All dates and times are stored in our central servers in what is called Universal Time or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Each User can set an offset in multiples of 30 minutes from GMT. Currently the Chip eServices Suite does not support daylight saving time. Each user must adjust their local time to ensure accurate recording of dates and times. Confusion and problems arise when a transaction is created in one time zone and read in another time zone.

Some data fields in records are stored in the Chip eServices Suite as ‘date only’ while other are stored as ‘date and time’. These records are handled differently in the software.

Date Only Fields

Examples of such fields are ‘Date of Manufacture’ and ‘Invoice Date’

 These fields are entered and stored as the date entered by the user and are not adjusted based on the the time zone of the user. For example if a User creates an Invoice in Pacific Time in the USA (GMT -8 hours) at 17:00 with a local date of 10 April 2008 that Invoice is created and displayed always with a date of 10 April 2008 despite the fact the the invoice was created on 11 April 2008 in GMT. This is important for consistancy in financial and/or contractual interpretation of data. For example there should be no confusion as to the date of a financial transaction as a result of the geographic location of the User reading that data. In this way a financial transaction will always belong to the same accounting period.

Date and Time Fields

Examples of such fields are ‘History Event Date’ and ‘Delivery Date’

These fields are entered and displayed with an offset based on the time zone of the User entering or reading the value. For example, consider a User in the USA at GMT - 8 recording a telephone conversation with a customer at 17:00 on a local date of 17:00 and a local date of 10 April 2008. If a User in Singapore, at GMT + 8, reads this record they will see a date and time of 11 April 2008 9:00  as the time and date of that entry. This is important so that customer service escalation processes correctly interpret time intervals in the context of their local time zone.

Each table in the database of the Chip eServices Suite has two date time fields called ‘Created’ and ‘Updated’. These fields are entered automatically by the system and are used for auditing and data sychronisation. Using the reporting menu item in any of the applications in the Chip eServices Suite it is possible to search for records based on a time and date range. It is necessary to be careful when selecting a date range to be sure of selecting all required transactions and not selecting unwanted transactions.

On Monday 24th March 2008 ‘The Returns Game’ will again be run as a workshop as part of the Reverse Logistics & Returns Management Asia 2008 Conference held by IQPC at the Amara Hotel in Singapore.

In the Returns Game, the participants adopt roles in one of two reverse supply chains. The first reverse supply chain uses a distributed repair model with service centres located close to customer sites. A second reverse supply chain using a centralised credit and remanufacture strategy. Participants learn the basic principles of reverse supply chain management by creating and running the two supply chains in a computer simulation. Then they compare and contrast the outcomes of the two supply chains and discuss reverse supply chain optimistation and how to apply those principles to their own businesses.

This workshop is designed to enhance the understanding of the participants of the different strategies possible with reverse supply chains and to give them a framework to select the optimum design for their business goals.

For the Cork event please phone +353 21 4854300 to reserve a space. On 11th March, registration and coffee will be at 10:30am and the training exercise will begin at 11:00am. A light lunch will be supplied and the training exercise will be finished by 3:00pm. The fee for attending the training exercise is €300 per participant. Attendees are advised to bring a laptop computer running Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 to gain maximum benefit from the simulations.

For details and registration for the Singapore event visit www.iqpc.com.sg and locate details under the Supply Chain topic.

 In order to reduce SPAM some email servers chech that the IP address from whence an email came is associated with the sender of the email. This association is made by linking the IP address and the domain name in a Reverse DNS Lookup Record.

You can again use http://www.mxtoolbox.com to verify that a Reverse DNS Lookup exists or you can use http://www.dnsstuff.com to check also.

 As an example of this issue, we have experience that Yahoo and AOL mail servers check that these records exist.

If you have any concerns or difficulties relating to Reverse DNS Lookup then please contact our Network Operations Centre on +353 21 4854300 for support.

 A number of companies offer the service of maintaining lists of potentially dangerous servers by IP address or by URL. These lists are called blacklists if communication from the servers (such as email) is intended to be stopped and greylists if communication is to be held for human moderation. If the recipient of the email has either a firewall or an email server that subscribes to these blacklists and you are on one of these blacklists then your email will not be delivered.

 To see if your email address is on a blacklist (or a greylist) you can visit http://www.mxtoolbox.com.

Subscribers to the blacklists can add a URL or IP address to the blacklist. If one subscriber adds you to a blacklist then all other subscribers immediately blacklist you also. Companies that maintain blacklists frequently have agreements to exchange records on their blacklists. Therefore if your email is blacklisted by one company it usually propogates to a number of other blacklist companies also.

Even if you never send SPAM you may inadvertantly find yourself on one or more blacklists. Even if only one email recipient thinks that your email is SPAM they can have you put on a blacklist. To remove yourself from a blacklist you must email the blacklist service provider and ask for removal. As a way of increasing their revenue, some of these companies ask for a fee to have a record removed from a blacklist quickly. If you don’t pay they may take a few days to remove the record.

 If you have problems with your email domain being balcklisted please contact our Network Operations Centre on +353 21 4854300 for support.

Last week we had a reported problem from a user that had difficulty uploading model numbers using the template spreadsheet that we supplied. That spreadsheet template was developed in April 2006 and nobody had reported a problem since. The user confirmed that he was using Office 2007. We had developed the template using the VB scripting language in Office 2003.

It turned out that Office 2007 is far more picky about XML schema definitions than Office 2003. Darren explained it to be but I don’t understand the details. Suffice to say, all our template spreadsheets now work with both Office 2003 and Office 2007.

Job done…..

The integration occurs on the Helpdesk Screen of Dynamics CRM. From there customers can do three things:-

1. Move customer data from Dynamics CRM to myRMA.net if this is the first return from that customer.
2. Add an RMA to a Case created for a customer.
3. View (and update) RMAs associate with a customer.

This level of integration is exactly what your help desk agents need to manage returns from clients. The full functionality of myRMA.net then swings into action to manage the logistics, credit, exchange, and repair processes. The fantastic integration capabilities of ChipTalk can be used to integrate these processes with your ERP system.

myRMA.net is a hosted solution using the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model. This means that your business partners can login to myRMA.net. It also means you don’t have to install any extra software to get fully functional Reverse Logistics capability. Charges for myRMA.net are transaction based.

Chip eServices are the developers of myRMA.net and we also offer hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We can therefore offer you a complete CRM and Reverse Logistics solution from a single provider. We support both direct sales to customers and sales via a consultative reseller channel.

Up until now there has been no professional data centre in Cork offering its services to the public. Chip eServices needed such a facility and eventually we decided to invest in developing one ourselves. If you want to follow a blog diary of the construction of a data centre and maybe learn something about their construction please visit www.cix.ie.

I found one speaker especially entertaining…Hugh MacLeod. Apparently, Hugh is the largest blogger in the UK. I really felt that the bloggers were out in power at the it@cork conference…seem to be a very close network of people, which is nice. However, I do not quiet understand the power of blogging as a tool for creating awareness as I am new to the blogging world but I believe that it’s reach is quite limited. Do blogs really appeal to people who do not blog themselves - to the customer, the end-user, the person who will be paying for the product/service? Do blogs result in increased income for companies, i doubt it! What I found particularly amusing was when Hugh announced that people who do not blog are “uptight”. This is quiet a generalisation, it made me laugh though. It made me think that Hugh, along with many other bloggers are not interested in attracting new people to their blog (people who are not yet aware of blogging)…they are content with writing posts…posts which only other bloggers read. I certainly would not rely on blogging as a primary tool in promoting a product/service.   

We were very proud to have one of our own customers speaking at the conference. Matthias Kill is the European head of service for BEHRINGER. Matthias used the BEHRINGER Group as a case study in his discussion of “Software as a Service”. Matthias spoke enthusiastically about ‘myRMA.net’ and ‘RightNow Web Self Service’ as being major tools to the BEHRINGER Service Strategy. Matthias’ Powerpoint presentation is available at http://www.itcork.ie/index.cfm?page=events&eventId=73&past=1 

Matthias is pictured above while speaking at the conference. Thanks to Donncha O’ Caoimh for the photo (http://inphotos.org/category/ireland/cork/ ) Having exchanged emails with Matthias a few times - I was looking forward to meeting him. I spent lunch of that day chatting with Matthias, I learned alot from him in this time. He spoke about jobs, past and present and about how he came to work in BEHRINGER. I really admire Matthias’ motivation and dedication to the success and growth of BEHRINGER.

Finally, thanks to all the guys at it@cork for organising such a great conference!!!

First of all, what are the integration points necessary to integrate an after sales returns management system to an ERP system? Automated Credit Note processing and Sales Order generation for exchange merchandise are usually the first two Integration points. Integration is therefore based on transactions. myRMA.net is constructed based on a transaction engine with a finite set of well defined transactions. Any one of these transactions can be used to trigger an integration point.

myRMA.net has a transaction engine with about 25 very well defined transactions. Creating an RMA is a transaction, for example, and receiving an RMA at a Service Centre is another transaction. Integration is all about replicating transactions in one system with transactions in the integrating system. Depending on whether ChipTalk initiates or responds to the integration there are two diifferent integration methods.
a) If ChipTalk initiates the integration then the occurance of a transaction in myRMA.net automatically triggers the execution of a script that performs the integration.
b) If ChipTalk responds to an integrating system then it exposes a Web service for each transaction so that another system can create a matching transaction in myRMA.net.

In future blogs, I will describe how ChipTalk works in greater detail.