| From: DEMON::GOVONI "DTN 227-3268 - Today's a gift, that's why it's called the present. 22-Jan-1996 1110" 22-JAN-1996 11:10:45.48
To: @PERF_SUPPORT.DIS
CC: GOVONI
Subj: Performance Support Meeting Minutes - Jan. 18
EventCentral Performance Support Team Meeting
Jan. 18, 1996
Attendees:
Bob Govoni
Tom Graefe
Nasrin Malayery
Pat Spoerl
Tom's Status:
Working with engineering on various issues:
o Agents - Still need definition. Engineering is working with
the Assetworks engineers.
o Integration with other management systems - Tom gave Lisa Spooner
some SNMP scenarios, which would define how EventCentral
communicates with NetView and Assetworks. Lots of decisions
yet to be made. The scenarios powerpoint document is located in:
\\snolpd\pem\gui\model.ppt
o Actions - Templates and definition of actions still to be determined.
Planning:
Tom to meet with Pete Spooner to discuss planning requirements and
scenarios.
For BL2, installation will be kludged ("bubblegum and bailing wire").
Discussed other products that have planning documentation. Tom has a
diskette of a server configuration from another PC product.
Action: Tom to make the files from the diskette available on snolpd.
Action: Nasrin will call Rick Schneider, network consultant, to
get samples of online planning tools.
John St. Laurent, support group, is a potential resource for planning
and integration information, due to his current work with NetView
and Assetworks integration issues.
Online Help:
Bob gave a short presentation on how the online help will be seen
by users, both operators and administrators.
The online help architecture (or structure) is in place. Bob passed out
copies of a preliminary Help Contents page. Pat and Bob will send
Nasrin, Tom, and Gary a working help file by Monday afternoon. Anyone else
who wishes a copy can contact Bob or Pat.
Adding customer policies to the online help will be easy to do, but
requires the customer to create a .hlp version of their policies.
The documentation will discuss how to link in the policy file into
the help contents page.
Action: Bob to research if we can customize adding a policies
link into the contents page.
The other performance support priority, advice on customizing maps,
has not yet been researched, but should not be a problem to add
to the help.
Multimedia Tour:
Engineering is getting an estimate from Laura Picard's group to
do a marketing-type demo. Bob is involved with these meetings.
Action: Bob to determine if the operator tour we discussed
can be done as part of this demo package, or funded
separately.
Open Issues:
Bob needs updated video screen capture tools. Currently using
32 bit tools to create help. The existing 16-bit video tools
is incompatible.
STATUS: On order.
Next Meeting:
Thursday, Jan. 25, 1:30, in Stanford.
The agenda will consist of creating customer questions for the BL2
deliverable, and review of the online help.
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| From: DEMON::SPOERL "25-Jan-1996 1551" 25-JAN-1996 17:42:50.48
To: DEMON::GOVONI,DEMON::GRAEFE,CUPTAY::MALAYERY
CC: SPOERL
Subj: Performance Support Meeting Minutes - January 25
EventCentral Performance Support Team Meeting
January 25, 1996
Attendees:
Bob Govoni
Tom Graefe
Nasrin Malayery
Pat Spoerl
BL2 Goals:
The BL2 release will not be complete enough to support
formal usability testing.
We discussed goals for usability testing that will probably
occur during FT1. Some suggested goals include:
* Create a list of user tasks and ask users to perform them.
* After completing a task, ask users to answer questions
such as: What information did you need that you could
not find? Was the amount of information in each help
topic too much/too little/just right? What advice would
you like to include for the task?
* Determine whether the tutorial helps a user perform the
user tasks more quickly than a user who bypassed the tutorial.
* Ask users: Do you like what's there? What else needs to be there?
Tom plans to get customer opinions of BL2, probably by sending
questions and following up with conference calls.
Info System Design Issues:
Our current information design is consistent with Nazrin's
guidelines, that conceptual information should be available
in printed format and procedural information should be
presented online. Bob expanded the types of information to
include conceptual information, high-level tasks, and
low-level tasks. Low-level tasks are directly related to
the user interface; high-level tasks reference low-level
tasks and link to them for more naive users.
Bob described his info system design as a puzzle: First, we
design the pieces; then, we decide where to put each piece to
create the big picture.
Changes to the Operator Tasks List:
Bob and Pat have made several changes to the operator tasks list,
which we discussed.
Action: Bob will update the file to reflect changes.
Performance Support for Planning Tasks:
Rick Schneider told Nazrin that he is unaware of any sample
planning guidelines or tools that we can look at to get ideas
for the performance support we want to provide for planning
tasks. He emphasized the importance of this kind of performance
support and is an excellent resource for providing feedback
when we have this information available.
Next Meeting:
Thursday, February 1, 1:30, in Stanford.
|
| EventCentral Performance Support Team Meeting
Feb. 15, 1996
Attendees:
Bob Govoni
Nasrin Malayery
Pat Spoerl
Monsanto Trip Report:
Pete Spooner (lead engineer - server) and Linda Johnson (support)
delivered Baselevel 2 to one of our partners - Monsanto, in
St. Louis. The report confirmed a lot of our ideas, including
the customer need for planning information. Overal, the report
was very positive, and gave the writing team the confidence
that we're doing all the right things.
Terminology:
Pat discussed terminology problems. The main example discussed
was the use of the term filter.
Later after the meeting, Mike Young confirmed that the writers
and the lead engineers need to sit down and decide which
terms we should be using.
Objectives:
Nasrin suggested that we explicitly state the performance support objectives
for this and future releases. At this meeting, we started the
list for the first release of EvenCentral:
USER ACTION CONDITION RESULTS
Admin Develop implementation Use planning guide Look at completed
plan (print only in v1) implementation plan
Admin Integrate PEC with Use online info Survey users to
NetView and PAW re: integration determine success
tasks and concepts
Oper Become proficient Use online info Survey users to
performing basic re: operator tasks determine success
tasks
(Pat will supply
a list of tasks.)
Oper Understand basic Use online info Interview users to
task-related concepts re: task-related determine success
(Pat will supply concepts and find out how
a list of concepts.) they learned about
task-related concepts
Next Meeting:
Thursday, Feb. 29, 1:30, in the Stanford.
|
| EventCentral Performance Support Team Meeting
April 9, 1996
Attendees:
Bob Govoni
Pat Spoerl
Tom Graefe
Nasrin Malayery
Liz Gabel
Agenda: Since it has been a few weeks since our last meeting, we
spent the time discussing status and the current state
of the EventCentral online help.
Tom:
Working on EventCentral components:
o agent configuration, especially NT agents.
o console services
o libraries
Working with Nasrin on the EventCentral training course. Currently
concentrating on the planning and installation areas.
While discussing installation, Bob noted how the Administrator's Guide
(online version) can be separated and hidden from the operators. However,
this affects the installation process. Tom suggested that Bob write
up the installation issues with the online help and place that
document in the engineering syste, snolpd.
Working with Norma Torti, EventCentral marketing, on the marketing messages.
Nasrin:
Working on EventCentral training course with Tom, Mike Young (EventCentral
engineering supervisor), and Pete Spooner (EventCentral engineer).
The overall design has been accomplished; next step is to write the
content. Tom and Nasrin will oversee this process, but the engineers
will be responsible for writing the content. No course developers
will be used due to budget reasons. Bob suggested that an editor
look over all written material. Liz confirmed that since Gary
Schmitt is the EventCentral editor there would be no extra
cost to engineering. Nasrin will discuss this with Mike Young.
A major feature of the training is the EventCentral architecture. Tom
passed out copies of preliminary drawings. Bob also discussed the
architecture drawings he created for the online help. There was
general consensus that we should have the same or similar drawings.
As part of training, Nasrin discussed the planning job aid. This
job aid has been discussed since the earliest performance support
meetings. Tom and Nasrin have been doing research on exactly
what needs to be in this job aid. We also discussed how the
job aid fits into the doc strategy. Currently, there are placeholder
topics in the Administrator's Guide for planning. Generally, we
feel that the job aid can be reused, in some form, in the
Admin. Guide.
As part of the training, attendees will be asked to bring in their
own network topologies. The class will be designed to address
how EventCentral can fit into these topologies.
Pat:
Working on the online help - in particualr, the operator tasks and
user interface topics. Keeping up with all the UI changes. In
addition, Pat has made a number of comments and suggestions for
improving the UI.
Bob:
Discussed the Administrator Guide structure and topics. (It was
a lengthy discussion.) One aspect of the discussion was how do
users navigate from one topic to another. For example, how does
a user go from the Event View topic to a discussion of
shared event logs. Bob explained that, in this case, an
operator without extra privileges could not get to the shared
events topic, since it was an administrator concept. However,
Bob did show how a user with privileges could navigate from
Event View to Shared Event Logs.
Bob and Pat discussed how certain concepts were not accessible
to operators without privileges. This role does not include
using the server, event logs, or other features directly.
Therefore, these concepts should not be introduced to these
users. The team agreed.
Next Meeting:
Tentatively scheduled for next week, April 16, at 9:30 in the
Tufts. However, Tom can't make it. Bob will send mail
soliciting input to changing the frequency of our meetings
from weekly to biweekly.
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