when using the Research feature in the product research database.  In previous versions the search results were not always optimal, or worst case = was WAY off target.  We’ve now fixed this so we promise… no more questionable results!
    
2. Addition of the Success Metrics data in the Final Report:  You will now be able to access and share the wonderful Success Metrics data as part of your projects Final Report.
    
3. New and improved Team Members area: The Team Members functionality has often been a second thought especially as we work to improve the other key areas of the application, it’s the red headed stepchild if you wish.  We’ve finally got around to fixing some of the issues we had with this section.  However, we have a ways to go before the functionality is at the same level as other areas of the site, but we are hoping the recent changes go a small way to improving usability and user satisfaction.
    
4. Addition of Peer Data pop-up charts in the Success Metrics page: Yea!
    
5. New Gantt Chart graphical display of the Project Timeline: We’ve known of this need for a while and I’m very pleased to see that it’s now working well in testing.  I look forward to getting user feedback on this addition once it’s launched, it’s certainly been a topic on the tip of many toungs during past user interviews.  Oh, and as a bonus we’ve also included this in the Final Project Report.
    
6. Custom Timeline Milestones: Based on popular demand we will soon allow the addition of custom milestones in the Timeline section.  This should provide improved flexibility to our users wishing to work with a greater degree of detail.  In the future we’ll add iCal support that will allow you to view your milestones in your Outlook calendars.
    
7. Costs and Quantities UI revisions to improve readability/usability: Yeah… I know, big deal… but small improvements add up, and we’ve made more than 400 small improvements in the last 3 months and sometimes small wins add up to big victories. 
    
8. Loading Message for the Project Report: Yes, we’ve also noticed that the report is typically very slow loading.  It works hard to compile all of your project data into one page and sometimes this has to be done in realtime, not only does it take a long time to create the report but it can sometimes appear as if it’s not acutally doing anything…  So we’ve added a loading screen to display progress, and more importantly we are in the process of figuring out how we can speed up the report creation in general.

We hope to make this latest build mid-week (around the 15th of October) and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
 

Visit the site here. 

 

Latest ITSO Development Status

Get a high-level distilled view of the recent functionality updates and features currently in development.  Visit the ITSO Development Status page here.

Coming Soon: Save your Custom Review Criteria

We’ve been asked several times now if there’s a way to save product review criteria and reuse it for future projects.  We are aware that many of you use standardized criteria lists as a requirement and use this criteria to review hardware and software prior to selecting certain products for purchase.   We are also aware that it’s currently a chore to re-enter this criteria for each project that you create within the ITSO site.  Because of this need, and obvious inconvenience that is created by the application, we are planning to fix it in an upcoming release that will be online shortly.  Until we get this programmed and tested, please hang tight and you’ll soon be able to save custom review criteria for all your projects, saving you a lot of time in the future.