Take Command of Your Team
by: Joel T. Patz
H ow? What? When? TeamFlow 4.0 does more than answer those questions. It lets you create the organization, flow and Gantt charts you need to best manage team projects.
TeamFlow 4.0 will help you create a clear picture of your organization's structure, analyze tasks and responsibilities, and develop a time-scaled bar chart that graphically represents the collaborative project.
The process begins with a triple-pane TeamView Worksheet. You quickly define an organizational structure to show primary and subordinate relationships among team members. Clicking on the left pane inserts a new entry and opens the hierarchical team member information window.
The name field is added to the organization chart. You can add other useful information, such as telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses and descriptive text. View this data at any time by highlighting the name, clicking the right mouse button and selecting Show Information from the pull-down menu.
You can also set up subordinate groups or organizational entities. Drag and drop members to reposition them on the chart to reflect reassignments. A Usage window displays a quick overview of assigned responsibilities for individual team members.
The center pane contains the deployment flowchart. It shows the people involved in the project and their responsibilities. Dragging and dropping entries from the organization chart to the top of the flowchart creates the team field and assures task accountability. In the process field, the principal area of the flowchart, you construct a sequence of activities for accomplishing a goal. The process elements that are assigned to team members include tasks, meetings, reports, decisions, milestones and summary tasks. Adding a new element to the worksheet opens a window where you can add details including title, type of activity, start and finish dates, and budget information. Online reports can be attached to the flowchart, indicated by an icon in the right margin. While individual activities define the job, the work flow shows how the individuals interact. You just draw a line from one element to another; if a decision's involved, you need to determine the direction of an arrow connecting the elements.
The Gantt chart in the right pane displays the start and finish times indicated as process elements were entered. You can import the timespan and budget data from a spreadsheet if they were developed independently. Shading in a time field down the left side of the deployment flowchart and on the Gantt chart's bars shows how the project is progressing.
You can preview your TeamFlow before sending it to the printer. Printout size is determined by the font size you choose under Set Team Font and Set Process Font, not an intuitive menu choice. You can also select "shrink to fit" for one or both axes to adjust the size of the output. For multiple-sheet charts, you specify the amount of overlap to make it easier to paste the pages together. You can include printing date, last modified date, database name and a footer on the printout.
I ran into a few tough spots with TeamFlow. It is almost impossible to delete a member with assigned duties from the flowchart. If a member leaves and someone picks up the assigned responsibilities, you can just change the name. But if major personnel changes take place, you may have a lot of reworking to do. It's also too easy to mistakenly delete important entries. CFM says it plans to add a delete option that requires confirmation, but an undo function would also help.
TeamFlow lacks the histograms, resource allocation and load leveling capabilities found in other products such as Timeline or Microsoft Project. But if you need to show the collaborative process for achieving goals, together with a project flowchart and attached documents, TeamFlow fills the bill.
-- Info File --
TeamFlow 4.0
Price: Single user, $295; upgrade from 3.x, $89
In Brief: Team-based process management tool for developing flow, organization and Gantt charts.
Disk Space: 2MB
System Resources: 8%
RAM: 4MB
CFM
800-647-1708, fax 617-275-7008
System for the Image Conscious
by: Jim Forbes
Image-conscious computing doesn't mean your computer has a black magnesium case with a multi-hued geometric image prominently displayed on its front cover. It might mean you're running a 90 or 100MHz tower computer from NEC Technologies.
This system shows that NEC is looking forward, not backward. The NEC Image P90 MM I evaluated included a quad-speed drive, an excellent 16-bit audio system, a wickedly fast 1GB drive and a PCI bus. This machine uses a large tower case, which means you can expand it easily without resorting to a shoehorn.
The Image P90 series features at least 8MB of RAM, a total of five open expansion slots and a feature connector, large PCI EIDE hard disks, at least 2MB of video memory, a graphics accelerator and the normal complement of serial, parallel, audio and keyboard ports. Two excellent speakers round out the package.
Unpacking and setting up this system took less than 10 minutes. I like NEC's documentation, as well as its construction quality. NEC is one of a few vendors that now affix their cases to the chassis with thumbscrews, a nice touch.
The motherboard includes a ZIF (zero insertion force) socket for its Pentium processor. This greatly simplifies the task of upgrading your processor. With six SIMM slots on the motherboard, you should have more than enough room for memory expansion. If you run an application like Adobe Photoshop, you'll appreciate the ease of upgrading.
NEC is also among the first companies to adopt and incorporate Plug-and-Play compatibility. You'll appreciate this the first time you add any peripheral or new feature card to your system. Three of the five available slots are 16-bit ISA and two are 32-bit PCI. If you're interested in running multimedia applications, you'll like the fact that the feature connector is integrated on the motherboard. You can use it to add peripherals that rely on hardware acceleration to increase their performance.
I was particularly impressed with the NEC P90 MM's graphics subsystem. It uses PCI acceleration, comes with 2MB of video memory and has more than enough horsepower to run complex animation, video or CAD programs. The video incorporates NEC's TrueColor technology and will automatically synchronize its signal to analog monitors. The adapter on this PC (built into the motherboard) has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. A utility program included in the Windows Control Panel lets you set resolutions that match the capabilities of your system.
Once you've been exposed to a high-speed CD-ROM drive like this one, it's difficult to go back to an older standard. The audio system in this computer is also far above average. The unit I tested had a 16-bit wave table sound card that produced high-quality sound and was a joy to use. A good Labtec microphone is included. I also liked the speakers.
This machine is better suited for corporate than home use. While it has outstanding multimedia capabilities, it does not include a self-contained modem. It comes with software that helps corporations track their assets--an important feature for any corporation that buys large numbers of computers and needs a record of add-in cards and peripherals used in a specific machine.
The Image P90 MM processor turned out 94.1 MIPS and 19.5 MFLOPS on our WINDOWS Magazine Wintune benchmarks. Its PCI-based video subsystem cranked out 9.5 million pixels and its EIDE 1GB drive had a throughput of 12.9MBps.
The configuration and performance numbers for this PC suggest that it can handle virtually all of today's multimedia programs and serve as a platform for running Windows 95. My only complaints with the NEC P90 MM are the mushy keyboard and clone-type mouse.
--Info File--
NEC Technologies Image P90 MM
Price: $3,419 (street)
In Brief: Solid construction, high-quality components and many thoughtful touches make
the Image P90 well worth considering.
NEC Technologies
800-NEC-INFO, 508-264-8000
NT Dons NetWare Disguise
by: John D. Ruley
Since Windows NT's introduction in 1993, integrating NT Servers into the NetWare-dominated business LAN environment has been a challenge. NT's built-in networking, which is based on the NetBIOS Frame (NBF) protocol, is after all incompatible with Novell's NetWare Core Protocol (NCP).
Microsoft's File and Print Services for NetWare (FPNW), an add-on package for Windows NT Server 3.5 that provides NCP-based file and printer sharing, simplifies that task. The package allows NetWare clients to see and use shared files and printers on an NT Server using their existing client redirector software. FPNW supports all types of NetWare clients (DOS, Windows, OS/2, Windows NT and Macintosh.) The NT Server appears to these clients as a NetWare 3.12 Server.
FPNW provides NetWare emulation powerful enough to allow most NetWare applications to interact with NT the same way they would with NetWare. For example, you can see an NT Server running FPNW in the server list generated by NetWare's SLIST command-line utility. This emulation is complete enough that you can administer an FPNW-equipped NT Server using NetWare-standard supervisor utilities such as SYSCON.
While managing NT systems with familiar tools will appeal to NetWare supervisors, Windows NT specialists can take heart--resorting to SYSCON isn't necessary. FPNW ships with a set of extensions to NT Server's File Manager, User Manager and Print Manager that allow complete control of NetWare user accounts utilizing familiar Windows NT tools. If you have an existing NetWare server, you can automatically clone your account database using FPNW's enhancement to NT Server's standard NetWare Migration tool.
Since FPNW is hosted on Windows NT Server, it provides significant advantages over NetWare 3.12, such as domain-wide single log-on, inter-domain trust, and Macintosh file and printer support. FPNW on NT Server also supports long filename for Windows 95 and NT clients, and--since it's implemented as a portable, multithreaded, Windows NT service--allows full exploitation of NT's scalability on RISC and multiprocessor machines.
I tested a beta version of FPNW on a Mips R4000-based server running Windows NT 3.5. I was able to move user accounts from an existing NetWare 3.12 server in just a few minutes. I could have migrated the entire directory structure and system log-in scripts, which would have taken a bit longer. Once migration was complete, NetWare users simply saw an additional server on the LAN, with no obvious indication that it was running NT rather than NetWare. Since this is beta software, I didn't conduct performance benchmarks--but it certainly didn't seem slow and it was completely reliable during a full month's testing.
FPNW does have some limitations. Simply stated, running it is not the same as running NetWare. Since FPNW emulates NetWare 3.12, it doesn't provide support for NetWare 4.0 features like NDS, though it does support NetWare 4.0-compatible client software through bindery emulation. FPNW's emulation also doesn't permit NT servers to run server-side applications compiled as NetWare Loadable Modules (NLMs), and it doesn't work with NetWare-standard Open Datalink Interface (ODI) drivers.
Still, FPNW gives an impressive performance for any non-NetWare operating system, and it fills a definite need. In contrast to its one competitor--Beame and Whiteside's Multiconnect for Windows NT--FPNW has the disadvantage that it requires NT Server (NT Workstation isn't supported). But Microsoft says that FPNW will not require an additional per-client license fee over what's necessary for NT Server, making FPNW a bargain for all but the smallest LANs.
--Info File--
Microsoft File and Print Services for NetWare
Price: Not available at press time
In Brief: Makes NT Server 3.5 a NetWare clone.
Microsoft Corp.
800-426-9400, 206-882-8080
Software for the Hard Sell
by: Joel T. Patz
Marketing Plan Pro, the latest addition to Palo Alto Software's Business Essentials Library, is a natural follow-up to its Business Plan Pro 1.0
Marketing Plan Pro enters the scene once your business plan is completed and funding is secured. It helps you develop a marketing plan to sell your product.
I enjoyed using Marketing Plan Pro's user manual--a marketing textbook, really--full of detail, explanations and illustrations. Well organized and clearly written, it's an integral part of effectively using the software.
But, if you're like me, you'll install the software first just to see what's there. Four buttons--Markets, Pyramid, Programs and Document--present directions for planning a marketing strategy. Using them is deceptively simple. There's a fifth button, Exit, that you won't be using quite yet.
I started by clicking on Document, which opens the text development section. The Select button presents an extensive list of topics to use as the plan's framework. Compose text for the ones you think best fit your marketing ideas, such as Executive Summary, Marketing Strategy Summary and Critical Issues. The window's upper portion provides sample text and guidance for developing your own. If you want to add a table or chart, you just click on an icon to merge it with the text.
The Markets button opens a valuable analytical tool to help keep you focused on your goal. You begin to flesh out your plan by defining the type and number of possible customers, estimated growth and the amount each potential customer may spend. You then add text in six categories (Description, Needs and Requirements, Distribution Channels, Competitive Forces, Communications and Keys to Success), based on your research or estimations. The user guide provides help for this important part of your plan by suggesting possible marketplace information sources.
The Pyramid section puts your plan under a microscope in a three-pane window. Focusing on the relationships between Strategy, Tactics and Programs, here's where you sharpen your goal, plan how to get your message out and determine your needed resources. You enter short statements in a dialog box to help you visualize the analytical process you've undertaken. Information entered here is also carried over to the appropriate section of the developing document.
The Programs part of Marketing Plan Pro has a series of spreadsheets for developing your plan's fiscal details. You can include information such as target date, person in charge, monthly budgets, and projections of products or services. Later, this data can be used to determine the variance between estimated and actual transactions. A Recalc button provides quick updates. The program automatically prepares summary sheets as you work, and they become the basis for bar or pie charts. These charts display information such as expenses, units, sales or variances sorted by person, product or market.
You can output your plan to a printer or save it to a text file that you can edit and format in a word processor. However, the program's print format is most acceptable. When I printed my plan, the document included the tables, charts and text where they were supposed to be. The program also added a Table of Contents.
I do have a few minor criticisms of Marketing Plan Pro. It doesn't support file import or export, and a few instructions in the documentation are incorrect (the manual shows a 3-D pie chart example, but only 2-D charts are available). Also, after using Recalc, you're not returned to where you were working.
Marketing Plan Pro is easy to use, helps you define where you're going and how to get there, and produces a package you'll be proud of. It won't do the work for you, but it comes very close.
-- Info File --
Marketing Plan Pro
Price: $149.95
In Brief: This program provides essential help for developing new markets, boosting sales
and increasing your business' profits.
Disk Space: 2MB
System Resources: 15%
RAM: 4MB
Palo Alto Software
800-229-7526, 503-683-6162
Lights! Camera! Help!
by: David Methvin
Not too long ago, help files were flat abstracts of printed manuals, full of text but not much of anything else. Today, help seekers expect color, sound and video. RoboHELP and the WinHelp Video Kit enable you to satisfy those expectations with a whole lot less time and effort than you might have expected.
The WinHelp Video Kit is one of this package's most valuable new elements. It lets you record screen activity, an audio narration or both to an .AVI video file. Lotus ScreenCam offers a similar ability, but ScreenCam uses a proprietary format so it can't be edited or merged into a presentation like an .AVI file. Also, RoboHELP's video camera lets you record just a portion of the screen in order to keep the resulting .AVI file small.
The Video Kit can be used to demonstrate program features. For example, you could capture a sequence showing how to use a particular program feature, then assign this to a help-file button. If you're not satisfied with the help file's text description, you can press this button and replay the demonstration on your screen.
As with previous versions of RoboHELP, version 3.0 works with either Word 2.0 or 6.0 (I tested it with 6.0) and adeptly creates top-notch help files. In addition to the Video Kit's features, this version adds support for 256-color bitmaps, watermark backgrounds for topics, Word 6.0 toolbars and multiple foreign languages. You get all the tools necessary to create help files, including the help compiler, screen-capture utility and graphics hot-spot editor.
In some instances, you may want to maintain one file set to produce both a help file and a printed manual. While RoboHELP isn't designed for this, it does offer a few concessions. You can convert existing files with its import facility, but you're left with some manual clean up chores. Version 3 can also export the help text without all the help-specific codes, but you would have to do extensive editing and formatting in order to turn the text into a finished manual.
If you know how much work goes into creating a help file, you'll appreciate what RoboHELP does for you. If you're a novice help-file creator, it will take time to get used to the terminology. Blue Sky supplies sample files that demonstrate many features--a good start for either experienced or new users. RoboHELP's own online help is relatively good, although a couple of places describe Word 2.0 procedures. I was baffled as to why I couldn't find the options in Word 6.0's menus.
Since Windows Help doesn't have built-in support for RoboHELP features like displaying 256-color bitmaps or playing video clips, Blue Sky provides DLLs that implement the necessary functions. You can distribute these DLLs royalty-free as part of your own project. The video and sound DLL file is just 10KB and the 256-color DLL is about 50KB, so they won't bloat your help project.
For Visual Basic programmers, RoboHELP includes a custom control that eliminates all excuses for not integrating help support into your program. Although calling the WinHelp API directly is simple, if you'd prefer to add help support without writing a single line of code, then this custom control is just the ticket. It lets you create buttons that link to a specific help file and topic name by filling in fields in the property sheet. If you use this control, you'll need to ship its 24KB .VBX runtime file with your program.
All in all, RoboHELP lets you build some of the flashiest multimedia help files around and spares you the grunt work.
--Info File--
RoboHELP 3.0
Price: With WinHelp Video Kit, $499;
Video Kit alone, $99
In Brief: RoboHELP, one of the original help-file construction tools, now lets you add sound files, video and 256-color graphics to help files.
Disk Space: 5.5MB
System Resources: 16%
RAM: 1.2MB RAM
Blue Sky Software Corp.
800-677-4946, 619-459-6365
Deliverance from Judgment Daze
by: Joel T. Patz
Some days, making good business decisions seems about as easy as solving Rubik's cube. You have to analyze alternatives, determine preferences and evaluate results to increase the odds that you make the right choices.
Logical Decisions 4.0 takes some of the guesswork out of business decisions. It provides analytical assistance for knotty problems ranging from simple assessments to complex multi-factor decision analysis. It has the horsepower to help you evaluate unlimited variables and preferences, and establish probability levels and relative importance. It then prints tabular and graphical results of your work after crunching all the information. I tested a beta version of the program.
You begin structuring analysis of a problem in the program's Goals Hierarchy and Matrix windows. In the Matrix, you enter the preliminary alternatives for evaluation on a spreadsheet-like form. You establish initial preferences and enter any comments you have. Goals, subgoals and measures--variables used to rank alternatives--are next entered onto a hierarchical chart.
You then define the evaluation criteria to determine how the alternatives respond to the goals. The dialog boxes for this process are well designed and clearly labeled. You can make additions or changes in either of these pivotal windows. If the goals and measures hierarchy is complex, you can collapse and expand entries as needed.
Logical Decisions helps you distinguish subjective and objective criteria by establishing preference sets. You can establish preference sets that reflect the interpretations of different individuals or groups. The program converts your data into a Single-measure Utility Function (SUF) determined by ranking.
After you enter your assessment criteria, Logical Decisions produces a graph showing the curve for the input choices. You can immediately re-evaluate the input data by dragging a point on the curve to a new position or entering a different value in the edit box. Choosing the SUF Assess Value icon produces a more structured assessment outcome. The Assess/Weights option lets you define the relative importance of different goals. Logical Decisions provides tradeoff assessment, leading you through the comparison sequence for hypothetical alternatives. With the new Smart Method, you can reassign value by dragging the weight's graphic bar or by typing a new value. Other available assessment tools include weight ratios, AHP (analytic hierarchy process) and direct entry.
Once a problem's structure has been determined, alternatives can be ranked and manipulated to show the hows and whys of the analytical results. Eleven displays are available, including review of single tradeoffs, tradeoffs by one measure, assessment summary and graph pairs of measures. Stacked bar ranking, matrix presentations, sensitivity graphs and tables, and scatter diagrams show rankings based on the active preference set. The compare alternatives graph provides a detailed view of the differences between any two alternatives. The dynamic sensitivity option opens two side-by-side windows so you can perform what-if scenarios by inserting different values and reranking alternatives. You can also add uncertainty bars to results displays.
Logical Decisions is an extremely powerful tool. The wide range of options effectively performs quantitative analysis of goals and measures. The program allows you to set parameters and vary alternatives and then see the results immediately. That flexibility is a major asset in the dynamic environment of decision making. A clearly written manual provides detailed explanation of the program's features as well as an introduction to decision analysis theory.
-- Info File --
Logical Decisions 4.0
Price: $395; upgrade from version 3.x,
$79; with academic discount, $295
In Brief: A powerful assessment tool for analyzing alternatives and preferences to clarify and to expedite decision making.
Logical Decisions
800-355-6442, 303-526-7536
Potent Portable Printer
by: Jim Forbes
Any road warrior worth his salt needs more than the latest in multimedia Pentium notebooks. He also needs a high-resolution, full-color portable printer. That's where the Canon BJC-70 BubbleJet printer comes in.
The BJC-70 uses an external AC adapter and small color ink jet cartridges. The total travel weight for the printer, power supply and parallel cable is about 3 pounds. The unit measures 2.2 by 11.8 by 6.2 inches and slides easily into a briefcase. Canon doesn't supply the parallel cable, but throws in a leak-proof ink cartridge carrier.
Setup is a snap. The paper feeds from the top and exits the front. I easily loaded 20 sheets of paper in the top feeder. The BJC-70 has a rated throughput of 4 pages per minute for black-and-white printing and slightly less than 1ppm for color printing. The printer has six front-panel controls and an LCD panel.
The BJC-70 uses two ink cartridges--the BIC-10 128 nozzle cartridge for monochrome printing and the BIC-11 cartridge, which has 64 nozzles for black-and-white and 72 nozzles for full-color printing. The cartridges may be hard to find on the road, so carry spares. As with all ink jet printers, the cartridges can be expensive and short-lived.
This printer lays down monochrome text and images with resolutions as high as 720x360 dots per inch. I had no problem using the printer with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the latest release
of Ami Pro and 1-2-3 for Windows.
This printer's versatility, performance and print quality impressed me. I
used it for a 30-day period that included two extensive trips. I found the BJC-70 reliable, relatively quiet and a joy to use. I highly recommend it.
--Info File--
Canon BJC-70
Price: $399
Canon Computer Systems
800-848-4123, 714-438-3000
Uncommon Comm with This Modem
by: James E. Powell
Motorola's Power Series 28.8 data/fax modem stands out from the pack, which isn't easy considering all the me-too features that make most modems barely distinguishable from each other.
The modem supports rates up to 28.8Kbps and up to 115.2Kbps with compression. It's powered by Motorola's 68356 24-bit data pump. It handles faxing at 2400bps to 14.4Kbps using Group III, Class 1 fax standards. The unit is Hayes compatible and supports V.42, MNP classes 2 through 5 error correction and T.30 fax error correction. It also meets ITU V.34, V.32bis, V.32, V.22bis, V.22, V.23, V.21, and Bell 212A and 103 standards.
The modem's more distinctive features include support for caller ID and distinctive ring. The latter lets you share one phone line for data, fax and voice. Its flash memory allows you to upgrade through software downloads, and you can even configure it remotely.
The Power Series modem has three levels of security. You can set it to require one or two passwords or to hang up automatically and call back after a password is entered. You set security by using AT commands, but these safeguards disable the modem's fax capabilities.
The Power Series modem comes with starter kits for America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the Reuters Money Network; a coupon for Internet access via Chameleon Mosaic; and QuickLink II fax/communications software. A coupon for the magazine NetGuide--another CMP Publication--is also included.
This modem does everything you'd expect, but its added goodies make it special.
--Info File--
Motorola 28.8 Power Series Modem
Price: $375
Motorola
800-451-2369, 205-430-8000