Document Enable Any Application With Ratchet-X

I recently received an email from a customer saying; “I’m amazed at how many places within our organization we’ve applied Ratchet-X beyond the original project.” We hear this all the time. Although I often make this point during customer presentations, it usually doesn’t set in until the customer lives and uses Ratchet-X for a bit.

One example where Ratchet-X is repeatedly applied beyond the original customer project is in the area of enterprise document management (EDM). Once customers realize that Ratchet-X is actually a piece of desktop middleware that brokers a “conversation” between application screen data and external data sources (and not merely an integration tool purchased to solve a specific problem), integrating applications into the customer’s EDM system is a natural fit.

Ratchet-X is now commonly being used as a way to both submit documents to, and retrieve data from, EDM repositories. On the capture side, Ratchet-X works best with images and forms since the information used for indexing the documents is often available in the integrated application screen. With regard to document retrieval, pretty much every application user can benefit by an onboard ability to instantly link to documents that relate to the entity referenced by the application screen data. Since Ratchet-X enables more applications, and by extension users, to leverage the EDM, the costs associated with purchasing and maintaining the EDM is justified over a much larger pool of users.

Not many products can claim they dramatically impact the ROI of the other products running within the organization. So try integrating Ratchet-X with your EDM back-end and let me know how it goes. Also be on the lookout for the release of Ratchet-X plugins that integrate into the industry’s most popular EDM products. If you’re thinking of doing such an integration, make sure you check with us to see if we have a plug-in for your EDM in the pipeline.

Twitter - I Just Don't Get It! Never Did, Never Will.

I know this has little to do with the purpose of this blog but I can't take it anymore. Today, I had yet another associate of mine invite me to track his every movement on Twitter. This comes just one day after telling another colleague that I refused to communicate with him exclusively through Pownce.

Does anyone over the age of 18 really need to know at this moment which friend is picking the nuts out of his teeth from the Snickers bar he just ate? The only reason I know it was a Snickers bar is because I received an urgent alert to that fact five minutes prior as he was unwrapping said Snickers bar.

Just because we have the technical ability to transmit every fleeting thought and the undertaking of every mundane task doesn't mean we should. But what do I know, I'm just a cranky old geezer with a little less time on my hands than some.

If you're connected to me via Twitter, you probably know that already.

What's New in Ratchet-X Version 3.5?

Good news for RatchetSoft users! Ratchet-X version 3.5 was released to the Ratchet-X Community last week. Here’s a review of what’s new.

Assembles
The most significant change in version 3.5 is the introduction of Assembles. While Ratchet-X has always had the ability to extract, paste and manage datasets that scan multiple applications and application screens, version 3.5 shifts the responsibility of supporting this feature from the plug-in developer to the appspace creator and the platform itself. As part of our ongoing effort to focus the platform on managing desktop data rather than mere application automation, we felt that multiple application and screen support should be something that the plug-in creator inherits rather than have to specifically plan for. This supports the philosophy of loosely coupling applications and data sources.

So now, if a plug-in requires data from an xmodel that spans multiple screens, it’s up to the appspace developer (the only person who really knows this to be the case for a particular application integration), to define that fact by instructing the Commander to create an assemble in the task list when the user executes the associated plug-in. Once the assemble is in the task list, it becomes much easier to be repurposed to other applications and sources. For more on assembles, check out the Ratchet-X documentation.

Macro Throttling
Appspace macros are created by the appspace author. This being the case, defined macro execution speed is usually based on the performance the appspace creator sees on his/her desktop. However, once the appspace is deployed, the macro’s execution speed may need to be altered to accommodate the performance of an end user’s workstation. This is the purpose for macro throttling. Macro throttling allows each individual end user to globally speed up or slow down the performance of macros executed on his or her desktop (five levels of throttling).

AutoSave/AutoBackup
In version 3.5, the Appspace Editor has both an AutoSave and AutoBackup feature. When Appspace Editor saves, it makes a backup of the previous version. Further, once you save an appspace for the first time, Appspace Editor will autosave a copy of your appspace based on a user defined autosave time interval.

In addition, there have been various changes to the the connector API and plug-in API to accommodate changes to the task list and assembles.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the new version, please gives us a call or drop me an email. Good luck with version 3.5 of Ratchet-X!