SmartAsset Microsoft Windows 7 Ready

Testament to SmartAsset's leading edge approach to design and architecture is the fact that after significant testing Microsoft have accepted the entry of SmartAsset in the Buy Australian Windows 7 Catalogue.

The Catalogue is an initiative of the AIIA and Microsoft. AIIA with the support of Microsoft developed the 'Buy Australian Software" initiative to promote the capability of the Australian software industry delivering Windows 7 Ready software and The Windows 7 Catalogue will be launched at AIIA's, Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Summit (APDIS) 16-17 December 2009. http://www.apdis.com.au/

We have signed up as an exhibitor at the Summit and delegates will be able to find us on the Microsoft stand where we will be demonstrating from one of the kiosks.

SmartAsset Unveiled on Win 7 at APDIS.

The Online Workshop will be unveiling SmartAsset on Windows 7 at the Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Summit (APDIS) and Exhibition which is to be held from 16 to 17th December 2009.

At this time Australia will welcome members of APICTA, ASOCIO and the Asia Pacific ICT industry to Melbourne for the Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Summit. http://www.apdis.com.au/

We are looking forward to the exposure APDIS will provide us as it brings together participants from 25 economies, represented by 37 associations for 3 days of technology exchange, ICT innovation, collaboration, trade partnerships and business for the ICT industry.

SmartAsset Goes Art Deco

You may recall from the Kiwi Travelogue of our last newsletter that SmartAsset was destined to be implemented for the Port of Napier.
After several months of data preparation and two torrid weeks of uploading, testing, training and implementing, we are delighted to announce that SmartAsset is alive and well at the Port for the city that boasts some of the greatest examples of Art Deco architecture. The result of it being re-built after an earthquake levelled the place on February 3, 1931.

While the maintenance workshops and port facilities are functional rather than arty, they now play home to numerous PCs loaded with the Outlook Addin of SmartAsset to enable maintenance planning using calendars that are shared via MS Exchange, so that those needing to know can see the planned workload by major asset groupings. For the Port, these consist of mobile cranes, forklifts, wharves, vehicles, buildings and related services.

The Port is also the first SmartAsset customer to roll-out the Browser-deployed Job Request module enabling operations staff to report faults. The workshop planners receive these requests as emails and are able to raise and assign resultant jobs without leaving Outlook. Even the originator of the request gets an automatic email confirming this assignment and subsequent notification of job completion.

Training was conducted in the salubrious surroundings of the Port’s Board Room and consisted of a full-day planners training for 6, 2 half-days for training 12 job executors and 4 1-hour sessions for a total of 20 job requestors.

Production data copied to a test database was used for the training. It comprised 4893 assets, 115 standard activities linked to 576 assets and 353 catalogue items.

The Port runs Dynamics GP for its financials and a real-time interface was delivered such that cost codes, supplier codes and CAPEX codes are validated directly against the GP database from SmartAsset. Purchase orders and subsequent receipts are posted back from GP to SmartAsset as material/resource costs and the costs of plant and labour as recorded via job resource feedback and timesheets (both entered via the SmartAsset Outlook addin) find their way back to GP as charges to the related Asset and material/labour recovery accounts.

While the two-week visit to Napier consisted mostly of hard work, this was somewhat tempered by the surroundings.

The walk to work of a morning was along a stretch of beach that has been enhanced with gardens (including a sunken one), a sound-shell, conference centre, skate park, aquarium and eateries.

For those of you that like to spoil a good walk by hitting (and sometimes missing in my case!) a little white ball, the region boasts a golf course that is rated 27th best in the world. The Cape Kidnappers course is a short drive south of Napier and includes some fairways that drop away to the ocean. While there was insufficient time to play a game, just visiting the place has inspired this author to plan a game there at some future date. Maybe the Port will one day play host to a SmartAsset user conference?

Christmas Message

It seems like only last week that we were forecasting a busy 2009 and no doubt this observation confirms that it truly was.

Within the space of a few days earlier in the year, The Online Workshop secured orders from the Ports of Auckland and the Australian Wheat Board for SmartAsset.

These activities have required a presence of our resources in New Zealand and in the wheat-growing regions of Australia for a period that would easily exceed 5 man-months in the provision of installation, training, user-acceptance and go-live assistance.
And this does not include the effort that was expended at our offices in Melbourne and Brisbane in the ongoing development process that has ensured the continued evolvement of SmartAsset.

Additionally, the ACT Emergency Services Agency is poised to roll-out the hybrid FMMS/SmartAsset solution that sees the traditional Openroad Clients connecting to a SQL Server database that is also home to the SmartAsset Browser Deployment for requisitioning materials and raising job requests and the Mobile Deployment Capability that involves the use of PDAs for executing jobs in the field and for stock replenishment and stock take functions in central and satellite warehouses.

Despite all of this, Geoff managed to reduce his working hours in order to smell the roses, Keegan toured Europe for a couple of months, Anna wowed her teachers with an outstanding academic performance at university and Seya had a baby!

As per another article in this newsletter, Port of Napier have just implemented SmartAsset and we have commitments from two existing FMMS customer to migrate to SmartAsset during 2010.

So let’s all take a breath to enjoy the forthcoming festive season!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
From the team at
KDR Creative Software
& The Online Workshop.

Christmas Invitation

Yes, we are once again celebrating the festive season with with our traditional Chicken and Champagne Breakfast and you are cordially invited to join us on the banks of the Yarra River for the celebration.

Date: December 24, 2009

Time: anytime from 7:00am

RSVP: dianne(at)kdr.com.au

Location:

We will be on the river's edge, between Swan St Bridge and Anderson St Bridge. Click on the map for a bigger picture

KDR Creative Software and The Online Workshop and Microsoft Exchange, the Story so Far.

KDR Creative Software have always had on the back burner the perceived need to introduce Microsoft Exchange into the office. There has been an intention to utilise shared calendars to keep a track of who is where and who is doing what.
Naturally this always remained as a nice to have project given that resources were always allocated to FMMS Support, FMMS development and of more recent times SmartAsset development.

Well with the introduction of SmartAsset and the Office Deployment Capability (ODC) the need to have Microsoft Exchange running in our office suddenly became a necessity and a reality.

Hence, began the project to introduce Microsoft Exchange to The Online Workshop.


Microsoft Exchange 2007 can only be run on 64-bit architecture and operating system, it does run in a 32-bit environment but it is not supported by Microsoft in a production environment.
We purchased a new Dell Server and installed Windows Server 2008.
We setup Active Directory and then installed Microsoft Exchange 2007.
We created a number of equipment mailboxes.

We used these equipment mailboxes to test shared calendar functionality in Microsoft Outlook.


Whilst we have utilised Microsoft Exchange to test SmartAsset ODC we are yet to adopt it into our office environment. There are still a number of outstanding issues to address.
Namely:
- Where does our mail sit before being downloaded by the client. ie. should we utilise an external web mail provider or should we have it delivered straight to our Microsoft Exchange Server.
- How do we setup outgoing mail via Exchange.
- Which equipment and resources should we setup as shared calendars.
- etc


With the work that we have performed via SmartAsset ODC we can see that the introduction of Microsoft Exchange into our fold can dramatically improve our office environment efficiency.
- When a sales person needs the data projector for a sales presentation they will simply check the shared calendar for its availability and then book it out as required.
- When a customer rings our office wishing to speak to a particular staff member who is not in the office we can simply check the shared calendar and let them know when they are expected back in the office.
- And many more possibilities.

SIRF Planning4Reliability

The SIRF Planning4Reliability forum has been a favourite for us to exhibit at over the years and we are pleased to announce that we will once again be participation in this great event. This year it will take place at the Langham Hotel in Melbourne on the 20th and 21st April 2010.
Details at their web site: http://sirfrt.com.au/
or contact Anna Civiti
National Forum Manager
SIRF Rt
276 City Road
Southbank VIC 3006
TEL: (03) 9697 1103

Antarctica New Zealand Case Study

We are delighted to announce that the Antarctica New Zealand business article has gone live on Microsoft website. For a link to the Case Study go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005389

“…..it felt like a ‘get together’ to solve a family problem.”

Joey at the Ferntree Gully - Quarry Road fire Strike Team
on Black Saturday (Feb 2009)


Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Authority (ACT ESA) has been very busy in its final leg in implementing the FMMS/CIPS application for phase 1. In the midst of the preparation and implementation, there has been enhancements to the current application to meet the ACT ESA requirements.

Joey has been tasked to discuss, analyze and to come up with the proposals for the ACT ESA enhancements. By coincidence, Joey task is made somewhat easier as he is an active volunteer fireman with the Country Fire Authority (CFA) Victoria in the suburb of Rowville. “Yes, being a member of CFA, I understood most of the ‘slang and lango’ used during the discussion. Whenever we got together to discuss an issue, it felt like a ‘get together’ to solve a family problem. Their issues and practical requirements are much easier to understand and can be translated more effectively to the software design and development requirement “, said Joey Tan.

In Phase 1 implementation, apart from using the application to manage the maintenance activities of the ACT ESA assets and equipments, it is also to use the application to control all requisitions, purchases, invoices, vehicle inventory, warehouse inventory, special project, and issuing of emergency personnel safety clothing and equipment. The emergency personnel safety clothing and equipments is a big ‘budget ticket item’ within all emergency services around Australia and hence, a control on them is very important.

PDAs and scanners will be utilized to provide easy management of works, including warehouse stock taking, vehicle inventory control, and stock picking for issuing within a warehouse.

Microsoft Tech Ed 2009

As mentioned in the last Newsletter, several developers attended Microsoft TechEd, held on the Gold Coast Queensland. One of our most exuberant and enthusiastic team members - Anna won the competition for the Best Trip Report. Here is an excerpt from Anna’s Report and a listing of the papers and presentations she attended. I am sure this will only whet you appetite for more, so contact us for a copy of the whole report or contact Anna to discuss any of the topics in detail.

"This was the first time in my life that I have had the opportunity to go to a conference. I was so excited, that I did not pay much attention to my flight details and almost went to Sydney (my flight number was JF444, but the number of flight to Sydney was QF444). The flight was full with Tech Ed delegates and the two hour flight time passed quickly as I chatted to a couple of guys from a company called PnP. We had arranged for Kevin to pic me up at the airport. and after a short wait Kevin rang. He was there to pick me up. However communication problems occurred and I couldn't hear him clearly on the phone. I was inside the airport and he was outside. I finally heard a great word “Outside”, ran out and with relief saw Kevin waving to get my attention. At the Hotel my room looked huge and far too luxurious for me. But, no time to enjoy the large bed or watch the big TV right now, I had a quick wash and imediately went to the Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre for Tech Ed registration."

Lesson 1: Use Visual Studio 2008 Team System to manage Application Lifecycle Management
Lesson 2: Improve the code Quality with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Test
Lesson 3: Building solutions with SharePoint and Visual Tools for Office
Lesson 4: SharePoint Strategies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Lesson 5: ASP.net MVC
Lesson 6: Pitfalls of Software Development
Lesson 7: Migrating to Exchange 2010: Deployment Best Practices
Lesson 9: Building Fast, Standards Compliant ASP.NET sites
Lesson 10: What’s new in security in .Net4.0
Lesson 11: Server Query Plans and Query Performance
Lesson 12: .Net 4.0 Parallel Extension
Lesson 13: Tools for the DBA- better, faster, easier to use – SQL Server 2008.
Lesson 14: Big Algorithms made easy with Microsoft’s F#

"In Conclusion, after studying in Tech ed, I have gained some ideas about project management. I now have some new concepts about how to develop a website and a search engine techniques. I am far more familiar with New Visual Studio, SQL Server and windows 7 platforms. Plus as an attendee I was given a new(sweat) laptop, I think this is the best event I have attended in my life. I have to give my special thanks to my boss who gave me the chance to attend such a great event. Appreciate you, Kevin!!!"

A Tip when Using SmartAsset ODC

Here is a tip when using the SmartAsset Office Deployment Capability.

Users are already familiar with SmartAsset's ability to populate a Microsoft Outlook Calendar with SmartAsset Maintenance Jobs. This is achieved by merely 'dragging' them from the Schedules Table and 'dropping. them into the Outlook Calendar. Here Outlook provides a great visual interface to identify the work you have on today, tomorrow, next week, etc.





Additionally, the Calendar is a great communications tool. You can email the Calendar with built Jobs to those in your organisation who are interested in executing the work or just need to know when and where that work will occur.

Now, here is the bonus. The email doesn't just send the Calendar as an attachment, it also populates the body of the email with an interactive report on the Maintenance Jobs.

The picture below is a snap shot of the body of the email and shows Calendar days that have Jobs scheduled highlighted in blue. The highlighted dates are also hypertext links to; firstly a summary of all the Jobs for that day and; secondly, the Jobs are also hyperlinked to the Job details.



All this is in the body of the email, making it an extremely useful Report and Job Sheet to work off.

Microsoft Tech-Ed Australia

This year Microsoft’s Tech-Ed will be held from the 8th to 11th September 2009 on the Gold Coast. Like last year we will be sending as many staff as practical to participate in this valuable event to be sure our skill sets are kept up to date.
http://www.msteched.com/australia/Public/default.aspx



We are promised that there is a lot to learn and that Kevin, Joey, Keegan, Chris, Shane, Anna and Gab will return to the workplace with up to date information about today’s cutting-edge trends, and skills and knowledge that will help make us more valuable, more productive and of greater value to you our clients.



You might recall that last year Kevin was Keynote presenter at both the Australian and New Zealand Tech-Ed happenings, and deemed an 'Expert". He has the white lab coat and hat to prove it. He presented SmartAsset as part of Microsoft's 'Software plus Services' strategy whereby client side applications such as Windows, Office based PDA functionality meet Internet-based services such as our use of Virtual Earth to track assets by their GPS coordinates.

So we are looking forward to renewing relationships from last years participation and to further build personal connections with other Microsoft 'Experts' and IT colleagues that will last far beyond the event.

SmartAsset Workshop

April this year saw a gathering of many of our FMMS clients in Melbourne for a two day workshop to review SmartAsset. We had representatives from Fremantle Port Authority, Hydro Tasmania, Barwon Water, Edith Cowan University, Daracon, Institute of Child Health and Research and Queensland Rail.



The Workshop initially was to be conducted at our offices but due to the response we moved it to Clifton's (a conference facility) in the City, where they were able to load and ghost a Virtual PC copy of SmartAsset, thereby enabling each participant access to their own copy of SmartAsset to carry out the workshop exercises.



Whilst workshop participants were enjoying themselves working through exercises and gaining in-depth understanding of SmartAsset, Gab was back at the office up to his armpits in laptops fulfilling our promise to load SmartAsset along with data onto laptops which the participants had brought along. At one time Gab had given consideration as to how much he could get for the laptops on eBay.

Rotable Items in SmartAsset

One significant difference between FMMS and SmartAsset is the handling of Rotable items.
Instead of copying incoming & outgoing serial numbers to/from the trackable host (a very complex FMMS procedure), SmartAsset utilises a child item attached to the trackable host such that a changeout may be effected by simply changing the parent codes of incoming /outgoing Serial Numbers.

By adopting this approach each rotable keeps its own identity, optionally using an auto allocated "R" number for life. This includes all of the usual associated asset data such as reference data, apls, readings, remarks and standard activity links.

By assigning common trigger codes to host and child, reading inheritancy will apply with an option during changeout to keep them the same or it may be useful to maintain separate figures for triggering purposes.

SmartAsset Kiwi Travelogue

You may recall the fable about SmartAsset going to the South Pole (see last newsletter).

Well it hasn’t stopped there with regard to New Zealand customers.

While we were delighted that Antarctica New Zealand became the very first SmartAsset customer, we also welcome some additional customers from the land of the Long White Cloud.

Some of you may have met Bob Campbell of the Ports of Auckland at one of our 14 annual FMMS user conferences. Well Bob was so dedicated to FMMS, that he became the Port’s logical choice to head the roll-out of SmartAsset to manage their Cranes, Straddles and Fork Lifts (and The Rest!)


No sooner had we assisted the Port with their implementation, yet another Port put up their hand to implement SmartAsset in order to manage their assets in the form of the Port of Napier.

This picture of the Port of Napier was taken while the HMAS Kanimbla was docked.

Spooky!

FMMS is on board the Kanimbla while SmartAsset is being presented to the Port.


Given the Kiwi theme, it seemed appropriate to pictorially relate to you our travels through this wonderful country that encapsulates the attractions that inspire so many world travellers….mountains, plains, cities and most importantly, nice people!
Wellington -> Picton:

Take the Inter Islander ferry from Wellington on the North Island to Picton on the South Island.

Picton -> Christchurch

Then take the train from Picton to Christchurch through the wonderful wine growing regions and along the Kiwi’s equivalent of the Great Ocean Road:

SmartAsset in the Print Media

Len Bradshaw has been producing the Asset Management and Maintenance Journal for many years now and we have been consistently advertising with Len from the earliest issues. The July issue, Vol 22 No3 features the implementation of SmartAsset at Scott Base.



The issue's cover shot is of Scott Base in Antarctica. Antarctica New Zealand supports science and environmental programs at their Scott Base facility. They use SmartAsset to manage their various assets in Antarctica. The photo is taken by Lucia Simion, Antarctica NZ Pictorial Collection: K245 07/08.

You can download your eAMMJ copy for free and read the article by going to the AMMJ web site http://maintenancejournal.com/ and clicking the AMMJ cover. The cover picture shows part of the Scott Base building facility.

Getting the SmartAsset Message Out There.

An important aspect of establishing a new product such as SmartAsset in the market is getting the knowledge of how the product will bring benefit to an organisation through to your target audience.

We adopt several different vehicles for this task. This Newsletter is of course one such vehicle, others include; Conferencing, Exhibitions, Technical Presentations, technical papers, Print Media Articles and Workshops.

On Conferences and Exhibitions, in March this year we exhibited at the SIRF Conference held at the MCG. Here we have Shane enjoying a well earned beer at the members area of the MCG after a long day multitasking at the stand.


We have enjoyed a long term relationship with the Asset Management Council and over the years have exhibited at ICOMS many times. This year ICOMS 2009 was held at the Masonic Center in Sydney in June, where Gaye Montgomery shows off our new LED monitor.