Beta testers wanted!

We have been super busy working on a few new projects for the ITSO site recently and are feeling good about our general direction for the current Beta site, however we are looking for your input also.  We need additional beta testers to assist us in the ongoing testing of the site and to help us test new concepts, projects and ideas.

If you are interested and would like to become a part of our beta test group please get in touch here.

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.

Export your ITSO Timeline to Outlook!

We’ve just added support for the iCal standard in the Timeline section of the IT Solution Optimizer.  This new addition does something that has been asked of us over and over again… It exports your projects timeline data to your common calendaring or planning application.  

We think this will help our users create better efficiency by allowing you to by-pass re-entering project timeline information into Outlook or Project, etc.  It works very well and I’m sure it’s addition will make many of our users happy.  We’re just sorry it took so long!

ITSO Site Video Tour

We have finally put together a video tour of the ITSO product to help new and perspective users get a better understanding of what the site does and how it can help in the development of your IT projects.  We tried as well as we could to make the video as streamlined as possible so it’s certainly no “all incompasing” overview of the entire ITSO feature set, but we hope it adds to the understanding of the product.  

Unfortunately even though we’ve tried to streamline the video and intentially only briefly touch on most of the sites features, the video is still over 15 minutes long, so you may want to throw some popcorn in the microwave before hitting play on this one….

Here’s the video if you are interested in checking it out.

Update on the last week of activities

Things may seem to have appeared quiet around here for the last week or so.  The ITSO team have been hunkering down planning for the next major release of the site, as well as catching up on the less exciting aspects of our work such as documentation and process improvement.   

However, we haven’t stopped working on the current version of the site.  We have been slowly rolling out some minor enhancements such as the new timeline phase improvements that now allows for the much requested “Create Custom Milestone” feature.  This does exactly what it sounds like it should do; it allows users to add an infinite number of custom milestones to their project in addition to the phases that are required.  The results are compiled into the Final Project Report as well as available via the site by the way of a nicely laid out Gantt chart allowing you and your team to visualize your projects timeline.  

We expect we may build on to this area in the future allowing the addition of such things like; iCalendar export to Outlook, email notifications, upcoming and past due alerts and appending team members to milestones.  These features will be decided on as part of the next release and I will share a partial list of what we expect to build soon hopefully.

New Build Making It’s Debut Today

The latest build that was announced earlier this week will finally make it’s debut at the end of the day today.  We’ve been busy testing the new features (see a full list in the post below) and we’re now ready to release them into the wild.  We expect, as always, there may be teething problems, but based on the testing conducted this week we’re confident that the new changes and additions will add considerable value to the existing site for our users.  

Check back later today to see the new build live around 5:00 p.m. PST.

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.

New Feature: Solution Provider Database

Another new addition that we have been working on over the last few months as part of the new Beta release, and is now live on the new site is the Solution Provider database.  The feature is located in the Design Phase along with our vast Hardware and Software database and functions in a very similar manor.  However rather than filtering on specs and technical criteria as the categories mentioned above, the Solution Provider Database allows users to locate partners for their projects by filtering them using the following criteria:

• Certifications
• Alliances
• Geograpic location
• Industry focus
• Services provided 
• Years in business
• and more…

We think this will be a good addition to the site and will compliment the Hardware and Software databases very well as it provides pre-qualified solution providers in one easy look-up location.  
 

We currently have around 300 major SP’s populated in the database but expect to complete our initial goal of 1000 very soon.  We will continue to update and add to the database and will also be looking into allowing users to review and rate SP’s in the future.

 

New Feature: Success Metrics Dashboard

As we launched the new Beta version of ITSO on Monday we also made available a handful of new features.  One of these is a feature we are calling the Success Metrics Dashboard.  

We’re particularly excited about this addition to the ITSO tool set as we feel it truly exploits the value of the ITSO project database by allowing users to see how successful their projects are likely to be based on an aggregate of other ITSO projects performed by your peers.  

To do this we take projects of the same type and size and apply some database magic along with a handful of pretty powerful algorithms to predict the possible success score of your project.  In addition to this technical wizardry we also show neat peer feedback such as: common lessons learned, product categories used in successful projects, things to consider doing differently, likelihood of achieving project objectives, and a great deal more that will to make you stop and think before kicking off your projects.  

Our goal is that this feature will save you the time, money and face that go into less than optimal project results, and we believe that giving you the ability to apply the experience of the masses, you will be on your way to optimizing your IT operations. 

The Success Metrics Dashboard is already being recieved to rave reviews in user acceptance tests and user interviews, and while we feel this feature already has a huge amount to offer, we also know we have only just scratched the surface of it’s potential.  Over the next months we will continue to improve this feature along with many others to bring you a truly exceptional experience.