| Customer Configuration Updating:activation And Usage |
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SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE ACTIVATION AND USAGE PROCESS The process of Customer Configuration Updating (CCU) can be described as the activation of product software and the working of it at the customer’s site. As described in the main CCU entry, this is the last stage of the process. Figure 1 shows the overall picture of the CCU model. As can be seen, the model is divided into four phases namely: . To clarify this, the phases of CCU that are not covered in this article are concealed by a transparent yellow rectangle. After the software it needs to be Activated through a License in order to personalize the software for a specific customer. This is done within the license management at the vendor’s site. Another part of this process is the and all kinds of questions a customer can have. Feedback management is a way of obtaining and managing this kind of information. FROM DEPLOYMENT TO ACTIVATION AND USAGE Within the process it’s important to know what the current configuration at the customer’s site is and what resources the customer uses. This is also important in the Activation and usage process because licenses have to be adapted to the software configuration or even parts of the software configuration at the customer’s site. In order to do this, the feedback management plays an important role. By obtaining process for future Update s can benefit from this. The data is used to adapt Update s and to make sure that the implementation is done with minimal obstruction. After a successful deployment process, activation can take place. CUSTOMER ACTIVATION Activation request After the , an activation request is send to the vendor to start the activation procedure. The customer’s Contract is used to identify the license type, if a customer already has one. If not, a License is generated in order to link it to a certain License type. Licensing Product software uses licensing to control the software . In this case, the License is a Software License which is an agreement between vendor and customer. This agreement is sort of a contract or certificate which states the rights of the customer and the vendor. For example the type of product, the amount of users allowed using the product, for what period of time the License is valid and which part(s) of the software are allowed to be used. It also contains the activation code(s) sent to the customer to activate the product. In the case of CCU it’s important to manage these Licenses automatically in order to renew or prolong a license without much effort. License types Most software packages, used in businesses, can be bought with different license types. This can be a for the whole package. These types can then consist of a temporary license to be used for trail purposes or a full operational License . After the Contract has been found in the CRM system and a License type is identified, the actual License is generated. The generated License will then be Encode d, to ensure that piracy is kept to a minimum, and stored in a database. In order to activate the customer, the stored License can either be downloaded by the customer who can activate the License himself or be downloaded and activated automatically by the software if it supports this. A broader look at licensing can be found in a paper by Halina Kaminsky and Mark Perry, called “ The Pattern Language of Software Licensing ”. Delivery report A report contains al kinds of information about the activation process at the customer’s site. It can contain information about the license type, the time it took to activate the software , the time and date of the activation or other relevant information about the activation of the software . This report is send to the vendor automatically after activation. FEEDBACK MANAGEMENT This chapter provides an overview of the activities related to feedback management. Why do we need feedback management? Feedback management consists of all activities related to the acquisition of large amount of data about a customer and the software it uses. The vendor can use this information for product improvement or phase in case of an Update . Automatic or manual feedback This method contains two types of Feedback : • Automatic feedback is described as Feedback without customer interference. A build in module sends information such as configuration and usage data from the customer to the vendor. This is mentioned in the license agreement and only used for product and service improvements. • Manual feedback is described as customer triggered Feedback sent to the vendor. This Feedback can consist in the form of bug reports, user questions or other relevant data about product usage sent by the customer to the vendor. Different types of feedback Error reports When the software comes across has occurred a popup comes op that states the question to send a report to Microsoft for product improvement purposes. Bug reports A vendor can ask its customers to send a reports. User questions The software should contain a function to state questions about the software . This can be questions about unclear functions, feature requests or problems with the software . Customer configuration data CCU focuses on the improvement of the product Update process. Therefore it needs information about the customer’s configuration like settings, installed modules, installed Update s, product versions and other relevant information. This information is called Customer Configuration Data . It will take less time to adjust an Update to the customer’s wishes because the information is obtained automatically by the software . Product usage data Another part of the Feedback data is the Product Usage Data . It consists of data about the daily usage of the software . For example, it can contain data about the amount of times a certain function is used. This information can then be used to discuss whether a function is still needed or not. Analyzing feedback data for product improvement The gathered Feedback is valuable to a vendor. It can help him to improve his product by analyzing the data and learn from it. As stated above the Feedback can be used to get to know the customer and its configuration or to acquire bug and error reports, witch help to prevent these problems in a future Update . Eventually this will lead to better service and more trust from the customer. PROCESS-DATA DIAGRAM A process-data diagram is used to graphically illustrate the activities and deliverables within the activation and usage process.
ACTIVITY TABLE The activity table states a summary of the activities and its sub-activities used in the process-data diagram (Figure 2). These activities are steps to take in the process of activation and Feedback management. Table1: Activity table TABLE OF CONCEPTS The table of concepts gives the definitions for the deliverables in the data-model on the right side of figure 2. References used in this table are also used for some of the underlined words is this entry. Table 2: Table of concepts EXAMPLE This example illustrates the process of Activation and usage in the Exact Software company: Exact Software file (ELC) has been downloaded from the Exact Software Customer portal. This file states that the software is accessible to the customer and what parts of the software can be used. After a Contract is signed, they upload it into their CRM system. When this is done, the License file can be constructed. Several options have to be selected to meet the requirements stated in the Contract . A License file cannot be created if the right options haven’t been selected. The license file is valid if all options and variations are selected. Only then the actual ELC is generated. This is done automatically through a script that runs periodically. After this, the ELC is available on the Exact Software Customer portal. Exact Software installs the complete software package, even if the customer only bought a part of it. Therefore the ELC-file is used to Activate the requested parts of the software . The ELC-file can only be changed by Exact Software and will be overwritten each time an update takes place. A customer can now download the ELC-file to Activate the software . Some customers buy a product directly from Exact Software , but more often they buy it from a reseller. If a customer encounters problems they get support through Exact Software . They can report bugs and questions to the support department which reports it to the development team. In some cases the reseller gets a special “Service Centre” status which means that the reseller can give support on products made by Exact Software . Whenever a customer has a feature request or reports a bug, the reseller reports it to the support departments. Every three months a new of the product comes out in which bugs are fixed and feature requests are implemented. This support cycle repeats itself during the lifecycle of an Exact Software product. SEE ALSO • Customer Configuration Updating • • • • Release Management • REFERENCES Jansen, S. & Ballintijn, G. & Brinkkemper, S. (2005). Definition and validation of the key process areas of release, delivery and deployment for product software vendors: turning the ugly duckling into a swan. In Technical Report CWI, 2005. Jansen, S. & Ballintijn, G. & Brinkkemper, S. (2004). Software release and deployment at Exact. In Report SEN-E0414, 2004. Jansen, S. & Ballintijn, G. & Brinkkemper, S. & van Nieuwland, A. (2005). Integrated development and maintenance of software products to support efficient updating of customer configurations: a case study in mass market ERP software. International Conference on Software Maintenance 2005. Carzaniga, A.& Fuggetta, A. & Hall, R. & van der Hoek, A. & Heimbigner, D. & Wolf, A. (1998). A characterization framework for software deployment technologies. In Technical Report CU-CS-857-98, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Colorado, 1998. EXTERNAL LINKS • Product Software |
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