Francis Dion on Software Process

Competitors all agree: Xpertdoc is Simply the Best!

One of the nice surprises of this last SharePoint conference was to see how concerned the competition is with our rapid progress and the traction we are gaining in the market. At least three other vendors went through all sorts of tactics and contraptions to deal as best they could with the disturbance we are creating. Here’s a sample of the behavior we witnessed:

-   Downplaying and misrepresenting our capabilities

-   Sneaking into our booth while we were away

-   “Discretely” taking pictures of our amazing user interface

-   Coming to our booth, asking questions with their arms crossed over their name tags hoping we wouldn’t figure out who they were.

I guess the winner in this odd contest was this company founder and co-exhibitor who elected to pose as a representative from another non-descript company, apparently putting more value to spying on us than to connecting truthfully and meaningfully with clients and partners.

Interestingly,  these guys publicly confessed to working their staff at 20-hour day just to play catch-up with us!  While they seem to think there is some kind of a feature war between us, we are quite content to focus our energies on helping OUR clients win THEIR battles with our best-of-breed, trend-leading technologies. The most recent case in point: APPQ receives top-10 placement in the INNovators 2009 Award after our Insurance Management and Claims Processing Solution allowed them to reduce costs by 50% and increase productivity by 20%.

That, they truly can take to the bank!

Can you read my Japanese?

In preparation for a call to a Japanese client, we’ve had the opportunity to implement a template that really puts in evidence Xpertdoc exceptional support for international character sets.

At first we thought we would have to install the Japanese versions of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office, but it turns out that Office 20007 already supports this language (this test was done using Microsoft Office 2007 Professional with SP1).

1.
We started with a Japanese template taken from the Microsoft Office web site (Office.Microsoft.com).

2.
We then streamlined the content and turned it into an Xpertdoc template using our custom Ribbon.

3.
Next we added some basic Xpertdoc tags for looping 10 times, inserting an employee name and a date field.
At this point we had a working template with English-labeled tags, outputting a Japanese newsletter merged with English fields.

4.
Turned out that Microsoft DotNet (and hence Xpertdoc Studio) supports Unicode Japanese character, so outputting employee name in Japanese was as simple as asking Alta Vista’s Babel Fish (babelfish.altavista.com) to provide us a suitable translation for “John Smith”.

5.
Outputting the date in Japanese was even simpler thanks to Xpertdoc’s support for international formatting. We just set the field’s format type to “Date” and its “Culture” to Japanese (Japan).

6.
Now that the outputted document was fully “Japanified”, we needed to do the same with the template itself.
In the next release of Xpertdoc (to be released in February 2008), we’ve added the ability to specify the caption of Xpertdoc fields in multiple languages including, you guessed it, in Japanese.
We simply switched the template language to “Japanese” and inputted Babel Fish supplied translations for all the fields’ captions.
What’s neat about this is that we can work with the client on the same template, switching the tags’ labels back and forth to our respective language without affecting the template’s functionality.

Here are screen captures of the resulting template and document:

ありがとう!

Fast Export with Open XML

I knew Open XML was a good thing but I was still pleasantly surprised by this one: we have achieved a 300 to 1 performance improvement on a data export job by migrating from a Microsoft Excel automation solution to Open XML. Here are the details:

The requirements

Our client wanted to extract data from a SQL Server database to perform analysis in Microsoft Excel.

The catch

The client wanted the export to be driven from a management system that already provided a user-friendly interface for selecting columns as well as filtering and sorting rows.

Option 1 – Comma Separated Values

The first idea that comes to mind when exporting data for Excel is to generate a file with comma separated values (file extension/acronym: CSV).

The problem with this approach is that the results depend on the client’s internationalization configuration. A file which opens just fine on a computer configured for the U.S. might give unspecified results when opened from a European desktop having different settings for currency formats and list separators.

Option 2 – Microsoft Excel Automation

Microsoft Excel Automation is a means of controlling this application from scripts which can essentially mimic a user entering data on a sheet. The scripts are written in Visual Basic for application (VBA), a fairly easy language to master for entry-level programmers and enlightened power users.

On the plus side, you get a genuine Microsoft Excel file which will open correctly on any desktop. You also get to specify cell formatting and to structuring the data any way you want.

On the minus side, this method is excruciatingly slow. In our tests, exporting 4,000 rows of 10 columns took more than 10 minutes, which wasn’t acceptable for the client.

Option 3 – Open XML

Open XML is the native document format for Office 2007. Excel Open XML files are easily recognisable by their “.XLSX” extension.

The solution implemented by the Xpertdoc team involves creating a template Excel file and then injecting data in its XML structure using a DotNet program.

The same export that took 10 minutes in Microsoft Excel Automation now completes in less than two seconds. Overall the solution is also more robust, easier to maintain and it does not require Microsoft Excel to be installed on the system (good for server-side operation).

Office as a Platform for Enterprise Applications

I recently had the privilege to attend two very exciting Microsoft events: the ISV Architect Forum and the ISV Leadership Summit.

These events focused on various aspects of the latest technology and business platform offerings from Microsoft, with OBAs (Office Business Applications) being one of the more prominent ones.

I personally presented Xpertdoc at the Architect Forum as a complement to Javed Sikander (Director Industry Architecture, Microsoft Corporation) session on OBAs. You can download my presentation from the following link (PowerPoint 2007 File).

OBAs are a new breed of applications that utilize Microsoft Office as a familiar yet powerful user interface to Enterprise systems. Leveraging the expressing power and large distribution of the Office suite, their biggest strength comes from the fact that they minimize the “mindprint” imposed on end user. This is achieved by allowing them to use the same tool to create data bound reports that they are already using daily to produce all kinds of other “reports”.

In Javed Sikander’s own words, OBAs:

·         Extend LOB functionality into Office clients for easy consumption and broader reach.

·         Aggregate tasks spread across multiple LOB screens without major server side work.

·         Capture business activity surrounding a business process.

·         Drive agility and reuse.

·         Unlock more value from existing systems and information stores.

Now, how many users of Microsoft Word do you think there are in the world?

Although there are no official figures available, sources indicate anywhere between 400 up to 500 millions.

How many hours per week do information workers spend per week, on average, creating documents?

According to a recent study, information workers spend no less than five hours per week creating documents.

Now even if only one out of five documents can be automated or semi-automated using an OBA-type technology like Xpertdoc, this could mean hundreds of hours saved by eliminating the retyping of information that already sits on enterprise systems. Add the benefits of reduced errors due to manual data entry and a more consistent output, and you can see that the business case for OBAs is quite powerful.

OBA - Office Business Application

In Yoruba African mythology, the Goddess Oba transforms herself into a river, a symbol of fertility but also of communications between two realms.

In the world of enterprise architecture, OBA is an acronym for “Office Business Application”, a new paradigm for building composite solutions providing access to legacy applications through the productivity tools end-users are already familiar with.

The following diagram illustrate a typical OBA solution where the user leverages an enterprise data store without ever leaving the comfort of the tool he’s always used to create “reports”: Microsoft Word.

For more information, visit Microsoft OBA Developer portal.

Have you implemented OBA solutions in the pass? Are you planning on implementing one in the future? Share your experience, ask questions and post comments by using the “Comments” link below.

Developer or Standard?

We recognize that the distinctions between the two editions are not exactly evident from the Xpertdoc web site. We're working on fixing that soon, but let's see if we can provide some answers right away...

The Developer Edition is required to design new reports with Xpertdoc.

The Author Edition can be used by an end-user (typically not a programmer) to edit the document portion of an Xpertdoc template (changing styles, editing text, etc.). The Author Edition allows the user to compile and execute the edited template but not to change its programming.

A typical scenario would be for the editor of an accounting package to design "off-the-shelves" Xpertdoc templates accessing data from its package. Buyers of this package could create new documents without having to purchase an Xpertdoc licence. But if they wanted to adapt the look of the templates to better fit their own corporate branding, they could achieve this by purchasing the cheaper Author Edition.

I hope this explanation helps clear things a bit.

Cheers!

Reporting 2.0

We are taking advantage of our presence at the AIIM Expo next week in Boston to launch the idea of the “Reporting 2.0” product category.

“Reporting 2.0” applies the general concept of Web 2.0 user-driven content creation to the field of report generators. It represents a significant shift in the relationship and the dynamics between an organization’s IT department and its line-of-business professionals when it comes to the process of creating and adapting reports.

In the “Reporting 1.0” paradigm, a business user expresses requirements which a software analyst or developer tries to “translate” or “shoehorn” into a traditional report generator tool. This process is often challenging because of the disconnect that exists between how users conceive and express their needs and how the reporting tool is designed, and also because of the delays involved in going back to IT for every minute changes. This is especially the case for changes to the presentation and layout of the report, where an IT professional’s skills are not necessarily best used.

Reporting 2.0 changes this dynamic by allowing a better separation of concerns between the IT staff primary responsibility, which is to ensure proper access to data and the precise application of rules and algorithms, and the business user’s ability to grasp, emphasize and express the deeper informational meanings of the data.

Xpertdoc Studio is considered a “Reporting 2.0” tool because it effectively supports this separation of concerns, allowing both the IT personnel and the line-of-business staff to focus on what they each do best.

xpertdoc 2007 Technology Preview

It's here! It's here!

xpertdoc 2007 Technology Preview (Beta) is now available for download from our web site:

     Download Technology Preview

     xpertdoc 2007 Home Page

Please note that xpertdoc 2007 requires Microsoft Office 2007 to design templates. The resulting documents, however, can be viewed and edited from Word 2003, XP and 2000.

For those of you who are still wondering what xpertdoc is and what it does exactly, here's your "executive summary":

xpertdoc is a report generator that leverages Microsoft Word for producing sophisticated, professional looking documents with up to a hundred fold gains in performance, stability and productivity when compared to alternative solutions.

It is ideally suited for client reporting where the quality of the presentation is as important as the data.

Contrary to the prevalent reporting tool, xpertdoc truly supports adaptation and customization of the reports by non-technical end-users.

Typical uses include:

• Annual statements for Pension Plan programs
• Annual statements and general correspondence for the Insurance Industry
• Legal forms and general correspondence for the Banking Industry
• Grievance forms and HR-related forms and correspondence
• Technical and audit reports
• Invoices

Intrigued? Sounds too good to be true?

Contact us today and let us show you - or better yet, let one of our clients tell you - what value xpertdoc can bring to your business.

xpertdoc 2007 is coming

xpertdoc 2007 is just around the corner, and it's looking great!

I am very proud to report that the newest version of our client reporting solution is already in production use internally at the Process Academy, where we are using it to generate invoices directly from our accounting software database.

xpertdoc 2007 is installed on a Microsoft Windows Vista workstation (it also works over Windows XP) where we develop our flexible, multilingual invoice templates using Microsoft Word 2007. The templates are then compiled by xpertdoc 2007and deployed on our accounting workstation, a Windows XP box running SimplyAccounting and Office 2003 with the Compatibility Pack (which allow opening and editing the new DOCX Word document format).

The invoices look great, the entire solution is incredibly flexible (thanks among other things to the post-editing capabilities inherent to xpertdoc) and the product runs flawlessly.

The Technical Preview of xpertdoc 2007 will start January 31 as per the original schedule, with the full production release scheduled for early March. If you are not already registered to receive our monthly newsletter, be sure to do so by requesting a demo licence from our download center.

Best Wishes for 2007

Back to blogging after a little break!

2006 was both a fun and challenging year for me.

On the personal front, I turned 40 that year, which gave me an opportunity to reflect on life, health, family and all that usual stuff. After the expected mumbling on the "downward slope", "the beginning of the end" and similar thoughts, I got around to make significant changes in my lifestyle such as daily exercises and eating better. Striving for a better overall balance, I lost some extra pounds and I am happy to report that I've probably never been healthier of my entire life.

Good things happened on the business side also, with significant consulting and outsourcing contracts from companies like Bell Canada, AON and government agencies. This was also a fantastic year for xpertdoc, our client-reporting tool, with a very significant partnership established with Farm Credit Financial Partners inc. in the United States and new ties being established with Microsoft.

2007 promises to be even better, first with the launch of xpertdoc 2007, a complete overhaul of our flagship product that already takes advantage of the new capabilities just introduced in Microsoft Office 2007.

As far as new resolutions, one thing you can expect from me is more posts on Microsoft Office,  SharePoint and workflow services, technologies that are integral part of our business plan for the coming years.

Best wishes of health, happiness and prosperity to you and your loved ones!