It’s now 1:22 AM and I’m bringing day 1 of CCC 2009 to a close. It was a good day of sessions dominated by what I decided were two common themes: Reporting and Integration. Now, to be fair, these topics were on the agenda, but based upon how many times the topics came up in both the presentations and the all important small group conversations, these are clearly problems looking for a solution.
The day kicked off (after the key note address) with a session on reporting. Martin kicked it off with a discussion on PDF generation. Martin’s presentation highlighted some challenges in generating PDF document when the end user has full control over the Word document format. Microsoft Word has issues in converting to PDF in certain cases. The case Martin demonstrated was when the document had text wrapping around an embedded image. In the generated PDF, the text bled into the image making it difficult to read. He made a point to say that this was a Microsoft issue rather than an issue with the Click software, but to the end user it really doesn’t matter where the problem lies. What should concern the end-user is that the problem exists at all. A workaround for the occasional problem in converting a Word document to PDF is to print the document to a PDF driver in order to generate the PDF. This approach leverages Adobe’s print driver for PDF generation rather than Microsoft document conversion to achieve consistently better formatting in these special cases. The downside is that the end-user (typically an IACUC or IRB administrator) must then upload the generated PDF. A small price to pay for a properly formatted PDF document, but annoying nonetheless.
I followed with a review of the different ways to define and develop reports. I won’t bore you with the details here as the entire presentation will be posted to the ClickCommerce.com website for this CCC meeting. The point I wanted to stress in my presentation is that the notion of reporting carries with it a broad definition. Reports are anything that provides information to the reader. It includes informational displays that either summarize information or provide specific detail. It can be presented in a wide variety of formats. There really are no restrictions. The goal of a “report” is to provide answers to the questions held by the targeted users and it’s important to first understand what those questions are. Reports can be delivered in a variety of ways, from online-displays, to ad-hoc query results, to formatted documents that adhere to a pre-specified structure. A report is not one thing – it’s many.
David M. followed up on this same topic during his afternoon session, providing more detail on the type of reporting Michigan has implemented to track operational efficiencies. Karen from Ocshner also contributed with how they report their metrics and cited some very impressive efficiency numbers. Given their rate of growth over the last few years, their ability to maintain the level of responsiveness in their IRB is something that will continue to impress me long after this conference is over.
My session on integration approaches combined with Johnny Brown’s report on their progress toward a multi-application-server model highlighted the challenges in managing a distributed enterprise. There clearly is a need to establish best practices around this topic. The questions raised during both sessions were excellent and provided me with several topics to cover in future posts.
Unfortunately I missed the last two sessions as I had to attend to other matters, but from what I heard, the session on usability improvements presented by Jenny and Caleb was a big hit. Even DJ saw things in that presentation that got him thinking about ways to enhance the base Extranet product. Some of that was presented at C3DF and I agree, the judicious use of DHTML and Ajax really goes a long way to improving the overall user experience.
All the sessions were good but I especially enjoyed the small group discussions before and during dinner. I had the pleasure of dining with representatives from The Ohio State University, University of British Columbia, and Nationwide Children’s. If any of you are reading this, thanks for the great conversation and I’m looking forward to the “pink tutu” pictures.
The day was capped off by a survey of local nightlife. Thanks to our UMich hosts for being our guide and keeping us out late. I now have some new stories to tell.
Tomorrow’s almost here – time to get some sleep.
Cheers!
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