Check out Software
Category CIAO Notes Development
Craig Schumann posted an article on the TeamStudio blog, http://www.governancefornotes.com/blog/governanceblog.nsf/d6plinks/TBAN-7HGPB5, where he talks about their product, CIAO, which stands for "Check In And Out". He's asking for feedback from people who like it and people who dislike it.
Put me down in the I like it camp. Actually, even though I'm in a 2 person Notes shop, and we're rarely, if ever, working on the same database at the same time, I love CIAO!! Why? if we don't really need it for checking things in and out? Because I think if it as a safety blanket. I like having it ask me what's the purpose of the changes. I like the fact that I can "Make a Version" and a copy of the template is stored inside it's own database. And I really like that it has a little bit of their Delta product built in so I can see what the differences are between the current code and the last version.
Why do you need to see the changes? Well sometimes I work on low priority tasks over a long period of time. This gives be the ability to see everything that's been changed in case I need a reminder.
CIAO has some good reporting features - what's been changed, what's checked out, but honestly I haven't really played with those too much.
Why did we get into CIAO? Partly it was because we use some serious check in software on our iSeries. Our programmers couldn't live without that. So we wanted to try and emulate that environment to a certain extent. We believe that checking in is a "Best Practice". Another reason was for SOX Compliance. While our Lotus Notes Environment isn't really in the Auditor's radar, especially compared to our iSeries, we wanted to have a method of documenting our changes that's in addition to our internal project and task tracking.
We don't have the server version, just the client. But if you're trying to get into CIAO, just install the client and start coding. During the initial save of a not checkout out element, you're going to get a simple box where you can leave a comment describing the change. It's that easy. The only key is that you should check everything back in before you move it along on your promotion path. As part of our promotion path, we run Teamstudio's Analyzer Auditor program on it and one of the things that we look for is for "Checked out" elements. This gives us a reminder to check anything back in if we forgot it.
I think the best thing to do is get it installed, start using it and just don't take it off. Before very long you're going to forget it's there. I'll just seem natural.
But regardless of SOX, or best practices, I'd have to say that if I were an independent consultant, and just working on my own, I'd still want to purchase and use CIAO. Just for my own documentation and record keeping.
While I love CIAO, this does not mean that the product couldn't be improved. At least in my opinion....
A recent feature to CIAO is that it has the ability to link checkouts to a Custom incident tracking or "Help Ticket" database. That's COOL! I've wanted that FOREVER! It would be great to link the checkouts then from the Help database see what happened for a ticket or task. Unfortunately I don't think this feature is robust enough for every environment - including ours. I've brought this up to the Teamstudio team MANY times, so I'm hopeful that one day there will be a change and I'll get to actually use this feature. The real problem to me is if you want to look want to look up incidents by using a view, the first column must be an incident number and the second must be the description. While we have them, we don't actively use incident numbers in my organization. I wish we could choose any view we wanted and then when we select a document, we can specify in CIAO the field names to use for the incident number and description.
I really like the potential of another new feature that they recently added to CIAO, - Branch Management. In theory, that allows you to work on long term changes and still be able to so quick fixes and merge them together. I would love to get into that. Unfortunately, they really recommend that before you use this one of their consultants comes out for a visit to help you set it up and provide training. While I want to use the feature that's an expense that's hard to get approved in our environment.
I really wish that the checkout comments were more "robust". Often I'll check something out for 1 change, and end up doing multiple changes. I don't check out and check back in each time. I wish there were an option to popup the checkout comment box on each SAVE of the design element. Then I could at least easily remember to add additional comments to reflect the additional changes. If I were greedy, which I can be, I'd love to have something other then a free form comment field, so I might get the ability to link different comments to different incidents. BUT I'd really settle for just fixing/improving the incident linking.
I really don't get the reason why there are such controls on version names. You can only use letters, numbers, or an underscore. I really never know what to put in this field other then maybe "BASELINE" or "Update". I can understand imposing a limit to the number of characters, but I don't get the need to control which characters I can use.
Similar to my comment on check out comments.. it would be nice if they built into CIAO a little bit of their Snapper product like they built in a little of their Delta product. Because you might not check in and out the same element multiple times, it would be nice if you got a snapshot on each save, so you could easily roll back some test code...
Anyway, that's a few of my thoughts on CIAO. Again I think it's a great product with great support. I use several of the Teamstudio products and they're all pretty good. I think sometimes they miss the Gold but they're definitely on the podium with a Silver or Bronze! Also, I've always had good success with their support!! Though I don't need to call very often.
Craig Schumann posted an article on the TeamStudio blog, http://www.governancefornotes.com/blog/governanceblog.nsf/d6plinks/TBAN-7HGPB5, where he talks about their product, CIAO, which stands for "Check In And Out". He's asking for feedback from people who like it and people who dislike it.
Put me down in the I like it camp. Actually, even though I'm in a 2 person Notes shop, and we're rarely, if ever, working on the same database at the same time, I love CIAO!! Why? if we don't really need it for checking things in and out? Because I think if it as a safety blanket. I like having it ask me what's the purpose of the changes. I like the fact that I can "Make a Version" and a copy of the template is stored inside it's own database. And I really like that it has a little bit of their Delta product built in so I can see what the differences are between the current code and the last version.
Why do you need to see the changes? Well sometimes I work on low priority tasks over a long period of time. This gives be the ability to see everything that's been changed in case I need a reminder.
CIAO has some good reporting features - what's been changed, what's checked out, but honestly I haven't really played with those too much.
Why did we get into CIAO? Partly it was because we use some serious check in software on our iSeries. Our programmers couldn't live without that. So we wanted to try and emulate that environment to a certain extent. We believe that checking in is a "Best Practice". Another reason was for SOX Compliance. While our Lotus Notes Environment isn't really in the Auditor's radar, especially compared to our iSeries, we wanted to have a method of documenting our changes that's in addition to our internal project and task tracking.
We don't have the server version, just the client. But if you're trying to get into CIAO, just install the client and start coding. During the initial save of a not checkout out element, you're going to get a simple box where you can leave a comment describing the change. It's that easy. The only key is that you should check everything back in before you move it along on your promotion path. As part of our promotion path, we run Teamstudio's Analyzer Auditor program on it and one of the things that we look for is for "Checked out" elements. This gives us a reminder to check anything back in if we forgot it.
I think the best thing to do is get it installed, start using it and just don't take it off. Before very long you're going to forget it's there. I'll just seem natural.
But regardless of SOX, or best practices, I'd have to say that if I were an independent consultant, and just working on my own, I'd still want to purchase and use CIAO. Just for my own documentation and record keeping.
While I love CIAO, this does not mean that the product couldn't be improved. At least in my opinion....
A recent feature to CIAO is that it has the ability to link checkouts to a Custom incident tracking or "Help Ticket" database. That's COOL! I've wanted that FOREVER! It would be great to link the checkouts then from the Help database see what happened for a ticket or task. Unfortunately I don't think this feature is robust enough for every environment - including ours. I've brought this up to the Teamstudio team MANY times, so I'm hopeful that one day there will be a change and I'll get to actually use this feature. The real problem to me is if you want to look want to look up incidents by using a view, the first column must be an incident number and the second must be the description. While we have them, we don't actively use incident numbers in my organization. I wish we could choose any view we wanted and then when we select a document, we can specify in CIAO the field names to use for the incident number and description.
I really like the potential of another new feature that they recently added to CIAO, - Branch Management. In theory, that allows you to work on long term changes and still be able to so quick fixes and merge them together. I would love to get into that. Unfortunately, they really recommend that before you use this one of their consultants comes out for a visit to help you set it up and provide training. While I want to use the feature that's an expense that's hard to get approved in our environment.
I really wish that the checkout comments were more "robust". Often I'll check something out for 1 change, and end up doing multiple changes. I don't check out and check back in each time. I wish there were an option to popup the checkout comment box on each SAVE of the design element. Then I could at least easily remember to add additional comments to reflect the additional changes. If I were greedy, which I can be, I'd love to have something other then a free form comment field, so I might get the ability to link different comments to different incidents. BUT I'd really settle for just fixing/improving the incident linking.
I really don't get the reason why there are such controls on version names. You can only use letters, numbers, or an underscore. I really never know what to put in this field other then maybe "BASELINE" or "Update". I can understand imposing a limit to the number of characters, but I don't get the need to control which characters I can use.
Similar to my comment on check out comments.. it would be nice if they built into CIAO a little bit of their Snapper product like they built in a little of their Delta product. Because you might not check in and out the same element multiple times, it would be nice if you got a snapshot on each save, so you could easily roll back some test code...
Anyway, that's a few of my thoughts on CIAO. Again I think it's a great product with great support. I use several of the Teamstudio products and they're all pretty good. I think sometimes they miss the Gold but they're definitely on the podium with a Silver or Bronze! Also, I've always had good success with their support!! Though I don't need to call very often.
