It is always funny how management will say "we want this" and you go back a couple of days later and give them a price, 95% of the time they go "Oh.....well I guess we can get by with what we have". We recently had a client tell some of management how we should have Oracle rather than MSSQL (which does a great job for us). They asked me to get some pricing and when I went back with a bare minimum quote (just SW, no HW, no training), their jaws about hit the ground.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Kuminda Chandimith Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 8:48 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: (Long!) Exchange-based enterprise executive scheduling applic ation Martin. I thought 10K for system specification is on The higher side. Not mention that I'd be quoting 4-5 time more for the Actual development.. and you said that its on Lower side.. What am I doing here .. counting peanuts .. ?? Tell me how big is a peanut on your planet ..? and Mike.. Exchange is not a very easy development platform (Challenging ..Yes ... But you need real good programmers to work on it). There are 101 things that seems very simple but that you cannot do in exchange (or it would cost 10 times more to do..) so a comprehensive application like yours will take really long time .. I would say roughly 10-12 man months (being very optimistic calculation) Give a cost benefit analyse to you management.. They Will find out that several "time management training" courses to staff will cost much Less than the exchange application. (assuming people going to use what they learn in those courses) Good Luck mike Kuminda Kuminda Chandimith Sr. Technical Consultant Ducont.com FZ-LLC Tel: + 971-4-3913000 Ext 237 Fax: +971-4-3913001 http://www.ducont.com -----Original Message----- From: Martin Blackstone [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 30 September 2001 18:47 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: (Long!) Exchange-based enterprise executive scheduling application I think Kuminda is right, you may need someone to write this program for you. His quote of 10K is probably on the low side. Regardless, this is not something you are going to have by Monday, or probably even by Nov 1st. PERSONSALLY, I probably would have told management that this aint gonna happen and Exchange is what they have. It is good enough for the rest of the world, it should be good enough for them. But I have never been good at politics either :) It sounds like non of these people or their admins can responsibly handle their schedules, so they are hoping there is some kind of super secretary software to do it for them. I think for you, you may need to let them know that anything like this would take a couple of months (at least), and they will need to be willing to hire a programmer to come in and do this, as there is nothing off the shelf for them. See how much they are willing spend to do this, then pass it on to someone you can hire as a contractor for the job. Tell them you have already solicited one offer for 10K to do it. Ill bet it is gets swept right under the rug! :) Good luck dude. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mike Pelley Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 5:50 AM To: Exchange Discussions Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (Long!) Exchange-based enterprise executive scheduling application Importance: High Folks, I received on Friday a request that a new executive-level scheduling system be implemented yesterday (of course). For good or bad, I've convinced them that keeping all schedules within our existing Exchange 5.5 system so we don't have conflicting scheduling systems. However, I'm not sure if some features can even be implemented within Exchange. I'm NOT an Exchange programmer, so some things may not even be possible. They (the executives) really want some way that they (or their delegates) can prioritize meetings (I guess according to their priorities: First the Board, second senior executive, third joint executive, etc, with "local" meetings below these) and have "higher-level" meetings override "lower-level" meetings with central vetting. As well, they want the OWA interface changed so that a full month can be seen and different views applied (by scheduling body, by site, etc) and that it be viewable to all. I suggested Team Folders, but they say while is is "okay", it, even in the "full" Outlook version (let alone trying to view this over OWA), isn't what they want. Anyway, I've put the requirements below. Is there any product out there that can provide this functionality? Indeed, are there some requirments that Exchange 5.5 cannot provide? Thank you! Cheers, Mike ------ Project Requirements ------- Project: Scheduler to coordinate and facilitate all enterprise committee meetings. Requirements: * Efficient and user-friendly * Integrated into the existing Exchange system * Web interface: * Include some means of viewing information by committee and or by month (perhaps also by individual). * clude a category of simple list of meetings for that month. * Each meeting would have a link to a table of information on the meeting including time and place and a list of attendees. Each attendee name linked to their general info as well or to their conflict/ problem if applicable (See idea of conflict tag below). * Administrative (Data Entry and Maintenance) side such that a delegate for each committee could update their list of events. This input would go through a verification process that would ensure all the protocols were adhered to. * Work with the existing outlook information in terms of individual members existing commitments. * A planning hierarchy would be created such that the highest level meetings / most relevance can be flagged as such. Conflicts are detected when the item is added and some sort of simple flag (i.e. attendee name changes color or icon appears) indicating that another commitment exists for a specific attendee. Here too some assessment of the priority for the meetings must come into play. When a conflict exists the user should avail of a list of other available dates to reschedule the lesser priority meeting. * When sorting by location the list needs to include meetings specific to them and higher. The same level and lower are not necessary. i.e., A site meeting in City A need not appear in the list for someone in City B. * The project initiator (and Board of Directors member!) is responsible for the Board of Directory, Senior Executive, Joint Executive ( District Administrators ) and Extended Joint Executive ( District Administrators, Associate District Administrators and Pject Chairs) meetings. He has emailed members of these to contact him with a list of groups to be considered in this planning process. Examples: * A meeting with an external organization includes some higher executive members. Although it is not strictly an organizational event it must be covered on in terms of time committed in the scheduler. * Sub-executive groups have meetings wich conflicts with a Joint executive meeting which for one director. The scheduler would help avoid this.... If properly updated! * A meeting scheduled at a group or individual level needs to be accounted for, i.e., the information in Exchange must be available. (That is, everyone's schedule must be accessable to everyone else, including the web interface) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- Mike Pelley E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
