INFOMAN
doris hsiung
My organization is planning to use Infoman. I would like to know more
about its pros and cons and how long you have used it along with your
experiences.
Any information provides is appreciated.
Doris Hsiung
Eugene Ball
Doris,
I have used the product off and on for the last 12 year. I will be glad to
discuss my experiences. Please commicate with me directly at
7072...@compuserve.com
Gene Ball
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: INFOMAN
Author: Help Desk Discussions <HDE...@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU> at Internet
Date: 6/18/96 9:23 AM
Pamela J Brockman
I work for RMS Technologies at NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland,
Ohio. We have used Infoman since 1988 - we recently (February 96) upgraded
from Infoman 4.2 to 6.0. I am responsible for the Infoman database and all
of its customizations - I will try to answer any of your specific questions
if you would like to contact me.
We also are in the process of possibly moving to a client/server help desk
software product and are leaning towards Remedy. I would be interested to
hear any good/bad experiences with Remedy if anyone would like to share them
with me.
****************************************************
Pamela J. Brockman
Systems Engineer
RMS Technologies, Inc
NASA Lewis Research Center
Phone: 216-433-9808
Fax: 216-433-8000
Email: pamela.j...@lerc.nasa.gov
****************************************************
Colin Crossley
> My organization is planning to use Infoman. I would like to know more
> about its pros and cons and how long you have used it along with your
> experiences.
>
> Any information provides is appreciated.
>
> Doris Hsiung
We have used Infoman for many years (since version 1 in fact), and I
have been the principle administrator of the product for the past 8
years. We log about 100,000 records per year, with about 300 users of
the system.
We are at present actively looking at replacing Infoman
because for several years now we have recognised that it no longer
meets our needs. Infoman is essentially a front end to a database
(VSAM) rather than what is now considered to be a helpdesk tool.
It is very stong in storing Information and in retrieving it, but
it does little to aid the management of problems. Helpdesk tools
are now more than just record logging systems, they are to actively
help support staff to identify, track, resolve and prevent
problems. Infoman is not a tool that provides this
functionality well.
PROs
- Infoman has a very fast search engine.
- Infoman is relatively fast when storing/retreiving records.
- Not a bad mainframe product but there are better (eg. Sterling
SOLVE, others..).
CONs
- Infoman is a mainframe only application. As of version 6 it now
supports a 'client server' configuration, however this is stretching
the truth a little. The client which require ISPF on the desktop to
run, is little more than an 'Intellengent' emulator. It is able to
recognise seections on the screen and replace them with 'buttons'.
That is about the extent of the GUI capabilities of the emulator,
there are no dropdowns, combos, radio buttons, etc. The drop down
menus effectively just type commands for you on the command line
rather than issue genuine procedure calls.
- The database is a VSAM database. You can feed information also into
a DB/2 relational database but at present you still need the VSAM DB.
This means you have a choice :
VSAM only
- Proprietry database. You cannot use/buy third party tools
such as MS-Access, Forest & Trees etc. to do advanced
reporting etc,
- Difficult to manage. Requires specialised skills to tune
and maintain correctly. (Although this can also be said of
many other databases)
- VSAM is a very space hungry (but efficient) database due
to its large indexing methods.
VSAM + DB/2
- In order to avail yourself to 'relational' database
functionality you will need to keep an additional DB/2
database. You cannot have one or the other.
- Panel modification is difficult to learn, easy to do easy things
once you have learnt, but very difficult to do anything beyond
that. If you want just basic fields that collect basic data then
its easy to change the panels, but if you want to automate or add
unusual functionality to something it becomes quite confusing for
the new user. I estimate it takes about three months to become
confident with making (basic to semi-basic) changes on the system.
- The functionality of panels is very limited (this is the primary
cause of the point above). There are two 'command' panels in
Infoman, both have a very limited command set. You cannot add one
plus one in Infoman. You have two 'variables' to use, you cannot use
controlled loops, or any of the most basic programming functions to
provide functionality behind the panels.
- Reporting uses a proprietry language which is limited in
functionality and does not allow for code reuse. Graphics are
available only via GDDM (mainframe application). In the basic
system you cannot print these off unless you have a graphics
emulator and do a screen print (the only way to view these graphs
online is with a special emulator that supports 3279 graphics mode
- most common emulators don't). We spent weeks to get GDDM to print
reports via batch (IBM told us it could not be done).
- The notification facility is a sad joke. We wrote our own in REXX
which is far superiour, but still not a scratch on what is available
in other products. Email notification is not standard, neither is
pager, fax, etc. The escalation facility too is very ordinary.
- Users find Infoman difficult to use & difficult to search. We had
to write our own facility to allows users to produce basic reports,
but we still spend heaps of time writing simple reports. Report
writing is tedious and very time consuming.
- No CTI support.
- No Knowledge base.
- The external API is fairly difficult to learn, some of the methods
it uses are quite strange. Integration with outside systems is
usually possible but requires high levels of skill to setup.
These are just a few things from the top of my head. As you may guess
I am not a big fan of Infoman ('familiarity breeds contempt' you might
say). I know Infoman very well, and know that IBM are very much
behind the race compared to other products on the market.
Currently they are frantically trying to catch up but IBM, as
they are, are only just learning that customers want OPEN
tools. Up until recently IBM were still developing ONLY for IBM
databases, networks, Operating systems etc. As of version 6.2 I was
pleased to see that they have relented and actually offered TCP/IP
support instead of just SNA as planned.
My advise to anyone considering Infoman is : DON'T. If you are able
(ie. if your company has the right infrastructure in place)
look at some of the UNIX based products such as Remedy or Vantive.
These will position you better for the future, and offer far superior
functionality for less cost. Infoman will eventually offer extra
functionality as they are moving towards offering the same
the UNIX products but they are not there yet and will not be for
years.
Colin Crossley
Senior Analyst - Customer Service Centre Development
Coles Myer Retail Technology Services
Melbourne, Australia.
Ph : +61 3 9483 7435
Fx : +61 3 9483 7381
Colin Crossley
> My organization is planning to use Infoman. I would like to know more
> about its pros and cons and how long you have used it along with your
> experiences.
>
> Any information provides is appreciated.
>
> Doris Hsiung
We have used Infoman for many years (since version 1 in fact), and I
have been the principle administrator of the product for the past 8
years. We log about 100,000 records per year, with about 300 users of
the system.
We are at present actively looking at replacing Infoman
because for several years now we have recognized that it no longer
meets our needs. Infoman is essentially a front end to a database
(VSAM) rather than what is now considered to be a helpdesk tool.
It is very strong in storing Information and in retrieving it, but
it does little to aid the management of problems. Helpdesk tools
are now more than just record logging systems, they are to actively
help support staff to identify, track, resolve and prevent
problems. Infoman is not a tool that provides this
functionality well.
PROs
- Infoman has a very fast search engine.
- Infoman is relatively fast when storing/retrieving records.
CONs
which is far superior, but still not a scratch on what is available
in other products. Email notification is not standard, neither is
pager, fax, etc. The escalation facility too is very ordinary.
- Users find Infoman difficult to use & difficult to search. We had
to write our own facility to allows users to produce basic reports,
but we still spend heaps of time writing simple reports. Report
writing is tedious and very time consuming.
- No CTI support.
- No Knowledge base.
- The external API is fairly difficult to learn, some of the methods
it uses are quite strange. Integration with outside systems is
usually possible but requires high levels of skill to setup.
These are just a few things from the top of my head. As you may guess
I am not a big fan of Infoman ('familiarity breeds contempt' you might
say). I know Infoman very well, and know that IBM are very much
behind the race compared to other products on the market.
Currently they are frantically trying to catch up but IBM, as
they are, are only just learning that customers want OPEN
tools. Up until recently IBM were still developing ONLY for IBM
databases, networks, Operating systems etc. As of version 6.2 I was
pleased to see that they have relented and actually offered TCP/IP
support instead of just SNA as planned.
My advice to anyone considering Infoman is : DON'T. If you are able
Richard Foulds
Hi Doris.
I hope I can help in making your understanding of the Info/Man product a
little better. I am a software engineer. I have my own company and have
been doing contract work for the last 5 years. I write software for
clients and have developed applications on multi-platforms, including IBM
mainframe and MS Windows.
I have been working with the Info/Man product for about the last 7 or 8
years (I think the product was introduced in about 1981 or so). I really
like the tool. It comes out-of-the box with a problem, change and
inventory or asset management applications. It lets you easily integrate
your company support or inventory data with your everyday problems and
changes. It also comes with a development interface for creating and
modify applications. I find the tool quite simple and easy to use and I
have trained people (non technical) to become developers. The product
has a reporting language built in that allows you to extract data from
records and format to your needs. Although the report language is quite
basic - it is very easy to use; quite often I have seen organizations use
first term co-op students to write all their reports. You can also code
ad-hoc query report generators that allow users to create easy on-line
report generation.
I have customized Info/Man applications to do just about anything. I
have developed E-Mail solutions (using MS-Windows E-mail products),
ad-hoc report generators, customized applications, MS-Windows Info/Man
search tools, API interfaces to allow other applications and processes to
enter and retrieve Info/Man data, etc, etc. etc. - you can do just about
anything!
Most products come out-of-the box needing modification for your company.
I think Info/Man is a relatively easy to maintain product. The PMF
(Panel Modification Facility) product is far easier to learn than C or
C++ (the language many products require you to use to perform real
changes - if you even can!). It's database structure is not relational
it has an indexing file and a data file . It's searching engine is the
best. It's ability to handle concurrent users is great. The fact that
source code changes are stored in one place (as is all your record data)
gives the product a bright light. By keeping your application source
code and company data in one place it makes often headache issues like
distributing software, reporting, managing, releasing, massaging, etc.
etc, your company code and data, very easy. You change something and all
users who log on see the change right away. The mainframe is great for
this! If you have hundreds of concurrent users (users logged on at the
same time) you will have a performance issue with other client/server
solutions. Some other products will fail greatly on SQL queries when you
try to have hundreds of concurrent users performing database reads.
Info/Man is great for having a large volume of users do whatever they
want to do.
New Info/Man third party vendors are popping up all the time now (myself
included, my company provides a product that will document your source
code for you - written for MS Windows).
The only really bad thing I can say about the product is it's user
interface. Because the product is a mainframe technology, it's user
interface fails in comparison to the users desktop platform and the
interface's that live their. IBM has made great strides in delivering a
new version of the product that takes advantage of the latest version of
ISPF (The product that Info/Man is displayed through) and it's GUI
controls. The ISPF product does support radio buttons, group boxes,
drop-down list boxes, menu bars, the use of a workstation editor (ie;
notepad) for large text edits, etc.. In that respect - IBM has done very
well. Which in-itself (IBM), is a good reason to buy into Info/Man. IBM
has been involved in problem management since it first became an issue.
Info/Man currently has integration to many other IBM product (Like
netview) that can make life easy for you.
IBM also has a true (desktop platform) graphical problem management
application - PNMS - son of SDPM (I think I have the acronyms right).
This product is a OS/2 client/server solution that has an interface to
Info/Man to store and retrieve records.
Also, IBM has recently merged with companies to assist in the
auto-tracking and resolving of problems on all platforms (ie; Tivoli) and
is staying atop of the game better than anyone.
The latest version of the Info/Man product (6.2.1) has a really neat
feature that allows users to front-end the data base with a WEB browser
application. You can utilize the internet (or your own intranets) to
build a front end to the Info/Man data base. Users can enter and search
for records through web pages. And, you still get the centralized code
and data! I think the WEB front end provides all sorts of opportuniy,
especially since their is a real ruch on WEB development tools now.
There, in brief, is Info/Man. This product has made thousands of
corporations happy and managed to record, track, trend, assign and
resolve probably millions of problems in the world. It is a very mature
product with a weakness in the area user interface.
I hope I have helped a little. Do not hesitate to call or e-mail me if
you require any further information or are in need of assisatance.
Bye for now.
Richard Foulds
Owner
Info/Assist Inc.
Ottawa, Canada
InfoA...@CompuServe.Com