Products - Service Manager

Purpose Of Product

* Service Manager is a configurable way of scheduling automation processes to create rich content and output into MSOffice documents

* Service Manager provides a means for users to subscribe to one or a number of scheduled automation processes or “services”.

* Service Manager provides a way of “stack” sequential services – e.g.

* 1) Create a spreadsheets (via the ExcelGenerator service)

* 2) Emails the spreadsheet to a distribution list (via the Emailer service)

* 3) Posts the spreadsheet to a shared drive or sharepoint portal server (via the FileCopier service)

* Service Manager creates project management reports and reports to support core Programme Office processes – e.g. change control and issues resolution.

Feature Listing

* Front end application to create and configure new “services”

* Front end application to create ad-hoc reports or schedules for running “services”.

* Services can be exported to XML documents and re-imported into another Service Manager instance.

* Audit logging of ad-hoc or scheduled services.

What it is

* A client-based application that is typically installed on a users desktop

* A schedulable and configurable reporting tool

* A way of generating documents via MSOffice automation processes (or “services”)

What it isn’t

* A data repository (see LaunchPad).

* An application to capture user-entered data

* Web-based (though it can be used to retrieve data from web-based data repositories)

Technology and Dependencies

* Client-based C# executable running over an MSAccess or SQL Server database.

* MDAC2.5 or greater

* Depending upon the services deployed, Service Manager is dependent upon Microsoft Office 2000, or 2003 being installed on the client machine.

Pricing, Support and Hosting

* Service Manager is typically priced as a one-off fee for the framework, plus an additional price for each executable required to run on the framework. Service Manager executables currently include:

* ExcelGenerator

* ExcelGeneratorCrossMatrix

* DocGen

* Emailer

* FileCopier

* Since this is a client-based application, hosting is not yet supported (though it is planned for Q3 2006 to offer service manager functionality via web-services, which would make hosting possible).