[91] in Tooltime
Scopus/Tooltime meeting notes 5/7/96
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Wade Neiterman)
Tue May 7 14:41:49 1996
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 14:41:45 -0400
To: tooltime@MIT.EDU
From: wade@MIT.EDU (Steven Wade Neiterman)
Cc: pakulat@MIT.EDU, jwl@MIT.EDU, tarnett@MIT.EDU
Scopus Implementation Meeting May 7, 1996
Attending: Sousa, Dupuis, Larrabee, Willis, Charbonneau
Pakulat, Lee, Wade, Arnett, Fermann
Agenda
1. Administrative, status updates
2. Walkthrough of screens
3. Next steps and action items
1. Administrative, status updates:
- Still under investigation by Scopus technical reps are slowness for the
Macintosh and when Scopus will be certified with SQL*Net 2.1. This
is important for running SNS 1.0 (encryption) and turning on the hard
encryption switch on the Oracle database.
- Repair & Maintenance will have a Scopus sales rep (Dick Campbell) give
a presentation on May 28, pm. Someone from tooltime may want to
attend some part of the talk.
- It was noted that there probably should be a meeting of OLC/OWL/OLTA
administrators sometime in June to discuss options to proceed. Other
business candidates may be included in another meeting.
- Peter Kelley is still checking into server machine, Wade will meet
with the database team on Friday May 10.
- Setting up accounts is still being tested and should be done for the
team shortly.
2. Walkthrough of screens:
- Terry handed out four screens for review - each screen had the same
top portion for fields, but differed with tabs for data specific to
Help Desk, NetInstall, House Call and Mainframe.
- Due to Visual Basic display, a number of fields did not make it to
the printed version. These fields were noted on each screen printout.
- A number of questions and issues still remain
General Comments:
- Discussed screen real estate - issues on what size consultants will
be using (17 inches at 1024 resolution - to be confirmed). What is
the standard for the consultants?
- Reviewed lookup fields and drop down menu's for selection. Lookup
fields default to wildcard. Long discussion on how some fields
will be used for lookup.
- Question: Can the number of open logs per retrieved person be
displayed when record retrieved? Terry - yes.
- Having phone number lookup is good, no need for wildcard phone lookup.
Tcl can accommodate this change.
- Privacy issues. Current Scopus architecture allows for those with
accounts to the Oracle database to retrieve call history and fields
migrated from the warehouse. Are there any issues? Could Oracle
limit the volume of records retrieved? Still under investigation.
- Is it possible to deal with multiple customers associated with the
same log? Discussed a primary and secondary contact tab folder.
- Decided to display a "checkbox" to indicate which tabs (e.g. Help Desk,
Mainframe) have content. This is a program change and a field will
be identified in the database to store this information.
- Need training and identification of system administrator, a person
who will update database tables, e.g. software, platform, etc.
- Comment: Move the topic field, current location implies it may be
the first field a consultant uses.
- Issue: Where does the MIT Status field come from? Values contain
Faculty, Student, Staff. Sounds like we need a conversion program
somewhere.
- Harold was concerned with having a function to detect "thrashing",
where consultants look at the same log file many times without
answering. Kinda like "grabbing" a log question in OLC and then
placing back in the queue. Some discussion if this was a training
issue or could be solved via technical. Determined that we could
keep a counter in the database when a log is selected. The counter
would never be reset.
- Could the default button bring up information based on the skill
sets of the consultant? Probably not.
- Exit button will be removed from the screen, it's already in the
file pull down menu. This will save screen real estate.
- Discussed that the Save button is needed to write a record, there
is no default "save". Does not seem to be a problem.
- Peter brought up issues with "lack" of record locking. This will
be resolved via programming. Retrieval of a record will write to
a status field. Clear, Send or Exit will clear the status field.
The status field will indicate that someone else has retrieved the
record. Issue: if application bombs when status is "checked-out",
need to manually reset the field (see system administrator).
- Issues: With the number of Tcl program changes mentioned above,
how would this affect a Web interface?
3. Next steps and action items:
- Next meeting Wednesday May 8, 1996. Goal is to review today's
changes, revisit outstanding issues, continue with refinement,
possible "walkthrough" where person talks about how data will be
looked up and entered. Terry to supply a list of open questions
for resolution.
- Ray and Wade to meet Thu May 9 to evaluate packaging Windows version
of Scopus.
- Lynne to help Terry print MSWORD document from his laptop running
Windows 95 and MSWORD 7.x
- Carla to help Wade look at account administrative issues, need to
write a document on how this may work and issues
- Wade to continue to check if there are any risks that need to be
mitigated when accessing data supplied by the warehouse. Current
thought is that there may not be a problem, but, we should understand
issues and communicate risk.
- Peter Lee to write data dictionary and "storybook", describing how
screens will be used at a high level. The data dictionary will
describe field use and relationship to business requirement.
- Terry will attempt to distribute a rough draft of the requirements
document for review by Friday morning (late Thursday).
