To Image or Not to Image

Having chosen my career path towards project management, I am not as strong in desktop support as many others. However, I can work my way through just about anything but it might just take a little longer. I thought I would share my experience over the past week in attempting desktop support for myself.

Let’s begin; a few weeks ago I started to experience strange things with my how laptop was working. Just “wonky” (yes, that is a technical term… look it up). I decided to suffer through it but this past Monday I hit a road block—my computer wouldn’t let me move ahead any longer. I then turned to the guys in my office and they all said “Oh you must have a virus.” After a full scan… NO virus. So I went back to see what else I can try to fix this issue… the final suggestion was to reimage. OH JOY!!

Being the self-sufficient person I am and not wanting to bug someone else, I figured I would do this myself (I do have a degree in computers after all). I assumed after a few hours of work my laptop would be up and running again no problem but boy was I mistaken.I began backing up all my documents and favorites, listed out my software etc. Once I had everything I needed, I pressed the magic button and the partition was gone. The long process of putting it all back together began.

After a day and a half, I restored all my software back on except for ILINX®, thinking that it would take another hour or so (as all the other software took about that long). I went to download the software from the ImageSource download center and within 30 minutes I was back up and running with all my applications and workflows that I had backed up.

The moral of the story: when your last option is to reimage your machine, plan on it taking more than a day to get back up and running (especially if you don’t do it regularly). The good news: if you use ILINX software, it only takes a short time then before you know if you will be capturing and retrieving those documents again.
Jen Hilt
Project Coordinator
ImageSource Inc.

Serendipitous Cerebration (Part 1)

I recently worked on a team tasked with a software integration project that connects invoices from between some Accounting software to ILINX®  Content Store.  The integration software was used for pulling invoice values from both our AP and AR invoices for modifying the image indices for the stored content in ILINX Content Store.  Following a series of patches for Windows, Content Store, and the accounting software, Murphy’s Law began rearing their ugly heads and the integration solution in place that retrieved and updated indices flat quit working.

Most of the issues resolved themselves in short order, but ONE issue – the ability to read one field.  We were able to connect and pull values from every other field on the Accounting form.  To complicate issues more, 2 of the fields from the invoices are used to identify the proper document in Content Store and the broken field was one of these.  Trying to isolate the cause of the issue quickly started feeling like wrestling with a squamous Kimono dragon bent on devouring as much time and resources as a large Monitor lizard can muster.

A couple of techs, multiple attempted connector types, some choice language, and a forehead sized dent in my keyboard later it connected and started pulling.  After all of the hair pulling and frustration I’m left with one of those moments when things started working for no reason and continued to function as originally expected, and while you still need to determine what happened you’re just too ecstatic that the software is no longer harassing you with error messages.

I’d never advise using Serendipitous Cerebration as a preferred method of problem solving.   In fact, if Serendipitous Cerebration is your preferred method of problem solving, chances are there is a lot of floundering around before isolating the issue down to a workable solution.  Which is why I’m guessing that most of us try and not go that route, but I’d bet that there are not many techs out there that have had similar moments when, out of the blue, an issue seemingly resolves itself and all you want to do is jump up and start cheering before attempting to figure out what really corrected the issue.

Please check back for the Part 2 of this 5 part blog on 9/30/11!

 

Co Authors: Random Kurt-Patrick Duncan McParks & John Hart
ImageSource Inc.

Slowing Down?

For those of you with Enterprise Content Management systems, you know that a lot (if not all) of your data is stored in a database.  A lot of times, performance issues are not a result of your Content Management system itself, rather your database is not tuned properly.

Most of what I have to work with is Microsoft SQL Server.  There are a few tips for making sure that your database is performing at its best.  Every system is different, but there are some basic fundamentals that need to be checked.

1)      Memory.   SQL will eat up all the memory you give it.  Make sure that the host machine has plenty available and tune the SQL memory usage so that it does not use up all available memory on the host and slow the whole system.

2)      Network.  Your database server needs to have good connectivity to your client machines.  This means that the network has to have adequate speed and a low enough latency for all SQL connections and data streams to be maintained.

3)      Indexes.  A database uses a basic structure to store information.  Every search it performs has to find a single row, which can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  Fortunately, in addition to rows, SQL also has indexes to aid in searching.  Most systems will use indexes.  However, indexes have a tendency to become fragmented if they are not maintained, so part of your SQL maintenance should be to tune the indexes.

I hope this gets you going in the right direction!  If you feel that your content management system is not performing adequately, let the ImageSource Support Department know!

 

Mike Peterson, MCTS
Support Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

The Nexus Scoop

It’s been a while since I posted anything new to the ECM support blog.  If you want to know why, see Brandon’s post from a while back- Support: A Day in the Life Of.  I feel his pain!  But there have been some exciting things happening here and you should know about them.

First of all, I got the low-down on Nexus ’11 the other day!  It seems that the goal is to make every year bigger and better then the next.  This year there are some very well-known and engaging speakers (such as Dr. James Brown), break-out sessions held by ECM professionals, deep dives with ECM field specific experts and of course the after-hours social events.  If you have not been to Nexus, you need to register for this event.  If you sign up early, you get a pricing discount!  Tell us if you want to attend!  (The best way to get a hold of us is put in a support ticket and in the description put that you are interested in Nexus.)

On the software front, I have been busy working with development teams on ILINX® products!  Content Store specifically has been really taking off and there are new improvements being added all the time!  The whole goal of ILINX is to provide a simple user experience, while providing a powerful administration interface, all though thin-client technology.  The ILINX Products Suite has everything covered – conversion, workflow, storage and integration.  Tell us if you want a demo – we have great people that know their stuff in the world of Content Management that would love to work with you to see if ILINX is right for you!

Last but not least, I want to thank all the reader’s outside of Washington State.  Thank you for finally sending us some warmer weather – it took ‘til August but summer is finally here as well!  As always, any questions or comments, please call or email me and we will give you an answer!

Mike Peterson
Support Engineer
ImageSource, Inc

Bits and Bytes

The new standard in operating systems is rapidly transitioning to 64-bit, as opposed to 32-bit. The change is occuring on both the desktop and server-side. As with any major architecture change, there are bound to be a few hiccups along the way as new systems are integrated into existing infrastructures. There are a couple things to know when troubleshooting problems in 64 bit systems.

First of all, try not to get caught in the situation of incompatible software in the first place. Do your research. There are usually levels of compatability with software that has undergone QA testing. Some terms you might see are not compatible, not supported and supported. “Not supported” is where you are in a gray area of compatibility, which usually means that no major issues have been seen, but it has not been fully tested on the platform. It may very well work, but make sure you do extenstive testing before committing resources to implementing it.

Another thing to know about 64 bit systems when troubleshooting issues is the concept of WOW. And I don’t mean World of Warcraft… WOW is a newly reborn legacy term “Windows on Windows.” Originally, this was the compatibility layer for the then-new 32bit Windows (think NT 4.0) that would allow 16 bit applications to run – Windows 16 bit on Windows 32 bit. It has now been reborn into WOW64 – Windows 32 bit on Windows 64 bit.

Basically, WOW64 allows 32 bit applications to have resources to run properly. If you look in the %systemroot% folder, you will see a System32 and a SysWOW64 folder. The latter contains the libraries for 32 bit applications. Understanding that 32 bit applications use the WOW64 structure can solve lots of headaches. For instance, the ODBC configuration tool that is opened in the Control Panels administrative tools points to the 64 bit version of the utility. If you have a 32 bit application that is trying to use an ODBC connection, you must manually open the utility in the SysWOW64 folder to configure the ODBC connection for 32 bit.

When troubleshooting issues on a 64 bit system, never rule out a conflict between a 32 bit program on a 64 bit system. Knowing that Windows has a backwards compatability system can aid in that troubleshooting – keep an eye out for the “WOW.” Keep it in mind when those wierd issues creep up.

Mike Peterson
Support Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.