Introducing Package Manager

Welcome to 2012 and a happy new year!

This year is looking to be extremely exciting for EISNet and this post is to give you an update on the progress over the past few weeks.

Almost all of the work recently has been purely on what you may know as 'Applications'. This separate tool allows you to create software packages and shortcuts that are then assigned to computers and users from within Manager. Our goal since taking on this project is to reduce the number of separate tools and merge everything into EISNet Manager.

For EISNet v1.7, the term 'Applications' is no more. We will be using a more relevant term called 'Packages' and as a result, Manager now has a tool integrated called 'Package Manager'.

Although the functionality has not greatly changed, the interface has. In addition, the code behind it has been completely re-written to a modern standard, which allows us multiple options in the future.

EISNet Package Manager

The window is made up of 3 panes. The left side contains the list of available packages. When you select a package, the two panels on the right hand side show you the Shortcuts and Registry settings for the selected package.

Creating and editing a package

Creating a new package has not changed. You can however now assign an icon for the package, to make it prettier in the respective package lists. We also plan to make the chosen icon appear on the clients when installing.

Editing a shortcut

Renaming a start menu folder

Each package can have many shortcuts attached to them. Commonly this will be the shortcuts seen by the end users in the start menu and desktop. You can now edit the shortcut location directly when editing a shortcut. You can also create, edit and delete the start menu folders directly and all on the fly.

Exporting a package

A new feature we have decided to implement is the ability to import and export packages from EISNet. This really is as simple as it sounds. You select one (or more) packages and select 'Export' from the context menu. Each package is then exported into a compressed EIP file. This single file can then be imported elsewhere, which will prove useful for roaming technicians in schools. Each exported file contains all required files, shortcuts and registry settings.

I'm sure you'll agree the changes made are an exciting update. We are all working hard to get this released on time.

Christmas Update

Christmas is finally here and with it comes a few days where we can continue the EISNet development.

Today I continued working on migrating Applications into the Manager. Although it should be said, "Applications" are no more. We will now be calling them "Packages", so within the Manager software, you'll use "Package Manager".

The code is being completely re-written with offers us some great opportunities to improve it. The GUI is also different. You'll have a list of Packages as you'd expect, but this list is searchable. This helps schools who have hundreds of packages skip straight to the one they want. It's wildcard based, so if you enter 'E', all packages beginning with E will be shown.

We hope that by integrating the packages into Manager, you'll have greater scope for deploying software in later versions.

Announcement

Well, it's all gone quiet on the EISNet v1.7 front. We've all been working on other projects that have become urgent. That's not to say we have forgotten about our new version however. In fact, we've been given a final timescale to work to.

EISNet v1.7 will be available in April 2012

No pressure then!

Package Status

Progress has been slow whilst I've worked on another project and the usual September rush hits. Mike has continued his work on packages, tidying up the SQL where needed but like me, has been caught up in the start of term. He has started work on renovating the Profiles function again. After significant testing, we were still not happy with the way it was behaving, so Michael took a considerable amount of time re-writing large chunks of the code.

We have now demo'd the new version in our development environment to two schools and feedback had been great. Lots of excellent ideas and suggestions made - of which we have added them to the improvement list.

I have been steadily going through the bug list, fixing the issues that have found their way into the code with all the dramatic changes we are making. The list is getting shorter - honestly!

I have not moved onto the next phases of importing Applications into the manager application yet. Nor have I had the chance to improve Login script or the other applets in the product. This will come with time.

I thought I would give you another preview of a form you are probably going to use a lot on the new Manager. It is the Room Package Status window. This has been re-done from the ground up, and gives you instant visibility to success or failures when deploying packages.

In this new layout, you instantly know if just one station has failed to install a package.

The form is still being tweaked, and some GUI parts are yet to be updated, but it is changing all the time.

Progress Update

Its been a while since our last progress report, so I thought I would post on where we are.

As Mike has mentioned, his work on importing from SIMS is now done and I can safely say, the entire Import function looks pretty amazing.

We have been working on a lot of tweaks, fixes and polishing the existing developments. Archivist has now been fully ported into Manager. Its exactly the same feature-wise when compared to the older EISNet, although I think it's now bug free!

A number of things have been removed from Manager. For example, the Accessibility options. We feel this is something that can be achieved by creating a new profile - such as hi-vis for visually impaired users. However, depending on feedback, it may be re-introduced.

We've worked on the offline help as well. It now automatically updated from the web every 7 days. This ensures if your internet is down, you still have access to the help files.

The next focus of my attention is to include wallpaper and screensaver options to the user and intake properties. Once that is done, we will move onto the smaller modules such as Login Script, MyPage and Agent. Finally - we will then move to Applications and then Client.

Importing Users

As Kevin has mentioned about previously, the user import process has had some huge improvements made to it. Yesterday it was my turn to add to those improvements.

EISNet is now able to connect to a SIMS database and extract the Pupils and Staff directly from it. No longer will you have to find someone that knows how to create a SIMS report and export it to CSV. For pupils you can also apply filters to select them from a specific year group or class.

Code analysis & another performance tweak

Following on from my last post, I squeezed just a little bit more out of Manager. It now starts, on a live school system in around 0.5 seconds.

Yesterday I ran a code analysis on the original v1.6 code and the current v1.7 code. Here is the results;


Original Manager
Code Lines: 15,800 (63.20%)
Comment Lines: 3,302 (13.21%)
Blank Lines: 5,898 (23.59%)
Modules: 11
Forms: 45

EISNet v1.7
Code Lines: 10,761 (62.75%)
Comment Lines: 1,706 (9.95%)
Blank Lines: 4,681 (27.30%)
Modules: 5
Classes: 1
Forms: 28