As I mentioned in a previous post, we have standardized on SQL Reporting Services for our reporting needs. Coming from a Business Intelligence consulting background I had used a handful of powerful reporting solutions such as BusinessObjects, Spotfire, etc, so I was very leery when I first started experimenting with SQL Reporting Services.
After working with it for over two years, I can safely say that it is a very decent (and free) reporting solution for people running SQL Server.  For small to medium businesses who already own SQL, odds are with a little bit of experimentation, you can make reporting services work for you.
In my earlier post regarding the new release of the .NET 3.5 Framework and Visual Studio 2008, I mentioned a very exciting concept within the .NET framework called XBAP which stands for XAML Browser Application. XAML is basically a layer of abstraction that describes the presentation of a .NET app. So what is XBAP?
XBAP is simply taking a .NET application and making it run in the browser. In the olden days, you’d have to determine if you were going to write a desktop based application or a web application. Web applications are not as robust and feature rich in the UI and presentation in addition to having many constraints being a stateless model, hence why most complex applications end up on the desktop. That era is one step closer to being ushered out. With XBAP, the gap that exists between web applications and full client applications is closing. Read the rest of this entry »
This week Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework. While the 3.0 framework has been out for sometime now, the 3.5 framework builds on this and adds some additional features to the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). So why is this worthy of a blog entry?Â
The answer is simple! Microsoft’s latest strategy with the .NET platform is brilliant. At a recent MSDN event I attended, the presenter stated that they had basically concluded that the only thing developers should have to worry about are the elements that are unique to the business requirements they are programming. These fall into two simple categories, 1) the User Interface (UI) and 2) the business rules. All other code components are not unique across applications nor across businesses and industries.
At the last MSDN event I attended, there was some discussion of the new Microsoft Surface concept. If you are unfamiliar with this relatively new technology venture Microsoft is headed down I think you will be impressed with how neat the concept is. Basically it is bringing touch screen computing to a whole new level. Imagine a screen that is very large with software that is very interactive. You can start to explore and navigate in ways that a traditional mouse simply cannot.Â
Some say it is the future of computing, but I’m not sure. There is a great blog post here that actually discusses the technology behind it, it is pretty fascinating.
As you can see from the video below, the technology is amazing, but I’m not sure where it fits in my business. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be sweet in my living room (so long as it could stand a few kids jumping, scribbling and spilling on it). I’ll be watching this technology, I’m sure it’ll be everywhere in the future as people start thinking of great ways to leverage it!
This is the third article in the TOLIA Document Imaging for TMWSuite series. To recap, in article 1 of this series I discussed the TOLIA Image Viewer which is used for quick document retrieval and viewing in addition to some upload capabilities.
In article 2 I discussed the TOLIA Batch Entry program used to upload and tag scanned images in a batch mode.Â
In this article, we’ll focus on the last of the methods for inputting documents into the imaging system, which is with a tool called TOLIA QuickScan.
I think of my children anytime I get some new piece of hardware or software…I can’t wait to get it out of the box and toy around with it. The day I received my action pack subscription with my copy of Microsoft Vista Business Edition, I had to dive in head first.
I of course had been messing with the beta releases all along in a virtualized environment, but I thought now that it was live, I might as well make the jump and load it as my primary operating system.
I decided to take a Friday afternoon and eagerly make the jump. I made an Acronis copy of my work machine (thank God I did this) and started down the path of doing the upgrade from Windows XP Pro to Vista. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, then all of a sudden I got the blue screen of death. When it rebooted, things just continued to go south, it wouldn’t boot anymore and the installer wouldn’t continue, I was completely hosed. After an hour of googling and trying different things, I gave up, since I had to be operational by Monday.  I ended up restoring my machine back to XP Pro. I wasn’t about to let one bad install stop me from persevering though. Read the rest of this entry »
This article is the second in a series discussing our document imaging workflow system. This article discusses the batch workflow processing. The TOLIA Batch Entry imaging module adds a method of mass upload of images to the TOLIA document imaging system built on top of TMWSuite. Even with the image upload capability of the TOLIA Image Viewer, there are times that we need to mass upload images in a batch process.
This need arises several times a week actually since we rely on the TripPak overnight service that allows our drivers to send in all of their signed bills of lading, toll and fuel receipts, etc. It would be too cumbersome to try to individually scan and upload these images, so an efficient batch processing tool was developed, aka the TOLIA Batch Entry application.
The TOLIA Image Viewer is a custom document imaging add on module for TMW Suite. It was the first component that was built as part of the TOLIA solution and applications.Â
This application not only serves as the tool that images are viewed with, but it also has many of other features that were added to streamline our document imaging process. It has vastly improved our process workflow for how all documents related to a trip are pushed through the system.
As I mentioned in my previous post, at Tradewinds we had developed a very simple and easy to use imaging system that we have integrated into TMWSuite to provide one click document retrieval. Prior to my arrival at Tradewinds, we had originally been scanning bills and confirmations and had been labeling them in folders and using file names. This was slow since it was a batch process, it was cumbersome since it relied on manual labeling and it made it hard to find images…naturally the business had progressed and a system was needed.
This week I attended the TMW Systems 2007 user conference down in Orlando, FL with some fellow colleagues from Tradewinds. As usual, the event was jam packed with sessions and great opportunities to meet other users of the software. This was the third TMW conference that I have personally attended and am most impressed with how well put together the conference is.
As I mentioned in a previous post, we have standardized on SQL Reporting Services for our reporting needs. Coming from a Business Intelligence consulting background I had used a handful of powerful reporting solutions such as BusinessObjects, Spotfire, etc, so I was very leery when I first started experimenting with SQL Reporting Services.
In my 
This week Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework. While the 3.0 framework has been out for sometime now, the 3.5 framework builds on this and adds some additional features to the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). So why is this worthy of a blog entry? 
This is the third article in the 
I think of my children anytime I get some new piece of hardware or software…I can’t wait to get it out of the box and toy around with it. The day I received my action pack subscription with my copy of Microsoft Vista Business Edition, I had to dive in head first.
This article is the second in a series discussing our document imaging workflow system. This article discusses the batch workflow processing. The TOLIA Batch Entry imaging module adds a method of mass upload of images to the TOLIA document imaging system built on top of TMWSuite. Even with the image upload capability of the TOLIA Image Viewer, there are times that we need to mass upload images in a batch process.
The TOLIA Image Viewer is a custom document imaging add on module for TMW Suite. It was the first component that was built as part of the TOLIA solution and applications. 
As I mentioned in my previous post, at Tradewinds we had developed a very simple and easy to use imaging system that we have integrated into TMWSuite to provide one click document retrieval. Prior to my arrival at Tradewinds, we had originally been scanning bills and confirmations and had been labeling them in folders and using file names. This was slow since it was a batch process, it was cumbersome since it relied on manual labeling and it made it hard to find images…naturally the business had progressed and a system was needed.
