ManagePro Newsletter October 2000

Greetings! Hope you are doing well and that you experienced a lot of progress in accomplishing your goals during the month of September. How did you do on the goal we gave you of cleaning up your projects in your Top Level Goal Planner so that all the primary ones have a requirements section and Action Plan completed? We've got some very exciting stuff to go over with you this month. Everything from announcing our WEB enabled version of ManagePro to showing you some great tips on linking your strategic plan to your operational goals. So let's get started.

OCTOBER TOPIC HEADINGS:

1. ManagePro is now web-enabled.
2. Linking your Strategic Goals to Operational Projects.wo more things about To-dos.
3. Tips for Flagging Updated Goals
4. Requesting User Input.

We have been testing code for the last couple of weeks and are excited to say that ManagePro is finally useable via the internet. That's been one of our goals for more than a year. Here's how it works.

The Web-enablement is provided through Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server Terminal Service capability. That's a long word isn't it? What it means is that if you have the ManagePro Web Services Module (WSM) and Windows 2000 Server installed on your server, and the Terminal Services configured, you can log onto your server and run ManagePro from anywhere on the WEB. You can also do the same if you have NT 4.0 running on your server, but you have to install an additional Terminal Services component on NT (which can involve re-installing NT on your server).

It is very fast. The graphics are clear and you have all the functionality of existing ManagePro 4.0. What it means is that you no longer have to be on your LAN to pull up your ManagePro database. When you are in the office you connect through your existing network, and when on the road, at another office or home, you can work with the same database via the Internet. Now geographically dispersed teams can all collaborate easily using the same database.

The terminal services provided under Windows 2000 server allows for remote printing (you can direct the print to a local printer) and the ability to copy and paste data from a program you are running locally to ManagePro on your remote server and vice versa (NT 4.0 does not provide this feature).

For many of you currently running NT 4.0, the best option will be to simply add a small server running Windows 2000 to your existing network. We also make this available as a turn-key solution, with the goal of moving our customers to a web-enabled ManagePro platform within a week of a start date.

Here's what you will need to make this happen:

From PST,

One ManagePro 4.0 Teamware license for each user, and

One copy of the ManagePro WSM on your server.

From Microsoft,

* Windows 2000 Server or NT4.0 with Terminal Services installed on your server.

* One Server Client Access License for each user.

And before we move on, here's a link on Microsoft's site to provide additional information

on how it all works:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/guide/server/features/terminal.asp

2. LINKING YOUR STRATEGIC GOALS TO OPERATIONAL PROJECTS

       If you needed to sort all of your operations, all of your projects and look at which projects are supporting which strategic goal and what their present status is... would you know how to? There are several tools in ManagePro to do this, let's review three. First lets assume your strategic plan was wrapped around 3 initiatives, briefly termed Sales, Product and Staff.

2.1 The hard way is to literally group as sub-goals all of your projects under the corresponding strategic goal they support. This breaks up the benefit of seeing departmental projects grouped together, and we don't recommend this as the best approach.

2.2 If your project and operational goals primarily support only one strategic goal, then use a field that is a pick list. They are forced choices and one example is the Goal Type field. It is shipped with the options of Result, Skill or Other. But you can easily change these in the Terminology Editor (in the File/Preferences pull down menu, substitute Sales, Product and Staff for the existing choices). There are 7 available pick list fields to choose from (example Common User List 1) in ManagePro.

2.3 You can also use a text field, such as User Text 1. These are limited to 25 characters, but allow you to use short words to represent strategic themes. If a goal supports more than one strategic initiative, separate the terms by a comma (ex. Sales,Staff). Using this method allows you to cross reference a goal to more than one strategic goal, as in method 1 or 2 above. When you are finished you need to display what projects and operations support each of your strategic initiatives, and while you are at it, create a custom screen to depict these views with two clicks. If you have used method one, just role out the sub goals. If using #2, create a filter to show all items that have the same "Type" (Ex. Field = Type, Condition = Equal and Value = Product or any one of the pick list choices you want to review) and save the view. If you are using #3, then again go to the filter. This time in the Field area select the Title you have created for the text field (ex. Strategic Support), then in the condition choose either "Equal" if you want to see all the goals who only support the strategic plan you are focusing upon, or choose "Contains the text" if you want to see all the goals that have referenced that Strategic Initiative as one of several initiatives being supported.

3. TIPS FOR FLAGGING UPDATED GOALS.

      Boy that can be pretty dry. Are you still reading? Let's do the next one in two paragraphs. The question is how can you set up a system to Flag Updated Goals? This is particularly helpful when you are the manager and want to quickly review what's been updated. One quick way is to use the Notes field and icon for this purpose. Simply have whomever puts in the last progress note leave the date and their initials in the notes field for that goal. The manager is responsible to review and delete the notes text when completed (which removes the icon from view). A second method is to create either a separate text or date column in the Goal Planner view. If using a date, just enter the date of the last progress note, if text, decide on a letter or word you want to use as the flag. Either works well to give an immediate reference for what's been reviewed and what hasn't.

4. REQUESTING USER INPUT

By the way both of these tips came in a roundabout way from customers or working to solve customer problems. We want to make this very oriented to solving your problems and adding to techniques to your ManagePro toolbox. So... please email in questions you have to , and we'll do our best to address them in this user newsletter going forward.

Have a great month.

Rodney Brim

Performance Solutions Technology, LLC

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