Working with our Customers Oct 06 Patrick Clements

We always have a development road map for our applications that extend a mile long.  Just when we think we have come to the end of a feature list a whole new set of doors open up and provides new opportunities with how our applications can help our clients.  This is the nature of software and if you aren't innovating you are probably dyeing.  This is good for us because we enjoy software development and creating new cool technologies.  The struggle then becomes which feature set becomes next in line.  This is the not so fun part.  The bigWebApps teams does a great job in listening to our customers and to our prospects on what they would like to have in a complete solution.  We document each feedback and note who, when, why, and what so we can always come back and get a clearer understanding of what is being requested.  The tough part  for us is determining which ideas would have a the largest direct impact on the community at large.  Which feature would be felt in removing some overdue pain points.  Although often times the squeaking wheel does get the grease we try to be very thorough in making sure what is next up in development is universal.  However, often times we have long term quality clients that have a request or a series of requests that just don't get ranked high on the development road map.  In effort to address this we have begun to test out a new process allowing our client to take ownership of the development and to customize the application based on their needs.  This would give the clients access to a development team to customize the solution to meet their needs.  This process does have some limitations as bigWebApps project managers have to approve of the feature development due to the customization will be introduced into the single source code.  The client also has to to agree that all intellectual property will be assigned to bigWebApps.  The advantages to the client is they receive access to custom development quickly allowing them to get the solution they need.  This is a new step for us and we are testing it out to see how it goes.  Stay tuned to see how it works out!

15 Free Icon Sets for iPhone Mar 14 Jason Moore

This entry is by guest author, Anton Zykin (personal bio coming soon)

It’s common knowledge now that the iPhone is the best mobile device for combining excellent design and cutting-edge user-focused technologies. The army of iPhone fans is growing daily.

And, of course, people want customization! Tons of themes, wallpapers, and icons for the iPhone can be found. As icon design professionals, we are always looking for new icon sets. Today, we are going to share some of the best with you. Here are the TOP 15 FREE Icon Sets for the iPhone. Enjoy!

#1 Agua by David Lanham and Louie Mantia

Neat and quite simple; Very appealing

http://macthemes2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16783459

#2 Buuf by Mattahan and Louie Mantia

Uncommon icons: Soft colors with an old-fashion touch

http://macthemes2.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16783456

#3 Chalkwork iPhone & iPod Touch Mini-Set

Unique texture using photographic background

http://www.mezzoblue.com/icons/chalkwork/iphone/

#4 Hand Draw iPhone Icons

Hand-drawn style; inspired in Apple’s own iPhone icons

http://fasticon.com/freeware/?p=79

#5 Web 2.0 iPhone Icons

Large icon set; Web 2.0 style with reflections

http://forums.ipodhacks.com/showthread.php?t=19619

#6 Comic iPhone Icons

Comic style; good use of depth

http://fasticon.com/comic_iphone.html

#7 CMT iPhone icons

Excellent iPhone replacement icons! Sleek, elegant, and richly colored. This is a must-have!

http://ruizdesign.deviantart.com/art/CMT-iPhone-icons-69567377

#8 iPhone theme: Blueprint

Blueprint styling; true to original set

http://sometoast.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-theme-Blueprint-65406791

#9 Revolver Summerboard theme

Black and purple theme; interesting use of actual photos

http://sometoast.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-theme-Blueprint-65406791

#10 iFoley Summerboard Springtime

Great green theme; Natural color scheme and softer shapes

http://rawmade.deviantart.com/art/iFoley-Summerboard-Springtime-79284200

#11 iPhone Space Theme v1.1

Unique and professional; This is also a must-have.

http://pimpmyiphone.deviantart.com/art/iPhone-Space-Theme-v1-1-65747334

#12 Sticker by David Lanham and Louie Mantia

Retro styling similar to stickers; Impressive

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2008/01/sticker-by-david-lanham-and-louie-mantia-iphone-theme-of-the-day.html

#13 Renaissance By Louie Mantia

Beautiful art that could only be created for an Apple product; Say Hello to Leonardo Da Vinci. Louie Mantia rocks!

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2007/12/iphone-theme-of-day-renaissance-by.html

#14 Shiizun's REALIZE

Gorgeous REALIZE icon set seems to be a new trend in icon design for iPhone.

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/iphone-modifications/theme-shiizun-s-realize-16705.html

#15 Prado Theme

Minimalist and early computer era

http://www.iphoneskinning.com/2007/12/prado-iphone-theme-of-day.html

The Most Effective Way to Guide Your Decisions Feb 18 Jason Moore

Reading through one of Seth Godin's recent posts about decision making (does anyone tire of Seth?  I don't!), it made me reflect on how we make development decisions at bigWebApps.

I noticed my brain immediately started ticking off the ones that we use from his list...but wait!  Those aren't really the ones we use.  What my brain was building was the list that I would love to use.  So I had to consciously force myself into building the real list.  And it wasn't too bad.  So after spending a few minutes thinking about this from other angles, I came up with 3 lists:

1. The list I would love to use
2. The list that we really use
3. The list that we used in the past

The good news is that list #2 is much closer to #1 than #3.  Progress!  And now that Seth shook the cobwebs off this thought process, hopefully #1 and #2 will soon be equal.

If you haven't already navigated away and are interested in reading my interpretations of bigWebApps' three lists here they are starting at the bottom.

#3 How we made decisions in the past

• It's something a major customer wants
• It's cheap (but never is)
• It's easy (but never is)
• It's important to our community
• It adds a feature that our CTO really wants
• We've come this far and quitting now costs too much (this one is so painful)
• It will increase sells (never as much as you think)
• It's the next logical item

The thing about this list is that it's not really that bad.  It's just too reactive.  The major problem was the way we went about executing the list.

#2 How we currently make decisions

• It's important to our community
• We've come this far and quitting now costs too much (yep, still painful)
• It will increase sells (better execution, hopefully)

The main difference between #2 & #3 is the fact that we have simplified and tried to maintain focus on what is important to our current community.  We also have a few pieces of unfinished projects that need to be wrapped up.  The entire team seems to be on the same page that this will not be the future.

#1 How I would like to see us make decisions

• It's important to our community (using a page from Dell's website for this. very exciting!)
• It will help us serve our community better (this includes more sells)
• It's fun! (new addition, but should be a mainstay for any community-centered business)

So, in the future, if there is a fun project that will either help us serve our community better or is important to the current bigWebApps community, then fire up the wagons!

Never Shutting Computer Down Jul 02 Jason Moore

We have had a report of missing classes in bigWebDesk this morning since the upgrade.  This is related to people who have not logged out of the system since it was updated.

Overall, you should turn your computer off when not in use to give all of the mechanisms a break as well as letting your computer reset itself.  This is not necessary for bigWebDesk, but it is necessary to at least start a new browser.

If you are seeing tickets come in without classes, have that customer log out, start a new browser, and log back in.  Then give them the bonus advice to help lengthen your assets' life. ;)

Asset Phase I update p. 6 Jun 25 Jason Moore

Asset Phase I upgrades are fully working on the beta site at this point!!  We are on schedule to publish the update over this coming weekend, so the new features and functions will be available when you arrive at work on Monday morning, July 2!

Included Asset Upgrades:

• Saved asset sorts/filters
• Export multiple types of assets together (1 worksheet, multiple pages)
• Import and overwrite changes made in excel (this is a biggie!!)
• Printable versions of specific list of assets
• Export specific list of assets (another biggie!!)
• Add and verify assets during ticket creation
• Add multiple assets to one ticket
• Link related assets
• Easily manage tickets associated with assets
• Track life cycle of asset as well as value depreciation
• Add picture of asset for tracking damage
• Improved log entries to better track the history of checked out to, location, status, and value changes
• Overall improvements to Setup Categories/Type/Make/Model section
• Add links to outside manuals or links on the web based on Model of asset; for example, you can add a link to the Dell Inspiron Support page that will show up in each ticket that is associated to a Dell Inspiron desktop

Include Upgrades outside of Assets:

• Add files to ticket during ticket creation
• Spell check during ticket creation for subject line and initial post
• Add files to Scheduled Tickets

We look forward to getting everyone's feedback on this.  We will be sending out a schedule of webinars to walk through the new updates once they are released.

Enjoy!!

Networking Auditing, Need Your Input Jun 01 Jason Moore

bigWebApps is actively looking to integrate a third-party network auditing solution into bigWebDesk.  The far and away leader at this point is Discovery by Centennial Software!  Jon Hernandez of Centennial Software graciously accepted our offer to be a guest author in our newsletter this month.

Here is an excerpt:

"As a 10 year old company, Centennial Software has over 5 million "agents" deployed with over 4500 customers.  Through OEM partnerships and integrations we have become the de facto auditing tool for many organizations. 

Discovery will provide you with rich asset data including:

• Hardware: machine name, manufacturer, serial number, BIOS date, processor, memory, hard disk size/space, installed adapters, network information
• Identification of file types, eg MP3s, and percentage of disk space used by file type
• Software: vendor, application name, version/patch, last used, frequency of use, licensable & unlicensable applications, product type
• Audit history and record of changes
• Current location tracking to alert administrators to movements, additions and removals"

Our main goal of having him write that newsletter was to get feedback from you addressing your needs (or lack thereof) for a very capable network auditing tool.  Please leave your comments and thoughts in the comments section of this post.

Also, Jon has offered to do a webinar presentation showing how Discovery, integrated with bigWebDesk, can help you gain control over the hundreds or thousands of assets that you currently have on your network.  There is no date set for this webinar at this time, but if there is interest we can schedule it within a week or so.

We look forward to discussing this with you more.

Are You Prepared to Provide a Great Experience? May 30 Jason Moore

Once you make the decision that your organization is going to provide great client fulfillment, the first step is to buy aspirin (you may substitute ibuprofen or naproxen sodium if you please).

The amazing feeling that you WILL get when you put the finishing touches on that first fantastic experience with your client is not lost on you.  Due to you providing such an experience, the client will walk away feeling satisfied but wanting more.  All of us being consumers on our own time allows us to understand just how poorly most customer service interaction go.  But only some of us know what it feels like to receive that over-the-top client fulfillment experience.  And when we do, you know it because it feels good.

So why the aspirin?  Because you will start receiving more requests and ideas.  The main reason why this is a great thing is because your clients/customers can give you insight to your product that you can not find anywhere else.  Then you, your team, and your products/services improve as your client's experience improves.

So pack some chocolates with those aspirin because you are going to feel like giving yourself a reward!

(seriously, would you have ever been able to find a picture of a chocolate aspirin 5 years ago?)

To Sell Change or a Slightly Better Way May 12 Jason Moore

We have just recently (in the past 6 months or so) realized there was a major flaw in the way we present our support application to potential clients. Many of the times, the organizations/companies that we are talking with need a major overhaul of their support process.  The problem is that a major overhaul, well, feels like it is going to be a major overhaul.

Seth points out how selling change can be a big challenge.

The new twist that should have been obvious to us long ago is that our applications can help them do almost exactly the same thing they are doing now but with better organization, tracking, and reporting.  Once we help them implement our application to slightly improve their current process, we can continually improve (overhaul) their process over the course of months/years instead of making them feel like it has to happen overnight.  The overhaul will always be available, but a gradual change is more likely to be accepted.

We'll see how this goes.

When You Fail at What You Do May 10 Jason Moore

I love Client Fulfillment.  I love the practice of working with clients to get their ideas, add information from an expert, and work with them to come up with the best solution to improve their support process. 

Sometimes that ends with us tweaking a current feature or adding an entirely new feature. This is a great ending because the client sees how important they are to our community, and our products get better. On other occasions, we come to the conclusion that the client's process would improve more by making changes internally and adopting an idea in place at one of our other clients.  This is also a great outcome because, ultimately, the end goal is to improve the client's process.

In the end, there are two performance measure that matters more than all others when it comes to client fulfillment:

1. Did the client's process improve?
2. Does the client understand what steps were taken (or going to be taken) and why?

Which gets us to the point of this post: A long-time client contacted me yesterday about a situation where they need improvement. When I reviewed our log in bigWebDesk, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I have completely failed in properly communicating with the client, working with them to improve their process, and helping them understand what was going on and why.

This is a really tough situation to be in professionally because it is one of those rare scenarios where zero blame can be placed anywhere but on yourself. The good part about this, though, is that instead of trying to find something else to blame, work can get started immediately on correcting the problem. Hopefully, the situation is not irreparable.

Have you found yourself in a situation like this?  Tell us your story and what you did to recover?  Is this person/company still a client?

Configuration Overhaul, part 1 Mar 08 Jason Moore

Over the past 8 years, bigWebDesk has been developed by taking client feedback and working those ideas one by one into the application.  This has served the application (and the company) very well, but the application's configuration area has suffered in complexity and confusion.

We are going to be performing a complete overhaul of the configuration section making it easier to understand and complete.  This blog series will serve as a journal on what are thoughts are, gathering your opinion, where we are, and ultimately where we are going.

There is currently no timeline on this project due to its very early stages.  We are excited about receiving your comments and complaints pertaining to this section.  Your input will ensure that we are moving in the right direction.

Current thoughts:

• All routing rules configured from one screen
• All options selected from one screen (currently separated into Features and General Options)
• Easier controls (use of Ajax and other tools)
• Better explanations (general descriptions, how does one feature effect another, etc.)
• Default setups (are you an internal IT dept, internal Facility Maintenance dept, supporting external clients, etc.)
• More finite permissions controls

This a very broad stroke list and will be added to and certainly be defined better as we go.

If you are currently a bigWebDesk admin and have ideas on improvement, please feel empowered to share those here.  No holds barred.