Data Storage Lesson

Welcome to the lesson

2008-10-04T21:14:00.000-04:00

As you can see in the block above that for this lesson you are now Sam McLintoc and that you work at a job with a number of other people.

For this lesson we are going to be covering a specific problem that you, Sam, will be facing. It is based on the type of problem that you might face in real life. And our goal for this lesson is to not only show you some ways that you might tackle this problem if you faced it but also we hope to be able to give you some tools that can help you out if you are dealing with any number of problems that might arise when you are looking at collecting, storing, sorting, and accessing data in some form or fashion.

Start off by selecting the "About your problem" link to the right. This will start you off on the right foot.

You'll also notice that we have the list of topics that you will be coving in this lesson. Feel free to use this navigation section as you go through this lesson. If you start this lesson and come back later then you will be able to navigate right back to where you left off.

As with many of the Howard Training Inc. courses we expect you to have a certain amount of knowledge and understanding in these topics. If you are not sure if you have the qualifications then please contact the instructor for guidance.

basic understanding of computers and how they operate
solid understanding in the concept of data
basic understanding of the difference between a client (PC) and a server

Don't forget to select the "About your problem" link to the right when you are ready to continue.

Lesson Summary

2007-10-15T22:31:00.001-04:00

We've covered a good bit of information and thrown a number of things at you. We've given you a set of case studies. We have reviewed each of the case studies with summaries and we have a set of pro and con lists for each case study.

The bottom line here isn't the one correct answer. It's finding the proper solution for your office, your company, what you can do with the resources that you have available, what your boss can reasonably support to her management, etc. You'll find that when you are dealing with complex problems like this one that many things need to weigh in and an approach that works for you now might not be the best choice months or years from now. When you end up coming again to this type of problem or another problem with a similar levels of complexity then you'll have been through the process of reviewing and analyzing multiple points that can weigh in your decision.

You are now in a better position to deal with similar complex problems.

Prof. Huff

final meeting with molly

2007-10-13T18:58:00.001-04:00

Ok. You need to get ready for your final meeting with Molly, your boss. The night before your meeting you go back through all of your notes. You look at your summaries to each of the interviews and you look at your Pro and Con lists. Now you need to make a decision as to what approach (or approaches) you are going to bring to Molly.

Yes, you can bring more than one approach. But you need a number one approach that is your main recommendation. But you should give Molly some options since some of the approaches that have been discussed here might not be feasible. For example if Molly isn't able to get any IT support higher than a medium overhead requirement then the two of you might have to agree upon another approach.

For this lesson there is no single one answer is correct. It really comes down to a number of the factors that has been displayed during your review of the case studies. You just need to be able to explain to Molly what your recommendation is and why you choose that approach.

Another key factor here is that if this were a real-world situation you might have to do additional research and you might have to go back and do some more interviews with the people to help you understand a little more about some of the comments that were made earlier. Now that you have had time to digest what was said and you've seen both positive and negative outcomes that people have experienced you might have other questions for people.

As a final project for this lesson write up your approach(s) and your reasons why you are making these recommendations. The document should follow the document preparation rules outlined in your syllabus (e.g., MS-Word 2000 or newer readable format, ADA conformance, double spaced). Upload your final document to your shared folder on the web site as you have done for your previous lessons.

And now you can go to the lesson summary.

interview ten pros and cons list

2007-10-13T18:57:00.002-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
No new software or hardware required (expected)	High to very-high overhead for the IT group
Your data requirements should be met
Your data will be backed-up constantly
Access to the data can be controlled
Multiple users can get access to the information at the same time

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to the final meeting with Molly.

interview ten lesson summary

2007-10-13T18:57:00.001-04:00

Well, that was a different discussion. While it does seem that the IT group was able to solve the problem that Jamie had you don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling that they will be able to do the same for your little group. That isn't to say that they won't. Just as Jamie pointed out you'll never know until you ask. But you feel that this would be something that you'll let Molly ask up the chain. Jamie was doing a support for the company management for a company-wide data collection and retention. That task had a good bit of overall company exposure. So you can see why she didn't have too many problems getting the IT group to help support this.

But the requirement for your group to store the information on your customers is different. And this task might not warrant the high overhead for the IT group.

But the fact that there wouldn't be an additional cost is a good point. And the fact that you'd end up getting the data structure and elements that you are looking for is good. This is similar to the discussion you had with Dan. Then it was more of a localized/locally shared Access program and this is a centralized ORACLE approach but some of the same points come out in each.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Matt. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your tenth interview

2007-10-13T18:56:00.001-04:00

You've known Jamie on-and-off for a few years. She also works in your company but she doesn't work in your office. She is more of a mid-manager and not as much of a worker-bee. You feel that getting her higher level view would give you a different prospective on the problem. And she might have an idea for a solution that you never even thought of.

You: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today about this. I'm very interested in hearing what your thoughts are on this problem.

Jamie: Well, I'm thinking that if this is critical to your job, and your boss wouldn't have asked you to do this unless it was, then you should see about getting someone to setup a database on the ORACLE server. The IT groups uses the ORACLE database for all of the enterprise level systems. I think you should talk to the IT group about setting up a database on their server to hold this information for you.

You: Huh. Do you think they would do that for us? Isn't that a lot of work?

Jamie: Well, they did something like that for us when we were trying to get information together about the training that everyone has been going to and what they are planning on going to. We have to track the people in each of the divisions and who they work for and what training they have taken and what they want to take. The upper management wants to keep an eye on making sure that the people have the ability to get the training they need to do their jobs.

You: That seems like we are keeping similar bits of information but you are keeping information for everyone in the company. We are looking at keeping just information about our customers. I don't know if the IT group will feel that our information is that important for them to put it on their database server.

Jamie: You'll never know until you ask them.

You: Ok. Saying that they say "OK" to doing that. Do you have any idea what they will have to do on our machines, or what we will have to do to enter and get access to the information?

Jamie: Well, once they have the database up then they would just build some screens in ORACLE and then they would give you accounts on the server so you can access our database. The IT group will come around and install the ORACLE client on each of your machines. Then it's just easy as filling out a form to put the information in the system.

You: Ok. How do they know what information we want?

Jamie: When they agree to do this then they will get with you to define your information formats and structures. Once they have that then they can build your database.

You: Ok. What are any other advantages that we would get by going this route? So far it seems that there's a good bit of work to do and most of it is getting the IT group to be willing to not only do just about all of the work but to also agree that we can get on their enterprise data server.

Jamie: Well, everyone in your group could access the information at the same time. Actually you could have everyone in the company access the information at the same time. Those servers are really powerful. But because your information would be in your database then you can have them limit the access just to your group. Needless to say the IT group could see the information since they can see everything on the server. Also since it's on the enterprise database server it would be constantly backed-up. Most systems are only backed-up nightly. The enterprise database server is mirrored so everything written to one system is written to the other. That way there isn't much of a chance of you loosing anything.

You: And?

Jamie: Well, you won't have to buy anything since the company already has the server and it would just be the IT groups time and effort to do the work. And it's a very fast system. You can quickly search through records and everything. Reporting is also very simple once setup.

You: Thanks Jamie. This has given me something to think about.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Jamie interview.

interview nine pros and cons list

2007-10-13T18:55:00.002-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
no cost for software	unknown cost possible for hardware needed for this
web based normally means no software to install on desktops	unknown training requirements to use the system
data would be centrally located on the server, since that's normal for most web server setups	unknown if the system will meet your data requirements for storage, reporting, and indexing
	heavy overhead for IT group
	much more research must be done before this can be considered

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

interview nine lesson summary

2007-10-13T18:55:00.001-04:00

Well. Matt sure did through a lot of terms up in the air. But it seems that his comments do have some merit. From what he said there should be free software out there that can be downloaded and installed on a server that would give you the CRM like functionality that Denise covered in her interview. The key words here are: (1) free, (2) server, and (3) should be.

Well, the free point is good from a budget point of view. Why pay for Act! when you can get the same functionality for free? Well, Matt didn't say that you would get the functionality you need or even the same that Act! can give you. Just that there should be free CRM software packages. Until you look more into what functions these open-source solutions offer then you won't be able to compare the two proposals.

Another point that he made is that it would run on a server. Well, you are already aware that Act! would cost you something in at least hardware so what the cost would be to purchase a server is unknown. There is also the possibility the IT office already has a server that you can have this installed on. But this does seem to have a fairly high overhead requirement for the IT office. They'll have to do some research on open-source CRM options. They would have to see about setting up a system to run this with everything it needs. Matt mentioned that there would more than likely be a database involved and that there shouldn't be any real cost for the usage of MySQL (whatever that is).

And the other key point is the should be. You and your office will have to rely heavily on the IT group to help get this setup and running. And you aren't even sure if there is any type of training required to run this. Until you find out more you can't fully see all of the issues and steps that will be required to make this happen.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Matt. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your ninth interview

2007-10-13T18:53:00.000-04:00

Matt is one of those IT-type guys that you ran into a few years ago and you see every so often. He's been off on a ski trip and you are finally getting around to talking with him about your problem. You meet at a local coffee shop and with the tape recorder running you start discussing...

Matt: So, you want some type of CRM solution.

You: You know about CRM?

Matt: Sure. I've one of the people who went skiing with us last week kept talking about how they were doing an upgrade to his CRM software and that's why he could afford the time away from work to join us. He said that with the IT people doing the upgrade to the software his entire office is just about shut down.

I think I've got the perfect solution. Just talk to your IT office people and get them to setup your own CRM server. It should be easy for them. I could get it up and running in a few hours, but

Matt grins

You can't afford my rates.

You: Yea, I was just talking earlier to a neighbor and she mentioned Act! I think that's up on my list of possible solutions. I'm just worried about the cost.

Matt snorts

Matt: Act!? Client-server software is so… 90's. I mean, it's fine if you want to go that way, and you have a large sales force or something. But you don't need that. That's like buying a Porsche when all you need is a set of roller blades so you can go the four blocks to work and back. What you need to do is talk to someone in your IT group, get them to look on the web. There are open-source solutions out there right now that they can download and setup on a system for you. It'll be web based so you don't need any client software installed on your system. And open-source software is normally free to use. If you have a half-way decent IT group they should be able to stand up a Linux box with an Apache web server in no time. Then just install this on the server and you should be up and running.

You: Apache? Linux? Huh?

Matt: Don't worry. The IT people will know what all of that is. Just talk to them, tell them you want an "open-source CRM solution" and I'm sure one or two of the geeks in the group will already know where to find it. If they don't then it will be easy for them to Google it and go from there. It is more than likely that they'll have to setup a database on the box. But since most open-source applications can talk to a MySQL server they can set that up for free on the same box.

You: Ah… Thanks Matt. I'll get right on this.

Matt: No problem. Like I said they should be able to whip this out in no time. I'd offer to help out but you know how busy I am right now with…

And the conversation goes on for a little bit more where Matt talks about all of the stuff he is doing and then he rushes off with another Cup'O Joe in his hand.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Matt interview.

interview eight pros and cons list

2007-10-13T18:52:00.000-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
No local software and minimal IT overhead	Access controls might be required to limit who can view data
Learning to use wiki should be easy for people already used to word processor software	There might be a cost associated with this
The data is stored off-site so if something happens to your local computers your information is still safe	You might have to limit the information you store about the customers
Multiple people can access or edit the information at the same time	You didn't ask if there was any way to search the information

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

interview eight lesson summary

2007-10-13T18:51:00.002-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
No local software and minimal IT overhead	Access controls might be required to limit who can view data
Learning to use wiki should be easy for people already used to word processor software	There might be a cost associated with this
The data is stored off-site so if something happens to your local computers your information is still safe	You might have to limit the information you store about the customers
Multiple people can access or edit the information at the same time	You didn't ask if there was any way to search the information

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

interview eight lesson summary

2007-10-13T18:51:00.001-04:00

Well, that really brings another option into play that you hadn't considered before. There are a number of advantages of using an outside server that requires no new software installation and doesn't require any real support from the IT office. So, the overhead for the IT office should be low.

The way Casey makes it sound it should be relatively easy to teach everyone in the office (who are already familiar with word processing software, as noted in Aunt Polly's lesson summary) to use the wiki. That's a good advantage since it'll let people transfer some of what they already know about using a word processor into their learning about using a wiki.

One thing to remember is that while this may solve the access control and still allow multiple people access the information in a single location at the same time issue there is still another issue. And that is there might be a cost associated with this. Casey didn't seem to stress the cost all that much so there might not be a large investment required the way it seems that the Act! solution might cost from your interview with Denise.

The point that Casey makes about the data and protecting it also has its valid points. The contact information is for the most part open information. As she points out companies normally post this information on their sites, and freely give out the information in Yellow Pages, on ads, etc. The only sticky point is how much information might end up going into the notes section should be kept between the office staff. For example if Dale knows that whenever he wants fast service from that catering service that he tries to swing free tickets to some new show to pass along when he stops over to see them. The tickets are free and he doesn't charge anything. Dale is just helping out the people who work there. But it might not be best to advertise that to everyone who might be reading the World Wide Web. So the point on being able to limit the people who can view the information might be good. Or you all just limit the information like that that you put into the system. It is possible that if anyone else went over and tried what Dale does then they might not get the good service Dale gets. It could be that Dale gets the good service because he's Dale and he gets along great with the people at the company.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Casey. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your eighth interview

2007-10-13T18:46:00.000-04:00

Casey is another of the team that works in your office. Casey always seems to be up in the news and what's going on in the technology arena is something you overhear her talking about often. After a meeting you ask her what her opinion is on a solution that could deal with this problem.

Casey: Well, I've been thinking about it and chatting with some of my friends. I think the best approach would be to go to one of the on-line sites that offer hosting of wiki sites. I think a wiki could give us what we want without having to worry about installing software or getting those yahoos in the IT group involved.

You: Ok. I have a few questions. What are you talking about and what is a wiki? And why would we want to use something that isn't here in the company?

Casey: Well. A wiki is a web site that anyone can go in and update. We would want to use one of the services that would give us the ability to limit who can edit the information. So you, Wally, me, everyone in the office would have an account and we could go in and make changes to the information.

Casey pauses. She seems to see a lost expression on your face.

Ok. Let me start over. Let's say that we wanted to setup a wiki. We bring up our web browser and go to something like (this is just an example) www.wikis-R-us.com and we setup a wiki. It's like setting up a blank web page on their system. We setup accounts for all of us and we go in and just as if we were working with your word processor you would add or update information on the web pages. You don't need to know anything about how to make a web page. The wiki software running on the server does all of that. All you have to do is type in information just as if you were building a document on your PC. It's all typing and clicking buttons. And then you save the changes. And they are up there for any of us to see.

The neat thing about this is we don't have to install any software here since all you need to use on our end is just a web browser. And we've got that. It wouldn't take me more than ten minutes to show anyone in the office how to add and edit information on a wiki. Like I said it's just like doing a word processing document but it's saved to the server rather than on your PC.

So, another advantage is that all of the information is on their server. We don't have to worry about security or backing up the files since they already do that for us. Only people with the accounts would be able to make changes. And because this is web based you can be entering a new client while the rest of the office is looking up information or doing updates to existing customers, etc.

You: But that'll mean that all of our information will be out there where everyone can see it, right?

Casey: That's one option. But some companies do offer wiki services that are controlled as to who can see what. So we could get one of those if anyone is worried about it. I don't see any reason since it's not like the contact information to that group who does the sound and music work for us from time to time is secret or anything. They're all over the web; they are listed in everything from Google to MySpace to Facebook. So if someone stumbled across our wiki and found that to call those guys you just use this phone number doesn't matter. I can get the same phone number off of their company web site. We aren't trying to keep secret information here. We are just trying to keep the information in one place that each of us can get to and can update when we need. Not to keep it from outsiders.

You: Huh, so you think we can learn how to use a miki?

Casey: It's wiki, not miki. And yea. It's very easy to use.

You: Ok. So we don't need any software installed. Is there any cost for this? I can't believe that all of this is free. Why wouldn't just about everyone out there be setting up wikis all over the place.

Casey: Well, there are companies that will charge us for this. But those are more of the people who have additional setups (like limiting who can see the information). But there are a number of free sites out there that we can go setup a wiki right now. A couple of months ago some friends and I used a wiki to plan a camping trip. We not only used it to plan out where we were going, but also who was bringing what, and what we were going to do during the three days we were at the camp site.

You and Casey had to stop the interview as other people wanted to use the conference room. You continued to talk as you walked down the hall but it was just to confirm what she had already told you.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Casey interview.

interview seven pros and cons list

2007-10-12T23:12:00.002-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
You will more than likely end up with a solution tailored to your needs	You will have to get the CIO office to agree to let one of their MS-Access qualified employees to expend the amount of effort to get this job done. Based on Dan's comments this could require weeks and weeks of the persons effort
You will not have to buy new software or hardware to make this work	The CIO office will have to maintain the database
Your approach will, for the most part, be able to be multi-user accessible

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

interview seven lesson summary

2007-10-12T23:12:00.001-04:00

Well, one thing you can say about the approach Dan was talking about it seems that you could end up getting something that is built to your specifications as far as how the data is stored and that you have a multiple user (at least some times) capability. And you haven't gotten that from any of the other electronic multiple person based approaches. You came close with Denise's interview talking about the Act! software. One of the differences is here you can get the data storage setup to meet your requirements and the interface the way you and your people are used to seeing and accessing the information. With Act! you can't say all of that.

But it would require more of an effort on the IT department since they will be required to get a good understanding of your requirements and then they would design, build, and deploy an Access database. And they would also be expected to maintain the database. So their overhead could be either medium or high. And that's based on the amount of work they will have to expend to do this. A good thing is that MS Access is already installed on everyone's machine and you wouldn’t need to buy anything for this approach.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Dan. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your seventh interview

2007-10-12T23:11:00.001-04:00

Dan doesn't work in your actual office but he does work for the company. You met Dan Magnus at an office party about two years ago. You don't remember which party but you did end up hitting it off and the two of you still run into each other from time to time. A couple of days ago you saw him in the hall and arranged to meet so you can talk about this. We'll pick this interview up after you've told Dan about the issue you are facing.

Dan: Huh. Well, I can tell you what I would recommend. I would get someone from the IT office to build you a database in Microsoft Access.

You: Why Access? And I don't know anyone in the IT group that I could call to see about doing any programming or anything. I don't even know much about Access to even know what questions I should ask them.

Dan: Well, over a year ago we wanted a way to keep track of all of the books that we have up in our office. I mean we must have five or six hundred books up there. So, Connie, who was my boss back then called someone in the IT office. In a few days about four of us, Connie, me, John (another of the people who has a lot of books in his area), and the IT guy (I think his name was Freddy). Anyway, we all sat down and Freddy asked us some questions. Then a few weeks went by and John went down to the IT office and came back saying that he and Freddy looked at some database the guy was building for us. He had some recommendations and then said that Freddy said that we should have something that we could use in a couple of weeks.

Then a few weeks later Freddy comes up and shows me how to open the file in Access and how to put in my books and how to search for them and that was about it. I've been using the Access database file ever since. Just adding books when I get new ones in.

You: What type of questions did you all go through when you had that first meeting with Freddy?

Dan: Well, he just asked what we wanted in the database. We said we wanted to have the Title of the book, the Author, and stuff like that. I know that when Freddy and John talked the second time John said that he asked Freddy to make some of the fields a little bigger (we have some very long titled books.)

You: Do you have any problem with anyone else getting into the database while you are there?

Dan: Yes and no. Sometimes when someone wants to go into the database to look for a book and I'm in there adding a new book or updating some of the information about the book then they tell me they get a file locked message. If they get that then they know to either call me and ask me to get out or they just wait until later and try back.

You: Do you have any problem with anyone messing up your data in the database?

Dan: How do you mean?

You: Do you have any time where you go in there and some of the books are missing and you know you entered them in there? Or where someone has gone in and changed the title or author of a book or anything?

Dan: No, no one has done anything like that. Why would they, it's just a database of the books. If they mess it up then they have to come over to where we store all of the books and sort through them manually. And no one likes to do that.

You: Do you have Freddy's phone number?

Dan: Nope. I'm not even sure if he is still around. I don't really hang around with those people. They are a little weird for me.

You: Dan, what else can you tell me about this?

Dan: Nothing. That's about all of what happened.

You thank Dan and leave, walking back to your office.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Dan interview.

Interview Six Pros and Cons List

2007-10-12T22:05:00.000-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
Off-the-shelf software that could meet your needs	Additional funds would be needed to purchase licenses for all of the users (people in your group using the data and anyone who might want to generate their own reports)
You wouldn't need to deal with trying to build security or file protection procedures that the previous Excel and word-processor recommendations required	Either the funds for the hardware and software required to stand up a database server would be required or space on an existing database server would have to setup
You wouldn't need to try and get a software package (like Excel or a word-processor) setup that isn't built to hold your data	Medium level support expected for the CIO office
It is more than likely that the data structures you will and might need for your data are already covered in this software	Training is more than likely required for the group on the usage of the software
It is built to be used by multiple people at the same time so you won't have sharing or permission issues that you would have from many of the previous approaches	Additional add-on packages might need to be purchased to extend the functionality or capabilities of the base system

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

Interview Six Lesson Summary

2007-10-12T22:04:00.000-04:00

WOW really covers your interview with Denise. You really didn't think that she would be dropping a bombshell on you like that. You had no idea that there was a market out there where someone has already built a software solution for tracking some of the information that you are looking for.

One of the key things here is that it's already pre-built and seems to be focused on the type of information you are looking to gather and store. It is possible that it might allow for the addition of information that you really aren't interested in but that shouldn't be a problem. The only issue is that if because the software was built with more of a focus on a sales staff and that's not what you and your people do then it is possible that they might have different terms or data structures than what you were thinking of. But you don't think that'll be too much of a problem.

It seems one of the biggest stumbling blocks will be the cost of the software, the cost of getting a database server (or access to an existing database server), and any other additional burden that will be placed on the office of the CIO. If you can get the budget handled and can get the CIO office to be willing to provide the needed support then this might be a good recommended solution. It seems that this could have a medium overhead requirement for the CIO office to support this approach.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Denise. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your Sixth Interview

2007-10-12T22:03:00.001-04:00

Denise Pale has been your neighbor for just about a year. While you would not really consider her very computer savvy you know that she seems to have a solid head on her shoulders. You've had her and her kids over for dinner many times. You mentioned that you are on a fact finding mission and she said that she might have something of interest that might help. So, you went over to her place with your tape recorder in hand to find out what she had to say...

You:So, what's on your mind?

Denise: Well, you were talking about wanting to track information on your customers. Can you tell me a little more about what you are looking for and why you want to track this?

You and she really haven't gone into details as to what each of you do. You know that she works in an office for some type of company but that's about as far as your "what do you do" conversations have gone. You explain to her a little about your company and the task the Molly assigned you.

I had a feeling it was something like that. Right now I'm working at the headquarters for a video rental distribution system. But from time to time I take side jobs helping people out with basic office administration issues. Most of my work has come in as word-of-mouth and some of them have been starting out lawyers. A couple of lawyers get together and start their own business but they really don't know what it takes to run the front of the house. Sometimes I've recommended to them that they look at a software called "Act!".

You: What is Act!?

Denise: Act! is a program that runs on your computer that is helps you to manage your customers and contacts. It allows you to track not only the information about your customers and contacts but it also can track the calls you've made to or received from them. You will have the ability of having a tracking of the e-mails with each of your customers or contacts. You can keep notes about the customers or contacts, etc.

You: WOW!!! How does it work?

Denise: Well, I'm not a techie so I can't tell you how it does what it does. I can tell you what I've read about how it works behind the scenes. I can tell you what you can do with it and how you run it and put stuff in and get stuff out. But I can't tell you about how it does what it does. Act! is a contact and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

From what I understand it has a client piece that gets installed and runs on each of the people who you want to access the information PC's. And it talks to a database on a database server.

The basic client software is built for sales people so most of the interfaces are really for their type of usage. I haven't found too many problems getting the people that I've worked with up and running with it. It has all types of reports and functionality built-in, but again since its main market is sales people or help-desk people then I'm not sure how much of that you'll need or want.

You: Ok. Tell me more.

Denise: Well, there are some add-on options that you can purchase that can give you some other configurations. For example I know that they have one if you want your Act! to be customized for help-desk staff. I'm not sure about what other options they have, but I know they have quite a few.

And that's another thing. Not only will you have to make sure that your company IT group will let you use the client software but they will also have to setup a full database server to hold the data. You don't keep the software with the client PCs. It's all stored on the database server. That does give you some added security and recoverability if they backup the database server. Since all of the information is there you could have your PC crash and all of the information would still be on the server. I don't know how much the hardware and software will cost your company to run this. When I go into one of the offices that is willing to use the Act! software I tell them to get their IT support (or get some IT support if they don't have one already) to buy it, set it all up on the server and on the PC's then to call me when everything is installed and ready. Then I come back in and show them how to use the software.

You: Ok. Let me see if I've got this. It seems that this is a good option to recommend but we might have problems getting the software purchased, installed, and getting a database server setup and configured.

Denise: Right.

You: And once we get that done then we still might have problems using the software?

Denise: Well, it might take you a little time to get used to it, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Heck, you came over and fixed my printer before. I'm sure you could figure out how to use the software. It comes with a manual and a tutorial DVD.

You: Do you know how much the software costs?

Denise: I haven't looked in months, but I remember that you had to buy a copy for each person using it (either entering data or just doing reports, so don't forget any managers). I think some of the off-the-shelf prices were about $500.00 per person. If you want to look at some of the add-ons then you'll need to up that even more. I don't know what the cost of the add-ons would be.

You: Ok, where do I find out more about this software?

Denise tells you the web site address and with thoughts of budgets and getting approval for database servers setup you end up wondering back to your place…

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Denise interview.

Interview Five Pros and Cons List

2007-10-12T22:02:00.001-04:00

A lot of the same points that were brought out in your Wally interview would also apply here. Here are some things to consider:

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
Low IT overhead	No controls on the data being entered or changed in the files
Excel is a program everyone in your office can navigate/use	Depending on outside group to protect your data might be a risk
You have no requirements to data structure (as previously mentioned)	You still have the first in controls the file issue already mentioned
Shared directories is something that your IT department can do	Not all tools can be fit to fix all problems. Excel is a good tool for what it was designed for, but that doesn't mean that it should be used for all problems

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

Interview Five Lesson Summary

2007-10-12T22:01:00.000-04:00

It was good talking to Gail. While her story didn't have a very happen ending it did give us a good counterpoint to Wally's interview. Some of the things that Wally pointed out still apply. But also there are some other things to keep in mind.

The point where Gail was talking about setting up ground rules seems to be a good thing to do when you have multiple people working on a collaborative project. Also the point where your office might not always want to depend on an outside group (for example the IT group) to protect your information the way you want it protected. In her case it was the fact that the backup solution the IT group used didn't meet her groups data protection needs.

As she pointed out Excel isn't bad software or anything there are just some security and data control issues that might or might not impact you and your office if you use it in a shared approach as has been discussed. They also had a local expert to work with Excel to help their group out. Just as with Wally's comments this approach would normally have a low IT overhead requirement. And you also know that the IT group can setup a shared directory if that's the approach you want to take.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Gail. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your fifth interview

2007-10-12T21:57:00.000-04:00

Gail is another co-worker in your office. You've known Gail for a few years and you know that Gail is a very talented person. From time to time she is shared out with other offices in the company to support them on projects. It's a nice day and you and Gail take your lunches out into the park-like area just down the street from the office. There you and she discuss the data problem…

Gail: I've been thinking about this and I still haven't come up with any approach that we haven't already discussed as a group.

Gail pauses for a few moments.

But I did hear you and Wally talking the other day about using Excel as a way of storing the information and I did want to bring up an experience I had before with Excel and working with a group.

You: Ok. Was this a good experience or a bad experience?

Gail: Well, I'll let you judge that. About a year ago I don't know if you remember but I went down to the 2nd floor and was working with May's group helping them out with getting all of that information together for that thing they were dealing with. They were a little short handed and since I've worked in that type of office before Molly sent be down to help.

Well, we weren’t just working with names, phone numbers, etc. on customers. We were working with all types of budget and statistical information. But we had to keep all of this information in some type of system where we could all get access to the information we needed from our desks. Some of the work was done just by one person but some of the work we all pitched in and gathered and put into the system.

The system that we used was Excel. The IT group had setup an area where we all had access to this one shared directory. Since we were working together as a team we laid out some ground rules when it came to these files:

the master copy of the files was to be kept on the shared directory.
on the "front page" of each of the Excel files we listed who was responsible for the information in that file, that way we would know who to ask if the numbers seemed different than what we expected
the information was cross-linked so verify your source link before you cross-connect the data sets
Johnny is the expert in Excel and if you have any question ask before you do it

A simple set of rules and we figured that everything else would be fine. We were worried that the information we were getting from the "outside" sources

Gail lowers her voice

you know what I mean.

wasn't right and that was part of why we were all gathered together to do this review. Anyway, within a few weeks we noticed all types of issues that were coming up.

Gail pauses to take a drink

We were told that the IT group would handle the backups so we didn't have to worry. Well… one of the problems we had was one Monday morning I go in to open up a file that I had been working on just before I had left late on Friday and the file wasn't there. I know that I had saved the file when I made my changes. And it's not like the file just hadn't been updated it wasn't even in the place where I had put it. Actually that sub-folder did have a couple of files there and they were all missing. The sub-folder was there but it was empty.

So, I went over to Johnny since he knows a lot about IT and was the main "ok what happened here" guy whenever something happened that involved the computers in that office. He said that he didn't know what could have caused the files to go missing but that he would get the IT people to just restore the files. He said that the IT people were backing up the files every night so I should be able to just keep working right where I left off from when I walked out of the office Friday.

deep breath

Well, it wasn't so easy. It seemed that the files were deleted and no one seemed to know how before the Friday night backups. So when the backup happened it just backed-up what was there. And since the files weren't there there was no backup. I don't understand why they didn't keep a copy of the files from the previous week but apparently the way they were doing the backups every night they only keep three nights worth of backups. So, they had the files from Sunday, Saturday, and Friday in their backups. Now, why they were doing backups on Saturday or Sunday when no one was working weekends I have no idea. But the bottom line is that we had to recreate all of the information that had been in those files because we couldn't get a backed-up up copy.

You: You are right, you never know what goes on in those IT people's heads when they do their stuff.

Gail: Well, that wasn't the only problem we had. Actually once we knew that was the way they were doing backups we had people start making copies of the files every Friday night just to make sure they would be there Monday when they came back in. I know that's what I started doing. But we also had problems where people started to see some strange results when we started to produce some reports. When we started to track down the problems we started having issues where people couldn't explain what happened where data was changed. For example Lonnie kept having a problem where the data seemed to be changing once entered. I think that it was Simpson who kept messing with the data. I noticed that he seemed to be working late just before each time the data seemed to be changed. We never proved it but that's my opinion. And Johnny said there was no way to know who changed what in the files. Even if the IT people could say that he was in there the system didn't track what happened while he had the file open. He could have just been reviewing the information or making cross-links to work he was doing.

You: Ok. Is that all of the problems you faced?

Gail: Well, these were the main ones. I mean it was a last minute, drop everything to get done project and we really didn't have the time to learn a new software package or even get something specially built just to let us do this work. So the impact on the rest of the support services was minimal, from my point of view.

You: Would you recommend we use Excel for our information? I mean we are just tracking names, phone numbers, etc. It's not like we are collecting and processing budget data or anything.

Gail: Well… I know we aren't working with the same critically important information but the information is important to use when we need to find out who would be the best people or what options we would have if, for example, we wanted to hire a model to stand next to a horse for that ad shot we did last week. Without some type of system to not only track who we've worked with but what type of rate or even relationship we have with them is key to our getting our work done in a timely manner. I think Molly is right in that we do need something to help us out. I mean, I can't believe we even tried to get that photographer who did the stills of the racing cars for us. I mean, you can't convince me that every shot can be taken with his one single camera and single lens. I can buy a better camera at Best Buy for goodness sakes.

After calming Gail down you try and get an answer to the "is this an approach you should recommend" question.

Gail: In my opinion yes, it can work, but only with everyone working together on this with strictly enforced guidelines. I still think one of the problems with missing data is from time to time people would make copies of the files to their local systems and then copy those back to the shared directory. Well, when someone else was working on the file after you made your copy but before you your new one back up there then those changes would be gone, overwritten when you did your copy back up.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Gail interview.

Interview Four Pros and Cons list:

2007-10-12T06:55:00.001-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
Most PIM like systems have a variety of pre-built fields to hold the information you've already outlined for this project	Not all business environments will have something that will give you a PIM like capability
Most PIM like systems give you the ability to add custom fields to store specific bits of data	Software dependent
Using the fields to store the data does provide you a known structure for the information storage	If you want to store information that doesn't fall into any pre-build fields you will have to have some customization accomplished on the system
Most PIM like systems have the ability to have pre-formatted printed versions of the stored data generated as needed	Most PIM like systems store the information locally to that PC and do not work well sharing the information to multiple computers at the same time
Because the system is storing the information for you with most PIM like systems you will not have to worry about file names or where the information is stored on your computer	If you have multiple people keep parts of the information on their individual systems then you will have a difficult time searching the entire set of data electronically because most PIM-like systems do not have cross-system search capabilities.
Most PIM like systems allow you to export the information into a diverse set of formats that could be used for backing up or exchanging information with other people

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

Interview Four Lesson Summary

2007-10-12T06:54:00.000-04:00

Well, as Kathy said her approach really does work for her and it might or might not work for your office. One of the key things you need to research more is about PIM options that your CIO office can/does support. Once you have that information then you can continue on and determine if this is really an option for you. Even if they don't support some type of PIM implementation then you still might be able to go and fight for it, but it'll be more of a battle if you are explaining why you need a PIM solution for your office.

Also, you want a PIM solution that allows some type of sharing of information. Now Kathy really did comment well on the ability of being able to print the information in multiple ways. This could constitute a way to exchange information. Yes, it would mean that everyone in your office would have a binder or folder where they kept all of the printed sets of information from everyone else. Now it does mean that you might be able to work out some type of who controls what information for what customer in this approach.

Another positive thing can be the comments about out of the box with no additional programming the Address Book has at least 35 different fields and bits of information that can be entered in about a person. As she says this does give you some of the information structure and control that you haven't seen in any of the first three interviews. It is also possible that you might be able to expand from the canned list of fields that comes with Outlook: Kathy's PIM option of choice.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Kathy. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your fourth interview

2007-10-12T06:46:00.000-04:00

Kathy Duncan has been a long time friend. You've known her since your first day at High School. You and she work in different fields and have never worked together. But she does work in a field that she interacts with people often in her day-to-day function. You are over at her place for dinner and you start by telling her a little about your need to collect the information and the conversation continues from there…

Kathy: Well, I don't know if this will help you or not but I can tell you how I keep track of similar information on people that I work with all the time. They aren't my customers but I think the information is similar enough. Now, I'll tell you right up front that this is Kathy's way and it might not be the right cup of tea for everyone.

You: Ok. Spill the beans.

Kathy: In our office we use Outlook as our e-mail client. And what e-mail client do you use?

You: We don't use Outlook anymore. The CIO office said something about security and overhead since it didn't want to work with our server or something. All I know is right now we use something other than Outlook.

Kathy: Well, you don't need Outlook. I guess you can use just about any personal information manager (PIM) software or any software that has PIM capabilities.

Kathy looks off for a minute or two.

If you can get with your CIO office and find out if they have some other PIM software or if your current e-mail client has a PIM capability then my approach might be helpful.

You: That would be ok if I understood what PIM really is.

Kathy: Well, PIM software or PIM functions really is a way of managing contacts. In Outlook you have an Address Book. If you are using something like Thunderbird (a free e-mail client) then they also have an Address Book, they just handle it differently than the way Outlook does it. And there are even PIM packages you can get that just focus on PIM functions.

Kathy seems to feel you aren't getting it yet by the look on your face.

You see. The information that I keep on you in my Address Book is your name, your phone number, e-mail address, fax number (not that I use it all that often), the company you are with right now, and your picture. Now, the full term of PIM could include other functions, but for now we are talking about the capabilities of keeping this information in some type of system that has the ability of search and indexing.

And Outlook Address Book gives me that and more. For example right out of the box I can keep about 35 different bits of information about a person. And since all of the information falls into fields in a data structure then you have some type of control on the information that goes into that field. For example I can't enter letters when I am entering in your phone number. And your e-mail address must include the @ symbol when I enter it. So this way you have a little control on the data that is being entered about the person. And since you have the pre-defined fields you have an easier way to search and index the different people in your Address Book or PIM implementation. For example I can sort the people in my Address Book by their last name, nickname, the company they work for, etc.

You: Ok. I think I can see how that might help out. But is this something that everyone in the office has access to or are you the only one who can see your Address Book?

Kathy: Well, the way our CIO shop has us setup I am the only one that can see my Address Book. And while I don't know all of the options and ways that things can be setup it is my understanding that the way we are setup is the generic way that Outlook is setup. And because of this it is hard for anyone else to know about the people I work with. But in my office that's fine. We don't need to share all of our contacts. As a matter of fact some of my contacts wouldn't deal with some of my co-workers even if they had the right information. And that's why I'm not sure if this will work for you.

I'd say get with your CIO shop and find out what PIM option that they could support in your company and then look to see if any option would help you or not.

I like my Address Book. Not only can I easily find people in multiple ways but I can also print my information in a couple of default formats and I also can take the information with me.

Kathy points to the new cell phone sitting over by her purse.

I just tell my phone to sync with my Outlook and all of my contact info gets transferred over.

The conversation continues on along different paths so you stop your recorder.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Kathy interview.

Interview Three Pros and Cons list:

2007-10-11T22:09:00.000-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
Excel or an Excel-like software is common in most work environments.	You are tied to a software package for at a minimum updates to the information
You have no specific data structure you are required to follow for your data	You have no data standardization on the information as it is entered in the Excel file
You can format the information for printing if you wish	No built-in multiple file search function. Most Excel software packages only searches information in the currently open file
You have the flexibility in storing all data into single file or multiple files	You either need to identify one person to be your librarian (like Neville) or in some way identify who will be maintaining what bits of information
if using electronic files you have the flexibility in storing them in a single computer or allowing multiple people to access the information through a file sharing network option.	If you use electronic files then most OS's will not give any access control to limit the changing or erasing of the content of the files by accident or disgruntled employees
Some Excel software packages will give you the ability to insert images into the cells.	With most word processing programs on most OS's the first person to open the file has full permissions to change information. While that person keeps the file open anyone else opening the file is normally forced into a read-only version of the file.
If electronic files are the choice for this effort then backing up of the files is something that can be performed manually or automatically (based on your information technology infrastructure.)	Printed files stored in a binder are more difficult to backup than electronic files but they can be done through a manual process.

Remember that you have the capability to further enhance and expand this Pros and Cons list through the use of the comments section on this page.

Now you can continue on to your next interview.

Interview Three Lessons Summary

2007-10-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

Well, in many ways it seems that your job might be done. Your interview with Wally seems to have given you a solution that someone else already used. While Wally didn't rave about it he did seem to have some good things to say. All in all the Excel file approach has some of the same features that you heard about in your Tim and Aunt Polly interviews: For example you are not required to have any special formatting of the information to enter it into whatever you are using as your storage option. So, as previously mentioned if you want to add something that wasn't captured before, like an e-mail address, then you can just do it without having to rebuild all of your other records nor do you have to do any special reconfigurations to enter that information. Because Excel and Excel-like applications that are found in most office environments and the usage of this software shouldn't require much of any overhead or impact to the CIO office. You are tied to having to access the information through the computer (unless you follow Ron's example and make sure that the information is printable so it can be stored in a folder or binder.) But if you either put the files in a shared computer space (like a shared directory) or if you gave everyone a copy of the files that they can access from their computers then the fact that you have to access the information through the computer shouldn't be too much of a hindrance.

As Wally mentioned you have multiple ways of storing the information in the files: you can put the information in individual files for each company, or you can group the information in groupings that make since for your office (like video, animals, models, etc) and put the information in multiple tabs in the appropriate file. Or you could even put all of the information in one file and let the person use the Find function to search through to find whatever they are looking for by any word that makes since to them to identify the information they want.

If you put the file(s) in a shared area then it would be a good process to make sure that the information is backed-up. It would be easy for an accident or even a disgruntled employee to erase or damage the information in the shared area. The backup or protection plan that is implemented should be coordinated with the CIO office. It is likely that they might be able to help or they might have some lessons-learned from others who require files that are in a shared area.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Wally. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.

Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your third interview

2007-10-11T21:50:00.000-04:00

You've worked with Wally Franks for a few years. He's an all-around good guy. You feel that Wally is about as familiar with computers as the rest of the office staff. You know that Wally has worked in a number of other offices in the company and in other companies over the years. So, one day the two of you are sitting over by his desk and you start your interview.

Wally: Now that I've been thinking about this I remember going through all of this one other time.

You: Yea? I don't remember us (waving your hand around the office area) ever doing this before.

Wally: Oh, well, I remember back when I was working at Duncan Cow's (it was an advertising agency) and we wanted to keep track of people who would come in and help us out with photo shoots, props, lights, costumes, etc. We all sat around the table and tried to come up with a way to keep all of the information on these people in some type of order. This all came about because Shelly was the main person who used to contact all of these people. Whenever anyone wanted to get something done they would just yell out "hey Shelly!" and bam! she would be able to rattle off the information about who would be the right person to call for that type of light, or to get that type of model in for that look.

Well, then one day Shelly just didn't come into work anymore. We found out later that she had gotten a better offer from another company and just took it. I know they offered her a lot more money and all.

Wally gets a far off look for a minute.

Anyway, we had the contact information for just about everyone we had used for years in invoices and through correspondence so we had the information but it wasn't in quote real accessible end quote (Wally makes the quote symbols with his hands).

You: Yea? Great. So what did you all come up with?

Wally: Well, what we ended up with is a new Shelly.

You give Wally a quizzical look.

What I mean is that Neville Frank ended up getting all of the data together and he ended up passing the information out to the rest of the people who needed it. I don't mean that as if he was hording it or anything, it's just that he collected all of it and he kept the information up to date. If anyone found a new contact or ended up with new information for an existing contact then they would tell Neville.

You: Ok. So, how did he store the information and how did he give it to you all?

Wally: I'm getting to that, I'm getting to that.

You see, Neville liked to use the program Microsoft Excel. I think that might have been because he used to do so much budget work, from time to time helping out the front office and all. So, what he did was he setup a file for each of the main jobs that people would do for us. Like he had one file that listed all of the people who could come in with trained animals for photo and video shoots. And another file for the people who did graphics design work for us. The way he setup the information in each of the files is, well, you know that in Excel you have a way of putting information in tabs. Well, he made a separate tab for each company or person. He didn't really do anything special with the cells or formatting the information using any special formulas and such.

You: Ok. So what did you do when Neville wasn't there? Did you go to his computer and look the information up? What if he was on the phone and you couldn't access his computer?

Wally: Well, he did the collection of the information but if you yelled over and asked Neville what the phone number for someone or what rate we used when working with this other person it is more than likely that he'd yell back "look it up yourself!"

You see, Neville would put the files out on a directory that all of us had access to. So if anyone wanted to go look up anything they would click on an icon that the Information Technology (IT) group put on our desktop and it would bring up a list of all of the files that Neville kept for us.

Now, some people would copy the files to their PC's so they could have their own copy. I know at least one person who did that. It seemed that Ron always ended up going in and keeping all of the key files open on his PC. So whenever Neville or any of the rest of the people wanted to go in and do anything with the files they would get an error saying that the file was locked. After a few weeks of this everyone started getting on to Ron about this. So Ron started to making copies of the files on his machine and then everyone else was happy.

You: Huh. Ok. I guess I can understand why people might be upset.

Wally: Well, also Ron started going in and formatting the information so that way he could print it out. I'm not 100% sure just why Ron wanted printed copies. I never saw him actually use his printed copies, but I know he spent a good bit of time formatting the information just so it would look a certain way.

You: Great. So that worked for you all there? What do you think about us doing that here? Don't we have the same type of collection of data?

Wally: Well, you see. In some ways it worked for most of the people. Some of the people in the office never really got the hang of looking up the information. They would either keep some hand written notes on places they often contacted or they would ask someone else if they could find out what they were looking for. It's not that they couldn't understand Excel. It's just that for them it was more of a problem than a helper. But I think you'll always have that. One of the things that we had there and I'm not sure if anyone here would want to be the Neville for us here to collect and enter all of the information in Excel. I think it might work but we should talk to everyone else. For some reason I think that some of these people want something other than just using Excel to store the info on our customers.

Wally shrugs

You: Thanks Wally. I'll keep looking to see what other options are out there.

You get up to walk away

Wally: Also, remember that the IT people will need to make sure that there are backups to those files. It's easy for someone to get into the files looking for information and they end up reformatting or mixing all of the information when all they wanted to do was a sort. We lost about a weeks worth of information once. Neville was so mad when that happened.

Wally turns back to his computer.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your Wally interview.

Overview of Case Studies

2007-10-10T18:36:00.000-04:00

Below we have the list of case studies that have been included in this lesson. The lesson will guide you step-by-step through the lessons. Or you can manually select to review any of the case studies in any order you wish. We have included in the table below notes to identify the different case studies. These sections are: (1) identification of who provide the information for the case study, (2) what perspective(s) are associated with the case study, and (3) what theme(s) are associated with the case study.

#	ID of person	Perspective	Theme
1.	Tim Mayfield	friend who works at the same company	Printed output, centralized, low IT overhead
2.	Aunt Polly	family, works outside the company	Printed output or electronic, centralized, low IT overhead
3.	Wally Franks	Office co-worker	Electronic, centralized or individual, low IT overhead
4.	Kathy Duncan	Long time friend	Electronic, individual, low IT overhead
5.	Gail Simmons	Office co-worker	Electronic, centralized, low IT overhead
6.	Denise Pale	Neighbor	Electronic, centralized or individual, medium IT overhead
7.	Dan Magnus	Non-office co-worker	Electronic, centralized, medium-high IT overhead
8.	Casey Russell	Office co-worker	Electronic, centralized, low IT overhead
9.	Matt Cunningham	IT-type friend	Electronic, centralized, high IT overhead
10.	Jamie Swabach	Non-office co-worker	Electronic, centralized, very high IT overhead

Interview Two Pros and Cons List

2007-10-10T17:02:00.000-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
just about any word processor or note pad software will work.	Aunt Polly mainly focused on printed folder as a storage option
word processing software is common in most work environments.	You have no data standardization on the information as it is entered in the word processing file
with a word processor you do not need a specific set of data structures since you can put the information in any format anywhere on the page	Difficult to index information since main sorting is only by directory structure or search for in a file text search options that can be found in some OS's.
flexibility in storing all data into single file or multiple files	If you use a single point for storing the information (printed in book or single computer) then you have to physically go there to look at the information
if using electronic files you have the flexibility in storing them in a single computer or allowing multiple people to access the information through a file sharing network option.	If you use electronic files then most OS's will not give any access control to limit the changing or erasing of the content of the files by accident or disgruntled employees
if your word processor has the capability you can imbed other bits of information if you have it (e.g., pictures of the customer or key employees from the identified company)	With most word processing programs on most OS's the first person to open the file has full permissions to change information. While that person keeps the file open anyone else opening the file is normally forced into a read-only version of the file.
If electronic files are the choice for this effort then backing up of the files is something that can be performed manually or automatically (based on your information technology infrastructure.)	Printed files stored in a binder are more difficult to backup than electronic files but they can be done through a manual process.

Interview Two Lessons Summary

2007-10-10T17:01:00.001-04:00

We'll cover some of the advantages and disadvantages of Aunt Polly's recommendations in the pros and cons list later. Right now let's look at a summary of the lessons that have been noted after this interview.

Well, Aunt Polly suggested what would be a single folder printout of the information that could be kept in a central location. Aunt Polly did discuss the fact that a word processor could be used not only for the generation of this single folder but it could also be a way to store the data. As noted in the first interview where Tim mentioned keeping a card catalog if you use the single folder option then you still have a single location where all of the information would be stored and it would normally require you to cross the office to get to where the folder is sitting. If you choose to keep the printed information in the single folder then you can still keep any electronic files as backups in case someone can't find or something happens to the printed folder.

Another approach is where you use the word processor as the main data storage option and only keep a printed copy as your file or backup copy for emergencies or accidents that could cause you not to have access to the electronic word processor files. One advantage of this is that most people in an office setting can work with some type of word processor software package. And again just as with the card file option from the first interview you are not limited to any specific structure when storing your data. You have a blank sheet of paper that you can use as you see fit to store your information. And if you want to include new information then you just enter it wherever you deem appropriate. You can keep the information in a single file or you can use multiple files to store the information. Also by keeping the information in the word processor files most OS's used in current office settings allow you to have up to 255 characters in the file names which will give you plenty of options for descriptive file names. And by adding directories to the mixture you can expand the options for storing the information in some form of indexed systems. So, for example you have a file named "susan_grey-company_president.doc" and you had that file in a directory "abc_corp-austin_texas". Then you could have all of the files for the ABC Corporation that is located in Austin, TX in that one directory. And you could find the file for Susan Grey just by looking in the file directory.

Aunt Polly also touched on the idea of having all of the electronic files on one system (either on a single person's system or on a separate system in the office). And while there can be some merits in this approach if you have a Local Area Network (LAN) or some type of file sharing capability in your office you might be better off with putting the files in some type of shared or communal area where everyone in the office can access the files from their individual computers.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Aunt Polly. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.

Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper (or use part of the other piece you used before) and your favorite writing instrument and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your second interview

2007-10-10T16:31:00.000-04:00

Your Aunt Polly "Pauline" used to work as what is now known as an administrative assistant. You go to her to ask her opinion on keeping the information on your customers. You figure that she should have a good bit of experience working with others in an office environment and you feel that her input will be valuable. So, over a plate of cookies you talk...

Aunt Polly:Let me see if I understand this. You want to keep a list of your customers like their names, who they work for, their phone numbers, etc. Everyone in the office will need to look at this information every once in awhile. But because someone may end up talking to a customer you talked to you don't want to just keep the information just by yourselves? Well, back when I was with Wee, Cheat'Em, and Howe we used to keep a book with all of the main points of contact with all of the local law enforcement, judges, clerks, and the like. And when any of us wanted to call one we would just get the book and call them. I mean, each of us used to keep copies of the main people we called all the time on a piece of paper on our blotters near the phone.

Do people still use blotters?

You nod your head

Anyway, I would say you should use a word processor. That way you can keep a sheet on each person with whatever information you want. Then you could just print the sheet and put it in the book. It won't matter really who keeps the files since you'll have the printed copies in the book. And if you want to jot down some notes on someone you can just write on the paper. If you want more than one sheet (after you've written on the back side) you can just put the person's name and such on the next sheet and staple or paperclip it to the other sheet.

You: So you recommend we use a word processor to keep the information but mainly we would print out the sheets and keep them in a book?

Aunt Polly: Yes.

You: Why wouldn't you just keep the files on the computer and if you want to look up someone you would just open their file?

Aunt Polly: I guess you can do it that way, but if you want to keep them all on a single computer and just go to that computer to look at the files then you could. pause But wouldn't that take up more space than just keeping a book? And if you want to look at a sheet then you could just take it from the book while someone else is looking up other information. You can't both be on the same computer at the same time.

Aunt Polly shakes her head

You: Ok. How would you know what file belongs to what person?

Aunt Polly: Well, we used to use the first letter of their first name and then six letters of their last name.

You: Well, I'm not sure. I know of two J. Johansson's that are our customers.

Aunt Polly: Oh, well, you have 8 letters to use so you just use the last as a number. We never had more than 9 of anyone in our office records.

You are thinking that Aunt Polly thinks the file names are still 8 characters and a three letter extension. You mentally file away that in this case you could put the persons name and company name as the file name without many problems.

You: Thanks Aunt Polly.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from your second interview.

Interview One Pros and Cons list

2007-10-10T16:18:00.000-04:00

Here is a Pros and Cons list that has been generated by the instructors for this course and has been enhanced by input from other students.

*Pros*	*Cons*
not software dependent	manual (written)
portable (cards can be carried)	written (non-electronic) make duplication more difficult
not dependent on computer	you must physically access the location of the cards to view the information (walk to the card file)
no required data structure (beyond limits on of writing on card)	even printing from different people can be difficult to understand so interpreting information might be an issue
Can be re-indexed without being required to rebuild the data by just putting the cards in another order.	No real data standardization enforced on the information as it is written on the card

Interview One Lessons Summary

2007-10-08T15:04:00.000-04:00

Key factors that Tim brought up will be listed in the pros and cons list. Some of the key things to think about are that it would be very free form in that you are not required to specify ahead of time how many characters you need since you have the entire index card to store information in any manner you want. If you make a change to what information you want to include (like one of your customers gives you their e-mail address) then you can just add a new field to the front of the card. Only index cards with that entry will have an e-mail address. Since you are not at all tied to the computer you have no worries about having to get any information technology approval from your CIO. But you are in a vary manual process and if you want to make copies or backup of your customer information then you’ll need to either hand write out or Xerox the cards so you can have a copy in case something happens.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Tim. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.

Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.

Your first interview

2007-10-08T14:18:00.000-04:00

You decided to start off your fact finding interviews with a co-worker. Tim doesn’t work in your office but you’ve known Tim Mayfield for years and you get along well with him. So you sat down with him, pulled out your miniature tape recorder, and laid out the issue as you see it. This is a transcript of the key points that were discussed.

Tim: Well, my recommendation would be to do this. Get an index card holder and put it up near the front of the office. Then you make up an index card for every one of your customers. And everyone else in the office makes up a card for every one of their customers. Then you put all of the index cards in the card holder. When you sort through them you’ll find any duplicate cards.

You: What do you do if you have duplicate cards?

Tim: Well, if the information is the same then you can just throw one of the cards away. If one person has information that the person who wrote the other card didn’t then get the two people to sit down and determine what will be the official information for that customer. Now, all of this is pointed at that first set of information you have on the customer. Each of you will be putting your own notes on the card as you work with the customer.

You: But Tim, isn’t using cards kinda out of the 50’s. I mean… people stopped even using card catalogs in libraries years ago. Do you really think that we can use index cards for this?

Tim: Sam, I’m just trying to answer your questions. You said you wanted to know how I would do this and I like cards. I don’t like to have to worry about contacting my clients if my computer is down. I just open up my rolodex and I can pick up the phone and I can reach out and touch someone. If you put all of your eggs in one basket then what do you do if that computer goes down? Or if the company stops making that software? There are many reasons why cards are such an easy way to keep customer information. I mean if you want to go visit them then just pull out the card, pop it into your pocket and off you go. All of the information is right there with you.

But, since you’ll have multiple people wanting to look at this information then you might just jot down some of the information on another card to take with you, or you all can maintain your own individual cards on your most often contacted customers and the master set of cards would be there for everyone.

You: Ok. I can understand that. What are some other reasons?

Tim: Well, you don’t have to learn any software program. Just about anyone out of grade school could fill out and read out what’s on an index card. And if you have more information than what fits on a card then just add another card. Either staple them together or use some type of clip. Like this.

Tim pulls out a stack of about 15 or so index cards that are held together with a binder clip.

You see. This way the cards for one customer can stay together. And you can still fill them, index all of the cards any way you want, etc. I’m telling you… this is a good way to go.

You: Thanks Tim. I’ll think about this.

Now you can go ahead and look at a summary of lessons learned from this first interview.

Quick review and plan stage

2007-10-05T21:01:00.002-04:00

Quick Review
Ok. For a quick review:

You know that you want to keep a set of data on each of your customers.
You have a list of the data that we want to capture:
- Full Name
- Address
- Job Title
- Company
- Phone #
- Notes
You know that we might expand some of this information to allow us more search or indexing capability, but that will be determined more once we figure out the data storage unit we are going to use
You have to interview people to get ideas from others before you decide on an approach

The Plan
Now, for the plan. A recommendation is for you to tape record or make sure you keep copious notes when you are talking to people about the approaches that you could take when selecting a data storage option.

Looking around the office and thinking about your other friends and family you make up a list of people you feel are important to talk with about this decision. Right now you are on a fact finding mission. Make sure that when you are talking with these people that you don’t try and lead them into any one direction and also don’t just cut them off if you feel that their solution isn’t going to work for you. Hear them out.

At the end of your discussion with them step away and take some time to review your notes. Then make up a pros and cons list outlining your feelings about the benefits and disadvantages that you’re going to have with implementing a solution like what was described.

During your review you might find that you have to get other bits of information before you can make a decision. For example if your recommendation is going to cause your company to hire someone then you might want to find out what the cost and feasibility of hiring someone at this time. While your solution might be the best for your office it is possible that implementing the solution just might not be an option right now (going back to the example of having to hire someone.)

When you are ready go ahead and read you the notes from your first interview.

Glossary

2007-10-05T21:01:00.001-04:00

CFO: Chief Financial Officer
CIO: Chief Information Officer

Contextual review of your data

2007-10-05T11:17:00.001-04:00

Ok Sam, we know from a broad prospective what information you want to gather about your customers. Now let's try and define a little bit more of just what these bits of data really mean.

You might want to know why we are doing this. Well, the main reason is that by defining more about just what the data is will help you to know if you are really gathering all of the information you want and that you are gathering the information in a way that can help you later.

Let’s look at each of the bits of information you want to gather and with each bit of information let’s talk a little bit about each. Included with each bit of info is a set of questions to help you define the information a little bit more:

Full name: We already said that you want to include the Mr., Ms, Mrs., etc in your data. Now, do you want to put this in with the full name or do you want to keep it separate? At the same time you said you wanted the full name are you looking at keeping that information together or are you going to separate the information into two bits of info? And how are you going to handle nicknames? One approach to this could be where you include all of the information in one field. In that case your data for this bit of information could look like [Mr. Timothy (Tim) Mayfield] (without the [ ] symbols.) This way you have all of the information together, and you have identified that he likes to be called Tim. Another approach could be where you divide the information into multiple bits so that you have one bit for Title [Mr. or Mrs., etc.], another for First Name [Timothy], another for Last Name [Mayfield], and another for Nickname [Tim]. This approach would be good if later you wanted to quickly sort by last name for example. Based on these two example approaches you can see that you are only going to be entering text data into this bit/these bits of data. How long you make each bit of data will be determined by the approach you take. If you use the multiple bits of information then each of them will have a different length, but you can guess as a standard rule that the bits could be 15 (first name), 30 (last name), 4 (title), and 12 (nickname) in length. If you use the combined approach then you would add all of them up and include 3 for the spaces between the bits.
Job Title: Well, for the most part this can be a simple fill-in text field. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to break this bit of information into multiple bits. As a standard rule this bit of information would normally be about 40 characters in length.
Company: There are two main approaches for this bit of information that you could use here: (1) maintain the information listing all of the companies your company works with in a separate data list and link that list to this as a selection option, or (2) leave this as a simple fill-in text field. Except for where noted in this lesson we are going with the assumption that you are going to use the simple fill-in text field for this bit of information. The reason is that later when we talk about different approaches that you can take some of them would give you the ability to leverage option one and others would never give you that cross-data relationship capability. Also, the rule for this bit of information is about 25 characters in length should hold this data.
You may be wondering why it would be worth the extra trouble to do something other than a simple fill-in text field. Well, that boils down to data integrity and when you start talking about huge database sets where there are hundreds of thousands to millions and hundreds of millions of records then you’ll see why you want to keep the integrity of your data.
Phone: With the phone for the most part we have a fill-in text field holding about 14 characters since the standard American phone number is formatted as: (123) 456-7890. Now, there can be discussions on only having the person enter the numbers and letting the data application (if you are using one) actually format the numbers to include the braces around the area-code and putting the middle dash in the main number set. Or you can leave it as an unformatted field. Since we are not looking into having this number actually acted upon by the computer (that is you won't be selecting it and having the computer dial the phone for you) then for this discussion we are not going to deal with specialized formatting or anything.
Address: When it comes to the address bit of data you have a similar discussion and decision path that we covered in the full name in that you could have all of the information stored in one block or you could break it down into multiple bits of data. For example, you could break the address bits into what is a more commonly seen approach: Address 1 [1 Main Street], Address 2 [Apt. 301], City [Sembach], State [TX], Zip [78125]. This way you could do more sorting or even some analysis on the data easier than if you put all of the data into one data set. The main key point here is "what are you going to do with the information right now and in the future?" If you think you'll never need to actually want to quickly, for example, list all of your customers who live in Virginia then putting all of the address in one data bit would be fine. By putting all of the information together does make it easier for you when you are going to be selecting your data storage approach because your data is less complex. But by using the less complex (all of the data in one bit) might hinder you if you later decide that you want that informaton broken out. To give yourself the maximum flexibility you should plan on requiring about 40 characters each for the Address 1, Address 2, and City. And two characters for State and 5 for Zip. If you are doing all of this in one data set then just add all of those numbers up and you would want to set aside about 127 characters of space.
Notes: In the Notes section you are going to be putting in information of a general nature that you and your co-workers might want to keep ongoing about your relationship with the customer. Really what you put in here would depend more on the services or support that you are providing to your customer and your business model rather than any specific data-centric definition of what goes into a notes section. The recommendation would be for you to allow as much space as possible based on your data storage approach. For now just consider this data set to be no less than 240 characters, and if possible based on the data storage method chosen this would be considered a memo field.

Now that we've talked about some of the context and structure you will be using when you are gathering and identifying the information you are going to be keeping on/about your customers we should move on to the problem constraints that need to be addressed.

About your problem

2007-10-03T19:36:00.001-04:00

Sam, here is a little information about the problem you've been given. Your boss (Molly) has asked that you look at the information that you and each of your co-workers maintains on each of your customers. After sitting down with each of your co-workers (Wally, Tom, Gail, Dale, and Casey) you have come up with the following bits of information for each of your customers:

Full name (with Mr., Ms., Mrs., etc.)
Job Title
Company
Phone Number
Address
Notes

So, now that you have the information identified you need to look at why type of information you want to save for each of these bits of info. What do we mean by type of information? Well, that is another way of saying that we want to put this all into a context that we both understand and agree upon. Click here to continue to the contextual review of your data.

Problem constraints

2007-10-02T17:15:00.000-04:00

You've looked at the the overall problem and you have identified a set of information that you want to collect and organize for each of your customers. Now we need to talk about some of the limitations and constraints that could possibly impact your use of or approach on storing, searching, accessing, and updating this information.

Your boss (remember that's Molly) and your co-workers have passed on some of the things they see as overall limitations and constraints that must be placed on your overall choice for data storage:

You, your co-workers, and your boss must all be able to access the information while at work

You have a limited budget with which to work with when you want to implement your data storage solution. Molly won't tell you what that budget is yet since she's going to have to go to your CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for the funds. But you need to know there will be a limited budget for this project.

All of the people in your office are fairly computer literate and they feel they will have no problem learning any computer application that they might interact with. That isn't to say you might not have to include training for them; but they all feel that given "off the shelf" training (e.g. books, in class instruction, on-line tutorials) that they should be able to handle it.

You will have to get approval for any software that you want installed or any type of server setup in the company from the CIO (Chief Information Officer). This is because the CIO is responsible for all of the computer systems and has approval/rejection authority for any thing that is information technology related.

You have a total of three weeks to do your research and to come up with a proposal to Molly. Molly will review your proposal and if she agrees with it then she’ll make sure it’s carried out.

And that’s it for the main constraints that you are under right now for this problem. It is possible as you continue through this lesson other constraints might come up based on decisions that you make in coming up with your recommendation of a solution to this data storage problem.

When you are ready continue on let’s do a quick review and plan before we start asking people about how they have solved previous data storage problems.