Yesterday, I started working on the help file using Dr. Explain which is a software for making help files. I’ve mentioned this product in a previous post but this time I want to mention a bit more about it.

The great thing about it is that it comes with a sample file which you can use as a template. The sample file is for the TBS Cover Editor software product. You can open the file within Dr. Explain and find out how it all works and hangs together.

As I’ve mentioned previously the main selling point of the product (at least for me) was its ability to parse a screenshot into its invidual components and automatically assign bulleted lines to them. There is no need to use all the components. Actually, you can delete the ones you do not need and Dr. Explain takes care of the renumbering.

Another thing that I found useful was that you can add a screenshot taken with another screen capture software. I do not have any problem with the screenshot images it creates except that I need to resize some of them. Dr. Explain has an image resize option but what I want to do is to resize the screenshot and enhance it at the same time. Dr. Explain cannot enhance an image. I use FastStone Capture as my image capture utility (works great and has its own editor) and IrfanView to resize and enhance my images.

After adding the screenshot you can add a new control (this is just an area you specify which Dr. Explain will treat as a control of the current screenshot). You can change the name of the control as well as adjust the bullet mark’s location and distance from the image. For every control you add you are presented with its own text area where you can write something about the control you added. The image below can best illustrate what I mean:

The other reason why I am using FastStone Capture as my screen capture utility is because you can edit the image and add some text highlights (see above image) as well as have a torn-paper effect on the side of the screenshot. Having this effect is handy when I want show only a portion of the screen. It’s not much but I find it useful. See the following image:

While you are in the middle of writing the contents you can simply click on the HTML Preview or CHM Page Preview button to quickly have an idea how the page looks like once it is exported to one of these formats.

Once I got the hang of adding windows, inserting existing screenshots, creating bullet marks the whole exercise of writing the help file became easier. I think I’ll get the help file done faster than I initially thought. Thanks to Dr. Explain.

Today, I’ve decided to finally (really) stop working on the code and adding little nice-to-haves (hello scope creep) and start focusing on the other aspects of this project namely, the documentation. Here are some the changes that were done on misvCRM in this month of July 2008.

• Made the field name display in the history log more friendly i.e. instead of showing CL_LASTNAME it now shows ‘Last Name’ which is definitely more understandable than showing the actual field name.
• Cosmetic changes in terms of making the labels and captions more consistent.
• Completely changed the way the sales were recorded. The sales items are now recorded from within a single window rather than invoking the sale item dialog window each time.
• Labels with drop down boxes are ‘live’ i.e. you can click on them to bring up the Table Item window to add a new table item (if such an item is not in the list). See the screenshot below. Note the Reason and Method labels.
• Converted a lot of the SQL into stored procedures.
• A lot of itsy bitsy changes…

Beta Test

As a result of this code freeze, misvCRM now moves to the beta testing phase (really…not anymore early beta as was mentioned in the download page…or still is until I get to update it). If you wish to participate i.e. receive a full working version with the printing of reports enabled send me an email at pflores at pcfworks dot com (apologies for the non-standard way of representing my email address…as email address harvesters are prowling the Internet this very moment). I’d really appreciate that if you participate in the beta test you will at least send one or more feeback regarding your testing activity.

Download Available

I’ve also updated the download version to reflect that this latest build is now BETA. You can download it from here.

Yesterday, I decided to rip apart the Sales/Sale Items module of misvCRM because I was not exactly pleased with the process of recording a product sale especially in situations wherein there is more than one item sold e.g. CD backup or software assurance. In essence the Sales/Sale Items module is actually an invoicing module except that it is used after a sale has been done e.g. the user receives a confirmation email from his or her payment processor such as PayPal or Share It etc. The flow of recording a sale was not smooth and this annoyed me. In order to make the user experience more I had to change it so that its use is more intuitive and requires less mouse clicks as well.

The other thing that was in my mind was being able to record a group sale or when a company orders more than one licence and provides names for the different licence holders. The current version did not cater for this situation which was pointed out by someone who has downloaded the pre-release version of misvCRM a couple of weeks ago.

I know that this decision might impact on the proposed release date at the end of the month and it is something I have to adjust if needed. I think one has to find a balance between being able to release early for the first version and the quality of the product. I already have entries slated for version 2.0 even before I finish version 1.0! I have already given some thought on how to implement this new change and I am confident that the end of the month is still a possibility.

Here is a screenshot on how the Invoice detail page looks like:

At the end of the day I’m actually much happier with this layout than the original one. Now, gotta get back to coding and making sure it works

Well, here is my first blog entry post 30-day challenge deadline. I had a look at the statistics for yesterday and there was a spike to the number of visitors. I take it as an indicator to the number of people following the progress of the 30 day challenge.

One thing I can say though is that suddenly the pressure has lessened considerably, although the next deadline is set for the end of this month (July 2008). I envision that by the end of this month I shall be able to release version 1.0 of misvCRM.

One feature that I implemented is the history log. This is a table where the entries are the changes in the values of the different fields of the other tables. From this table you can follow the values that a specific field has assumed e.g. email address. Using the history log, you can track the changes in email address that a client may have had which you can then use to retrieve previous communication records.

In order to be able to establish the chronological order of the changes, each record has its own timestamp.  From the image above you can see that the email address has been changes twice as well as the address details.

This log can also come in handy when looking at the pricing history for a product. In the network version the userid of the person who did the update will also be shown so that if there are issues you know the person to go to.

If you have any other idea on how to improve the history logging feel free to tell me. Till next time.

On the 30th day…

First of all, I’ve uploaded a new set of screenshots. These screenshots represent all the windows that one may encounter when using the application. I’ve also uploaded a new build for download. There is also a new page outlining bug fixes and new features for quick reference.

Finally, the 30th day of the challenge has arrived.  With its coming two (2) things stand out: the satisfaction of having built an application in 30 days and also the realization that it is not at a stage where I wanted it to be i.e. there are still some functions missing that might give a negative impression to prospective users if it is released in its current state.

In hindsight, reasons CAN always be given as to why an objective has not been realised. Some of these reasons may be legitimate enough while others can simply be viewed as an excuse for not achieving the goal. At the end of the day, at least for me, the objective was to come up with an application that I can eventually sell and possibly serve as the beginning of my journey away from the office cubicle. I can honestly say I’ve moved in the right direction with misvCRM and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and no, it is not a train coming towards me

As Scott has mentioned in his blog post of not releasing his application at the end of 30 days, I’ve also taken the decision of not releasing it at the end of the challenge. The core functionalities of the application are in place but the helper functions such as record filtering, enquiry, and reports are still in the process of being developed. In short, misvCRM is not yet ready. There, I’ve said what really needs to be said. I’d rather release it late but feature complete for version 1.0. I envision that the final release will be sometime in July. The 30 day challenge just got longer.

To the other 30 dayers who will be able to release their product after 30 days I offer my congratulations and praise for being able to face up to the challenge and achieve a major objective. To the others who decided to delay their product release I also offer my congratulations for what you have achieved and for taking the decision (for whatever reason) not to release it now but maybe for later.

I shall still continue blogging the progress of misvCRM’s development effort. So, stay tuned. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, you can download a usable version for testing and evaluation.

The journey continues…

On the 24th day…

It has been a while since I wrote something on my blog about my progress and so here I am with the latest update. First of all, Scott K., Steve C., and Steve M. are almost finished with their respective products. Well done, guys! I’m sure the others are going full steam ahead and we will hear from them within the next few days to give us an update of where they are up to.

As for me, the last several days were an exercise in two steps forward, one-step back. Using the great feedback I received from an early misvCRM user I had to redo the managing of the sales and sale items as well as the products. For the products, I had to distinguish between non-software and software products. These two features took up most of my time as well as trying to make sure that I do not break anything major.

As of this day, Day 24, I am declaring a code freeze on the development. Why? Because otherwise that ever present danger of “scope creep” will soon rear its head. There are some more features that I wanted to include but for now they are consigned to either release 1.x or version 2.x.

Very briefly here is a run down of the existing features of misvCRM:

• Client Management - capture both individuals and organisations. For organisations you can record the name of the contact person, For individuals you can record the organisation he or she belongs to. For both of these you can specify a parent organisation. You can use this setup to also specify the department where the individual belongs especially if your product is used by more than one department of an organisation e.g. state government.
• Product Management - set up both software (versioned) and non-version products (e.g. services or CD options). For software products it is now possible to capture details about different versions. Changes in a given version as well as new features can now be recorded. This is useful when you need to mention these details in your website. The release and retirement dates can also be captured.
• Licences - the licence keys that you send out to registered users can now be recorded. If you licence key resides in a file it can also be stored in the database. The licence key can also be linked to the invoice number.
• Issues - nothing much has changed in this features except it is now possible to capture the type of reporter for the issue. This reporter type can be internal i.e.  a developer in the team or yourself, client i.e. a registered user, trial user or beta tester. Having this information can give you an idea where most of the issues are coming from.
• Actions - these are tasks taken to resolve/implement an issue or issues. The name of the affected module or modules can be recorded for quick reference.
• Expenses - this is a new one. This feature simply enables you to record your expenses. The expense entry can be categorized i.e. office supply, software, petrol etc. and its type specified i.e. business or personal. The name and other details of the vendor can also be captured.

Some of the things that will come after the 30 days:

• Be able to store screenshots of issues.
• Provide keywords for issues and actions
• Allow multiple client names to be attached to a single invoice (group purchase).
• Installment Payments (Subscriptions - initially this was included but I removed it because I was not really happy with the way I have implemented it).

I am sure there are a lot more as time goes on and the product matures.

I have also implemented a history log. What is this? Well, for every change you do to a record i.e. updates, misvCRM records the before and after values. Is this feature relevant you may ask? I think it is because it can give you an idea of how a specific value has changed through time e.g. price of your product or the email address of a client. In short it gives you the life history of every record that you have changed.

Well, I guess that’s all for now. As usual, the latest build of the pre-release version of misvCRM is available for download.

On the seventeenth day…

I’m currently listening to http://www.accuradio.com while writing this blog entry. I actually listen to swinging standard music when coding. It makes me more productive.

I’ve done more UI cleaning up. Some of the fixes are:

• The client selection drop down boxes have now been replaced by a drop down tree view.
• Made sure that when a new issue is being added there is no random value in the ticket no field.
• Changed the layout of the fields in the issue detail form.

A new build incorporating the new changes is now available from the download area.

The following are the things that I want to add after which I shall start concentrating on the help files and tutorials and the website.

• Use error providers to indicate mandatory or required fields. Error providers are images that appear beside fields that need to be filled in before the record saves successfully.
• Add an additional field in the sales form to capture licence key values. Also to make it possible to store licence key files.
• Web update function (not really urgent but possibly nice to have during this phase i.e. pre-release).
• Basic reports.

As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done and I feel that the end of the month is approaching faster than it should.

On the issue of help files, are they more useful if they can be accessed from the website or from within the application? It seems that nobody really consults the help file anymore especially with the advent of video tutorials. It will be good if I can get some feedback on this issue.

Also, is it better to have several short video tutorials explaining or showing the different features rather than a few long ones? I tend to favour the short video tutorials but it means making more of them

To those who have downloaded the pre-release version I’d really appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

Till tomorrow, now I have to go back to writing the code for the remaining bits.

On the sixteenth day…

It’s really nice to know that everyone involved in this challenge are pushing hard to achieve the objective by June 30. Progress is being made all around and one can see that there seems to be a shift now from development to the marketing side of things such as signing up with payment processors as in Steve’s case while Mike is asking for interested parties to assist him. It will be very interesting to see what will be happening just a couple of days before the end of the month.

You might be asking where are days 13, 14, and 15? They’re there but there nothing worth reporting about. Most of these days were spent in simply cleaning the code, changing the way some of the information is presented to the user e.g. instead of a simple drop down for selecting a client I replaced with with a drop down treeview. The reason for this is that I reimplemented the client management by making it possible to have a parent client which can apply to large organisations with departments of subsidiaries. During the past days I also had to track down a nasty bug in the grid which returned a wrong record when selected for editing.

One thing I’m happy to report for Day 16 is that I’ve just made available for download a pre-release version of the application. This pre-release version lacks certain features that still need to be added, teh documentation is still being prepared, and other similar things. But, the application itself is stable enough to be used for evaluation or testing. For information you can go to the download page. In that page you also have to option of submitting your email address if you wish to receive announcements and updates about the program.

On another note, I’ve also started to fix the main website for this program. The URL of the misvCRM website is http://misvcrm.com.

Please feel free to send me feedback about the program and about the website. Now back to the challenge…

On the twelfth day…

I spent most of the time further cleaning up the code and making sure the user interface interacts together properly i.e. all the drop down boxes are populated properly, the selected entries bring back the correct information, the tab order is correct etc. All these things are little but in the end they add up to making the application pleasant or annoying to use.

I’ve included a screenshot below showing the tabs to the different pages as well as the product dashboard with the List Issues showing. As you can see, I’ve been using it to track the changes I need to add or fix or improve on. While I was using the Issues function it made me realise that there was still something missing from the details window (see Issue Detail screenshot below) which was a description of the solution. Having a place where to record the solution to a problem can assist in resolving related problems in the future. I might even extract these solutions into some sort of knowledgebase (version 2.x perhaps?).

Here is the Issues Detail window with showing the page describing the resolution to the problem.

I think the application is now ready for alpha testing (with the reporting the only missing portion as far as I know). In the next day’s report (Day 13) I will include the download link.

A recent post from Scott Kane mentions about NextGrid from BergSoft and I made a note to examine the possibility of using their grid component for the application. The only unknown is how much impact will it have on the overall progress that I am making. I am sure it will set me back a day or so if I decide to use it. So for now, I think I’ll leave it for later.

I have this growing feeling of confidence that everything will be finished (at least for version 1.0) by June 30. Till next time.

On the eleventh day…

With the local/network (remote) database issues resolved, I moved on to adding two (2) new features relating to the client(s) and to the product(s). I’ve added the Client Dashboard and Product Dashboard. These terms are arbitrary until I find a more appropriate name.

Client Dashboard - this dashboard shows three different list grids. These list grids display a client’s purchase history, support calls history, and communication history. It gives you a comprehensive view about a client and it can give you an idea how much a client likes your product based on the number of support entries he/she has. These list grids reside on their own page within a page control.

Product Dashboard - this is similar to the Client Dashboard except that it is for products. In this dashboard you can see names of all those who purchased a particular product, all related support issues raised and all actions performed. This dashboard can give you an idea how popular your product is and/or how buggy it is.

For both dashboards you can still add, edit. or delete records for each of the displayed list grids. Here are some screenshots of the two (2) dashboards.

This is the Client Dashboard page. This pages shows tabs for the Products, Issues Reported, and Communications containing records for the selected client.

Here is the Product Dashboard page. This contains tab pages for the Issues Reported and Licencees for the selected project.

When I’ve finalised the dashboards, I am going to make it available for download for those who want to give it a whirl. I just like to point out that it is still very much work in progress but I think I ‘ve reached a stage in its development that it can be used. I’m actually using its issues feature to capture the outstanding issues that I need resolved before the final release.