Review

Understanding Changes In Dollars And Sense Tenrox Incident Management Allows Managers To Assess Impact Of Change Requests
By David Rubinstein, Software Development Times, November 1, 2000

A tool to integrate change management with time sheets, workflow and expenses is at the core of Tenrox PSA V6, due out later this month from Tenrox Corp.

The tool, Tenrox Incident Management, is designed to allow managers to evaluate the change and then calculate the impact on man-hours, deadlines and costs before deciding to implement the work to team member, according to Ludwig Meilk, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Tenrox (www.Tenrox.com). Tenrox Incident Management is just one of 11 components included in Tenrox PSA, which also has tools for such functions as tracking time sheets, expenses, cost and revenue, invoices and billing and a hierarchical view of the organization. Now, with Tenrox Incident Management, issue tracking, help desk and bug tracking are integrated into the management suite.

The Tenrox SDK components permits VB developpers to customize the Tenrox PSA

According to Melik, Tenrox PSA was designed to be used in conjunction with project-management tools such as Microsoft's Project, and messaging applications. The suite has functionality to allow for planning, procedures, cost control, performance reporting and resources and risk management. "We don't want to do Project or Crystal Reports," Melik said. "We provide integration but don't redo what those tools do so well."

The new release also will have the capability to track projects based on the phase they are in, such as research, development or maintenance; and site scooping to limit access of remote users to a central database or project code.

The Tenrox PSA database stores project phase info for calculating impacts of change

Another important feature of the upgrade suite is Tenrox SDK, an SDK that allows Visual Basic programmers to extend or customize the suite, or integrate it with third-party tools. Through an OLE interface with Microsoft Project, data can be synchronized across a variety of enterprise systems. A Windows NT/2000 server is required to run the application, and users access the suite's applications through a Windows application a Web-based interface or e-mail. "The advantage of accessing through e-mail is that [an enterprise] won't have to buy 300 or 400 database licenses from Oracle," Melik said. The new release adds DB2 support in addition to existing support for Microsoft SQL Server and Database Engine, and Oracle. "All you need is a browser," he added.

Tenrox PSA, set to be introduced in mid-November, will sell for $380 per user. Tenrox Incident Management, the change-management software, will be available for $180 per user as a stand-alone application.