eVantage

from AdvantageCS

July/August 2014

Aller Media Goes Live on Advantage

by Cindy Mikol

Aller Media's Danish operations are now live on Advantage, with Sweden, Finland, and Norway soon to follow. Aller Media is the leading publisher of weekly magazines in the Nordic countries with a weekly circulation of approximately 2.7 million issues.

At the onset of this multi-level, multi-phase complex project a year and a half ago, the Aller team set a go-live date of 19 May, 2014. And due to the hard work and long hours put in by many Aller and ACS people, that deadline was met.

The core Aller project team included staff with lead roles from across the business and included: Susanne Karll as the project manager, Martin Paluszewski as the integrations and IT lead, Maria Mortensen and Camilla Mørch as the customer service leads, Kirsten Wandall as the marketing and distribution lead, Michael Thomsen as the test manager, and Henrik Ambjørner as the finance lead, with many others providing support and guidance.

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AdvantageCS Welcomes New Employees

by Cindy Mikol

Aaron Ridenour

Aaron Ridenour has joined the engineering team led by John Moore. Aaron is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where he earned a degree in computer engineering.

Since he was eleven years old, Aaron has known he wanted to do something with computers, but it wasn't until his first programming class in his freshman year of college that he knew that "something" was programming.

A native of Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, Aaron now lives in Ann Arbor, near the university campus. When he isn't working, Aaron enjoys watching hockey and football. He plays some football as well and looks forward to his weekly poker night with friends. He is also an enthusiastic "gamer"--with Watch Dogs his current game of choice on his new PlayStation 4.

We welcome Aaron to the Advantage family!

Emily Lozon

The newest member in the ACS Client Services Division is Emily Lozon, who reports to Bill Pinard, special services team leader. Emily joins ACS from the University of Michigan, where she recently earned a degree in industrial and operations engineering.

With her aptitude in math, Emily knew early on that she wanted to be some sort of engineer. She chose industrial and operations because she likes understanding how things work and making them more efficient.

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Ben Sha

The ACS Product Development department--specifically, the team led by Toby Hartman--recently welcomed Ben Sha as its newest member. Ben is a graduate of the University of Michigan where he earned a degree in computer science.

Ben always knew he would pursue some sort of engineering but didn't choose his major until he attended his first computer programming class in college. Then he was hooked. He likes computer science because-as he puts it-"you can literally create something out of nothing." In mechanical or other engineering branches, he explains, you start with an existing product and then work to improve it or add to it. In computer science, however, "it's all ideas."

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Gainful Deployment

by Dick Hile

PRESENT CHALLENGES (SELF-PITY):

In the public sector, employment statistics loom large. Among the AdvantageCS software development team, deployment statistics are a far bigger concern. Throughout all the years I've worked with Advantage, tools and techniques for installing and upgrading the software have been a constant, if unheralded, focus. Ever since the cutover to .NET, though, there has been a distinct upward trend in the attention we pay to smoothly and successfully installing our software on clients' servers and integrating it with their customizations.

In this post I will recap recent developments and describe coming attractions.

Before getting into that, though, permit me to indulge in just a bit of self-pity about what a challenge we face. When I think about the behemoths of software delivery-- the Facebooks, Amazons and Googles of the world --my first thought is to be staggered by the software deployment challenges they face. Millions of users, hundreds of servers, multitudes of languages, dozens of development teams - all must be considered when rolling out a new version of Netflix or Facebook. They occasionally stumble, but for the most part they have mastered the tricks of successfully rolling out new versions of their software.

But here at AdvantageCS, although we deal with much smaller numbers, we have upgrade challenges of our own. <Insert sad violin music here>. The upgrade 'jump' for our clients is not usually one revision to the next but across years of revisions. We are currently upgrading one client across six years of changes. Each client's installation is customized in various ways and those customizations and interfaces must be upgraded as well. The hardware is not under our control. Gigabytes or even terabytes of data must be upgraded. And we do not generally have the security of backup servers in case of failure.

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Preview of Advantage Features Coming This Summer (To a Theater Near You)

by Tim Martin

These Advantage features will be available in the summer of 2014. Contact your Advantage account manager for more information.

Back Up and Change Previous Phase in MSTFST

Earn AMB Income at Various Intervals

Automatically Include IMB

Auto-add Customer to BCL

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Ogden Completes Upgrade

by Cindy Mikol

Congratulations to Ogden Publishing who recently completed a successful upgrade of Advantage. Project manager Eric Burbeck reports that it was an incredibly smooth and uneventful cutover. The ACS team included Philippe Rowland, Eva Weissman, Martha Krieg, and Larry Kleber.

Tim Swietek, Ogden's Director of IT, said it was the smoothest cutover ever.

Good work, upgrade teams!

How To Send an Ad Hoc Premium

by Mike Miklosovic

Tech Tip logo

Perhaps the original premium was never received, or you want to send a token of appreciation to someone who was patient with an issue resolution. As long as security allows, the customer service rep can enter a premium or premium set directly into the system. It isn't an order but an order number gets assigned. Here's how to do it.

Customer Service Premiums

1) Open the SVCPRM - Premiums view. The Customer Search view opens.

2) Click the Add or Add Premium Set Action

3) Enter the data elements as required and click Ok (leave the Order Number blank).

4) Run MST390 to fulfill the premium or MST391 to fulfill the premium set.

Add Action: