Where to practice End-User Support

I am teaching End User Support at Prague College.The really funny thing is that I am currently dealing with serious support issues with Buxfer. I have bought the highest possible subscription but as of today,I am unable to use it. Have a look for yourself here and here...

Always look on the bright side of life - at least a great example for my students: always check the Service Level Agreement...

UPDATE: Not sure yet how it will end with Buxfer after Unable To Use Buxfer After Setting Projections so I will still give them time to solve it.


UPDATE 2: Finally I have been able to "hack-login" into Buxfer using combination of Buxfer Mobile and Firebux and send the priority support request. My issue has been solved in less than 24 hours then. I understand the need to login first to send the support request, so they know your SLA level, but still, if CRM for service would be in place, they would know just from my email...

UPDATE 3: Yes, finally I am a Buxfer user again. Thanks guys!

How to burn a DVD in Ubuntu from command line

Go to the directory you want to burn in the root of your DVD and:


growisofs -dvd-compat -input-charset=ISO-8859-1 -Z /dev/dvd -R -J -pad .

Really useful when CD+DVD creator stops working.

How do you handle entity statuses?

As part of what I am developing now, I needed to handle different entities' statuses. Although developing for decades, I was yet tempted a little bit to use a boolean. Fortunately ;-) found a great status patter description with explanations!

Software Development Tasks

Just a few unsorted thoughts about tasks that needs to be done by somewho in the development/managing team:

• Prioritize tasks/issues
• Define how should it be implemented (how should we treat overlapping appointments in function GetNextAppointment() )
• Choose the best technology/strategy/...
• Estimate the time
• Check the progress according to the estimation
• Review the final code

SOLVED claws mail Google Apps mail sending problem

For few weeks I have had a problem with email sending from my Nokia using claws mail client. Finally today morning I went through Q/A to find out,that I need port 587 to use STARTTLS. It works now.

How SprinxCRM looks from Wikipedia CRM Part 1

I decided to take a look at the Wikipedia Customer relationship management term and add what SprinxCRM has to tell to it. Please note that most of the text is the Wikipedia article. This text is also licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.





Customer relationship management (CRM) consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing. SprinxCRM contains all the modules and functions you would need to work with customers and their interactions.



While the term CRM generally refers to a software-based approach to handling customer relationships, most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM effort requires a holistic approach (See Malthouse, Edward C; Bobby J Calder (2005). "Relationship Branding and CRM". in Alice Tybout and Tim Calkins. Kellogg on Branding. Wiley. pp. 150-168.). CRM initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation, without providing the context, support and understanding for employees to learn, and take full advantage of the information systems. (See Rigby, Darrell K.; Frederick F. Reichheld, Phil Schefter (2002). "Avoid the four perils of CRM". Harvard Business Review 80 (2): 101–109. doi:10.1225/8946.) SprinxCRM addresses this issue by being very intuitive and simple. You can start using SprinxCRM right after opening its homepage. Typical training takes less than two hours.



Other problems occur (see Paul H. Selden (April/May 1996). "SFA Myths Abound". Sales and Marketing Strategies & News 6 (3): 51 and 53.) when failing to think of sales as the output of a process that itself needs to be studied and taken into account when planning automation (see Paul H. Selden (November 2000). "The Power of Quality Thinking In Sales and Management". Quality Progress: 58-64.).

How to Convert a YouTube Video to an Animated GIF

Although our SprinxCRM YouTube is great, sometimes an old animated GIF suits better. In that case simply follow Chuck Caplan's guide.