Island Web Works

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

When we blogged about the new client/server model of MIGTurbo CRM 2, we gave a hint as to how we see users interacting with the product. This post discussed how the database server was “hidden” behind the MIGTurbo application server. But if the user cannot connect to the MIGTurbo database directly, how can they use MIGTurbo?

MIGTurbo CRM 2 brings with it a comprehensive API for extending the product both at the server level, and at the client-level. Using this API, we can provide secure access to MIGTurbo data using nothing more than a server URI, a username and a password. We’re going to include two “clients” out of the box.

MIGTurbo CRM 2.0 Silverlight Client

The MIGTurbo CRM product demands a rich user interface that is a pleasure to use, as it is often the key component on a user’s desktop. We were keen on retaining a web user interface, but we didn’t want to find ourselves working around the complexities of web pages and utilitising toolkits that were stretching the web experience to its limit. We developed a number of mock-ups using web page-based user interfaces but felt that we still lacked the killer customisation and user-driven experience we required. Until we created a mock-up in Microsoft Silverlight.

Microsoft Silverlight is a rich internet application (RIA) platform that allows development of web experiences that combines the mashing together of web data and technologies and a rich user experience. While it is implemented in much the same way as Adobe Flash, it is actually a richer and more comprehensive platform. Silverlight brings with it a subset of the .NET Framework, building on existing APIs such as WCF and WPF. Much of the code between server and client can be shared, and using the Microsoft stack, we were able to create an attractive and extensible user interface on business data. We’ve remained loyal to our user interface, too, as you’ll see in upcoming screenshots.

Using Silverlight, it is also possible to “install” MIGTurbo locally. This “out of browser” experience creates an icon in your Start Menu that behaves in most ways as if the software was installed locally on your own machine. This reduces the gap to the server, but it is important to note that MIGTurbo will continue to run in all the major browsers on the Windows platform (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc.) and also the Apple Mac platform.

Silverlight remains amongst the most secure application platforms available on the internet today. It also is not standing still. The upcoming release of Silverlight 4 promises interoperability with desktop applications, webcams and more. Rumours abound of Silverlight appearing on mobile devices being announced in the MIX10 event from the newly rebranded Windows Phone to Symbian devices. If you’re in doubt, check these trends out for people investigating Silverlight as opposed to ASP.NET on Google.

MIGTurbo CRM 2.0 Office Client

Not all users will need to use MIGTurbo for their day-to-day work. And not all users work in a web browser silo to fulfil their function. That is why MIGTurbo CRM 2.0 will extend the successful Outlook Toolbar add-on to provide more functionality direct from Microsoft Office.

Users of our Outlook Toolbar have seen how integrating with MIGTurbo and MIGTurbo DocuMentor has made their job dealing with items in their inbox much easier, especially when relating communication back to clients, respondants and candidates. We’re building on this functionality to dig deeper into MIGTurbo, providing features from across the product including any plug-ins. The MIGTurbo toolbar will appear in Microsoft Outlook and will also soon appear in Microsoft Word and Excel. You won’t be far from MIGTurbo, whatever your role may be.

This is possible using the MIGTurbo CRM 2 API. We’re already starting to hear expressions of interest on how our clients can utilise this API for themselves to extend our existing user interfaces and build entirely new ones for their own specific purposes. The API is secure and uses the Microsoft stack so will be readily portable onto desktop, web and portable devices.

These posts discuss features of MIGTurbo CRM 2. While we have every confidence that these features will appear and work as discussed, these blog posts do not represent a final product specification. We will release final product specifications at launch.

Nathan MIGTurbo CRM 2 MIGTurbo 2.0, MIGTurbo Outlook Toolbar, Silverlight, User Experience (UX)

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

With the development of version 2 of MIGTurbo, we soon realised that we needed to revitalise the MIGTurbo branding to reflect both the major leap in technology and the potential present in the new version.  After all, this is our first full version upgrade with a completely new code base (we’re not using a single line of code from the previous 1.x versions).

The first thing we needed to address was the MIGTurbo logo itself.  The logo had undergone a slow and gradual evolution over the years, but essentially stayed the same square white and blue badge as it was in our first release in 2002.  For the new version we wanted to illustrate the solidity and adaptability of the software, but at the same time hint at how easy MIGTurbo is to use.  After much discussion we agreed on replacing the badge with a glassy sphere.  The shape of a sphere is simple, smooth and efficient, and making it look like glass gives it an impression of being heavy and solid whilst at the same time being transparent and clear.  The name MIGTurbo was also moved out of the logo and placed alongside to make it easier to read.  In addition, the abbreviation ‘CRM’ was added to clarify the purpose of the product.

With the logo now in place, we moved on to the supporting branding.  For the last couple of years we’ve been using our ‘Blue sky’ concept together with the tag line ‘Simply a better way…’ which has served us well.  This would not work with our new logo however; a different concept was needed.  The fact that MIGTurbo is business critical for many of our clients gave the idea that MIGTurbo is like the DNA of a business; a centra-lised carrier of  information necessary for everyday operation.  That resulted in the tag line ‘MIGTurbo - The DNA of your business’.  That, in turn, gave us the concept of DNA strands and we tried out several different backdrops based on that idea until we finally settled on a multi strand swoosh sprinkled with bubbles representing DNA base pairs.

The end result is a brand that feels modern and fresh but still distinctly business-like.  We are rather pleased with it.  What do you think?

We are planning to integrate the new branding on our Twitter channel and our MIGTurbo web site.

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

Andreas MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo CRM 2 Branding, Logo, MIGTurbo 2.0

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

Over the past year, we’ve been hard at work developing the new evolution of our key business intelligence product, MIGTurbo 2.0. MIGTurbo is a successful CRM product running in many client sites both on and off the island. During its lifetime, we’ve come to understand what our users want and how they work. One aspect we have come to learn is how users configure their servers.

A key trend that has developed in the last 5 years is virtualisation. Virtualisation allows companies to extract more efficiency out of their existing hardware platform by creating virtual instances of servers running on the same physical hardware. If implemented well, this can result in benefits such as:

• efficiencies in leveraging under-used CPU cycles by planning and scheduling server activity accordingly
• separating server processes to provide a layer of protection from configuration issues when processes compete for finite resources
• provides redundancy and an additional backup strategy to maximise uptime and reduce maintenance costs

Having virtualisation in mind when working on MIGTurbo 2.0, we were able to re-architect MIGTurbo to work well within both virtualised and existing physical environments. A key change we have made to this new version is to extract the “engine” of MIGTurbo from an IIS-hosted application to a self-contained server process. This allows MIGTurbo to operate independently of IIS and its configuration for its core operation, and providing a host for autonomous activities such as workflow, caching, index building and security services.

A key benefit for us is that as MIGTurbo develops, we can decide whether features are user-oriented, or system-oriented. System-oriented features such as security indexes can be built and maintained on the server at no cost to the user’s experience.

This positions MIGTurbo in the ideal position for businesses of just about any size. From a one-man business with a server in the corner to an organisation with thousands of users across different sites, MIGTurbo has a deployment model that will work.

The diagram below illustrates a typical “top-end” installation.

MIGTurbo Server deployment

The diagram shows three servers managing the MIGTurbo installation. These can be independent physical boxes, some or all of them could be virtualised on a single box, or different processes can be brought on to the same box as required by the company and available on the existing infrastructure. The Web Server continues to be the “point of contact” for MIGTurbo users who will fire up their browsers in the usual manner to interact with the software. Using the new API, new user interface clients can be created which interact with the web server or directly with the MIGTurbo server engine itself, for added performance.

A final benefit to this is that it moves the sensitive raw data further away from the end user. In a security conscious organisation, firewalls can be implemented between each server to maximise the security of the SQL Server databases used to store business critical and highly sensitive data. We’ve also used secure communications between the client and various components of MIGTurbo to further increase security. The diagram below shows that MIGTurbo maintains a secure database even when deployed over the internet using a DMZ configuration:

MIGTurbo working within a DMZ firewall

Moving the MIGTurbo engine out of IIS also allows us to provide additional functionality that would otherwise have been difficult from within the security-restricted context of IIS. Services such as instrumentation using Windows Performance Monitors can be created to allow real-time monitoring of MIGTurbo performance along with other functions that require deeper interaction with the operating system. Configuration is also made easier as IIS dependencies are reduced to only those services required to support the user interface.

Profiling MIGTurbo using Windows Performance Monitor

We believe that this change will form an important platform to allow us to take MIGTurbo to a new level. MIGTurbo has been growing with your business since v1.8, now it can grow with your IT hardware policy to maximise performance for individual users.

These posts discuss features of MIGTurbo CRM 2. While we have every confidence that these features will appear and work as discussed, these blog posts do not represent a final product specification. We will release final product specifications at launch.

Nathan MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo CRM 2 MIGTurbo 2.0, Virtualisation

Yesterday saw the Isle of Man section of the British Computing Society host a talk by Gabriel Karawani on Sharepoint and the benefits it can bring as a Document Management  solution. The BCS regularly host events such as this, which range from soft-skills to harder, technical topics. Overall, a wide mix that should suit most tastes.

As a regular attendee, I was keen to invite Charles down to the presentation to see how other people implement and use Microsoft SharePoint.

The presentation consisted of a fair chunk of marketing-speak, with a brief case-study thrown in. I found it interesting when Gabriel (the presenter) asserted that most people spend a lot of their day interacting with Microsoft Outlook. To this end, he demonstrated SharePoint as an add-on to the standard Outlook interface.

The question is, do people use Outlook because it is a reliable and effective interface for working with other applications such as document management, client management, etc., or because as Outlook is a de-facto business standard which leaves them feeling as if they no have other choice? The interface that was demonstrated felt a little clunky as a result.

What became clear from the presentation is that utilising SharePoint is hardly a case of  ”turn it on and go”. The product represents the foundations of what you could accomplish, given sufficient time and allocation of IT resources whether internally or externally.

When you put it alongside other, more feature complete, systems we deal with such as our own DocuMentor product which comes as part of MIGTurbo CRM, or the Laserfiche Document management solution, it becomes clear that businesses don’t necessarily work the way Microsoft think they do - or should. Nor do they have the resources required to “complete” the job.

We’ve had a number of discussions within the office about the MIGTurbo experience, and where it should lie. Should we leverage the existing power and user experience built around the Microsoft Outlook/Exchange product, or develop a product alongside it that itself would form the hub of a user’s day? The answer is a mix of these. What is key, however, is being able to draw on our experience with working with businesses to facilitate a working procedure that mirrors their business processes and requirements.

In moving forward, we’re certainly going to maintain our focus on the MIGTurbo CRM product as being the force mejeure behind many of our client’s businesses, but we will keep a keen eye on what infrastructure is already within the business, such as Microsoft Exchange for working with scheduling and communications and Microsoft SharePoint when working with documents. It seems to be a logical move to be able to provide users with the option of combining MIGTurbo with their existing infrastructure, which may have its own eco-system of plug-ins and processes essential to the business. MIGTurbo CRM 2 is certainly going to be an exciting product.

Nathan MIGTurbo Document Management, DocuMentor, Exchange, LaserFiche, MIGTurbo 2.0, Outlook, SharePoint

As Charles alluded to in his last post, MIGTurbo 2.0 is coming on apace, with no lack of focus on maintaining its high levels of usability. We’ve been thrashing a number of ideas around in various forms to try and come up with a system for Securing data with the flexibility required by regulatory and legislative requirements but without losing usability and comprehension. We hope to post more on how this is going in the next few days, including some of the first screenshots from our new product.

The “other” big product announcement you may have heard about is the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) of Windows 7 by Microsoft. Windows 7 is what many see as what Vista should have been and has been widely accepted and praised as being an outstanding improvement not only on Windows XP, but also Windows Vista. Microsoft really seem to have pulled it out of the bag this time, with one user claiming to have installed it on a 266MHz Pentium II with 96Mb of RAM. If you’re already using Windows 7 in its Release Candidate or if you’re lucky enough to have a copy of the RTM, try these Keyboard Shortcuts which really open up usability when working with windows on your desktop. Some of them will also work in Vista. Try them out, you’ll be surprised what you didn’t know. Our favourite? Windows+Shift+Left/Right to move windows between monitors.

Staying with Microsoft, there’s been a widely publicised outpouring of grief resentment over the continued use of their old Internet Explorer 6 browser. Twitter and various other sources have mounted a number of campaigns to try and encourage users to ditch the IE6 browser in favour of more modern versions such as IE 7 or 8. IE 6 has been the bane of web developer’s lives, with its quirky rendering mechanism and requirements for bad practices in order to force web pages to work as the designer intended. We’d all like to see it pass on, but reality will see that there are many reasons why the browser will hang around for a few more years yet, not least of which is Microsoft’s commitment to support the operating system it shipped with till 2014. Persuading users who are visiting YouTube, Orkut or other sites which are now actively eschewing the IE6 browser is one thing, but persuading corporate IT departments to move away from IE6 is quite another. Coupled with the requirements of IE7 being Windows XP or later, existing Windows 2000 users don’t even have the choice. As such, IE6 continues to represent a sizeable chunk of browser traffic.

In the office, the debate continues about the benefits or otherwise of Office 2007’s new ribbon interface, an interface that has been extended to the rest of the Office suite of products in the 2010 Technical Preview. The detractors have a very valid point in that it significantly reduces usability for users who just want to “get the job done” as they have been trained. My own discussions on Twitter this week highlighted the other side of the argument, which is that maintaining legacy user-interfaces is detrimental to innovation.

Twitter conversation with @alexdegroot

It would be nice to achieve a happy medium, much like the Lotus 1-2-3 emulation mode previously in Excel to try and entice old-school Lotus 1-2-3 users over to the product. I guess when it comes to migrating users who have already “bought in” to your product it becomes a less viable feature proposition. Two of the guys on the Office development team at Microsoft have built a site dedicated to soliciting user feedback, cunningly titled “Make Office Better“. As most users in businesses spend most of their time in Microsoft Office, it’s perhaps an opportunity to drive the future of the product from the “grass-roots”. (It’s also got a great logo.)

Nathan Friday Feeling Internet Explorer 6, MIGTurbo 2.0, Office 2007, Office 2010, Windows 7

With the new user interface in MIGTurbo 2 coming together, we were faced with the daunting task of replacing the existing set of icons.  In older versions of MIGTurbo we have been using pixel-based 16×16px icons, just like the ones you find in older versions of Windows (pre-XP).  Whilst they’ve been serving us well, we thought a new set of vector-based icons would suit the new Graphical User Interface (GUI) better.

So, considering we’re currently using more than 350 icons in MIGTurbo, how to go about getting a replacement set?

First we looked at commercially available icon libraries, but we soon hit a couple of problems. To start with, existing libraries are subject to a range of complicated licence schemes, where you might or might not be able to use the purchased icons in distributable software products (whilst it’s true that MIGTurbo is a web based solution, it’s not after all a single hosted web site).  Secondly, finding a set of icons in a suitable style catering for our rather specific needs proved to be difficult.

In the end we found it more convenient to create the replacement set ourselves.  This gave us full control to add and/or modify icons to suit our needs, and obviously licencing wouldn’t be an issue either! Also, it was quite rewarding to get an opportunity to work in Illustrator again.

So, what at first seemed to be a daunting prospect turned out to be the easiest solution - with the added bonus of getting a unique one-of-the-kind icon set!

Below you can view a small subset of the new icons - I think they turned out quite well!

Andreas MIGTurbo Graphical User Interface (GUI), GUI, icons, MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo 2.0, User Experience (UX)

You may recall we’ve been working on improving the speed of MIGTurbo 2.0 further by making various optimisations in the call to the server and its response to the client (your web browser). Having set the precedent and the model to use, this work continues.

Our new Security Editor for MIGTurbo 2.0 builds on our existing security mechanism in MIGTurbo 1.8 and 1.9 by introducing Roles and Rules. Without going into too much detail at this stage, this will provide users with an elegant and flexible solution for securing their system, whether they prefer MIGTurbo “locked down” or with more liberal access. The customer decides, not the software.

It’s important we get the user interface for this right, as it is a new concept and we need to be sure that users can jump on board with the new flexibility this offers. If you’ve used Windows file permissions, you’ll quickly become au fait with the new interface. 

Using the same technique, by using AJAX and web services to circumvent the traditional web page processing pipeline, interaction times were cut again. In fact, moving rules up and down the list occured so fast you couldn’t be sure if it had actually happened. Using AJAX means that we can update the page seamlessly, so can change small elements of the page with no-one but the most eagle-eyed users noticing. Using web services, we can do it faster. 

This presented us with a problem. We actually needed to slow down the interface to provide the user the reassurance that something had actually happened. We’ve come up with a nice visual cue that takes 0.5 seconds to run through, but gives the user the confidence that something has actually occured.

Take a look at the first screenshot from MIGTurbo 2.0, albeit a very small one (we don’t want to give too much away just yet!)

I’ve just clicked the “Up” button to move the UserAdministration rule above the rule above it (thereby allowing UserAdministration members to perform this particular action). Instead of simple redrawing the rules, the rule “fades out” and then redraws. This gives a small and simple visual cue that something is happening. 

Another effect we’re working on is when deleting rules. In the same example, if I was to delete the rule by clicking the Delete icon, the rule is turned red, then faded out. This gives the impression that the rule has been “blown up”. Another simple cue that confirms something has happened without requiring any interaction or confirmation by the user.

We hope to add more of these interstitials to reinforce the actions that the user is performing within MIGTurbo 2.0. They don’t just provide a key aspect of a user experience, though, they also make the use of the product a little bit more fun (but don’t “blow up” too many things)!

Nathan MIGTurbo MIGTurbo 2.0, User Experience (UX)

It’s been a tough couple of days on the MIGTurbo CRM 2.0 project. I’ve been working on the code to Display and Edit Client Details. It’s nothing spectacularly complex or detailed, of course, but there was a niggling issue that was bugging me.

MIGTurbo 1.8 /1.9 is fast, very fast. So in writing next-generation code to replicate the functionality and speed users are used to, we need to make sure that we can maintain a similar level of user expectation. As with the commitment to maintain the User Experience in terms of user-interface, we also need to make sure users’ expectations of speed is maintained.

Traditionally, when editing a record on a web application, there is the inherent cost of applying the changes to the server, retrieving the latest details and updating the user interface. All quite costly. In the slowest tests performed in the last couple of days, this was taking up to 5 seconds. A lot of debug code, and support resources are involved here and this does not represents a “real-world” scenario, but even 2-3 seconds will give a feeling of “lag”.

Improving the speed of this was very important, and if we could do it using the same foundations we’re implementing for improving extensibility, then all the better. So, armed with acronyms and search terms, I set upon resolving the speed issue and tweaking the code to extract every bit of performance possible. Effectively, this has taken 2 days … to gain 4 seconds of performance. Now, a typical round trip takes less than half a second (in rough tests).

Was it worth it? Of course it was. Those 4 seconds, multipled by all our clients, multiplied by the number of times a user performs that single function and you get a significant time difference that exceeds 2 days. What would have taken a round trip of approximately 30Kb (even using AJAX - albeit ASP.NET AJAX) now takes a round trip of less than 200 bytes in a typical scenario. That’s a lot of bandwidth given back to the network and it all goes to ensuring MIGTurbo 2.0 remains an enterprise class CRM.

Just in time for the live streaming of The Gu’s Keynote at MIX09 and all without a Diet Coke, too.

Nathan MIGTurbo MIGTurbo 1.9, MIGTurbo 2.0, User Experience (UX)

Charles recently blogged about the challenges around making improvements to established products and designs. MIGTurbo is a successful CRM package and is evangelised and valued by its users. One of the reasons behind this, we believe, is the supremely simple and quick user interface. We are currently internally testing the next version, MIGTurbo 1.9, and this has a number of exciting new features which will further enhance the user experience - or ‘UX‘ to its friends.

So when moving towards the next major milestone in the MIGTurbo roadmap, MIGTurbo 2.0, it presents a challenge to us. While we are looking forward to being able to provide more features and better performance with a contemporary design, we must balance that with what we know has made the product such a success up until now … and that is the simplicity of the user-experience.

One thing I have really appreciated since joining Island Web Works is the opportunity for frank discussions about everything from the fundamentals of the Microsoft SQL Server Paging mechanism to the finer details of Natural Selection. These discussions have allowed me to come into the business as a new member of the team and also as a new and fresh user of the MIGTurbo application while still being able to contribute my opinions and outlandish statements without fear of tarnishing any egos. So when looking at what form the user experience of the 2.0 release should take, a full and frank discussion could be had. 

We quickly identified and agreed that we did not want to repeat Microsoft’s mistake with the Office 2007 user interface. Previous users of Office 2003 were able to use their years of experience using the world’s most popular office suite to create and manage their documents, spreadsheets and presentations with relative ease. Ever since Word 6.0, the user interface has been more or less consistent even as new features were added. Then, in 2007, Microsoft redesigned the entire user interface of the Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint products to use ‘Ribbons’. Sure, the Ribbons are beautiful, and I happen to prefer them, but most users just want to get the job done and when functions not only move but appear to disappear altogether, user unrest is sure to follow. So despite extensive usability testing and user experience workflow modelling when coming up with the Ribbon Experience, users are still rejecting the user interface due to requirements of loss of productivity and requirement of re-training staff. While we need to maintain a consistent experience with previous versions, one of the key components of the MIGTurbo 2.0 roadmap is extensibility, so we equally didn’t want to restrict any opportunities in the future. We need to be able to provide extra functionality, in new places, but not disturb the central usage workflow.

Our challenge is how to maintain a consistent user experience for those users who have used the product for years, while providing visible opportunities to help them get more out of their usage of the product - but at the user’s own pace. We are working on an experience which will mirror our existing UI design and associated benefits, but will also hint at opportunities to help users focus on the job in hand. One key example I use is a month-end procedure. We want to be able to facilitate everyday use whilst accommodating specialised use, so provide the regular “everyday view” but give enough cues to help the user realise that they can extend their view on the system to perform specialised procedures even easier than before. This did not happen with Office 2007.

After the discussions we have had both today and previously, I believe we have come up with a sensible compromise. We will be maintaining the experience as much as possible for users who are already used to the system by ensuring functions and data are where they always were. There won’t be any disappearing or moved functions, but there will be additional opportunities to get more from the user experience. We will achieve this by mirroring established design patterns that have proved to work. By adopting patterns such as the Task Bar, Breadcrumbs and Menu patterns along with Web 2.0 practices, we can benefit from existing user experience. When a new user uses the new MIGTurbo for the first time, they will already know how to use the menus, how to navigate between screens and why the application feels the way it does because they will have already used the techniques in other applications. When an existing user uses MIGTurbo 2.0, they’ll have a strong degree of familiarity based on their previous experience.

It’s too early to show screenshots as the UI framework that will hold the functionality, data and plug-ins together is still very much in flux. However, we are looking forward to involving users in the latter stages of the development of the user experience to further build on our impressions and experience using MIGTurbo and seeing other users use it, both the user and the seasoned expert. This will provide us with a valuable opportunity to see user reactions at first hand and give users a valuable opportunity to further influence the design of a product many users spend all of their office day with.

Nathan MIGTurbo MIGTurbo 1.9, MIGTurbo 2.0, Office 2007, User Experience (UX)