NATURAL PROCESS Extends NATURAL to Operations Center

1 Service/Connection: ANew WavTo
Communicate
I
Simon Kane
Service Development Group
Customer Service Division
A prototype version of Servicel
Connection was demonstrated at
the 17th International Software AG
Users' Conference in November
1987. Survey forms were distributed
to everyone who attended one of
the demonstrations or the associ-
ated presentation. The results of
this survey, and answers to some of
the many questions that have been
asked, are presented below.
For those of you who were unable
to attend the Conference, here is
a short description of Servicel
Connection:
ServicelConnection will be an online,
customer-accessible system
that will ~rovide the customers of
Software AG with various functions
intended to improve service levels.
It is intended to be a supplement
to, not a replacement for, existing
support procedures.
continued from page 5
rected and coordinated by
ADABAS Product Support. Their
skills and enthusiasm have made a
very valuable contribution to the
test effort.
Documentation Testing
ADABAS documentation is such an
integral part of the product that it
cannot be tested separately. Early
in the alpha test phase, preliminary
documentation was reviewed for
readability. As conflicts and inac-
curacies have been discovered dur-
ing the course of testing, the
Documentation Group has been
responsible for coordinating
changes.
Education Testing
In addition to their role in internal
testing, SSRs who were in Reston
for testing during the week before
the Users' Conference attended
the beta test of our Customer Train-
ing Department's newly-developed
5 course for ADABAS V4 users inter-
s ested in the differences between
The initial system plan includes
four basic functions:
User profile system
Electronic mail and bulletin
boards
Search and retrieval of Software
AG supplied documents
Search and retrieval of product
fixes and updates.
Features identified for possible in-
clusion in later versions are:
Online registration for customer
training
Online document ordering
Access to Technical Support
System data extracts
Entry of customer requests (TSS
logs)
* Enhanced customer interaction
on customer requests
Communication with other Soft-
ware AG departments
Access to ServicelConnection will
be via dial-up telephone lines from
a customer-supplied personal com-
puter. The system will run under
the two versions. This gave Cus-
tomer Training a chance to test the
class and find out what areas were
likely to provoke questions. Sue
Karlin, Manager of ADABAS Prod-
uct Support, was able to attend
some segments of the class and
provide additional insight into both
ADABAS 5 operation and what
users were likely to want to know,
based on her experience with
Users' Groups.
Iterative Testing
All jobstreams built to test
ADABAS 5 are designed to be easy
to re-execute. These jobs are re-
run against every significantly dif-
ferent load library and will form
a valuable tool for efficient testing
of ADABAS 5 SMs and releases.
Subsequent Releases
As functionality is added to
ADABAS 5, whether in ADABAS
Online Services, ADABAS 5.2, or
with the appearance of ADANET
and the NET-WORK 5 product, test
jobstreams will be added to the
NATURAL 2, NATURAL CONNEC-
TION V3, and CON-NECT 2 with
special CON-NECT application
programs added as necessary,
Some of the advantages to provid-
ing this type of service are as
follows:
Service levels will be increased
by having information available
when needed, regardless of office
hours, acts of nature (eg. bliz-
zards), resource limitations, or
time zones.
Information will be available to
all customers of Software AG
simultaneously. Delays due to
distribution limitations, mail
service, etc, will be reduced or
eliminated.
Through the use of NATURAL
CONNECTION, ServicelConnec-
tion users will be able to down-
loadlupload data necessary for
stable operation of their Software
AG environment without the
risks inherent with human
intervention. continued on page 20
testbed. Where possible, tests for
problem resolution after release
will also be collected so that with
each subsequent release, ADABAS
will be more and more thoroughly
exercised.
External Testing
Customer beta test sites have also
been working hard to become fa-
miliar with ADABAS 5 and identify
areas which could be problems for
them. Test sites were each given
an area of the matrix for which to
build and execute test jobs. Beta
sites have been requested to convert
a subset of their major ADABAS
applications to ADABAS 5 and
compare execution with ADABAS
4 to see how ADABAS performs
in the real world. A resolution after
release will also be collected so
that with each subsequent release,
ADABAS will be more and more
thoroughly exercised.
This complex Quality Assurance
process allows Software AG to pro-
vide the highest quality product
to our users.