Transactor Version 7 Advance Product Information
Winchester, United Kingdom, March 2008. TGSL today confirm the introduction of Transactor Version 7 for release in quarter four 2008. Existing Transactor users will be able to migrate to the new version from January 2009 onwards. From April 1st 2007 new clients will be given the option of either going live on the current 6.2 version, or waiting until later in the year for a Transactor 7 launch. “There are few, if any, cost implications whichever route the client chooses’, confirms Ray Vincent, Managing Director, TGSL. ‘It’s all about what is best for the clients business.” Some generic new features of Transactor 7 include greater use of SMS messaging, and WAP (mobile phone based) enabled transactions such as quotations for new business and renewals.
Whilst currently TGSL is under no commercial pressure to better 6.2, Transactor Version 7 is now underway as a self sponsored project. Microsoft’s new Team Server technology has been adopted for the new project. The importance of the front-end is being recognised by the inclusion of a web designer for skinning and themeing.
TGSL is adopting a methodology known as ‘Extreme Programming’ (similar to RAD), which will be facilitated by the adoption of some new ‘Team Server’ features that provide for the creation of test scripts as the product is developed, the automatic creation and self maintenance of documentation at developer level, and the means to auto-build nightly releases and run test scripts against them using automated harnesses as a non-intrusive overhead. “The adoption of Team Server technology will change the way we work in development fundamentally”, confirms Mark Rogers, Applications Director.
Additionally, TGSL is looking to adopt WPF and XAML technologies in its application development. “A lot of Version 7 is not about functionality, which we have had cracked for some time”, continues Mark Rogers. “It is more to do with front-end evolution, what widgets and add-ins we can support, how the front-end evolves, how we can leverage Microsoft technologies such as Outlook from within the front-end. It is also about how we can give users options to fundamentally personalise the look and feel of their Transactor, and I am not talking about just changing the colours and fonts, and putting a different logo in a certain part of the screen. Our approach will certainly involve providing facilities to embed objects for users/teams, even brand different team’s desktops, and much greater use of community options and RSS feeds. We also, through the use of the latest technology, want to find smarter ways of handling fault notification, with more MSN type communication with the supervisors on client sites and here in customer services.”
Transactor Version 7 is also going to make use of Microsoft BI (Business Intelligence), and on the database front, early adoption of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is approved.
‘As already mentioned however, it is about what is best for the clients business, so rather than make everything dependent on a Transactor 7 launch, all new development has been made available in the current 6.2 version of Transactor,‘ confirms Vincent. “Originally, Version 7 was being readied to allow the introduction of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft .Net Framework 2, and Microsoft 2007 Office (Word), but these too were all introduced into the current 6.2 version, which has given us the time to sit back and work out what people will want in 36 months time. You can only adopt that approach when you have your core software is all complete and current.”
For further information contact tony.withers@transactorgsl.com