Correspondence
Hi Murray,
Sandra left me a voicemail on Tuesday to discuss this but we have not had a chance to talk yet.
I have no issue with students from Seneca working on a project for Westminster and we will co-operate with them.
I have not had a chance to investigate Wordpress in much detail but I see that it requires PHP and MySQL. We don’t have any other clients who require this on our Windows web servers and I am not likely going to install it unless there is the possibility of other clients using Wordpress as well. If the Seneca students are interested in designing a website taking advantage of IIS using Windows then that would work out fine for Westminster and we could continue to host the site.
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
From: Susanne Boisvenue Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 8:38 AM To: Bill Boisvenue Subject: FW: Hi There from Murray at Westminster
Do you know what he is talking about?
Susanne.
From: Murray Saul [1] Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 7:43 PM To: Susanne Boisvenue Subject: Re: Hi There
Hi Susanne and Bill,
I believe Sandra may have contacted via phone about allowing Seneca Students work help analyze and design some modifications on your existing Windows system.
I believe these students can also incorporate a web-page design if required (i.e. not have to look to WordPress). I believe Westminster would benefit from an in-depth analysis (with students generating full documentation). The analysis phase would take 1 semester, and the design and implementation one semester. There may be room for subsequent projects to "tweak" the system. I recall we discussed a possible arrangement for students to work with you to see how it affects your side...
Anyways, the fall semester is starting which presents a window of opportunity. I will support and stand by whatever decision or suggestion(s) you make. If you could please let me know if a "go" or "no-go" within a week's time, so I can plan or "call-off" any projects that would affect the Seneca students.
- )
Thanks, Murray
Hi Murray,
We do run Perl on one of our webservers.
My son is now living in Waterloo as he is attending Laurier so he is not available to run cable. I am willing to help with some cabling but my calendar is pretty full right now. What exactly needs to be done?
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
From: Murray Saul [2] Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2010 12:54 PM To: Bill Boisvenue Subject: Re: RE: Hi There from Murray at Westminster
Hi Bill, I have a couple of questions:
Do you run Perl on your IIS system for Westminster. If so, then I might be able to get another student project to help create a temp webpage for church and mechanism for updates if student could run perl scripts. I guess church is trying to have Earl focus on AVIT suite complete instead of getting spun off in other directions. I recall you and your son do cable runs. Would you be available to do that in order to get Linux computer lab hooked up to Internet? I could offer my assistance in this as well if required...
Cheers, Murray
Murray,
BSC might be willing to host the software at our datacenter if that is required. Our servers are 100% Windows based and we are concerned about having to install applications that could impact the performance of them or add a support burden to our staff. We continue to donate our time to support the church as we are supporting equipment which we installed and configured. If our team has to learn new software and support becomes time consuming we would have to charge for it. It might make sense to host the software on the local server if it ends up integrating with Exchange or SharePoint Services.
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
From: Murray Saul [3] Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 8:10 PM To: Bill Boisvenue Subject: Re: Questions
Hi Bill,
I'm sending this e-mail to provide as much information regarding Westminster's system analysis and design project by Seneca students.
Attached is a PDF of a slide show I gave to the Westminster executive committee today. This presentation was well received in the meeting.
If you view the PDF, one of the "sticking points" of the process is that once the project is over, there is no support for the software. Since it is good for both of us to go into this process with "eyes wide open", I need to gain a sense of how this support could be in place after the project is completed.
I would be interested in your suggestions on this issue and what you would recommend...
If the project is partially completed (eg. like a phase 1 of 4 phases), then I would treat this as a candidates for "follow-up" project(s) to add or tweak the system. I assume there would somehow to collaboration with my students and your staff during the project to run software on your site? If that is the case, would there be a "tie-in" to your staff knowing about the software and provide support (even if this required an additional support cost?). Just wondering how this would work. Some sort of answer to church executive would put them better at ease to strongly support this project initiative.
There will be some sort of contract on the software, and from what I gather, traditionally the church would be owner of software, or some sort of agreement for open-source for host company, or possibly a contract where students reserve right to develop software on their own to create a full-blown product in the future. We would have to discuss the merits of those types of contracts at some point...
I would be interested in your suggestions on this issue and what you would recommend...
To date, the project professor has found candidates that want to work as a team to analyze system. There may be teams competing against each other to encourage the best candidates. I'm doing my best to have Westminster collect documents and prepare themselves so they can provide as much information in order to gather information and generate required needs...
I will provide more information regarding this projects as soon as I receive it...
Murray
Murray,
FYI – it looks like we are already hosting the website on our servers. See my responses below.
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
From: Murray Saul [4] Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 7:50 PM To: Bill Boisvenue Subject: Re: RE: Questions
Hi Bill,
I will be going into the Westminster church board meeting tomorrow to get the final "Green light" for the systems analysis and design project...
The two technical areas that I need to get straight in my head would be tech support and web-ties to Westminster's local server. I'm not an expert in the Windows area (although the Seneca students would be familiar programming in that environment).
I know that support would be an important issue with Westminster (big issue), and I would like to know the typical rate for support that your company would charge. I know as a fact, that once the project is over, students are not expected to provide support, and a mechanism needs to be in place for support. I would communicate to Westminster that "there is no free lunch, and support comes with a price" (which I believe is not only fair, but realistic).[Bill Boisvenue] We typically charge $150/hr but do give discounts to charities that bring the price down to $128/hr. We might be willing to discount further.
Although the analysis phase has not occurred, I suspect that the scope is very large for a single project, and may have to be separated into a few phases. From what I initially gather (in my own rough opinion), a project to solve the office transaction processing, scheduling, and tie-in to a web-page, would be quite enough (and perhaps a little ambitious).
From my own observations, I gather that Westminster greatly needs a system to update material to their web-page, and that web-accessible transaction processing seems to make sense. I have come to this conclusion, since a major focus of a "Windows Open Wide" initiative (conducted several years ago) indicates a strong need for collaboration and communication among facilitators (eg. department heads - from last count there are 17 facilitators!). Having the ability (even if in the future) for a facilitator to conduct their computer operations from the convenience of their home would be a good thing and would indicate a flexible design.[Bill Boisvenue] I think the team should look at Microsoft SharePoint Service which is free but requires programming to customize and tie into existing software. We could host this or it could be hosted on the church’s server.
On the other hand, I have yet to meet with the project team... I want to keep all options open (eg. costs versus benefits so they can make a decision that provides the most flexibility for them). Also, I'm wondering if during the design and implementation phase, Seneca could provide a server for your staff (or accessible to your staff) to view progress and see how this system would impact your side... If you are interested I could check with Seneca IT to arrange this...[Bill Boisvenue] I’m not sure there is a need for a test server. Possibly on the church premise but not at our datacenter.
I would need to know if there would be any limitations/consequences to a web-accessible system design if we proceeded with placing the program on the Westminster church office local server... and other scenarios costs...[Bill Boisvenue] with the software on the church server costs would be minimized and integration possibly easier.
If you could be back to me with this information, that would be greatly appreciated...
Thanks, Murray
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
From: Murray Saul [5] Sent: Monday, September 20, 2010 3:04 PM To: Bill Boisvenue Subject: Re: RE: RE: Questions
I just saw you mentioned free, so disregard that portion of my question. But need to know if it allows Transaction Processing from facilitator's homes via web-browser.[Bill Boisvenue] yes.
Also, would you be able to specify how support costs via BSC would be reduced if going the "SharePoint" direction? This suggestion you make sounds better to me all the time...[Bill Boisvenue] We are willing to support the app as long as our commitment remains relatively small. We currently spend 1-2 hrs per month support all computers. If this were to balloon to 5hrs or more we would need to start charging a fee. If we are assisting with SharePoint initial setup we likely would not charge a fee or if we did it would be minimal.
Thanks, Murray
Hi Bill,
Below is an e-mail to and from Mark Buchner (student project coordinator) regarding optics or approach to Westminster solution. I recall you remember the web-based online room booking demo from a couple of years ago...
If you could please read below and comment, that would be greatly appreciated...
Cheers, Murray Saul
Hi Mark,
I need your "point of view" or "optics"...
After analysis, and students start to look to design and implementation, is it feasible for students to modify an existing open-source structure (i.e. not re-invent the wheel), or do they build own system from "ground up"? I don't want to "spin students off" when the implementation occurs. But then again, a tweak of an existing system may put less burden on students, and allow them to focus on what they have to do (i.e. scheduling system and other features like web-based editing already there). Therefore students just add an additional "module".
The reason I'm asking this question, is that a few years ago, I was playing in Linux with an open-source app called egroupware. I used this as a demonstration for "booking rooms" using the calendar which was VERY effective over the Internet to book, and visualize on a given day in month all rooms booked. The church members where "very impressed" and some still talk about it today! I was thinking instead of "re-inventing the wheel", that the students could modify areas of this structure, to provide a more "realistic and effective" solution to the needs of this church.
Danny Roy provided me a link to such open source framework for MS Windows:
http://www.opengroupware.org/en/applications/index.html
This may be a good way to go. On the other hand, this link was just provided to me, so I would need to know if it is feasible in terms of: Is this framework "truly free"? Will this framework operate with current setup of MS server in church office? Does this framework work with MS Share-point framework to update web-page hosted on church's ISP? (ie. their side) Does Calendar work in the same way as with Linux egroupware demo? (conducted few years back) Does this allow easy method for students (using OO approach) to design and implement within this framework? I have no problem doing "background research" on my end to check this feasibility, but I would need to know, and I would tend to follow your suggestions... I guess my thinking is "do we do something that may be replaced in not too distant future, or could we "go for the prize", and tweak an existing framework that already has many features (that church can develop on its own time), and just allow students to "do their thing" without adding burden of having to create web-based scheduling system that is already out there...
Thanks, Murray
Murray, the answer is most certainly YES.
This may enable them to add more function/content to the solution.
The answers to the your 5 bullet questions should then be worked out during design. If we work backwards from the requirements and design the students may find that:
1. Open source based scheduling system meets the requirements just fine, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. The function they want has become "commoditized"
2. There is a very valuable and specific booking business process which has not been adequately captured in Open Source. We should then create this function either as an extension to open source where we would then have to contribute it back through GNU or as a "proprietary" piece of software, presumably some MS code that ties to Outlook, Exchange, Sharepoint etc.
Does that make sense to you Murray? In the end, the overarching goal is to design a system that meets the needs of the Church and can be implemented in 4 months. I was also thinking that SugarCRM would be a good solution and we could use the community edition.
Cheers!
Mark
Murray,
SugarCRM may be something work looking into. Whatever solution is proposed should integrate with their existing Microsoft platform; specifically, Microsoft Exchange.
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
OK,
Just getting it straight in my head...
May be better to study MS Exchange that already has these features as opposed to egroupware. Does MS Exchange allow for WIKI support or to host WIKI's? I will study up on MS Exchange later this week.. [Bill Boisvenue] SharePoint supports Wiki’s.
I'm assuming that installing MySQL on local server for Wordpress is a "pain", and could incur costs, thus better to pursue another temporary venue for a temporary web-page (until design phase is completed in April).[Bill Boisvenue] It is not too much of a pain to install and can be done on their server. I’m not willing to put it on my hosted servers as no other clients are using it.
If you could get back to me with these questions, that's great. I just want to make certain we are proceeding with a potential solution that works with the hardware / software requirements of the church's server.
Thanks and cheers, Murray
Hi Bill,
Question: Would putting MySQL on Church's local server and running Wordpress work for the church as a temp solution until permanent design?
If yes, would there be any costs associated, or problems or "headaches" associated with updating webpage on your server. If it is complex, I would just assume that "communications" come up with an alternative to Wordpress. If on the other hand that could be done on local server with no problems, something to consider, but I know you have a better "feel" for the system than I do!
I'm just an old Linux/Unix "Grey-Beard"! :)
Murray
I would think it should be okay.
Bill Boisvenue, President BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
