Cyclone Rollout Database for Large-Scale Deployments
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| To
manage a rollout from beginning to end is a major task, and the keystone of
a successful rollout is the accuracy and accessibility of the data at the
centre of the project. If you and your staff have a reliable source of
information at your fingertips then you're in the best possible position to
plan, strategise, and deal with any situation that arises. |
| Cyclone
is a role-based information store. Your staff are assigned roles which
entitle them to work with the data appropriate to their job. For example,
your stock controller will have access to orders and deliveries, hardware
lookup lists, supplier details and serial number assignment. Roles can be
customised,
created, or combined to suit your needs as the project progresses. |
| Cyclone
is driven by statuses and events. All objects (PCs, users, orders, problems, etc) stored
within Cyclone have a Status which, depending upon the value, causes that object to appear in the
diary of the appropriate person. This, for
example, would make a faulty monitor "appear" in the van driver's
jobsheet (the printed version of the diary); he'd collect the monitor from the user's desktop and flag
the task as "done". The monitor would then appear to the stock controller
who would place it in the "DOA" pile, mark it as "done",
and the order clerk would then see the monitor as "stock to return to
the supplier". |
| These
"events" can be timed to appear on a particular date (such as an
appointment to interview a user) or prioritised to display prominently (as
in the case of a low-stock warning) in the appropriate person's diary.
Events are closed but not deleted, giving a complete history of activities
against any given object since the start of the project. |
| Cyclone's
front-end is clean and simple - which means less time learning and more time using the product. |
| All
events, categories, statuses, icons and lookup lists can be customised (by
those staff whose roles allow it, of course) meaning that Cyclone can
be maintained by non-programmers, almost to the extent that it could be taken
and adapted into another language! The front-end component resides on
the user's desktop whilst the data remains on the server, and internal
version control checking helps keep the local database up-to-date.
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| Other
features include cost-centre charging, order processing, import and export,
prepared queries for use in Excel pivot tables, supplier performance
reporting, and asset tagging. Serial number and asset tag fields are tested
for accuracy against templates to minimise typing errors, and timesaving
features such as automatic login name generation and auto-capitalisation are
throughout the program.
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| Some
more of the pre-defined roles are Asset Disposal Clerk, Team Leader, Order
Processor, Serial Number Entry Clerk, Profiler, Trainer, Project Manager,
Build Engineer, Application Tester, Deployment Engineer, Database Admin, and Guest.
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