Metrix 4e Customer Day 2, Nov 16th 2006

Cubic Transportation
Mike Gosling – IT Business Systems Analyst

Mike Gosling ran through Cubic Transportation’s implementation of Metrix 4e and some of the interfaces that have been created by Cubic. These included:

• Customer Web Portal
• Customer Site Asset Register
• Service Centre Call Closure Screen
• Automatic Device Fault Logging
• Real Time Contractual Performance & Escalation Screen
• Stock Interface with MRP System

Mike Gosling will be happy to run through the presentation again at the next Customer day in a break out session for those customers that could not make this meeting.

Metrix BV
Benny Mass – Business Development Manager Europe

Many UK implementations of Metrix 4e have been client server based – whilst mainland Europe implementations have taken a browser route. Benny Mass, Business Development Manager for Europe discussed the architecture of a Metrix 4e browser deployment and ran through some of the advantages of a browser based deployment.

Metrix 4e Browser deployment benefits:

• Configurability
• Intuitive User Interface, enable default settings in screens by user role, reduce keystrokes
• Don’t show data which is not relevant for the supported business process
• Combining different elements of Metrix functionality into one screen e.g. parts and labour usage
• Seamless integration with other browser based solutions, add other objects/data sources. E.g. a query to a financial system can be done in the same user interface.
• Easy to deploy - No need for thin client technology for remote users (Citrix etc)
• Customers can take ownership and customise web
• Easy to incorporate additional functionality, add business logic on top of the Metrix workflow and business logic
• Multiple portals available, Customer, 3rd Party, Engineer
• More repair centre / logistics features
• Multiple xml adaptors to load balance

Field Service Management Limited
Steve Hurst – Technical Director.

Steve ran through a demonstration of the Metrix 4e XML Integration Hub designed to offer easy and efficient systems integration.

The first example covered the upload of new places, in which Steve ran through the process of generating an XML file, processing the file and showing the new places in Metrix. The second example was interfacing to a third party system. In this instance Steve took a number of jobs created in a third party system and loaded them into Metrix – each job was processed and the workflow and scheduling rules created a task and allocated it to the correct team or specific engineer. The XML integration hub not only deals with inbound data, as tasks are updated there is an outbound message generated to update the third party system(s).
• Inbound
– Inbound messages can be XML or CSV
– Listener determines if message are available to be processed
– Listener detects a message and sends to inbound queue
– Queue passes message to Mapping translator for formatting
– Mapping translator detects errors inbound messages and places incomplete or inaccurate messages to error queue for manual processing

• Translation Processing
– Mapping translator passes inbound message to translator for mapping and reformatting
– Retry logic runs until message confirmation is returned successful or retry logic expires
– Failed messages are placed to error queue for further processing
– Formatted message passed to outbound queue

• Outbound
– Failed messages are placed to error queue for further processing
– Listener detects outbound queue message and sends to file or formats for http web service
– If back end is standard Metrix.  Message are passed to and from the standard XML inbound and outbound adapters 
Steve Hurst will be happy to run through an overview of the XML Integration Hub at the next Customer day – this will be in a “breakout” session for those customers that could not attend in November.

Zebra Technologies
Alain Picard, Channel Development Manager

Alain ran through a presentation covering Zebra’s range of mobile printers which are suitable for various environments and job functions. DHL mentioned that they are already using Zebra printers in the field.

Alain’s presentation was both interesting and particularly lively when he demonstrated the “drop test” with one of the ruggedised printers.*
Alain’s presentation has been circulated.

*Alain is a trained professional – do not try this in the field!

Cognitor
Donna Salvatore President & CEO
Maria Wilder - Lead Business Consultant

Donna and Maria gave a comprehensive overview of the suite of Cognitor products encompassing:
Inteligine OneView provides user-configured, integrated, graphical views of customer issues and service levels which are highly customisable and interactive, allowing the user to define exactly what information they want to see in different visual formats. The drill down feature provides a view of the data behind the visual representation and allows you to perform root cause analysis. Data can be viewed from multiple data repositories besides the CRM production system, real time, from a single view window.

Inteligine Answer automates the capture and reuse of knowledge and continuously learns which solutions have worked in the past so that it can rank and display the most accurate and relevant solutions to an issue.

InteligineAlert provides user-friendly functionality to identify, track and set notifications on customer, account, site, product or other issues in real time, based on user-defined and selected criteria. InteligineAlert automatically detects repetitive events within a site account, a contact within a site, a part number, or a specific revision of a part number. A multitude of trigger event combinations can be specified for any period of time, including monthly thresholds.

The Cognitor presentation has been circulated.