Newsletter July / August 1999
Customer News
This month sees the addition of the John Lewis Building Group and another major County Council to our customer base. We are also proud to note that several of our major customers are now upgrading their licenses to allow more users to connect to the CDM ToolKit™ at any one time through our very popular concurrent user license scheme. The benefit of this approach is that users only pay for the licenses they actually use at any one time.
Product Upgrades
CDM ToolKit™2000 Service Release 2a is in distribution for all those customers who have contracted for it. We are currently shipping, so if you have not received your copy, it should be with you in the next few days.
If we do not have your e-mail address, please send it to us. We are finding e-mail the answer to so many communications issues and want to cut down of the number of Faxes and Letters that are being sent out. If you don’t have an e-mail address, isn’t it time to consider it? A lot of providers now do it for free!
Request for Information
Please see our web site for our O and M survey and Paper to CDROM survey.
Service Release 2a
The new release continues the list of improvements to date and majors on the print preview module. Users can now format their document margins to their own requirements, and output them to File, e-mail or MS Word. We are finding that the features in the product are now so strong that some of our customers who have to date relied on MS Word are now remaining within the CDM ToolKit™.
A recent demonstration to our customers at the Pfizer Corporation revealed that the document sections within the CDM ToolKit™ can be linked to external Word documents. This link can be kept ‘live’ so that changes to external documents are mirrored in those provided by the CDM ToolKit™. Furthermore, if the contents of the MS Word documents are kept in the CDM ToolKit™ Library, the contents can be copied and ‘paste linked’ to any other document section in the CDM ToolKit™! This is a very powerful way of controlling all those copies of policy statements and other important documents that are currently generated and maintained by other departments elsewhere in the network.
CDM ToolKit™ 2000 Training
We have now completed our first on site training courses for CDM ToolKit™ 2000. This has led to a review of the course content and the structure of what is presented. One of the key issues we are finding is that in spite of the initial eagerness to embrace the CDM ToolKit™ and all its principles for consistency, ease of use and time saving, Users still find it difficult to find time to set the product up. Older hands at the CDM ToolKit™ will know this has always been the case. In spite of rewriting the product, the manuals and the Product Guide, we have a steady stream of requests for functionality information. We hope that the following options will prove popular in addressing the urgent need for more training.
Training
We provide training for individuals either on-site or at Milton Keynes where we have access to a tailor made PC training suite. The Milton Keynes based courses are recommended for Standalone Users and are geared to their needs. We supply site based Network Product courses that are intended to take a core group of people through a training process so that they in turn can train others in the Organisation in due course.
Product Overview Course
The Product Overview Course is for users who are unfamiliar with the CDM ToolKit™ 2000. The course is aimed at all users from senior managers to individual users. Everyone contemplating the basic course should attend this. The product Overview Course lasts approximately 2.5 hours on-site, It is unrestricted in the number of attendees and is provided for a flat rate fee of £250 plus travelling expenses.
Basic Training
This course is for new users of the CDM ToolKit™ 2000 including standalone users. Targeted at the core group, each attendee
should be thoroughly familiar with MS Windows, MS Explorer and the use of Windows applications on a Windows 95/98/NT4/2000 platform. Attendees should have attended the Overview course. The training objective is to enable users to produce standard CDM Documents including Risk Assessments from the CDM ToolKit™. We provide a Windows Training course for those who need to fulfil the pre-requisites of this course, please ask
for details.
Advanced Training
The Advanced Training course is for those who have completed the Basic course. This course introduces some of the more advanced features of the product, the use of Tools, Object Linking and reporting.
Other Training
We provide training for Administrators and a MS Windows familiarisation course for those not yet proficient in MS Windows 95/NT/2000. Details are available on request. Full details of these courses are available on our website.
Next User Forum
The next User Forum will be on 30th September 1999 at Milton Keynes. Please put the date in your diary now. We will write to you nearer the time with details of the event and a registration form.