Receive an improvement report of your SQL configuration and Exact databases.

In 2009, we start building the Exact System Informtion (ESI) Tool. This tool serves both Exact and the customers: Exact gets clear insight in how customers use our software and customers get targetted and personal advice on their use of our software. I'm happy to see that a lot of our customers have used the ESI tool. As of today the Exact System Information tool is extended with an option to receive an improvement report per e-mail.

If you specified your e-mail address and press on the Start Analysis button, the Exact System Information will analyze your SQL Server and Exact databases. When the analysis is completed you will receive within 10 minutes the improvement report. The report is divided in 2 sections:

1. Server improvements. Server improvements are related to your SQL server configurations like:
   Have you installed the latest Service packs?
   Possible changes in your SQL Server configuration to make use of all available memory.
   Etc....
    
2. Database improvements. Database improvements are related to the database itself like: 
   Available product updates.
   Clean up of historical journal records.
   Clean up voided entry records.
   Determine not configured  background jobs.
   Clean up of temporary tables.
   Big SQL log file in comparison to the SQL data file.
   Etc.....

If you're already using the Exact System Information tool, it will update itself when you start it again.
Enjoy using the Exact System Information tool. If you have suggestions for improvements please let me know.


Additional information about the Exact System Information tool:

• Download the Exact System Information tool 
• Information about the Exact System Information tool itself 
• What information is retrieved by the Exact System Information tool

Exact Synergy Enterprise certified for Windows Server 2008 R2

As of product update 240, Exact Synergy Enterprise is certified for the latest  Microsoft server platform Windows Server 2008 R2. This is another great step of Exact in supporting the latest technology of Microsoft. Exact Synergy Enterprise can be used in 32 bits or 64 bits mode.
Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe now supports the latest available Microsoft operatings systems like Windows 7, SQL2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Exact Synergy Enterprise supports SQL Server 2008 as of product update 241

As of 30 June 2009, Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 241 is general available. In this product update SQL Server 2008 is supported. Exact is selling this new version of SQL Server. Please contact your local Exact office or reseller. If you want to have a look at the unique selling points of SQL Server 2008, please have a look at the overview on the Microsoft website. For an overview of technical documentation for SQL Server 2008, please refer to the Books Online.

SQL Server 2008 licenses grant customers the right to downgrade, which means that customers wanting to use SQL Server 2005 can still do so when purchasing SQL Server 2008 licenses. The upgrade to SQL Server 2008 can then take place at their own convenience. So if you are currently using SQL 2000, you can buy SQL 2008 instead of SQL 2005. If one of your applications does not support SQL 2008 at this moment, you are allowed to install SQL 2005.
 
More information about the product update 241 of Exact Synergy Enterprise can be found on the Exact Product Blog.

Exact Globe and Exact Synergy supports SQL Server 2008 as of product update 393.

As of 21 april 2009 product update 393 for Exact Globe and Exact Synergy is generally available for all customers worldwide with an active maintenance agreement, except for customers with custom solutions .

As of product update 393 both Exact Globe and Exact Synergy supports the use of SQL Server 2008. This means that Exact starts selling this new version of SQL Server. Please contact your local Exact office or reseller. If you want to have a look at the unique selling points of SQL Server 2008, please have a look at the overview on the Microsoft website. For an overview of technical documentation for SQL Server 2008, please refer to the Books Online.

SQL Server 2008 licenses grant customers the right to downgrade, which means that customers wanting to use SQL Server 2005 can still do so when purchasing SQL Server 2008 licenses. The upgrade to SQL Server 2008 can then take place at their own convenience. This is also important to know for customers purchasing or using Exact Synergy Enterprise: they are adviced to purchase SQL Server 2008 licenses and use SQL Server 2005 until product update 241 of Exact Synergy Enterprise, which suports SQL Server 2008,  is available.

Use Email to communicate but don't use it to collaborate.

With the web application Exact Synergy Enterprise, you can easily collaborate. It is much easier to collaborate in Exact Synergy Enterprise than using Email. I hate the use of Email for collaboration from internal people. Especially if multiple people are involved. The Reply To All button creates only more work. Who is in the lead? How to combine for instance the comments of 3 Reply To All from 3 different people?  This typically happens with people involved from different time zones. Sometimes I asked why people asked the question via Email to me. They have always the same answer. It is so easy to create. To be honest that is indeed true. However the collaborating with Email is terrible. In Exact Synergy Enterprise it takes a little bit more time to create a task but it is still very easy to do. The collaboration is 10 times better. Involved people can easily follow the status of the request.


Do you recognize that Email is a bad collaboration tool? If yes, please have a look to Exact Synergy Enterprise.

Enterprise Search features in Exact Synergy Enterprise

In my previous post I explained why we build our own search engine in Exact Synergy Enterprise. In this blog post I will describe the features we have build in the search engine of Exact Synergy Enterpise.

Image credit: paloaltosoftware

• Relevance ranking. Display the most relevant documents for your search. Relevance ranking of a word in document is based on different components. For instance, the number of times a word exists in a document. Is it part of the title etc....
• Attachment search. Documents can have attachments. These attachments are indexed on the same way as the document content itself.
• Synonyms. Within an Enterprise people can talk about the same things in different ways. For instance, within the company people talk about the Supportdesk. However customers are talking about the helpdesk. Assume a customer is doing a search on your web site for helpdesk, you want to display the contact information document of your Supportdesk. For this situation the Supportdesk is a synonym for Helpdesk.
• Search suggestions also known as Do you mean? Everybody can make type mismatch which you did not realize when you type your keywords. If you type 'debttor' we will suggest 'debtor'.
• Expertise search. Within your company you have people with a lot of knowledge: The Experts. New people in your company, or people on different locations should find these people. The experts are based on the documents they have written. If you do not write documents about your expertise the Expertise search will not find you. The basis for an expert is to share his or her knowledge.

Why did we build our own search engine in Exact Synergy Enterprise?

In Exact Synergy Enterprise we have made major changes to the search logic. Sometimes I got questions from people why we did not implement Google or other available engines. I think this is a valid question. In my previous blog: Why is Enterprise search more complex than we search? I explained the difference between Enterprise search and web search.

In this blog I will explain the main reasons for our own developed search engine:

1. Exact Search engine is integrated in the software. No additional deployments steps are necessary to use the engine.
2. No additional configuration is not needed. Index process is configured out of the box. Only one background job to schedule the indexing process.
3. No additional hardware is needed to use the search engine.
4. Access control of content is integrated in the Exact Search engine.
5. Development costs versus license fee of external search technology.
6. Training of support and consultancy.

Can it happen that we will use an external search engine in the future? Yes, there will be a moment that we will make use of external search technology. If you ask when, I do not know at this moment. We continually follow available products. The quality of the result set is not the only factor for a decision. We will take the mentioned reasons into account.

If you know search engines who has a good answer on the mentioned reasons feel free to contact me.