What a disaster. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Cameron Sent: Sunday, 4 December 2005 3:15 PM To: 'General Practice Computing Group Talk' Subject: [GPCG_TALK] A techies view of PractiX PART-2 -oh my godness
Here it is part 2 of the (yes it is now officially a) Saga; There were problems galore with the data conversion stemming some house keeping not being done on the old database by practice staff. This threw up some errors that IBA rightly said must be fixed before the conversion take place. These errors resulted from some dubious practices done by practice staff in the past. So the practice had shot themselves in the foot months ago without realising. This meant the conversion was a few days later than timetabled (despite the valiant efforts of the onsite IBA person) which meant the nice quiet go-live day with reduced doctors working and a reduced patient load for those working was missed. Day 1. So 'go-live' happened with 90% load ! It was fairly ugly. And most staff complained it was too slow ! I asked IBA Support about optimising the SQL data and was told it is not their problem but the surgeries!!! They gave me a few sketchy verbal idea's on what to do which I performed on the evening of day1 after consultation with a colleague who is more knowledgeable regarding MS SQL. No one noticed any real speed difference on day2. Day 2. IBA transferred a new bug fix build of PractiX onto the server. IBA asked me via phone if I could do the upgrade later that night after everyone was logged off. I agreed on the proviso that they email me the instructions to remind and instruct me. That email has never arrived and neither have I received any reply to the emails I have sent to IBA support despite the fact I have email delivery receipts. I knew that the update was critical for the surgery to be able to bill through HIC Online the next day so I spent considerably more time than normal (remotely) figuring out what needed to be done. Confident I had achieved the upgrade on the server and one workstation (like MD it detects the new version on the server), consult2 I left the other workstation upgrades to be done by the Robina staff in the morning. Day 3. The next morning several workstations did not upgrade correctly and ceased to run PractiX causing chaos on reception. The response the onsite IBA person (who was onsite and called support on the surgeries behalf) received from IBA support was in my personal view dismal and un-professional. This person called me to help fix the problem that was caused by the PractiX upgrade. (funny I get the same type of calls from another client after Plexus upgrades break their installation) The cause seemed to be a combination of the upgrade and Computer Associates AV, eTrust 7.1. It would appear that CA AV is quarantining some part of PractiX within 2-30 minutes of it being opened on some but not all pc's. CA are investigating the issue but they (and I) need some feedback/help from IBA support to achieve anything. IBA's onsite person mentioned that they have seen some AV programs detect PractiX as a virus. I have sent an email to IBA support on day 3 and again on day 4 but have yet to receive a reply to clarify this. It took me a while to find this problem with the CA AV which no doubt increased the users frustration. In the meantime the quarantine is disabled (this is a short term measure only). In the Plexus information for hardware suppliers document sent to me there is a brief mention of Norton's Enterprise AV. It is listed under the 'optional software' listing. My view of Norton's AV is that it is a liability. Keep in mind that I have another site running essentially the same version of the IBA software but with a different name (Plexus) on very similar hardware (nearly the same Dell server, same PC's, same switch, same operating systems, same versions office etc). IBA's preferred hardware partner for PractiX is Dell according to their website. He also has CA AV installed and has not had any issues with it. IBA support decided to run SQL profiler on the server to see if there were any SQL type issues, hooray ! But they didn't tell anyone they were going to do it on the console, in plain view of anyone logged on. I happened to be on the console with CA support remotely in, checking on the AV problem. So I had just disconnected CA when SQL Profiler popped up. I checked with the practice manager if IBA were doing anything remotely to which the reply was NO. So I closed it. I found out later that IBA had executed it and they restarted it the next morning. No feedback yet though. Day 5. Users are still complaining to me about how slow PractiX is. At various times during the week I monitored the servers performance, CPU sat on about 5% and network traffic the same. I must remember to check the disk I/O this week. It's Sunday as I write this to get it off my chest. These issues are really starting to get to me. The attitude of the IBA support team (except for the onsite person) is really starting to piss me off. Their attitude has been worse than HCN support and that's saying something. In comparison the HIC Online support team are great. The problem at my other IBA surgery last month involved HIC Online. This broke on the same day that IBA support did a Plexus upgrade remotely on the server. IBA support were very unhelpful and pointed the finger of blame at HIC. HIC Online support to their credit took ownership of the issue and continued to work with the client and the uncooperative IBA support team to resolve the issue. I was called in at the request of the HIC and together we found that the Plexus upgrade had a flaw and had broken HIC Online. Their practice manager wrote to IBA for an explanation but there has been no reply. Its a sad day when a commonwealth govt department have a better support team than a commercial vendor. Another comparison from a different site with different clinical software, Shexie from the same day. They were helpful, polite and wanted to help resolve the clients issues wether or not they were directly related to their product or not. Totalcare have the same attitude with their support. Satisfaction of the customer comes first. Its day 6 tomorrow, what horrors will it bring... Andrew C. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
