Hopefully spring is coming to your area of the country soon; I know I am definitely ready for some nicer weather!  I would like
to use this article to update you on the UFO and Summit.

I hope you enjoyed Summit as much as I did.  As always it is great to reconnect with old friends, meet new friends, and network with as many people as possible.  Summit is a great yearly platform to keep in touch with Eclipse, friends, and upcoming offerings.  Thank you to all who stopped by the booth and congratulations to drawing winners.  Also thanks to all who stopped me and other board members to discuss issues that are important to you and your company.  All of this feedback is very important and helps set the stage for our meetings with Activant.

The UFO Board had several important meetings during Summit:  Our yearly UFO board meeting, an informative dinner meeting with the P21 users group, and the UFO executive team meeting with the Activant executive team.

Our yearly UFO meeting had normal board updates concerning enhancements, training, and our in development website.  All three of these areas are making great progress and you will be hearing big things in the near future regarding even more UFO enhancements making it into the product, new and exciting training classes, and our new and very improved UFO website.  The board also agreed to host FREE training in the future so continue to keep your eyes on future announcements for details.  All very exciting!

During Summit we met with the P21 user group board to keep in touch and really try to learn from each other and what we can be doing to better the group for our user companies.

Wednesday evening of Summit the executive UFO board met with Activant's executive team.  This is our time to take all those suggestions, concerns, and fears in front of Kevin Roach and his executive team.  This also affords the Activant team the opportunity to hear what we are feeling.  At the end of the meeting we committed to working on several items, show progress, and then continue to build on that positive progress.  Here's a short list of those commitments:

-          Monitor the UFO boards as a group and if needed hold small town hall meetings to address.

-          Further commitment into getting UFO enhancements into Eclipse (12 UFO enhancements in the next release).

-          Review the System monitoring process and help everyone understand.

-          Develop Metrics (Support, Development, and resources) for the user base to follow.

-          Review the iSupport review process and improve.

-          Review the survey generated after a completed service request.  Possibly provide a section for just the SR and another section for Activant as a whole.

-          Continue to have face to face meetings.  We are hoping to have another face to face the end of this year.

The group attached timeframes to most of the items and committed to getting these items done.  It's great that the group committed to working together and tackling this list.  My hope is that we complete these items soon and then in our next meeting develop another list and then tackle those items.  Look for feedback on these in future articles.

So Summit was very successful in my eyes.  I hope to continue building on that success.  As always if you have any feedback don't hesitate to contact myself, Mary Barlow, or any other UFO board member.