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.

As you well know, I’ve now made available for download an early pre-release version of misvCRM. Earlier today, I received an email from someone who had downloaded a copy. The email was quite long filling two (2) pages when printed. The email contained a lot of very good suggestions on how to make misvCRM more usable and attractive to those who are looking for such an application. The sender is a software developer herself and she has developed a business management software for artists (http://www.artaffairsoftware.com).

I’m going to implement most of her suggestions before the thirty days are up since I have most of the hooks in place and it will not eat much into the remaining days.

While I am at it I would like to list some of the third-party tools that I am using, excluding my main development tool which is Delphi.

EMS SQL Manager Lite for Interbase/Firebird - is a powerful tool for InterBase/Firebird administration and development. It provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for maintaining databases and database objects, managing table data, building SQL queries, administering users and their privileges, extracting, printing, and searching metadata, etc. The lite version is free.

FlameRobin - is an open-source application that basically does what EMS SQL Manager does except with a less flashy GUI. The reason I use it is because there are times that I only need to have a quick look at the database or the existing data and using EMS SQL Manager is a bit of an overkill.

Advanced Data Generator - I came across this a couple of days ago and it is a great application for generating data for database applications. It enables you to define the type of data that needs to be generated for each field of your database tables. It is even possible to specify real-life looking data e.g. first names, last names, company names etc. If you want to load test your application using a data generator is a must. You can download the trial version.

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.

On the tenth day…

I did not realize that more work was required than I initially thought when I enabled the application to be used in a networked environment (i.e. multiuser mode) with the least amount of code rework possible. Most of time was spent on making sure that it works both ways i.e. using a database on the network and using the database on the local machine. With the way I’ve set it up, it is possible for someone to initially start using the program with the local database then when the need arises move on to using the network or remote database without reinstalling a new or dfferent version.

That’s all I can report for the 10th day. I hope the report for the eleventh day is more exciting. Till next time.

On the ninth day…

From the different posts in the 30dayers site one can gather that everyone involved in this sprint is really putting in 100% effort in producing high quality applications. I think when there is an achievable objective, anyone with enough motivation can achieve it, not only in producing software but in any endeavour.

Early today I can say that I’ve finished all the features I want to include in this first release. They are as follows:

• client management - a bit more work needed here. I need to separate individual clients from business or corporate clients. It just makes more sense especially in generating analysis reports.
• contact management - just have to add a pop-up window for selecting the clients. I initially thought of having the client names in a drop down combo box but decided against it because of the possibility of having a large number of clients.
• product management - at the moment only digital products and services can be recorded. Future plans include the option to record non-digital products such as books, merchandises, etc.
• sales management - it took me a while to figure out how to handle a single sale and multiple item sales but in the end I figured it out.
• subscriptions management - these refer to those products/services that have a subscription mode of payment rather than one-off.
• issues management - these are items relating to the quality of the product of service. I initially thought of limiting it to bug reports but in the end there may be things that are not related to the actual software but some ancillary thing e.g. the help file or installation problems etc.
• actions management - these refer to activities taken towards the resolution of the issue or issues reported. This and the issues feature are almost in code freeze state (almost no more work is needed).
• table codes management - these are top-level codes that misvCRM needs and will be set to read-only when released.
• table items management - these are the sub-items relating to each table. The entries of this table can be updated or deleted. It is also possible to add a new item record.
• discount codes management - this is where different discount/coupon codes are maintained. I initially thought of leaving it to the user to specify the coupon or discount rate used when the item was bought but I think this can get tedious when there are several variations of the product available for purchase and each one have their own discount code.

I just have to cleanup the code and tidy up a few loose ends and I think I can make it available for download for those who want to take it through its paces. I just have to make clear that the final product may be the same or have additional more features. Anyway, this is something I have to think about when the time comes.

Another capability I added is that of being a multiuser (I know, it is not really a big deal) . I’ve made it in such a way that it is possible for the user to connect to the database via the Internet. The IP address of the middleware is shown on the caption of the application’s main window and an indicator of the type of connection is shown on the lower left corder of the main window. Here is a screenshot:

Another feature that I included when I made it multiuser is that depending on the licence the application can either connect to a remote database or to a local database i.e. residing on the same machine where the program is.

I think from now on it will be more fiddly in the sense of making sure everything hangs together and that the UI is consistent. An inconsistent UI is something that turns off users, I know I do.

That’s it for now. Till next time…

On the eight day…

A few more features were added such as subscriptions and discounts. I’m currently working on the sales and sale items feature. The subscriptions feature manages subscription purchases. I initially thought of including this information in the sale item table but in the end decided against it. The discounts feature are for those products that attract a discount voucher or coupon. For this feature, I could have left to the user to simply specify the discount rate during the sale record creation but I tried to cover the situation where there are several discount coupons for a product because of a marketing campaign etc.

Another feature I added was having an alert/message/notification window pop-up when the application starts. The purpose of this window is to inform the user of the important things that need to be done for the day. Examples of items appearing in the alert window can be: producing or generating the billing report for the month; producing invoices for clients of subscription mode etc; activities marked as urgent etc. Here is a screenshot of the Alert window. This window can also be displayed by selecting the appropriate menu option.

After I finish the sales and sales items feature I can then move on to the enquiry area which I think is the part of misvCRM that should give the user the greatest benefit. In this area the user should have a 360-degree view of his/her client. The enquiry window should be able to show in a single glance to the user client details such as purchases, licence keys or licence numbers, requests for support and bug reports, etc.

On the six and seventh days…

It’s been almost a week since the challenge started and as you can see in the 30dayers feed site there is a lot of activity and progress is definitely being made by everyone involved. As it has been mentioned in one of the feed’s post that the quality of the products is really impressive. Having the 30-day challenge and the spectre of not meeting the target is a very good motivator for really doing quality work. To the others involved in this challenge I encourage you to push on, it will all be worthwhile in the end.

On the sixth day I got had to take a step back in the development of the product/product item portion of the application. I decided against having a two-level approach in recording the products. I went for a single table with more data instead. During this time I had a brainwave which I shall describe in another blog post (possibly after this one). The whole process of undoing the two-level approach took sometime since I had to remove the product item processing feature and then revise the product portion to cater for the increase in data. This was the sixth day.

The seventh day is a completely different story. I managed to finalise the product processing and add the contact processing. The contact processing portion manages the communication between the uisv and others. I think being able to keep track of all contact made with clients is a good thing because it gives you a history of your relationship with them.

The funny thing with this development effort is there are a lot of things that I want to add but I know if I will not finish so I am maintaining a separate list of things to have after the 30-days are up. One of those things is the inclusion of alerts.

That’s it for now. Hopefully, the entry for Day 8 will be more substantial and also I will new screenshots as well.