By Sandy King, Product Manager

The release of the new TurnOver client this month completes TurnOver’s transition to Eclipse-based technology — a major milestone in TurnOver’s evolution — and introduces a simplified single, easy-to-install client that offers many advantages to you.

By redeveloping TurnOver in Eclipse, we were able to leverage the graphical and modeling frameworks inherent in the Eclipse environment to deliver significant enhancements at a much faster pace. If you’ve used TurnOver’s Graphical Application Designer, you have experienced the power of those frameworks. A significant change is that we can now present TurnOver application definitions as images instead of text, allowing you to understand your promotion structures at a glance and from a single view. Customized type codes and systems to which you distribute are also readily apparent.

Figure 1: Installation Roles

The Eclipse environment offers you many other advantages. For example, you can customize the TurnOver perspective and choose which views are shown, how they are sized, where they are located, and so forth. Compare this with 5250 or client/server technology, where you have little or no flexibility in how this information is presented.

Historically, if a Project Manager was also a TurnOver Administrator and, in addition, answered calls for the Helpdesk, he or she would need to install and work in three separate clients. Now, the new single client framework can encompass as few or as many TurnOver functions that a given user needs, including PC version control. TurnOver’s installation wizard offers a set of default functions for typical roles. If your role isn’t “typical,” you can easily customize the client by selecting additional functions you’ll need.

Detailed View

Figure 2: Installation Components

Here’s how it works. When you install the TurnOver client, you select the role that best describes your job function. Figure 1 displays the available role choices, which are used to identify specific components to install.

As shown in Figure 2 at left, if you select the Project Manager role, we automatically select the Forms, Project Administration, and Reporting components for installation. (Note that Tasks and WiseDesk are installed as base components, regardless of role.) However, you are free to select (or deselect) components as necessary before proceeding. This makes the TurnOver client completely customizable for you!

Figure 3: TurnOver Client

Figure 3 shows the major components that were installed into the stand-alone TurnOver client based on the Project Manager role. During installation, you can also choose to install the TurnOver client into any Eclipse 3.0-based IDE (for example, WDSC 6.0) that resides on your PC.

What happens if you change roles within your company? No worries — just re-run the installation procedure and specify your new role. It’s as simple as that!

Notable Features

The new TurnOver client includes a number of significant enhancements you’ll want to use. Let’s take a look at the more notable features.

Reporting Subsystem

The new Reporting subsystem contains 30 pre-defined reports including CM Metrics, Forms, Requesters, Resource, Project, and Task Analysis reports. These easy-to-use reports enable IT management to make informed decisions based on company metrics. (For details on specific reports, you can download Technical Supplement #65 from our customer support site.)

Auditing Enhancements

Several of the new reports, such as the Forms, Forms List, and Task Information reports, provide all the details about a change that your auditor will want to see. These reports contain extensive drill-down capabilities for accessing related tasks and viewing the objects promoted on particular forms. You can print or export the reports to various formats.

In April 2005, TurnOver Release 5.4 introduced application auditing and the application change history view. From the change history view, you can see who modified an application, and when and why the changes were made. The new TurnOver client introduces an easy-to-use compare option that shows the differences between any two versions of an application in a simple format. In addition, this client lets you list application versions by application code, user, and date range. For example, you can choose to see every change that occurred this month across all applications or all application changes made by a specific user within a given date range. From this list, you can select a particular application to compare to its previous version.

This latest release of TurnOver also includes auditing of explode libraries, the ability to run the Audit and Audit Adjustment reports over a specific library or set of libraries (such as explodes), and a new Audit Adjustment log. The log presents a list of Audit Adjustment runs, including who ran them and the run date and time.

Export Enhancements

In the new client, you can obtain lists of data in a grid. For any such view, you can now export the data to a clipboard, in one of three chosen formats. For example, you might view timesheet entries for a project and then export them to Excel for graphing, or export a list of tasks with a particular status to send in an email to your boss.

Availability

The new client is available on the January 2006 CD for TurnOver Release 5.4. Order when you’re ready — we know you will be pleased with this single client that’s packed with new features!

WHAT'S NEW

Sign Up Now to Receive The Landing Zone eNewsletter
| more

 

 

 

 

 

 

::   December 2006

::   August 2006

::   April 2006

::   January 2006

::   September 2005

::   June 2005