Solutions Monkey : IT

Microsoft Dynamics AX Enterprise Portal @ TechEd

meysun — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 21:32:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics has a full track at TechEd and we are having sessions on Enterprise Portal as well. Come and join us for in-depth technical discussion on Microsoft Dynamics AX Portal platform.

Extending Windows SharePoint Services with Enterprise Portal Web Parts for Microsoft Dynamics AX

Attend this sessions for a deep-dive discussion on the portal strategy and technologies for Microsoft Dynamics AX. Learn about the enhancements made to Microsoft Dynamics AX to support the deployment of an enterprise portal in Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). Walk through a demonstration of how to build and customize an enterprise portal to add new functionality that will suit your customers' needs. The technology is built on WSS and the underlying Web Application Framework.

For the full list of sessions, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2006/default.mspx

Getting ASP.NET version used by IIS Web Site

meysun — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 01:29:00 GMT

It is easy to get the ASP.NET version installed at the machine level. But it took me some time to figure out ( with the help of others , of course) to get the ASP.NET version used by a given web site in IIS , since side by side is supported by .NET and admin would be able to pick the ASP.NET version from IIS Manager and change it at any time at a granular level.

Here is the code snippet & help I got

String sWebSite = “w3svc/1”
DirectoryEntry site = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://localhost/" + sWebSite + @"/Root");

                    PropertyValueCollection vals = site.Properties["ScriptMaps"];
                    foreach (string val in vals)
                    {
                        if (val.StartsWith(".aspx"))
                        {
                            string version = val.Substring(val.IndexOf("Framework") + 10, 9);
                            MessageBox.Show(String.Format("ASP.Net Version on virtual server is {0}", version));

}

}
The idea here is to use the System.DirectoryServices classes which will use IIS ADSI provider.
You need to read the ScriptMap property at your application path. For example if you wanna see the asp.net version for the default web site - read the ScriptMap at LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/. The script map property is an array of strings. If the app supports asp.net one of those strings will be a mapping of the aspx file extension to the asp.net handler which will a the full path to a DLL. The path will be something like %windir%/Microsoft.NET/Framework/<asp.net ver>/aspnet_isapi.dll. You can get the version out of this string with some simple parsing.

Other approaches from scripts include

1) Running “cscript adsutil.vbs enum w3svc/filters” (without quotes) from command prompt should list the filters in IIS metabase. You need to change the current directory to c:\inetpub\adminscripts before running this command.

2) %windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50902\ASPNET_REGIIS.EXE –lk

Live Software

meysun — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:44:00 GMT

Certainly “Live” is the latest buzz word and Microsoft responded to this renewed phenomenon in a big way. That is certainly going to fuel “Software-as-Service” concept further. One thing that I love about Microsoft is that it’s collective ability to recognize and respond to the new trends early enough and morph for future success. In that there is never a question about “Innovator’s dilemma”.

Nevertheless, does “Live” mean “dead” for every other software model?. I don’t think so.
There is a great analogy in Automobile industry. Five or ten years before there were dreams about cars that would run on water or electricity. I was certainly looking for a car that would fly me to my work (and avoid the traffic jam :) ). But today what has become real and tremendously successful are the hybrids and I certainly own one and proud of it.

So I think “Software-as-Service” is going to add value to the traditional on- premise
software, but certainly not going to replace it completely. It is going to be more effective and useful where the traditional software TCO is high and needs constant update and intelligence over wire to keep it effective, like my hybrid car which switches to electricity on a slow city traffic, but I love and need my “gas” engine when I am on the high way.

In “Web 2.0”, people most often think of AJAX, RSS as key themes, which is unfortunate. These are just user interface and application interfaces for web applications.The focus should be more on making web really the platform of platforms, which would allow people to develop, integrate, deploy and use applications that brings down the TCO and harness the collective community knowledge and enables distributed collaboration. Most of all it should make the applications simple and easy to use. “Simple” is the key to success.

Implementing TSP process to build better software products

AnandhSesh — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 03:36:00 GMT

How many times we have been asked this question, “How long you think it will take for you to write this code” or “how much does it cost to develop” and we go scrambling, searching for some figures and randomly guess and throw a number based on our gut feeling at the spur of the moment. It may be so that, at times, we may have to provide such figures representing a large team. Well, at the end, we will only be puzzled to ask ourselves "did I tell the right figure?"

Would it be nice if we had real parameters handy enough to provide estimate on metrics collected from previous projects such as project size, KLOC (Lines of Code in Kilobytes) /projects, team size, cost, defect density etc. But how do track projects in terms of above parameters?

In order to track these parameters, there are different processes followed in many teams/companies by adhering to some flavor of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process. One the most successful processes industry-wide is Team Software Process (TSP), recommended by Carnegie Mellon University, which technically is the next higher model to Capability Maturity Model (CMM). In fact, TSP is implemented by few internal teams in Microsoft including my team (SMIT - Arsenal & Infoweb).

What are the benefits we can derive by implementing Team Software Process (TSP) across Development or Testing teams

ensure delivering quality software products
create secure software products
improve process management within the team and across organizations
imbibe discipline-oriented coding/testing principles and patterns

IT or Engineering groups use the TSP to apply integrated team concepts to the development of software-intensive systems. A four-day launch process walks teams and their managers through

establishing key goals
defining team roles
assessing risks & mitigation plans
producing team plans

How does TSP actually work?

First of all, all the team members undergo Personal Software Process (PSP) training which will ensure that each individual is exposed to a set of standard practices laid out for each phase - Envisioning, Design, Stabilization, Deployment, Production - of the SDLC process. PSP offers role-based training that is focused for various roles; Developers, Testers, Program managers and Product mangers. Once the team completes PSP, they will be ready to embark upon TSP launch.

When a project is awarded, the team internally groups together and kicks-off a TSP launch. Assuming that business requirement and functional requirement are signed-off by management team, typically, a TSP launch spans for about 3-5 days, where the whole project is broken-down into several smaller modules. Each module is assigned a set of tasks such as design document, design inspection, coding, code-walk through, code inspection, unit testing, integrated testing and post-mortem depending on how many tasks the team collectively agrees to add for each task. Tasks will vary depending on the functional role; developer, tester, Program manager and so on. Now, time is allocated to each task (usually measured in hours), called task hours. Apart from this, there are other non-project related tasks like reading e-mails, attending mandatory company meetings, filling TSP worksheet etc., which are classified as non-task hours. After identifying the number of total task hours and non-task hours, they are rolled-up to derive the total estimated project time. Usually if the team is launching TSP for the first time, then task hours (number of hours associated to a task) are based on some gut feelings (more of an average coding time by the team). Otherwise it will be directly imported from previous historic data. Then these tasks are evenly distributed to team members. With the total project time, number of resources in the team, dependency of tasks on other tasks, the team comes out with a project plan and schedule (several milestones dates, including start, design complete, code complete, end date and so on). There are times when the management might have some release dates in which case, few alternative plans and schedules are created by adding more resources or reducing the number of tasks associated to a module to meet management goals.

Also, during the TSP launch, there are several key assumptions, decisions, risks, mitigation identified by the team, recorded by a time-keeper and documented for future references. These factors are submitted to the management team along with the project plan and schedule for approval.

After the launch, the TSP provides a defined process framework for managing, tracking and reporting team's progress on a weekly basis. Each individual is handed-over a worksheet that will contain a filtered view of individual’s tasks. When the individual sets off to work on a module, several tasks are opened in the worksheet, once each task is completed, it is closed. Whenever a task is closed, it is attributed towards progress of the project, in essence, called project earnings. Then all individual’s worksheet is consolidated and rolled-up at project level to report progress of projects, defect metrics, Lines of Code (LOC), forecasting and other metrics. In addition to this, there are also other tools to, capture errors, record time spent on each task, count LOC for methods or functions (LocMeth) etc.

By implemented TSP, an organization can build self-directed teams that plan and track their work, establish goals, and own their processes and plans. These can be pure software teams or integrated product teams of 3 to 20 engineers. TSP will help your organization establish a mature and disciplined engineering practice that produces secure, reliable and quality software. TSP is also being used as the basis for a new measurement framework for software acquirers and developers. When it comes to meeting cost, schedule and performance objectives, program managers need

accurate cost and schedule information
proven practices for delivering quality software
timely knowledge of possible risks

The Integrated Software Acquisition Metrics (ISAM) project was initiated with the assumption the TSP can be the foundation that program managers need to answer questions like: Where are you in your program? How do you know for sure? ISAM is developing pilot studies to create an effective, common measurement framework for acquirers and developers based on TSP and PSP practices. Managers will be able to use data from TSP teams so that they can answer these questions with confidence.

For more details on PSP, TSP and CMM, you can visit these sites…

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/tsp/introducing.html

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/

- Anandh

Integrated Reporting Platform

meysun — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 22:32:00 GMT

Report is a very generic term used to define any form of data retrieval for information purposes.Everybody uses reports, in one form or another. It ranges from simple static ready to print reports to complex personalized , dynamic , interactive reports. Reports are usually created for certain purposes and used by different audiences like business executives to predict the future of business, customer service department to analyze on customer satisfaction, sales team to project and forecast sales operation, marketing to learn market trends to promote products etc. and also using different technologies like Commerce Server analytics, Excel , SQL Reporting services, SQL Server Analysis Services, XML, HTML and other web applications etc.

"What Goes in Must Come Out" is very much true for any data captured in transactional system. Traditionally the “Come out” part becomes the most difficult part as more often the data is captured in various systems in various formats and schemas and essentially not manifested but buried.

The other big challenge is that data captured in transactional system is very raw and may not be meaningful as it is, to be consumed and analyzed to derive certain important measurable parameters to predict rhythm of business, extrapolate using historical data and forecast the future of the business. Also data has to be properly organized - summarized, coupled or merged with internal or external system data, grouped together - to make it more appealing depending on the end user because each individual wants to see the same data with different perspective. It also enables to share and communicate with peers, managers, partners and customers for business purposes.

Today reporting is exposed through different communication channels, many different formats, applying gamut of technologies, using several delivery options. As we advance day by day, more compelling interactive report are made available though technology innovation touching person to person and from business to business.

Integrated and harmonized reporting platform across all the applications is a vital need for any business to better utilize the invaluable digital data captured in various systems and derive the maximum value of out of it to track, communicate, manage and predict the state of the business.

Reports could be

Bills/ statements that are mailed to customers
Purchase Orders , invoices to your partners
Financial or other legal compliance statements to statutory/regulatory boards about your business
Status Reports by individual, teams etc.
Business Performance reports
System reconciliation reports
Time scheduled (Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly/Yearly) state of business review reports and trend reports for executives
System Usages / ROI reports
KPI
Ad-hoc reports
Alerts
BI reports and so on

And they could be in the form of

Paper reports
Excel reports
Web based reports
XML documents which could be used to share with partners and other systems
Html reports delivered to a web portal
Device specific reports
Word documents / PDF send in emails
Interactive reporting –which provides an end-user to modify and issue queries according to his/her needs
Static reporting – daily news, weekly newsletters, monthly magazines
Audience-based customized reporting – like role-based, region-based etc.
Natural language based simplified reporting allows users an easy way to interact using their normal day-to-day language

For many years, every application has it’s own unique reports and IT departments will have to move and duplicate data across systems and build custom reports to get 360 degree view of the business.One of the constant flow of work to IT departments is to create ad-hoc reports for it’s ever changing end users coupled with complex discrete IT systems.

Earlier People were satisfied with ready to print static reports. With growing business demands and complex business systems , the need is high for instant , dynamic , online, interactive reports.

One need to keep in mind that Reporting User Interface is another important function in the reporting process. Graphical user interface plays a major role in exposing data using rich presentation objects like Office system web parts (bar chart, pie chart, graphs etc.) for end users to decipher and understand quickly and easily. By creating standardization report templates, reports can be created easily without spending too much time on building from scratch, thereby could save time and money.

Creation, Presentation, Output options, management, security, personalization, integration, user interaction options/ drill down, linking to other systems have all have become paramount requirements for reporting systems.

Sarbanes-Oxley and other acts coupled with stringent company polices on privacy and security requirements need to be enforced on the data shared and an integrated reporting platform should enable enforcing such policies at one cental location.

With powerful and easy to use (and understand reporting systems) , now the emphasis is more on putting the power into the hands of end users to carve the information that they want in the way they want without the need to depend on others to create reports for themselves. This cuts the critical time lost and improve productivity and quick decision making.

So to transform valuable digital data into information shared at all levels, derive knowledge /intelligence and use it to make insightful, timely decisions, An integrated reporting platform is a key IT investment area for businesses.

- Meysun & Anandh

Portals and Integration

meysun — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 21:59:00 GMT

A portal is a website (for now) that provides a quick consolidated overview of information from many different systems and serves as a starting point to lead to other resources. They are generally designed to provide personalization capabilities to give the power to the user’s hand to define their view across many systems in the way they want and inline with the way they work/contribute to the business.
Portals are often device agnostics and are truly the single and first touch point for the users anywhere, anytime and through any form.
Portals also provide the platform for collaboration. Portals are also the go to place to search across many systems and connect to systems, resources and other users.
Portals also could be role based and is becoming the anchoring site for communities and for content aggregation.

All in all, portals so far have accomplished the first task displaying information close together in a single or few web pages in one place from many different systems. This is just the beginning.

Integration is the hallmark of Portal and the full potential of portal would be realized only when they become the pseudo master aggregated application of connecting together (not just displaying together) the information and the application from different systems, as the user interacts as one single system and providing holistic integrated user experience transparently flowing all the way back to these individual systems.

Search is evolving as the primary means of getting to the information. It can no longer remain as the treasure hunt experience of jumping from one system to another to look for information and then connect the pieces of retrieved information together.

SharePoint V2 products and technologies are the right step in the right direction from Microsoft. SharePoint with page rendering framework , web part connections , xml support , list infrastructure , office apps integration, web services and with underlying ASP.NET and VS.NET as the dev tool makes a real solid Portal platform. With the innovations coming up in O12 and along with BizTalk, HIS and Indigo, I hope this will help realize the full potential of Portal platform.

Top 10 reasons “Why businesses invest in IT”

meysun — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:17:00 GMT

Some time back, in the media there was huge discussion around whether or not IT really matters and why on earth companies are investing in IT. Is it really strategic and the discussion went on and on…

It is very evident that IT has become the back bone of many companies over the last few decades. The technology has evolved even further in the last few years and makes things possible which were never dreamt of before.

In the next article, we will see why this is the right time for business who have embraced IT decades ago to reinvest in IT. For example, 5 years back, storing terabyte would be unthinkable and systems that were built decades ago have always been designed to capture only very limited amount of information due to storage considerations. This could have resulted in not capturing some key contextual information surrounding that transaction today. So it would be right time to rethink that system now. I will store further thinking on this topic on why business should invest more on IT now for the next article and here focus on laying the foundation on why businesses invest in IT in the first place.

Here is my top 10 list of “Why businesses invest in IT”.

1. Innovation : Software systems make it easy, cost effective and quick to design, proto type and innovate core “products” of any company which is the main source of income
For example, an automobile manufacturing firm invests in systems which will help them design computer models of their next generation cars. An architect firm invests in systems which will help them design blue prints and come out with innovative designs and test it through software systems.

2. Administration : Regulatory needs , company governance, financial information
Show me the money and obey the rules.

3. Operations : Automate Business Processes to capture vital data and enable workflow. Digitized data captured in transactions are the source of information of about your business, which could be turned into knowledge and knowledge would result it new opportunities.

4. Relationship : Give the power back to customers, vendors and employees to fulfill their needs through self service. Also track, maintain and improve the business relationship.

5. Productivity : Better Resource Management/ Improve productivity /Reduce time to complete a task/Schedule Management
Getting things done quickly and efficiently with less error is the main motto of implementing any system.

6. Management : Understand your business at ground from the top
The further you are up from the ground level of your business, the more you need to rely on systems to understand the status and ground reality of the business. Track, control and respond to your business instantly

Having an eye on the dashboard and control is the only way you will have safe ride. Otherwise it is like blindfolded and feel like driving. There is very less success rate, if not none with that approach. Empowering everyone with necessary data, information and knowledge and making the decisions happen at all level at lightening fast is the key to any agile business.

7. Intelligence : Harness the power of huge digital information captured in every walk of life in the business and get different perspectives and understand business opportunities and issues and better at it.

8. Communication : Build easy and effective communication channel
No two people hear the same thing the same way and get exactly the same sense and purpose. Constant, clear, concise communications is vital in having everyone on the same page and run the business like a well oiled and coordinated machine and execute tasks precisely. Also digitized communication content could be turned into knowledge and could be used to keep track of commitments.

9. Agility : Make quick and well thought out “educated” decisions to respond to changing business needs.Ability to respond to every changing business needs in the complex world is the ultimate weapon to stay successful. Thos who can adopt new competitive landscape and respond will perish. Effective Change Management systems are vital for business agility.

10. Commerce : Trading and doing business in the global marker beyond boundaries pushes eCommerce higher on the IT investment side for many companies.

Why Integration should not be an after thought?

meysun — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:01:00 GMT

"Integration" has always been the "magical" word for the IT world. Traditionally "Integration" projects have always been after thought projects started after purchasing/building more than one system and result of making it to work together in some way for business to function with less frustration.
Complexity of IT systems and making it work together in the natural flow of day-to-day business process scenarios have always resulted in work around and half working systems. This is mainly because , integration has not been in the forefront of system designs.

I believe that integration should be a design / purchase consideration for business systems right from the very beginning.
Also Integration has always been thought as the middle tier level integration. I also think that the integration needs to happen at every level
• Data Level Integration
• System Integration
• Business / App Level Integration
• UI level Integration

It's fact that company of any size will have more than one system and without “integration” being in the forefront of the design, we would never achieve the full potential of the incredible power of software. Consider that a mid sized company in some form will have the below systems
1. Finance
2. HR
3. CRM
4. Sales Analysis
5. Service/Support System
6. Internet web site /e-Commerce
7. Business/Domain specific systems such as Inventory , Procurement, supply chain , professional services etc
8. Mail Infrastructure and Communication Platforms ( Live Meeting/Chat)
9. Planning/Scheduling
10. Intranet/Knowledge Management / Collaboration
11. Training/Social Networking ( blogs, newsgroups, discussion groups etc)
12. Business Intelligence
13. Productivity Tools
14. and many more...

And without well thought out integration strategy, the systems would never fit in the natural business/operation process of humans using the system and allow them to get the most out of those systems.

With the advent of XML and web services, this dream is slowly coming into the forefront of system designs.

I hope, my friend Anand Rajagopalan ( co-blogger of this blog) who is working in the XML web services team in Microsoft would be providing more insights into this topic in coming days.