I'm trying to assess whether InfoAssist would work for some of our users. I know the product is a work in progress and IBI is actively working on features and fixes so I'm looking for some "real world" feedback as to good/bad experiences and issues and whether the ROI is being realized. Thanks.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

quote:

the product is a work in progress

This is the main reason I would not use it. When it's complete then I will evaluate it for my purposes again.

The statement reminds me a bit of Windows Millenium!

T

Rick,
The question is really what level of user do you have in mind?
For non-technical, business users that have a need for a user friendly reporting tool that resembles the MS Office look and feel, this option is ideal.
For developers and power users, I would recommend Developer Studio still.
Then again, if your power user or developer is familiar enough with the code, then they might just prefer a very good text editor (like some of us who have been around for a bit)...

I'm looking at this for our business end-users who are not very technical. Just wondering for those who have it in their company as to how the performance, stability, and whether it's working well for the end-users.

To me Report Assist are Info Assist are the same product, the major difference is that Info Assist is an updated Report Assist.

I think IBI has a lot of nerve charging for this product if the customer already has Report Assist.

Does anybody share my feelings?

First - Let's make sure we are talking about the same tools here. InfoAssist I like. Power Painter I never liked. It's too buggy.

InfoAssist:
For the non-technical business user I really like InfoAssist. So far it has proven to be stable and reliable for us. I can only think of one bug that I found when we first started using it and that is sceduled to be fixed in the next release.
It does not have the level of granularity that Report Assist has but the user interface makes up for that. The user interface is so much more intuitive it takes far less time to train someone to use InfoAssist that it ever did to train them on ReportAssist.
In its first release it handles a good 80% of what a non-technical business user needs. From what I hear the next release will also support compound reports, more output formats, and some SET commands.
I actually wish DevStudio had a more WYSIWYG report preview like InfoAssist does. If I need to create a very simple report I'll often just launch InfoAssist rather than DevStudio!

With regard to IBI charging for InfoAssist, I've not heard that before. I better look in to it!

I hope this helps.

For the record Jay, I respect your opinion; however I do not share your feelings as you only shared your thoughts and opinion on the matter.
I agree with the comments Dan has made regarding InfoAssist.

As far as InfoAssist goes it is a well matured product in its own right and has been widely accepted in the business user community as an intuitive and easy to use reporting tool.

So Rick to answer your original question, I highly recommend it for non-technical business users.
And there is always room for negotiation when pricing is involved ;-)

Kind regards,

Dan, that's good to hear about the stability. It does look like they're really paying attention to the UI on this.

I agree with the DevStudio version. The Report Painter seems a bit clunkyish and dated to me - like some old VB6 win-form app. Also never really dug that Procedure View icon thing - What the heck is wrong with a tree view?

I think they really need to freshen up the whole DevStudio which I think I recall someone saying that's where InfoAssist is heading.

Thanks for the info on the product.

--------

Thanks Clinton too - good to hear.

From what I heard at the latest User Group meeting DevStudio is being re-worked with AJAX controls and other enhancements. I don't recall if they mentioned when we may expect to see that.

Perhaps someone from IBI can comment on this?

I like info assist and think that our end users will also. However I do agree with Jay about the pricing as I have heard that Report Assist will be phased out and eventually fully replaced with Info assist. If that is the case then I don't think there should be a charge to replace existing licenses (beyond the maintenance we are already paying)

can we please hear from more people - if enough people agree that there should not be an extra charge for info assist assist if you already have report assist, maybe we can IBI to agree not to charge for this.

PLEASE EVERYBODY, THIS IS THE TIME FOR YOUR VOICE TO BE HEARD - DO NOT BE SILENT !!!!!

LET JERRY KNOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS

its very painful.
1) its very very very slow
Report Assist only loaded the masterfile
IA loads 500 records of the actual data everytime you blow your nose
Even RA has slowed down in 768 b/c it goes thru the same couple of extra .jsp screens before it presents itself to you.
2) Their sales presentation uses localhost and uses MYIA which is "My Info ASsist" which is running locally. The server version they don't demo...
3) there is an awful window that opens up , which they also don't demo, that allows the user to open up ANY app directory, not just the ones the domain has access to.
We've asked that they shut down that window...
they give us a run around...
EVERY APP on your APP PATH is revealed to EVERY user with Standard/Reports/Join privileges.
Think about that...every Master in your baseapp is now open to the universe. If you have PMF, you know that PMF requires that all its apps remain on the APP PATH...so , if you care, you're revealed all that, as well.

AND ... get this... when you click thru that 'pick your app' window, the IA user interface scrren often OPENS UP WITHIN THAT LITTLE FIRST WINDOW!!!! Who tests this stuff?
4) it gets worse
when you want your users to pick their own masters , you enable IA from 'standard reports' rather than 'reporting objects'...ok....
but then the little popup box where they pick their own masters (to do their own joins) IS SO SMALL THAT YOU CAN'T SEE THE WHOLE FILENAMES and there's no way to stretch it.

This product is so not ready for prime time.
i thought i would like it b/c users can see their code...but the view to that code is not so hot.
Its just not well thought out.

There's no charge per se, just your maintance goes up

ps if anyone wants to see screen shots, pm me and i'll email you my case files on this subject.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: susannah,

I agree with Susannah. InfoAssist is not ready for prime time, it is very slow. How come they missed a simple feature like changing the field format (for example, changing the no.of decimals to 2 for a numeric column).

----------------
WebFOCUS 7.6.8 on Windows 2003 Server
SQL Server 2005
Windows XP

quote:

There's no charge per se, just your maintance goes up

I'm not sure that this is true. It is definitely not true for "My InfoAssist". There is a seat license for that.

As for the live data thing, I thought there was a switch or property you could set to see simulated data.

I'm quoting verbatim the sales rep in charge of this account. it may not be true. but its a quote.

the simulated data thing..way before that, as the thing is launched..there's an agent open and a focsort...before you even see the list of fieldnames...its pulling a ton of records...for no reason...it just slows down the reveal.

and it has a feature that assigns the term 'dimension' or 'measure' to each of your fields... might be a nice feature for a cube..where such things are defined...but for an oracle file or a focus file... IA has no idea which is which...so our users certainly wont...

raj..thanks for the heads up on that bug.

The points of interest that concern me are:
1) Extras charge to RA owners for IA: This should not be as IA was / is to be a replacement for / upgrade to RA, right?
2) DevStudio having more WYSIWYG: Putting a recordlimit of some sort normally suffices for a quick preview. I, personally, like Dev Studio for some coding. But, the text editor is my tool of choice - except where “being able to open code in procedure viewer” is a requirement.
3) I think they really need to freshen up the whole DevStudio: I agree. BUT, make sure they don’t take away anything when they “upgrade”. I am concerned that too much will change (functionality, look, and feel) when they redo Dev Studio with AJAX controls. I’m sure most developers who use Dev Studio will agree that we don’t need this (Redoing of Dev Studio) to be, as Susannah said, “… very painful”.
4) And, What’s with the implementation of Non-Resizable windows? It’s not like it costs anything extra to add the capability of resizing windows to the app. All Windows Should be Resizable - IMHO...
5) Back to Susannah’s comments about the “sales pitch”… We all know that the sales pitch is a pre-rehearsed dog-and-pony-show… But, doing the same thing in real life … That’s a totally different story.

So, let’s wait till IA is READY…

-Doug

quote:

Putting a recordlimit of some sort normally suffices for a quick preview.

Not all relational adapters pass the READLIMIT to the backend engine. Teradata is one of them.

it gets worse....

we all know how in Report ASsist, a user creates a fex and decides to SHARE or not.
its private, or not, at author's discretion.
nice.
Well, in IA, if you give the user the right to do his own JOINs, guess what...his fex is viewable to everyone! Its in the STandard REports area, the only place where you can give the user access to a list of masters.

if you want to do your own JOINs, your work is public.
this is comical now.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: susannah,

Ginny,

quote:

Putting a recordlimit of some sort

Thanks for catching that one. However, by the

quote:

... of some sort

, I was referring to something like WHERE FIELD EQ ONE-VALUE, not necessarily WHERE RECORDLIMIT (or READLIMIT) EQ X. It works for me...

Susannah,

Please see below for some additional technical perspective regarding your specific comments on InfoAssist.

Thanks and regards,

Dan
================================================
1." Report Assist only loaded the masterfile IA loads 500 records of the actual data everytime..."

DanO. 5/12/09: The use of sample data can be modified in a few ways:
- Use Query Mode instead of interactive
- Switch the "Sample Data Method" from "Data from Source" to "Use Sample Data"
- Lower the number of records

As of WebFOCUS 7.6.9 all of this can be edited on a global level using InfoAssist Properties in the Utilities section of the WebFOCUS Administration Console. You can even indicate that the user cannot override your settings.

2)"Their sales presentation uses localhost and uses MYIA which is "My Info ASsist" which is running locally. The server version they don't demo..."

DanO. 5/12/09: Personal InfoAssist, also known as MyIA, does not run locally. It runs outside of Managed Reporting, but relies on the same exact application server and Reporting Server. Files are saved locally, but when reopened they are uploaded to the server. It has almost all of the features as InfoAssist for Managed Reporting with the excpetions of Global Preferences, User Options, and WebFOCUS OLAP.

3) "...there is an awful window that opens up , which they also don't demo, that allows the user to open up ANY app directory, not just the ones the domain has access to.
We've asked that they shut down that window...
they give us a run around...
EVERY APP on your APP PATH is revealed to EVERY user with Standard/Reports/Join privileges.
Think about that...every Master in your baseapp is now open to the universe. If you have PMF, you know that PMF requires that all its apps remain on the APP PATH...so , if you care, you're revealed all that, as well..."
4) "it gets worse
when you want your users to pick their own masters , you enable IA from 'standard reports' rather than 'reporting objects'...ok....
but then the little popup box where they pick their own masters (to do their own joins) IS SO SMALL THAT YOU CAN'T SEE THE WHOLE FILENAMES and there's no way to stretch it..."

DanO. 5/12/09: Answer to 3 and 4
Only Developers with Data Servers access can use the small window referenced to change their server and application path. Based on the information provided it seems that Standard Reports was used to allow users to pick their own masterfile to use with IA. A better approach would be to give users the ability to Create/Edit customer Reports. This is done by giving them the Advanced feature. Then they can access the tools such as InfoAssist, the text editor, etc. from Custom Reports, which does not prompt you with the small window that was referenced. Additionally, in WebFOCUS 77 you will have greater control over what users can see and edit from the Domain Tree.

5) "...and it has a feature that assigns the term 'dimension' or 'measure' to each of your fields... might be a nice feature for a cube..where such things are defined...but for an oracle file or a focus file... IA has no idea which is which...so our users certainly wont..."

DanO. 5/12/2009: It is correct that in WebFOCUS 76x, only cubes leverage this properly. The addition of cube support in 7.6.9 is a signficant enhancement, allowing customers to use a single tool for cube browsing, query and analysis,and creation/publishing of compound documents that can integrate information from cubes with other data sources. In WebFOCUS releases later this year, we will be adding the ability to specify in the masterfile what type of field it is, e.g., dimension, measure, etc. The GUI will then properly display the hiearchy.

We have had the opportunity to use the latest version of InfoAssit - V7.6.9 and have been very pleased with its capabilities. As DanO details there are options to configure the default settings for the user experience in InfoAssist that make it a viable report writing tool for those users who don't want or need to learn to "code" a report.

When you have hundreds or thousands of users in your company that need to be able to create reports it is not practical or very feasible to teach them to use Develoer Studio. As someone mentioned in an earlier feedback to this post - the value of using InfoAssit really depends on the type of report writer that you are becasue not everyone needs all of the capabilities that require Developer Studio.

quote:

thousands of users in your company

That's one of the beauties of WebFOCUS, Scalability.

We won't try info assist until Susannah says it ready for primetime...

Frank - agreed!

quote:

quote: the product is a work in progress
This is the main reason I would not use it. When it's complete then I will evaluate it for my purposes again.

The statement reminds me a bit of Windows Millenium!

I still stand by what I posted earlier. With experience of incomplete (even slightly) products I could not envisage recommending this to any of my Clients until I, myself, was completely happy that it perfromed (and performed well).

With this and the Dev Studio concerns post 7.1.6 (still my preferred release), I'm a little concerned of the direction in which the product is going.

I understand that the way forward has got to be GUI related (let's face it - training doesn't seem high on the agenda for a lot of today's users ) but without a reliable product where's the progress?

T

Dear all,
It is a pitty that this thread has taken the tone that it has.
It seems that there is a significant number of users in this community that look at a glass and considers it half empty vs. half full.
Then again this community is not unique in this regards.
There is a very apt saying in ZA: "you are complaining with a white bread under the arm".
I remind you that there is also ample room to be thankful for all the features that we do have available in the various IB toolsets and solutions that we use daily.
Thanks for the great feedack Dan!
And the rest of you users, SMILE! Life and work would have been tons more challenging without IB and IB solutions.
Cheers from Switzerland.

If I had nothing to eat I would be happy with white bread.

Since a customer pays for quality software shouldn't they expect excellent quality software?

Most of us love working with WebFOCUS, we just wish is worked better than it does.

say, 769 just came out today....
maybe its worth an upgrade before working on this version anymore...

Thanks for the feedback. I know the product is a bit "green" and they've been pretty forthright about it.

Doug: nowadays everytime I see an app that has non-resizable windows I'm always amazed this escapes basic user testing.

If the product is slow - that's way not going to work.

Thanks for all the comments - nice lively discussion

So how does one get the opportunity to "test drive" this new interface replacement for Report Assitant, in our real Managed Reporting environment, not through a sales demo or webinar?

Some of the features sound attractive. Some of the experiences sound possibly unworkable for our environment.

I understand the frustration that many in the user community experience with software features pushed out the door before thoroughly ready, we've had our share. But I also understand the need to improve, I wholeheartedly support the revamp of Report Assistant to an AJAX-based interface that generates clean code, and I wholeheartedly support dismantling the complexity bloat-anchor that Dev Studio has become through the years.

So how does one assess the viability of Info Assist for their shop for themselves?

Dan at UNO -- Linux, WF 7.6.5