VSoft Technologies Blogs

Big day today...

Mon, 21 May 2007 04:00:00 GMT

A day of releases today. FinalBuilder 5.5 is released today, and so is our newest product, FinalBuilder Server!

FinalBuilder 5.5 adds plenty of minor enhancements (including support for CodeGear Delphi 2007), bug fixes, etc, but the main thing is that the Professional version now gets a license of FinalBuilder Server thrown in! That's how we're justifying the jump from 5.0 to 5.5 :) We've already received a ton of very positive feedback on FinalBuilder Server, and I must say that it is quite nice to use.

In a nutshell, FinalBuilder Server is a web interface for centralizing and managing your builds. It relies on the FinalBuilder FBCMD.exe underneath as the build engine, but there are significant differences especially as far as logging is concerned. There is now a separate logging server, and FBCMD redirects all the logging to that server. This means that you can run more than one instance of the same project at the same time - plus of course FB Server needs access to the logs during and after the builds so that it can display the log output, statistics, build history etc.

FinalBuilder Server has been almost a year in development, and we've had quite a long beta period for it too. We have really been concentrating on ease-of-use and quality. Many features were put on the todo list instead of implemented straight away because the number one goal was to build a very solid base to work on. It's been running the FinalBuilder, FinalBuilder Server, and Automise builds for almost 5 months now, and we've had a fair number of customers use it during the beta - so, finally, today is the day for it's first release :)

More information on FinalBuilder Server here: https://www.finalbuilder.com/finalbuilder-server

Also - I forgot to blog about it before, but Automise 2 was released a couple of weeks ago. We added over 140 actions - there's some seriously cool stuff in there :)

HelpMaster Pro

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:00:00 GMT

PRD Software is a Canberra based company, just like VSoft, and they develop excellent help desk software. As we grow our needs for a good CRM solution is becoming a top priority... so HelpMaster Pro is looking like it'll do just what we need: handle support, sales, bug and issue tracking, and with a solid workflow system which pulls it all together.

I'm especially looking forward to the priority manager module, which can escalate jobs and notify both us and our customers :)

PNG Compression

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 03:00:00 GMT

After reading Getting the Most Out of PNG on Coding Horror... I thought I'd give it a go. That is, try out the PNGOUT tool that will re-compress PNG images files; but not for the images on the website, on the PNGs in our help file.

These are the results of running all of our 882 PNG Images in the help file through PNGOUT:
Before PNGOUT 13.2 MB
After PNGOUT 12.3 MB

(Unlike Jeff, I used a short project in Automise instead of a batch file...made it easy to pause the compression when I needed extra cpu cycles for other things :)

So that's a saving of almost 1MB. Not too shabby if you consider that this would directly translate to about 1MB shaved off the installer!

We're looking for a sales and marketing person

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 03:00:00 GMT

The job market (well, at least in Canberra and Australia) is generally pretty, ummm... tight. Good for people looking for jobs, but we're finding it hard to find a sales and marketing person. Please pass this on if you know anyone that might be interested - https://www.finalbuilder.com/company/careers

Who cares if the build is broken?

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:00:00 GMT

"If the development team is serious about creating quality software, then the entire team should care about the build being broken. Even if the team does not use any sort of continuous integration practices, a broken build is never a good thing."

Read the whole blog post at Dim Blog As New ThoughtStream(me)

Automise 2 Public Beta

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:00:00 GMT

Automise 2 is now in public beta testing.

Here's the download (the beta download is at the bottom):
Download

Now - here's the real news... for Automise 2 we've added literally hundreds of new actions. Some of the really cool new stuff is all the Windows Admin type actions, eg. Windows Update, Activate Windows, Active Directory admin, managing System Restore Points, NTFS Junction Points actions, changing file permissions and even Emptying the Recycle Bin!

We're really keen to hear about any issues or bugs with the new version - so please give the beta a whirl and let us know via email if you find a bug (or even if you've just testing some of the actions and they worked for you).

.t8

Xmas special - only a few days left!

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 03:00:00 GMT

If you're sitting on the fence, one side is batch files, xml files, or no build process at all, and the other side is a fully automated build process - well, now's the time to take the plunge :) And this applies to those network admins and sys admins also who want to automate some of the tedious and just plain boring stuff they have to do day-in-and-day-out!

We've got a special 20% off all FinalBuilder and Automise licenses purchased until the end of 2006!

See the home page for more details:
https://www.finalbuilder.com

Simplicity ain't so simple

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 03:00:00 GMT

I've been reading Nick Bradbury's series of posts about simplicity vs. features. Definitely worth a read, here's the links:

Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part I: Decide What to Hide
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part II: Stop Showing Off
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part III: Don't Add Features You Can't Support
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part IV: The Blessed Curse of Power Users
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part V: Combine Features
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part VI: Simple = Secure
Simplicity Ain't So Simple, Part VII: Know When to Stop

So... you've just read all of them I hope? Good. Here's some of my comments in relation to FinalBuilder and Automise :)

Firstly, I reckon it's a great series of posts - definitely some great advice in there to stop featuritis creeping in... which bring me to FinalBuilder and Automise... FB and AT have so many features that we loose track of them ourselves. I'm not joking either. And I don't know whether we should be ashamed or proud... (probably ashamed after reading that above post). Sometimes a user will ask "can I do X?" and we have to ask around if anyone knows if we've implemented that or not... But, more features can make a wider audience of users satisfied.

It's a fine line of course. You need to put features in to keep people happy, but you must present them so they don't get in the way during day-to-day use. It's also interesting to note that FinalBuilder has gone through a long growing phase of about 6 years with a huge amount of features added each release. We take a lot of suggestions (and opinions) from our users, and will generally add a new feature or option as opposed to not adding it in for the sake of simplicity. But, we tend to be quite careful of where we add the option, and to make it obvious from the icon or wording or placement of what the option is for. Plus we think hard about the default behaviour.

One interesting example that we added in for FinalBuilder 4 is a Build Summary screen. It's implemented as a tab which changes the main view from the "Design and Debugging" of your project into a view designed to show overall progress. It was a major new feature for FB4, and it has some advantages over the old way of watching a build. But, we knew a lot of existing customers would hate it. The default behaviour is that the IDE will automatically switch to the Build Summary screen when a build starts.

These are the options we added to make everyone happy:

A set of radio buttons (only one option can be chosen, top one is the default):

Always show build summary (Run, Run from Current, Run Selected, etc)
Only show build summary on Run
Show Build Summary when build completes
Never show build summary

And some checkboxes (either, both or none can be turned on):

Always show build summary if auto build
Show build summary on startup

So, quite a lot of options, and you have to access them via the Tools menu | Options | FinalBuilder category | General IDE Options | Runtime Options tab. Pretty hidden away - maybe we'll get a tick for that :) But self explanatory - it's unlikely you need to read the help file to understand what those options are going to do.

Another interesting graph I came across a few weeks ago is the Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak graph. Somebody mentioned that they thought FinalBuilder was on the top - thanks for that! But, the perception of a product is different for every person. FinalBuilder is the type of product where there will *always* be users who need more (eg. please support completely unknown product X - our forums are full of people asking for new features EVERY DAY), whereas other people get lost in the sea of configuration options.

If I was to choose an application with too few options or too many, I reckon I'd choose the one with too many (most of the time)!

Chistmas special for FinalBuilder and Automise!

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 03:00:00 GMT

If you're sitting on the fence, one side is batch files, xml files, or no build process at all, and the other side is a fully automated build process - well, now's the time to take the plunge :) And this applies to those network admins and sys admins also who want to automate some of the tedious and just plain boring stuff they have to do day-in-and-day-out!

We've got a special 20% off all FinalBuilder and Automise licenses purchased from today until the end of 2006!

See the home page for more details:
https://www.finalbuilder.com
https://www.automise.com

Automise 1.5

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:00:00 GMT

We've just released a minor update to Automise, so it's now at version 1.5

There a lot of bug fixes, enhancements, and a few new features. Free update to all existing Automise customers!

See What's New. Download Automise 1.5 Here.

A One Day Special

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Background

A while ago, I read a message on one of the ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals) private newsgroups announcing a new "Special of the Day" type website. It was to be called Bits du Jour - BDJ for short. BDJ would work along similar lines to Woot!, but would only feature software products. I thought “Wow, great idea... that's a fantastic way to promote a software product.”

Of course, the software vendor has to discount the product and provide a cut for BDJ, so the total revenue for each license would be much smaller than usual, but there is potential to reach a new crowd of people. It provides a way to promote the product at a lower price point, as a loss leader.

The Wait

I contacted Ellen Craw from BDJ and we exchanged a few emails. That was back in March 2006, and Automise 1.0 was still a month away from release. When you release a brand new product, how do you get the word out? Bits du Jour sounded like a great way to make a splash and build up a user base.

Automise retails for $195 US, and Ellen suggested that products priced over $20 don't sell so well on BDJ. It's all about impulse buys, and it sounds like twenty bucks is about the threshold. At the time we thought that $20 was just too cheap for a $200 product… no sale!

Time passed. Automise generated some sales and some interest, including some positive reviews, but we still didn’t have the widespread market penetration that we wanted.

So, in early November 2006, I thought we'd approach BDJ again. 90% discount off any product is sure to generate a lot of new sales. We also figured that BDJ should have gained in popularity since it's launch earlier in the year, and there should be a reasonable number of people now subscribed to it's RSS feeds and emails.

[As a side note, I bought Bar Genie through BDJ a few months back... it was a good deal and a nice reference for mixing cocktails!]

Preparation

We set a date - Wednesday 29th November 2006. Nothing special about it, but we chose a day in the middle of the week so that it wouldn’t overlap with a weekend or public holiday in any timezone.

Recently, Paul has done a considerable amount of work on our website store. This made it easy for us to set up a new coupon code that would last 24 hours. A few simple tests and we were ready.

Ellen drafted the BDJ article on Automise, and she also ran through the whole process to verify that everything held together.

D-Day

The special went live at midnight in the US (Central Standard Time). It was 5 in the afternoon here. I checked the BDJ site and Automise was on the home page. 90% discount was highlighted with red stars on either side - there's no question that this was a big discount. :)

I sent out some emails to some of our existing customers, users that we maintain a good relationship with. The email notified them of the special on BDJ for Automise, and encouraged them to spread the news. :)

The first sale came through 17 minutes after the special went live. Bloody Great! :)

The next sale came in at 22 minutes past, then another at 31, and another at 38. “Wow... this is awesome.” In the first hour we made seven sales. Seven new customers. Excellent!

Then it went a bit quiet. Over the next six or seven hours there were between about two and six sales an hour. Still great though, and by this time it was late evening in Australia.

Now, I want to give you some background on our order process. To place an order for Automise or FinalBuilder, you need to be a registered user on our website. New registrations need to have their email addresses confirmed (via a link in an email.) After you’re registered, you can add items to your shopping cart and go through the checkout process. During checkout, there is a coupon field. This is where the BitsDuJour coupon needed to be added in order to grant the 90% discount.

After checkout, our store redirects to the WorldPay payment gateway. WorldPay handles all of the credit card processing. We receive a Web Services callback with the status of the order, and send an automated email to the customer. The order then goes into a “pending” state so that we can review the order (eg. to check for fraud) and then we click a button to process it. FinalBuilder and Automise aren't high turnover products, so this process works great and we catch 99.9% of fraud before the license key is sent out.

Anyhow...I woke up the next morning and checked the pending orders. “Wow...” over 80 orders had come in during the night! Now someone had to process them. And guess what, that someone was me… It was a case of mixed emotions: heaps of sales, but a boring job manually checking and processing each one!

Sales continued to come in for the rest of the day. All up, the final count was 226 sales. We were all stoked, and a bit tired too. The sale had generated quite a bit of extra support work, and also there were also some bugs that showed up in the order process.

I emailed Ellen to let her know how we went, and got the following reply:

"That's GREAT - you just broke all my records. Thank YOU!"

Also, traffic on the BDJ site was about 40% higher than usual. We tried to promote the special as much as we could. Some fairly high profile bloggers mentioned the deal, eg. Roy Osherove (ISerializable) and Troy Magennis (LINQed IN). I'm sure a lot of traffic came to the site because of this.

Here's a graph of our sales volume over the 24 hour period:

And here's our daily website traffic. Because of our timezone the traffic is spread over both the Wednesday and Thursday. There's a pretty obvious spike!

So, there you have it. Overall it's been a great opportunity to feature Automise on Bits du Jour. If you're thinking about featuring your product on BDJ, and the software has a fairly general audience, then I reckon you should go for it! Thanks heaps to Ellen and Bits du Jour, the people who helped us promote the special, and especially to all our new customers. :)

Problems

Over the course of the sale, we experience a few minor problems that we hadn’t noticed before.

1. One of the main problems was that the store would allow you to enter the coupon code (and validate it) with an extra space character "BitsDuJour ". But then when the Process Order button was pressed, the coupon would be rejected. Many people reported that they couldn't get the coupon code to work, and it wasn't until about 18 hours into the special that we figured out why and fixed the bug. We lost sales because of this - people emailed us and told us so.

2. Another weird problem was that some people (normally from Germany) had problems with the store redirected to WorldPay. This was caused by the regional settings using a comma in the total amount instead of a decimal point. We fixed the bug but also had to process some of these orders manually before we had figured out the reason why.

3. We accidentally had heaps of references to FinalBuilder in the automated emails sent out for the store. This was more of an embarrassment than a problem, and we fixed it during the day as well.

What we've learnt

1. Bits du Jour was great idea. The customer base for Automise has grown, and there are a lot of happy people. The price was low enough to create impulse purchases, and will hopefully act as a loss leader to make Automise better known.

2. There were some bugs in the store that we should have known about. More testing required!

3. The order process is too difficult. A lot of people got a bit peeved at the entire process, and I'm sure some people gave up. There was a short thread on the Joel on Software forums with some criticism of the process:

https://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.421152.9

4. Promotion is very important. See below for mentions of the Automise special which appeared on various blogs. I posted the deal on a couple of mailing lists as well. This made a huge difference.

Links from the Blogosphere, and other coverage of the BDJ Automise special

https://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2006/11/components.html

"Coincidentally, his post today is offering Automise for $19 (down from $199) for 24 hours in Bits du Jour, a site, much like Woot, offering new discounted software daily."

https://aspiring-technology.com/blogs/troym/archive/2006/11/29/63.aspx

"Todays deal caught my eye - its 90% off. Automise - a general purpose automation tool (think GUI based scripting and debugging)."

https://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2006/11/28/cool-promotion-automise-for-20-for-24h-window.aspx

"A little bird tells me that in a few hours you'll be able to get Automise (that's the system admin's version of FinalBuilder - my favorite build automation tool) over here for a 90% discount - less than $20 instead of $195 for a 24 hour window."

https://mortonfox.livejournal.com/465710.html

"Got a copy of Automise at a 90% discount, thanks to Bits du Jour. When I have more time, I'll dig deeper into the software to see if it's really that much better than AutoHotkey. I have Bits du Jour in my del.icio.us bookmarks, but I'd forgotten all about it until IanH. mentioned the deal on the Joel on Software discussion forum."

https://midspot.wordpress.com/2006/11/29/automise-at-a-great-deal/

"Automise does it for you. I downloaded the trial last night and it is pretty slick and powerful. Try it for free, and today only you can get a huge discount on the product."

Some other user comments

"Holy discount, Batman! I almost feel duty bound to buy this 'cos of the 90% off! Nice job BDJ and Automise!"

"Thank you very much for this generous rebate!"

"Very cool tool!

I have tested many automation tools and Automise is one of the best. When I saw this promotion this morning I just bought it - thank you!"

"I've heard good things about it, and at 90% off, you can't really go wrong, can you?"

Automise on Bits du Jour

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

If you're thinking about buying Automise, or you need an automation tool for Windows... today is your lucky day!

Yep, Automise is being featured on Bits du Jour today (Wednesday 29th November 2006).

https://www.bitsdujour.com/

Finally there is a law and suitable punishment for breaking the build!

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Good on you Plip!

Who Broke the Build?

David Hayden is now a self confessed Build Junkie :)

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

"I am officially a build junkie. I love the automation. I love how quickly I can check-in new code and have the build process get me a fresh, working copy of everything in seconds. Yes, seconds. FinalBuilder makes it easy - really easy."

From: https://davidhayden.com/blog/dave/archive/2006/11/15/FinalBuilderBuildAutomation.aspx - FinalBuilder - Leverage the Software Delivery / Automated Build Process in .NET, blog post by David Hayden.

FinalBuilder 5 reviewed at Larkware

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Mike Gunderloy over at Larkware has just reviewed FinalBuilder 5! :)

Here's a couple of quotes:

"FinalBuilder, which just released its fifth major version, offers a full-featured IDE for managing complex software build and deployment processes."

"I've been using FinalBuilder myself for several years now, and I'm quite happy with it. VSoft continues to add new features, while preserving the ease of use that attracted me to the product in the first place. If visual tools appeal to you more than XML ones, and you need a powerful build and management utility, you ought to check it out for yourself."

Thanks Mike!

A dead GUID

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Yeah, we all know the jokes about killing GUIDs (ie. creating them for no reason), and I just happened to need another GUID a few minutes ago, so I went and generated one a new one, but it was already DEAD... check it out:

{3B795CB4-DEAD-4064-B5E1-6174B7414563}

Windows Powershell

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 03:00:00 GMT

Was just reading Arno Nel's blog, and he reminded me about Windows Powershell.

All of us here had a look at Powershell a few weeks back and were really impressed - and we're going to be investigating adding support into FinalBuilder and Automise for Powershell soonish hopefully :)

Here's a few links:

Daily Grind 1000

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 04:00:00 GMT

Congratulations to Mike Gunderloy over at Larkware... he's up to the 1000th Daily Grind - an essential read every morning to get the important news and other stuff going on in the Windows and .NET development world.

Impressive mate, keep it up!

FinalBuilder 5 is out!

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 04:00:00 GMT

It's been almost a year in the making, but today is the day - FinalBuilder 5 is released (download trial).

We've now got over 600 actions (see what's new), which is a pretty decent improvement on the 440 in FinalBuilder 4.
There's also heaps of really cool new stuff in the IDE.
We've even made the logo a nice blue with beveled edges :) [geez, the old logo sucked!]
Prices remain the same too.

FinalBuilder 5 Release Candidate 2

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

This is the last build before release...

But seriously, please report any bugs ASAP to support if you can afford a little time to give it a test, thanks!

.t8