UniPhi

UniPhi is going global

2012-01-26T08:46:00.001+11:00

It's been a hectic couple of weeks for us at mbh but the long hours and extensive travel has bared fruit with the acceptance of a proposal to roll out UniPhi globally with one of our largest clients. Over the next 2 years UniPhi will be used by over 2000 users in 5 continents and over 100 offices around the globe.

It has always been a buzz for me to know that while I have breakfast or eat dinner someone is using UniPhi to assist them deliver some real investment somewhere in Australia or the Middle East. Now this really will be a 24 hour proposition. Well done Murray and the software development team on a great result.

More news on this to come

Distributed versus centralised data capture

2011-12-28T21:22:00.001+11:00

One of the key changes in the public domain created by software has been the ability of millions of people to enter information into a centralised source. There are two examples of this; one the general updating of information through web pages aggregated through Google and the other the specific updating of social information and its aggregation through Facebook. Many organisations have identified this change and leveraged its value as a distribution channel for marketing and sales and more recently as a source of customer feedback. The central element of success is that millions of people add information that is then aggregated and re-purposed either through a web search or through a pre-designed portal.

What's interesting though is that business to business software is yet to take full advantage of this concept. Most areas where this type of architecture has been developed is in the "non-sensitive" areas of Intranets and customer relationship management systems. Anything financial is still collected and then keyed in at a central source. This puts a great constraint on the system and results in real time business information being delayed as well as their being a lack of breadth and depth in the information being presented.

UniPhi is one of the first business applications that requires the distribution of data entry for it to be a success. The concept is similar to the Facebook one, get hundreds of end users entering in their piece of the puzzle directly into a centralised system and then present this information aggregated and re-purposed into the slice relevant to the user logging in. The executive running a company with 55,000 people can know how many projects are late, on schedule and ahead of schedule across their company in the same way as an individual at Facebook could theoretically aggregate the 800 million Facebook users into those that like Star Wars and those that don't.

This distributed data entry model is the biggest productivity improver since the invention of the PC. Companies that recognise this now and implement the change programmes to take advantage of it are going to out perform their peers like never before.

UniPhi 6.0 released and Data Warehouse Out of The Box announced!

2011-10-03T15:38:00.001+11:00

Well UniPhi 6.0 has been out now for 3 months. Check out the press release for new features. We've quickly moved on to the next round of developments. The big launch for UniPhi will be our next release which will see what I believe is the first data warehouse and BI out of the box application on the market. The unique structure of UniPhi has enabled us to develop a data warehouse process and analysis services cubes that cut the need for internal naval gazing and reflection. Most companies spend millions defining their warehouse structure and designing and building BI Tools to overlay this data with tools for end users. UniPhi provides all of this structure out of the box. Deploy UniPhi either on your own SQL and Web server boxes or subscribe to our cloud infrastructure and bingo you're ready to analyse your data and see how you're performing. Use the profit cube to analyse fees, book to burn rations, slipping projects, market segments that you're performing well in or not so well and employees who are kicking goals both for and against.

I will update with more info on this exciting development in the coming months.

To error is to be an executive

2010-06-22T14:48:00.015+10:00

We have heard plenty lately about the bad judgment of a recently departed head honcho of David Jones. While it's easy to file as 'bad judgment' or 'ill advised' the unwanted advances of a CEO to a junior executive at a company function, it is much trickier to separate the 'wheat from the chaff' when it comes to executive strategic decision making.

In a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of 2,207 executives, only 28 percent said that the quality of strategic decisions in their companies was generally good, 60 percent thought that bad decisions were about as frequent as good ones, and the remaining 12 percent thought good decisions were altogether infrequent.

In a March 2010 McKinsey Quarterly entitled, 'The case for behavioral strategy', the authors, Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony, assert that '...cognitive biases affect the most important strategic decisions made by the smartest managers in the best companies. Mergers routinely fail to deliver the expected synergies. Strategic plans often ignore competitive responses. And large investment projects are over budget and over time—over and over again.'

The authors' advocated remedy for the problem of 'biased' management decision making is for organisations to adopt processes that 'debias' strategic decisions.

It just so happens that UniPhi is an enterprise process that debiases strategic decisions. Once deployed and used by key stakeholders across the enterprise, executives can easily track, manage and report on the progress of key organisational initiatives. Accurate, real-time project and portfolio data is at the executive's fingertips.

UniPhi provides a more objective road map for an executive's strategic decisions, ensuring they are guided by objectively-tested facts and figures, instead of 'gut feels' and 'intuition'. In my view, UniPhi represents an invaluable tool for debiasing executive decisions and making sure strategy development is informed by reality, not 'hisimagination'. Of course, I may just be biased, but use UniPhi and then prove me wrong.

UniPhi 5.0 to be released

2010-05-12T21:43:00.002+10:00

After 9 months of intensive development, we are about to release our biggest launch of UniPhi yet. UniPhi 5.0 is a major step forward for mbh and for the product itself. After significant and greatly appreciated feedback from our thousand strong user base, we have been able to enhance many existing features and bring in new ones. The contracts management functionality was completely overhauled with significant productivity improvements to the creation of the full suite of contract admin components (variations, progress claims, EOTs, RFIs etc. This new contract management also has the capability to manage your fee with the client as well as all other contracts on the project. Adding this to our new fee management system and existing lifecycle feature and we can now tell you how many jobs you're winning and how many you're losing; in what sector your winning and what one's you're not.With transparent real time internal KPI performance management, I can see already that many potential clients are going to be threatened by how visible their performance is.

This release would not have been possible without the dedication of our software development team. This cosmopolitan group of guys who all reside in Australia but hail from all over the world makes our Sydney office a vibrant and buzzing place to be. Although the hours are insane and juggling the business with running my kids to school, soccer practice, ballet and the like is not easy, it's great to never wake up in the morning with the words "oh no, it's only Wednesday". Thanks guys for making each day an enjoyable event!

We have scheduled a series of breakfast seminars along with our monthly webinar to present this new release across Australia and will follow it up with a roadshow across the middle east in September.

You can read more about this release and the roadshow at our website. Please come to the breakfasts if you can, we'd love to see you there.

UniPhi expands to the middle east

2010-05-07T21:30:00.001+10:00

8 months ago I caught up with a colleague from school days. We had met a few times post school through a mutual friend of ours. On this occasion (as usual when catching up with old acquaintances) we started updating each other on events since the last few years. Francis, my school colleague, had been living in the UK for 8 years, had gotten married and had had his first child about 6 months before we met. He was back in Australia, sadly, due to an illness of a relative. Yet through every sad event, a silver lining can be found.

Francis had recently moved from the UK to Dubai. Having tested the market there briefly before his Australia visit, his business radar piqued when he heard about UniPhi. The next day Francis came to our office in Sydney and had a look at what we'd developed. Another 24 hours later and he had put together a proposal to distribute our software in the middle east. He has worked tirelessly since and this climaxed with us exhibiting at the Cityscape conference in Abu Dhabi in April. Unfortunately, due to other commitments I was unable to attend but thanks to the project management efforts of Katja Abramova (mbh project manager) and the tireless Sarah Quinton (mbh director) who flew over to support Francis in showing off UniPhi to the world all went well.

Below is an image of our stand and feedback from the show has been exceptional. I am very excited about becoming an Australian exporter and international markets will now become crucial components in what we hope will be the rapid commercialisation of what I believe is the best portfolio and project management application on the market.

The exhibition was a great success for us. It has led to four very strong proposals being sent to potential clients and over 160 business cards being collected at the booth.

Thanks Francis, Sarah and Katja for all your efforts!

UniPhi deployment

2009-12-02T09:39:00.002+11:00

It’s exciting working on a UniPhi deployment. The moving of the UniPhi software from an application to a real life working environment is a beneficial experience . The developing and integration of the clients fundamental business requirements to the UniPhi software is integral to a deployment.

Each organisation or business area is unique, as has its own wants and needs that are required to be met. The changing working environments and the people I work with both internally and externally on each deployment are the most rewarding aspects of working with UniPhi.

Trials and tribulations of windows authentication

2009-12-01T11:14:00.002+11:00

Windows authentication can be both a blessing and a curse when it comes to developing an intranet based application. From the users perspective, they can use their standard PC login to access the application - functionality which is seamless when using internet explorer. From a developers perspective, you can rely on the network to provide authentication to the various systems that you are integrating, such as databases, reporting services, etc.

Unfortunately, often times passing windows credentials around breaks down, specifically when you begin to grant access to your application outside of the intranet via SSL or perhaps port your application over to using forms authentication, such as we have done recently.

The specific problem I needed to address today was with UniPhi's automated .pdf generation when emailing a document. Windows authentication credentials were not being passed through to the page that renders the pdf attachment when the end user was accessing the application via SSL. The possible solutions provided by a google search were many and varied, several stating that passing through the credentials was unsupported. In the end the solution to the problem was simple - don't pass credentials at all, move the pdf generation to a library rather than calling the asp.net page directly.

It usually pays to sleep on a problem such as this, let the solution come to you.

Reset locked remote desktop

2008-02-04T09:31:00.000+11:00

To connect to a server on which "terminal server has exceeded maximum number of allowed connections", run the following command to remotely connect then reset the non active connections:
start | run - mstsc -v:0.0.0.0 /f -console

Restoring databases to Server 2005

2007-09-21T16:05:00.000+10:00

Whilst attempting to restore a database backup to SQL Server 2005, I encountered a "restore failed" error due to "the file or filegroup cannot be selected for this operation". After some trawling of the Net, I found the solution.

There is an option in the Restore window to copy the script generated to the clipboard. Cancel out and paste the script into a New Query. Delete the two "FILE = " options from the line then execute the script. Bingo, you have a newly restored database.

Coming up for air, UniPhi 3.0 released

2007-03-19T09:24:00.000+11:00

It has been a while between UniPhi blog posts, however the 3.0 release of UniPhi is now complete and deployed with existing clients, so far the feedback has been very positive.

Some of the key new features include:

Exporting UniPhi documents to pdf
Cost Management
Procurement Management
Improved rich text editor

Of the four major additions and improvements, the pdf rendering of UniPhi documents is the most interesting from a technical perspective. We are utilising XSL Formal Objects as a means of converting the XHTML output from the UniPhi document management system into a format which can then be passed through a processor to generate almost any format desired, PDF was obviously the first one we looked at, utilising third party library from Altsoft.

Writing the XSL transformations was completely new to me from a personal perspective, a new challenge is always a welcome addition to any software project and we are very pleased with the results.

Upgrading MS Project 2002 Standard to MS Project 2003

2006-09-03T19:38:00.000+10:00

A new issue has arisen in the integration of MS Project into UniPhi. Extra information is stored in MS Project 2003 Standard and Professional. This extra information requires changes to the database structure. This was not a problem initially as the original version of MS Project 2003 updated the table structure upon saving the first 2003 version into the database. However, this application is already onto its second service pack and in these patches is the elimination of this update functionality. Microsoft now supplies a SQL patch to update the database with the new fields and the one new table required for the application to run in 2003. Versions older than 2003 still function in the updated database structure and hence, we have included this new database design in the standard UniPhi 2.4 deployment.

Service pack 2 for MS Project 2003 (which includes the bug fixes of service pack 1) can be found here.

The SQL Script that updates the database can be downloaded here

Floating point error in SQL Server 2000 service pack 3a for MS Project 2000

2006-08-28T14:11:00.000+10:00

After significant testing I have come up with the following information relating to the floating point error we have been receiving.

The error is created when data in the timephased data table is extended to many decimal places. However, it is not an error that will occur for all timephased records that have large numbers of decimal places.
The error is created when using MS Project 2000 (either original or SP1 versions) and the data is saved to SQL Server 2000 service pack 3a or before.
The error is corrected if opened by MS Project 2002 and saved BEFORE being corrupted (i.e. before saving it in MS Project 2000).
The error does not occur if the file is not corrupted and is being saved by MS Project 2000 into SQL Server 2000 service pack 4.
When the error occurs, MS Project does a partial write of the MS Project file and will start to save ok, appearing to be ok to the end user. However, data will have been lost in the execution and hence the recommendations below should be followed.
I believe that once all new files are created on the SQL Server 2000 service pack 4 database, the error will no longer occur. However, any files that have transitioned across from service pack 3a to service pack 4 have the potential for the error to occur.

For systems transitioning from Service Pack 3a to 4 I would recommend the following risk mitigation:

Open up all the project plans using a version greater than MS Project 2000 (i.e. MS Project 2002 or MS Project 2003).
Save the files
Re-map the files to their appropriate projects in UniPhi

If the error occurs after this, follow the steps below:

Delete the file in the live UniPhi database
Restore the UniPhi database as a new "temp" database.
Open up the offending file in a version greater than MS Project 2000 (i.e. MS Project 2002 or MS Project 2003)
Save the file
Save the file into the live UniPhi database
Remove the temp database.

Unicode SQL Scripts and TortoiseMerge

2006-07-25T14:43:00.000+10:00

Version control is a vital part of collaborative software development. Being able to compare differences between files and resolving differences is a vital aspect of maintaining code in a repository. We use Subversion which is only supplied with a command line interface. The ability to expand and build upon open source programs like Subversion has allowed development of Tortoise SVN, a second program that acts as a GUI interface to Subversion. Its tight integration with Windows file explorer allows easy access to all the functionality of the commandline version.

Comparing differences between your current edition of a file and those in the repository is handled extremely well by Tortoise SVN. TortoiseMerge places the files side by side, you can compare differences per line. However, it needs to know how to display different file formats and currently Unicode isn't supported by TortoiseMerge. We only became aware of this after trying to compare SQL scripts that had been exported from the UniPhi database.

Exporting stored procedures, views and tables from Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Manager using Generate SQL Script defaults to Unicode file format. By changing the file format to ANSI under the Options tab, you can start visually comparing files that use this format.

Keeping MSSQL Transaction Logs in Check

2006-07-24T09:35:00.000+10:00

An essential part of maintaining any Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (MSSQL) Database driven application is a robust backup strategy, not only for the case of disaster recovery but also for keeping the size of your database transaction logs in check. By default, these transaction logs will grow over time to an infinitely large size, or if an upper limit is placed, the log file will fill up without scheduled maintenance, locking users out of the application.

The following Microsoft KB article is very helpful in this regard: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272318/EN-US/

My recommendations for transaction log maintenance for UniPhi and related databases is as follows:

Since the ES2 (Innerprise Search) database is repopulated on a daily basis, the transaction log is not of a great importance, the following commands could be scheduled for backup purposes, keeping the log file size down:
BACKUP LOG ES2 WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE(ES2_log, 100)

However for the UniPhi database, we do want to have the transaction logs available in case of an emergency, so:
BACKUP LOG uniphi TO uniphilogbackup
DBCC SHRINKFILE(uniphi_log,100)

MS Project

2005-11-29T13:31:00.000+11:00

We have been working for some months now on a 2 site deployment of MS Project standard 2000, MS Workgroup timesheeting and centralised resource pool levelling. To say it has been a rollercoaster ride would be an understatement. Welcome to the world of "what on earth happend then" and "what service release fixed this bug". To be fair to the tool, we are trying to use MS Project for an awful lot on this deployment. It is a:

Time recording system for Accounts to charge labour costs to the project
Time recording system to improve the accuracy of estimation
Scheduling tool to commit deadlines to clients
Levelling tool to level resources across the organisation
Cost tracking tool to record forward estimates of actual equipment costs via purchase orders

And once interfaced to UniPhi

Project status tool for project managers
Dashboard reporting for information to sponsors
Team member task performance reporter

Some of the things that have gone wrong are:

To email out one timesheet, a user must create a master plan of all plans linked to the resource pool. Once completed, one timesheet that includes tasks for all projects a person has been allocated to work on will be sent to them. As part of the control process, this master plan was being saved as "Master Plan for date.mpp" Unbeknowns to us, what happends is that the tasks that are allocated are put into the users task list in Outlook (nice feature I here you say) however, the filename is used as the "category" for the task. If the task has not changed from one week to the next, then the category is not updated. When the timesheet is returned, the system looks for the weeks before's master plan (which no longer exists) and throws an exception, crashing the project plan and corrupting the data. So we no longer rename the master plan.

Similar issues come from renaming the resource pool. The resource pool currently links to 135 projects. When the file is renamed, these plans can no longer find their pool as they are looking for their old name. Hence, the all have to be opened and re-linked to the new pool.

If a user ticks a task in outlook, it then apportions the estimated work for that task across the timeframe of the task and allocates that time as actual work (not good when actual work has to be actual work and not an MS Project calculated estimate.

If a project manager ticks a task as complete then the estimated work for that task is copied to the actual work for the resources assigned to that task (again, not good when you need to report actual actuals). So they now have to zero out remaining work when a task is completed, as all the actual work should come from the individuals timesheet.

To get the full integration into UniPhi, we needed to save the plans into the SQL Server 2000 database. This has caused a whole host of issues including:

Project ID increments if saved in MS Project 2002 when the file was created originally in 2000
MS Project 2000 had a service release that fixed a bug relating to winproj.exe errors when opening plans through an ODBC database.
SQL Server 2000 has a floating point exception bug that wasn't fixed until service pack 4.

These are some of the joyful issues we have encountered throughout this deployment. However, when you look at where this company is going in terms of being able to properly commit to deadlines, forward plan, allocate work efficiently and on a prioritised basis to team members, track actual versus plan on costs and time, resource level and use theory of constraints practices to crash the critical path; we think the pain and suffering has been worthwhile.

UniPhi 2.0 Features List

2005-11-29T13:24:00.000+11:00

UniPhi

We ran a workshop last week to define the features list of UniPhi 2.0 due for release on March 1st 2006. Thanks to feeback from our clients on issues/additions they require. The aim of 2.0 is to bed down the features that were released in 1.0 and to add easy to implement features. After much debate and soul searching, here is the features list per module of the system:

Online Document Management System

Allow the output order of a document to be different to the input order
Map on document's contents into various sections of another document
Create a document based off another document
Increase the number of object types in a template e.g Multiple file upload object, customised drop down lists, embedded reports etc.
Improved checklist of steps completed while populating a document
Allow for a document to be moved between projects

Change Control System
This feature slipped out of scope on release one and will be used to track project change requests.

Reports

Customisable dashboard reporting
More project status related reporting
Ability for reports to run in Firefox (our browser of choice)
Ability for end users to customise their own reports (could be dependent on SQL Server 2005 actually being released)
Potential for reports to be based around analysis services and reporting services rather than just reporting services

MS Project (cringe - refer to blog regarding MS Project deployments)

Integrate the resource management system with the resource pool that exists in Microsoft Project
Launch MS Project files from within UniPhi (requires an Active X control which has obvious security implications. We will be looking at alternative methods
Integrate tasks in MS Project into summary tab of My Projects

Timesheeting system (pending design phase review and may be de-scoped)

Allow users to enter time against tasks, issues, risks and documentation
Integrate the completion of tasks back into the MS Project plan stored in the database
Create a simple interface for timesheet entry that allows users to put time against any task scheduled for which they have been assigned to complete.

User interface

Improve the sort and filtering options
Allow for multiple summary views on the All Projects/Summary tab
Allow for documents to be launched in the documents tab not just the template section

Add author, description and other meta tag data to the search results
Improve the ability to view search results by author
Look at taxonomy potential

Methodology

Improve the flowcharting integration into the library section
Improve the template party/role model interface and online help

So as you can see, it's quite a list. The next 5 weeks are dedicated to fleshing out the detail of this list and completing an initial design. From this design we will be re-estimating how long to build and test. Once we get this data, we will de-scope features until we can hit our March 2006 deadline.

Uniphi Officially Launched

2005-06-30T15:35:00.000+10:00

UniPhi, mbh's enterprise project and portfolio management system, concludes Beta testing today. We have delayed the roadshow of this software to early August due to the purchase of UniPhi by Bluescope Lysaght. Bluescope Lysaght at Chester Hill will be the first recipients of the UniPhi system. Deployment begins on July 11 and concludes a month later when the full team of Project Managers and Team Members will be trained. Next will be an upgrade for ILRIC Ltd in Armidale who have been using the previous version (methodology 5.0) for 12 months now. They are currently running a dozen projects that and are keen to utilise the new features incorporated into this latest release. Obviously, we are very excited about this milestone and look forward to communicating more UniPhi success in the near future.

Here's some screen shots of our new baby!

UniPhi Templates and Document Management

2005-06-22T20:02:00.000+10:00

UniPhi
I've been using the electronic templating and document management system a lot of late and it is the best thing in UniPhi. The ability to store and integrate components of the system into an integrative project management document like a business case or scope of work is just awesome. The system can uploan financial spreadsheets that are then incorporated into the end report, integrate issues and risks that have been created in the system into the end report and allow for version control, commenting, email, sign off and status control.

Well done Murray, an awesome piece of software!

MS Project Integration

2005-06-06T07:16:00.000+10:00

UniPhi
Well, progress has certainly been made over the past month. All of the functionality is in the system and we are now currently Alpha testing with some of our existing clients of methodology 5.0. After running mbh for six years, we finally achieved a dream of mine; automated progress reporting. A combination of the ODBC connection from MS Project, SQL script that creates the MS Project table structure in MS SQL Server 2000 and SQL Reporting Services has allowed us to quickly generate some amazing high level reports. Of course the key to this is the capability of the organisation to efficiently maintain project plans. We are currently consulting to BlueScope Lysaght regarding this exact thing. I'll post an entry over the next few days describing how this piece of work is going and the end goal that is in mind.

The big news from this is their purchase of 30 UNIPHI licenses. They will be the first to receive this Release with our existing clients being upgraded soon after. BlueScope have made a commitment for another 70 licenses to be deployed at Port Kembla too. This will provide a user base nearing 300 and we hope the deployment and feedback will provide an even better enterprise project management system into the future.

UniPhi Reporting and Dashboards

2005-05-03T11:34:00.000+10:00

The last few days have seen some exciting developments in the area of dashboards and reporting on the vast amount of information currently captured by UniPhi. We have successfully deployed Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, and upon inspection of the many features available, we feel the platform will greatly enhance the functionality and flexibility of our reporting options.

Some of the key features we are most excited about include exporting reports in many formats such html, excel and pdf, ease and speed of reporting development, a strong security focus, and most importantly the customisation options that will be available to the end user. With limited training, a UniPhi administrator will be able to create customised reports and have those published to the rest of the organisation.

The feedback from the development community seems to be that Reporting Services is far superior to the ever popular Crystal Reports for ASP.NET development. Based on a cursory glace at the APIs available, I can certainly see why.

Finally a name that can match the software - UniPhi

2005-04-28T10:33:00.000+10:00

Well, after several years of "mbh methodology version x" we have finally gotten our act together and come up with a decent name that can support what is a unique piece of software. A bit of derivation for those interested. I have always been interested in the uses of the irrational number PHI and was surprised when I employed three young software developers who were even more passionate about PI...except they were usually referring to the eating kind and spelt it pie. Still the correlation was close enough for me (as all probability is flawed anyway). Many of the bad jokes that we come up with are based around PI and PHI and it is common for our testing to include projects like "mmmm pie" or an issue may be raised that states "Ohhh I ate too much pi". Yes this is the typically sad humour that permeates around the office.

Then one day, I was harping on about how combinations of PI and PHI creates a perfect square meaning that it is possible to have perfect rationality from two forms of irrationality. From this banal conversation, we started on a brainstorming session on how to include Phi in our software name. We started off with Phi power or Phi squared and ended up with UNIPHI, which I think encompass everything that mbh is about; integrated heterogenous groups who may look like they're acting irrationally but are actually creating the perfect square.

So there you have it, the derivation of a name that one day...hopefully, will be known by many of you.

UniPhi Blog Launched

2005-04-21T16:13:00.000+10:00

UniPhi is an organisation wide project management solution, currently under development by mbh software.

This blog is intended to open communication channels between the developers of UniPhi, associates and customers of mbh, and the broader community.

Over the subsequent months, you can expect to read announcements related to product launch, details of exciting new features and information on development milestones. We encourage anyone with comments or feedback to step forward and be heard!