Here at Nogalis we perform managed service for several dozen enterprise customers. Most of our customers are either using Lawson V10 on premise or Infor CloudSuite products in the cloud. Our customers vary in their level of complexity but they almost all have several custom interfaces that support the operation of their businesses. Most of these interfaces are built with IPA (Infor Process Automation) or with ION which are both Infor supported products. Here are some examples just to name a few:
- Positive pay interfaces to banks
- Invoice import interface
- Vendor creation interface
- Automated user provisioning
- Employee benefits exports and imports
- COBRA interface
- Batch job automation
- Invoice or Purchase Order Approval interfaces
- Journal entry imports
And many more
Many of these interfaces were designed and developed years ago and have been modified several times since. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the documentation that was once made for them if any. In an upcoming webinar and subsequent article, I plan to discuss how to develop accurate, useful, and easy to maintain documentation. But in this article, I want to focus on the reasons why we need these documents because without knowing why we do something, we’re not likely to do it right. The reasons below serve as guidelines for our documentation:
Reason 1 – Supporting the interfaces. This is the primary reason for creating good documentation. The goal of the any documentation should be that anyone can read it from start to finish and be able to support the existing process when it breaks. Therefore, one of the first things we do for our new managed service customers is to create detailed documentation of all their interfaces on our DOCR documentation portal and give them access to it. You can see some examples here. What’s nice about storing these documents on a web portal is that there is a central place for keeping them updated that everyone can contribute to. For support reasons, we make sure that we have a troubleshooting and a recovery section in each of our interface documents.
Reason 2 – Updates and enhancements. We’re routinely asked to update and enhance existing interfaces. While we can dig through the entire code of the interface to find out what every piece does, it is always helpful if some documentation exists that has an overview of the different components of the interface.
Reason 3 – Change Control. As we make changes to interfaces over the years, it is important to document these changes for change control purposes. Having a web-based documentation portal makes it easy to do this as it is the only version of the document that exists, and it is always updated with the latest changes.
Reason 4 – Application upgrades. As we upgrade our large enterprise applications, we always must study the impact of the upgrade on any custom interfaces that we have. The only way to do this quickly is to review the documents and specifically focus on any sections focusing on dependencies, and general data flow. Having proper documentation during an upgrade process can make the difference between a 1 month upgrade and a 6 month upgrade.
Reason 5 – Training and new hires. We pride ourselves in our one-to-one client to resource ratio in our managed service group. That means that for every new managed service customer, we add at least one new member to our team. This new team member goes through a rigorous training that includes reviewing all existing client documentation. This is an indispensable tool for our team as well as any client newhires.
If you need help creating your interface documentation, or to subscribe to our DOCR documentation portal, please contact us here.
How AI is Changing CRM Landscape
NewsThe rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has greatly changed the way we do business. In one such area, customer relationship management (CRM), AI has improved its usability. An article from IT Toolbox shares 5 ways that AI is changing CRM.
CRM has been somewhat static for the past few years in terms of new features and functionality. With the rise of AI, that’s changing. AI-enabled CRM is reducing the pain points that used to hamper CRM use, and at the same it is greatly improving the intelligence of the system. This translates into more actionable data, and systems that are easier to use.
It is an exciting time for CRM and the businesses that rely on them.
For Full Article, Click Here
How to Update Lawson Database
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsTo update the database server that your Lawson instance is pointing to, you will need to modify the MICROSOFT (or ORACLE) files for each environment that you are updating. These files can be found at %LAWDIR%/DATAAREA/MICROSOFT. Simply change the server name for the DBSERVER value and bounce your Lawson services.
NOTE: This article assumes that your new database server utilizes the same credentials/authorization as the original database server.
How to Update Landmark Database
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsTo point your Landmark instance to a new database server, you need to update the db.cfg file for each environment. These files can be found at %RUNDIR%/DATAAREA/db.cfg. Make sure you update the data source for each data area, including GEN. Bounce the Landmark services, or reboot your server, and you are done!
How To Be More Effortlessly Efficient At Everything
NewsAn interesting read on the Trello blog recently covered the topic of time management. The article states “How you manage your time can mean the difference between feeling like you’re busy every minute of the day (but not actually getting anything done) and accomplishing everything you want in your job and your life—and still feeling like you have time to spare.” How can you make sure you’re actually managing your time efficiently? Here are some tips on how to master time management
We live in a world with so many distractions that it’s easy to let time fly by. With these time management “hacks”, you can take control of your schedule and make efficient use of your time.
Original post by Deanna deBara from Trello.
For Full Article, Click Here
5 needs your technical documentation should address
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsHere at Nogalis we perform managed service for several dozen enterprise customers. Most of our customers are either using Lawson V10 on premise or Infor CloudSuite products in the cloud. Our customers vary in their level of complexity but they almost all have several custom interfaces that support the operation of their businesses. Most of these interfaces are built with IPA (Infor Process Automation) or with ION which are both Infor supported products. Here are some examples just to name a few:
And many more
Many of these interfaces were designed and developed years ago and have been modified several times since. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the documentation that was once made for them if any. In an upcoming webinar and subsequent article, I plan to discuss how to develop accurate, useful, and easy to maintain documentation. But in this article, I want to focus on the reasons why we need these documents because without knowing why we do something, we’re not likely to do it right. The reasons below serve as guidelines for our documentation:
Reason 1 – Supporting the interfaces. This is the primary reason for creating good documentation. The goal of the any documentation should be that anyone can read it from start to finish and be able to support the existing process when it breaks. Therefore, one of the first things we do for our new managed service customers is to create detailed documentation of all their interfaces on our DOCR documentation portal and give them access to it. You can see some examples here. What’s nice about storing these documents on a web portal is that there is a central place for keeping them updated that everyone can contribute to. For support reasons, we make sure that we have a troubleshooting and a recovery section in each of our interface documents.
Reason 2 – Updates and enhancements. We’re routinely asked to update and enhance existing interfaces. While we can dig through the entire code of the interface to find out what every piece does, it is always helpful if some documentation exists that has an overview of the different components of the interface.
Reason 3 – Change Control. As we make changes to interfaces over the years, it is important to document these changes for change control purposes. Having a web-based documentation portal makes it easy to do this as it is the only version of the document that exists, and it is always updated with the latest changes.
Reason 4 – Application upgrades. As we upgrade our large enterprise applications, we always must study the impact of the upgrade on any custom interfaces that we have. The only way to do this quickly is to review the documents and specifically focus on any sections focusing on dependencies, and general data flow. Having proper documentation during an upgrade process can make the difference between a 1 month upgrade and a 6 month upgrade.
Reason 5 – Training and new hires. We pride ourselves in our one-to-one client to resource ratio in our managed service group. That means that for every new managed service customer, we add at least one new member to our team. This new team member goes through a rigorous training that includes reviewing all existing client documentation. This is an indispensable tool for our team as well as any client newhires.
If you need help creating your interface documentation, or to subscribe to our DOCR documentation portal, please contact us here.
Infor Announces New Solution for Hoteliers to Simplify Pricing
NewsOn June 17, 2019, Infor launched its newest addition to the hospitality sector – Infor Hospitaliry Price Optimizer (HPO). Infor HPO is a comprehensive, built-for-the-cloud solution that delivers pricing decisions for hoteliers. It will help hoteliers make better decisions more quickly, confidently price rooms left to sell, and increase bottom-line profits. Infor HPO is capable of providing a strategic price and distribution channel on which to publish this price, factoring into account distribution costs for the channels, which will help to boost revenues and profits. Infor HPO also provides simulators to predict the impact that a change of price on a given day will have on demand and expected revenues. This new addition will also pick out potential competition from a customer perspective. The launch of this new product, built on the backbone of Infor OS, further strengthens Infor’s global platform of cloud solutions for the hospitality industry.
You can find more information on Infor HPO Here.
For Full Article, Click Here
Migrate LBI Data to a new Database Server
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsWhether you are refreshing your test LBI environment or moving all your data to a new database server, you may eventually need to migrate your report data for LBI. This is a relatively simple process, provided the LBI instances using the data are the exact same version and service pack level.
First, back up your LBI databases on the source server and restore to the destination server (LawsonFS, LawsonRS, LawsonSN).
If you are migrating data for one LBI instance, you just need to point your WebSphere data sources to the destination server.
If you are migrating data for a new LBI instance, or for your test environment, you’ll need to update all the services and references to the old LBI instance. In the LawsonFS database, ENPENTRYATTR table, you’ll need to search the ATTRSTRINGVALUE column for your old server name, and replace it with the new server name. For example,
UPDATE ENPENTRYATTR
SET ATTRSTRINGVALUE = REPLACE(ATTRSTRINGVALUE, ‘source-server’, ‘destination-server’)
WHERE ATTRSTRINGVALUE LIKE ‘%source-server%’
After you update those strings, you will need to redo your EFS and ERS install validators to set the correct URL.
Next, log into LBI and go to Tools > Services. Click on every service definition to look for the source server name, and update with the destination server name.
Make sure your data sources are pointing to the proper ODBC DSNs, and/or add new ODBC connections. Test and verify all your reports.
Building Serverless for Enterprise Applications
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsIf you’re reading this, you must have already become curious about serverless computing or perhaps you just read our other article on the topic. There is no doubt that the future of computing will not have any traditional servers in it. In fact, I would venture to guess that by 2025, nearly every new development project will be a serverless project. This is not very hard to believe given that we at Nogalis have been developing all our enterprise applications for the past year using this paradigm and have yet to come up with a real reason to spin up a server.
There are a few things you need to understand about “Serverless” before you can start your project.
It is obvious that if Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM want to remain competitive in the DB space, they will also have to offer Serverless versions of their database products or go the way of the mainframe. In the meantime, you can build a serverless application, that connects to a server-bound database in order to store its data. We won’t judge you.
Of course, the items above are not the entire story. For instance, AWS SNS is a fully managed messaging service that you can use for messaging. Cloudwatch will help you with event monitoring and debugging. A whole host of applications exist that can help with nearly everything else. In the past two years of developing serverless applications, we have yet to have a need that we couldn’t eventually resolve with AWS available services. I say eventually because our developer brains were accustomed to think of every problem in a very server-centric way. Once you stop relying on the server to solve all your development challenges, you’ll think of some innovative ways to develop your applications that will surprise you.
If you’re considering developing a serverless enterprise application, we’d love to help. Please use the contact us page to make an appointment with someone on our team to discuss your serverless project.
Why the word “Serverless” needs to be on your resume
Articles, Frontpage Article, NewsUntil recent years, we treated our servers like pets. We gave them names and assigned a high value to their health and uptime. If a server went down, we did everything in our power to get it back up and running. With the advent of virtualization, the term server became more synonymous with VM (Virtual Machine) and the fact that it was running didn’t really have as much significance simply because we could spin up many more like it within minutes. But that was still a problem. We had to spin up many more just like it. We had gone from treating servers like pets, to treating them more like cattle. It appears the dream of virtualization was realized as we didn’t need to worry about one specific server anymore. If web-007 failed, web-001 through web-006 were still around to handle the traffic and no one would even notice the difference while a new instance was generated. But even in this new virtual reality, the virtual environment (our cattle) had to be up and running all the time, feeding on energy and they needed attention.
This was a problem that didn’t seem to have a solution. It seemed that if you needed to compute a bit of logic, you would have to pass that request to a service that could process it for you and give you a result. So, the cattle were as efficient as we could get for a long while. But realistically, each bit of computing request is just a tiny little request. Surely, we don’t need an entire virtual farm always on standby to fulfill requests that are not even being called on all the time. What if we moved from the cattle model to the bacteria model? Imagine an infinite ocean of tiny little computing units (our bacteria) that would instantly rush to our call whenever we needed them. Now imagine if that ocean was shared by all our applications.
This is the serverless dream. In the cloud ecosystem, we call these container services and major cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services offer these container services in an all you can eat ocean of compute that you can tap into whenever and however much you desire. Imagine never having to scale your server infrastructure. Imagine only getting charged for the infinitesimally small amounts of time that the CPU is processing your request. That is what services like AWS Lambda provide. AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume – there is no charge when your code is not running. You simply write all the logic of your code within a Lambda function, link the function to an application gateway and you’re ready to invoke your logic from anywhere, on any device, at any time, and as many times as you like. It is easy to see that with this new model of computing, your data center will soon become a thing of the past, and with it the skillset you have developed around the data center model.
So, what will it take to go fully serverless? Can you run your applications on this new computing platform? How do you develop applications in a way that can take advantage of these new technologies? Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of our upcoming articles that will address all these questions. If you have a serverless development project that you would like to talk to us about, you can contact us directly here. Nogalis has been developing serverless applications using AWS Lambda since 2017 and we’d love to discuss your upcoming projects.
Increase Work Productivity with Trello
NewsThe Nogalis team is always busy with multiple projects, and a way to stay on top of our productivity is by using Trello. Trello is a web based list-making application that is shared by everyone in your team to keep everyone up to date on all tasks, progress, and deadlines. This helps our team stay current with all our projects. Trello also has a blog that features tips on increasing productivity, workflows, and current events and news. We’ll be sharing some of those tips on our own blog from time to time. Take a look at the first tip below!
Overcoming Defense Mechanisms
Defense mechanisms were first noted by notable psychologist Sigmund Freud. At their core, defense mechanisms are self-serving. We subconsciously use them to protect ourselves from negative thoughts or feelings such as anxiety or guilt. How do you stop your own defense mechanism from becoming a bigger problem, especially in the workplace? There are a few things you can do. The first step in making any change is to recognize the problem. Analyze your thoughts, emotions, reactions, and exchanges at work to figure out which of the above defense mechanisms you’re using as a crutch. Following this you can practice compartmentalization by segregating different thoughts or portions of your life (i.e. shutting out any personal problems while you’re at work). Next, projection; assign your own thoughts and emotions to others. Then practice undoing by attempting to backpedal a negative behavior with a lot of positive. For example, if your first line of defense is to say something negative to a colleague, then backpedal and instead compliment or say something positive about the given situation. We all have defense mechanisms and we all have the capability to change (not use them as often), especially in the workplace. By eliminating such defensive habits, we could get more work done at the office and increase work productivity.
Original post by Kat Boogaard from Trello.
For Full Article, Click Here
Stay tuned for more tips from Trello!