Trials of a New SLX Web Developer

There has been some time lag between my last post and now. I am sure the vast following of this blog is taking this all in stride and checking each and everyday to see when I might get back to documenting the perils of my development experiences. Well hopefully this will happen shortly, I just wanted to share today that at certain ages your perspective on everything changes and sometimes it changes based on circumstances beyond your control. The latter was the case for me over the last few months. Personal issues with my family have made it very hard to place any priority on anything but making sure they were well or getting better. The experiences over the last few months have shown me there is much more than 14-15 work days, constant learning and vacation-less years. I am trying now to better manage my time and while I still struggle with getting everything done the one thing I am sure of is it will get done. I hope many of you reading this will have the opportunity to attend Sage Summit this year in Atlanta, sadly I will not be there. This will be the first time since Sage has started the Sage Summit that I will not be attending. I know that I’ll be thinking about the friends I have made over the years who maybe attending and hopefully they will have a great time and see some of the drastic improvements in the SalesLogix Web Client.

Well if anyone has any ideas and or issues they are trying to resolve please feel free to mention them and we can take a shot at trying to resolve them together, until I am deep into the 0’s and 1’s I hope your all well and healthy.

This week I have the opportunity to attend and present two sessions at the SalesLogix Bootcamp for business partners. While getting a chance to reconnect with friends I have made in the BP community is always a good thing this time it was something a bit more. The typical promotional agenda took a back burner to the technology and training that was so drastically needed.  I would have to start off saying that the training group at SalesLogix is unsurpassed in everything they do, in just 6 weeks they threw together an event that was heralded by all. Session from very deep dives on the new SP2 architecture, Optimizing SalesLogix Web Performance to actual coding sessions where everyone had a chance to build some customizations while all together. I heard numerous times that this was something they needed.

During the bootcamp the SalesLogix Beta for SP2 was released and beside the numerous defect fixes there are some major improvements in performance. Reading the upgrade manual will help breakout the new additions.

Well next up my sessions, while I have been one of the biggest critics of the 7.2.2 migration utility, I would have to say that the versions since 7.5.1 have been great. I tried in my presentation to provide the business partners with a good view of the tool, how to install and use it, what to expect from it and how I have been using it. I was presented with a beta version of the 7.5.2 mid week before bootcamp and struggled with getting the 7.5.2 SP installed finally getting an image that was working on Monday at bootcamp with my presentation on Thursday. We can just say in everyones history there is the one presentation that fail to meet not only the audiences expectation but the presenters also.. this was mine. Errors crept up and reared their ugly head. Well, I think I’ll try and create a quick review document that might help recap my presentation minus the error.

Well back into the swing of client projects, I’d love to hear about anything your working on that might be fun and exciting or ideas you might have for customizations we can work through.

Well in the midst of summer, business activities always seem to slow down a little and this year is really no different. While we are waiting on a few clients to finish their reviews and approvals one of the things I seem to find myself doing is looking for new ideas and possibly some training classes to help my limited knowledge-base. This week Sage has announced a new program called “SalesLogix Champion Program”. The purpose is to help people become more aware of the application and have a better understanding of what it can and can’t do. The program consists of Technical and Sales information, input to Sage on future design and functionality as well as some access to various people within the Sage organization.

SalesLogix Bootcamp is the first to kick off here are the details:

• When: August 17 – 21, 2009
• Where: Scottsdale, Arizona
• Who: SalesLogix Business Partner Technical and Business staff
• Cost: Attendees pay their individual airfare and hotel accommodation costs. Sage will cover the conference facilities, breakfast and lunch during training and at least one evening event dinner.

The agenda is still being finalized, but proposed topics include the following:
Technical (80% – Approximately 4.5 Days)
• Upgrading from v6.2.x/v7.0 LAN to v7.5.x LAN
• Migrating from LAN to 7.5.x Web
• Migration tools
• Best Practices
• Intellisync
• Exchange Link
• Web dashboards
• Mobile installation, set-up and configuration
• Performance Tuning
• Database
• Web servers
• Customization
• Best practices
• Application Architect
• Codeless customizations
• Coded customizations
• Future-proofing customizations
• SalesLogix Architecture
• sData/web services integration
• Visual Analyzer
• Troubleshooting
Sales and Business Strategy (20%, approximately 1.5 Days)
• Competitive analysis
• Strategic direction, vision and roadmap
• Effective use of Sales tools
• How to do killer demos
• Positioning/sales strategy
• Open discussion/feedback with Sage Executive Leadership
The Technical track will be all week and the Sales/Business Strategy track will run concurrently, in mid-week. To get more specifics, register and keep abreast of the event please go to the following link:

http://www.sageu.com/ns_crm/bp/champion/bootcamp.html

Please note, everyone attending the Technical Track of the Boot Camp must take the 2 Day “.NET Fundamentals” course (or have equivalent experience) which is being offered by Sage for a limited time at no charge. Please see http://www.sageu.com/ns_crm/bp/champion/fundamentals.html for sign up for this class. We also have planned a number of technical webinars, in advance of the Boot Camp on a number of specific technical topics; see http://www.sageu.com/ns_crm/bp/champion/technicalwebinar.html for the list and to register. Please direct questions about the Boot Camp, Technical Webinar Series or .NET Fundamentals course to training.crm@sage.com or call 888-765-6662.

Also, be sure to join the Boot Camp discussions in the Partners area of the Sage SalesLogix Community http://community.sagesaleslogix.com/slsl/board?board.id=bootcamp_champion to provide feedback and get additional information.

I look forward to seeing you all in Scottsdale in August, I suggest you all pack a sweater it might be a little chilly.. well a guy can wish can’t he?

In all my efforts to become more knowledgeable on web development and project estimation I have realized that I was missing a critical element in my skill set, Wireframes. Yes, I too asked the question when I first heard about them.. What is a wireframe? Well to make it simple it is nothing more than a design tool that can be used as a reference for what your web page will look like. I had some issues with the forms I could find on the web and using them with SalesLogix. Basically they had all the elements one could want, but seemed to be missing the connection to the business rules. This led me to create my own basic wireframe for SalesLogix. A simple frame with places for picklists, business rules, control level requirements, naming, entity binding and any other functionality each control should have. Once I had created this it makes a create template to effectively and quickly outline the functionality of your web pages and interactions. Check out wireframes they will aid you in reducing your development time.

Here are a few resources I came across today that might be helpful for anyone considering a web project for SalesLogix:

Effective Strategy To Estimate Time For Your Design Projects

Adaptive CSS-Layouts: New Era In Fluid Layouts

SLXGrid Helper

Importing Data Via SQL DTS

Trilllian Astra Beta Open for Downloads

Upgrading version of critical software in any venture is difficult enough but when the upgrade includes migration to a different delivery method and platform the task may appear to be undaunted. Over the course of the last year and a half I have been assisting our business partners as they look to upgrade some of their key accounts form the LAN client to the Web client of SalesLogix. The readers of this blog understand that prior to joining Sage I was working on the client side and upgrading to the SalesLogix web client wasn’t even a thought for me. Since the release of 7.2.2 and with the now released 7.5.1 I am a web advocate. The change in my thought has come to me based upon a few things

1. Technology — years ago when everything was mainframe/blue screen SalesLogix moved towards the client server platform. This was near cutting edge at that time, now they are doing very much the same thing. While the Internet and the web are not cutting edge in the basic sense, in the technical sense it still is as many of the newer technologies are being developed for the web. Things like Mashups, AJAX controls, single sign-on and of course many different places one can find information
2. Ease of Implementation — much easier to have the end users use a web browser than have installed software
3. Ease of Support — With many of the moving parts now located in the server space it makes overall support of the end users easier

Since I am now a convert I thought I would share with you how I have been going about migrating clients form the LAN client to the Web client. The first and foremost thing that needs to be understood is that this is a different platform so you really can’t compare things you did in the LAN client to things you can do in the web client. Since the underlying technology is different some of the things that have been done in the past have to be re-examined and perhaps changed so that similar functionality can be achieved. You just can’t say “Well it took me 2 hours to build this form in the LAN client, so it should take me 2 hours to build it in the web.” While this might be true for some forms the majority will find it takes slightly longer when your first getting started. I figured since I have been through a few now I would outline the steps I use when upgrading to 7.5.1 Web Client.

• Review the current database — Look at much of the functionality, are the current customizations being used?
• Create a form by form design outline — a quick schema outlining the controls and functionality of them
• Upgrade the existing database to version 7.5.1 — I still use the guide supplied because as I have said before make sure you do all the steps. This is not the same simple platform it was before
• Install the Sage Migration tool — this gets installed into Application Architect
• In the LAN Architect — create projects based on forms to be converted, I create each detail form as it’s own project. The tabs from the major entities are each their own project. Single out any form you believe to have lots of functionality or is customized extensively.
• In Application Architect — extend any fields that were added to the tables to the web. This includes bringing in new tables/entities
• Use the migration tool to start bringing in the projects — do them one at a time from start to completion to ensure your not missing any functionality. You’ll need to understand that the migration tool doesn’t always bring you 100% of the way there but it can get you very close. I then review the code from the LAN form that has been converted to C# code by the migration tool. Add back any code / functionality that may not have converted.
• Review the form post conversion — this is an important step because it is here that you might be able to provide a better end user experience than the existing form by combining controls into areas  as Tasklets, Mashups and menu lines.

This is the basics that have been working for me. The key thing to remember is that not all functionality that is available in the LAN client is available in the web yet, so you might have to create a work around or two. These situations have led me to the numerous resources I have posted about in a privious blog.

Last week I had the opportunity to take the Sage Training Advanced Web Dev Class, I have to say that this class was worth every bit of time and effort put in for it. We covered things like:

• sData — how to extract and add data to the SalesLogix database
• Process Orchestration — actually created custom work-flows to automated some standard work-flow
• 3rd Party Integration — by using the tasklets we created an integrated component that shared data between Twitter and Google maps, these while they might not seem like great things, gave us the foundation for integration between various other parties.

I was thinking of posting some of the code that we created during the class however, i feel it might be an injustice to do so. The classes they offer are very affordable for everyone and they have quite a few different delivery methods that everyone should be able to attend one. Just a word of thanks to the people at Sage Training for their time and effort, I am looking forward to more examples and items I can learn.

Tomorrow I will be attending an advanced web development class given by the Sage SalesLogix Training department. This is an on-line class taught in a virtual classroom. I just got my workbook today and looking at it briefly I think I’m in for a good few days. I’ll try and post each of the 3 days with the things we are covering.

Tomorrow Day 1 Advanced SalesLogix Web Development:

Here I am back in the office after spending a week in Nashville, TN at the Sage Business Partners Insights Conference. I am finding myself thinking about the things that have transpired over the entire week, the people I met, the people I had a chance to catch-up with and always the number of people I work with. Thinking back over the number of events that happened to me during the week I am amazed. First, on Sunday evening, while waiting on my dinner at one of the restaurants I had the pleasure to meet the new head of Sage Business Solutions Jodi Uecker-Rust. While many might not think this is an exciting event, you have to realize that I am a remote employee living on the east coast tied to an office in Arizona, this alone brings about some issues of being forgotten from time to time but when you have an opportunity to share 30-45 minutes alone with the new head of your division it can be really exciting. Ms. Uecker-Rust is an amazing women, she took the time to listen to me, share with me some of her thoughts and since she is still relatively new to her position she tried to learn from what I was saying to her. We spoke about the business partners, about the adoption of the new web client and the future of our business.

The second thing that had me amazed was the interaction of our sales team with the business partners they support. The sales team appears to be a very tightly knite organization who have developed outstanding relationships with their business partners, durning my time in the booth I watched as partner after partner just stopped by to say hello to their partner advocate. You see, this is a telling sign of how an organization is doing. The business model for Sage is to distribute our products via this partner channel and since our lively hoods actually depend upon the partners it is refreshing for me as someone who is slightly removed form the sales process to witness the closeness our partner advocates have with their clients.

I have said numerous times and I can’t say it enough, the team from training, Janet Moore, Diane Kohnert and Jason Huber are the best in the world. Given the limited time, they actually held training classes on site during the conference. A session track to help the business partners understand the differences between the LAN and Web based clients. I wandered into the session mostly to thank Diane for her assistance and was amazed to see the number in the room. The truly amazing thing I saw were the people in the room. Business partners ranging from little to no experience developing in the web client to partners who are very active in beta testing and helping provide a better product. If any of you have an opportunity to attend a class from the SalesLogix Training group do so, it will be worth the time and effort.

The last evening I had another chance to see something amazing. While looking for a few minutes to watch a bit of the Pittsburgh Penguin – Washington Capitals hockey game once more I had an opportunity to sit next to a Sage Executive. I entered the sports bar before going to my room to change for the event that evening and I saw Jeffery Gegorec sitting by himself. I took the opportunity to sit next to him and start a conversation. I mentioned that he looked tired, this could be because I saw him holding one on one with almost every business partner during his time there. He made mention to me he held something like 50+ meetings with the business partners during the conference.  In an economy like we have currently it is critical for any organization to reach-out and help their clients, this might not mean actually selling something now but might mean gaining goodwill by listening and helping your clients get through the tough times. Jeffery has been doing just that.  Sitting there watching the game we shared some ideas and personal stories form the week, I learned that Jeffery is a drummer, while he told me this story in a bar and yes I had the normal bit of skepticism, later that evening at the Sage event, Jeff had a chance to get on stage and play with the band. I have to say he was much better than I thought he would be. This just goes to show you never make judgements until you see action.

So all this babble, what does it have to do with being amazed? When you have the opportunity, just as I did, to see a company that is led by individuals committed to true customer excellence, a team devoted to helping companies in a very tough business environment, and a leading organization such as Sage strive to lead by example in the Customer Relationship Arena you have to think there is something greater here than just business, you might almost say that this is a family. The thousands of employees, the thousands of business partners and the millions of clients all one big Sage family.  This feeling is one of the things that keeps me working with Sage products. When I first started I knew very little about technology and it was the free assistance that the SalesLogix community offered that helped me make a career. I can see now that this community feeling is nothing more than an extension of the company.