I know that SuiteScript is the NetSuite platform built on JavaScript that enables complete customization and automation of business processes.
I want to know that SuiteScript is in demand? How would be the future if I do following certifications
SuiteFoundation Certification
SuiteCloud Developer Certification
I've worked with NetSuite development (SuiteScript 1.0 & 2.0, administration, and integrating NetSuite to many other systems) for about seven years now. I have no NetSuite certifications, and I have never found a need for them.
That being said, some employers think highly of certifications. Whether you need the certs really depends on whether you can be self taught and whether the company you want to work for wants you to have them before you are hired.
I have been working on NetSuite for 4 years now. I have done SuiteScript 1.0, 2.0, workflows, searches, reports, etc (all normal admin and developer tasks with NetSuite basically). I am now certified Developer (meaning I passed the 2 exams you mentioned) and because I am a consultant I am now a certified ERP consultant as well. I will probably take the analytics, admin, and eventually SuiteCommerce as well.
So with that background, the answer to your question depends on what you want to do. If you are already working with a company who is using NetSuite, an end client probably doesn't care a ton about the certifications. If you are looking to get a job in this, then it may help you a lot. If you are looking to be a consultant, it will probably be a requirement at some point. For consulting companies, certifications help them look better to clients.
I also will add that I find that by studying for and taking the tests I have learned about features I did not have exposure to prior. This pushes me to learn those areas, talk to others, and better my overall skills beyond the exam itself. If you are only self taught, in my experience, you eventually fall into the "if your own tool is a hammer, than every problem looks like a nail". You won't have all the possible tools to do the best job
I personally found my certifications valuable. Last year, I completed the SuiteFoundation and Administrator exam, both of these guided me into different segments of NetSuite I had never used before.
I'm currently studying for the SuiteCloud developer exam, and I've had the same experience. It's forcing me to look into new modules and test out new functionality. With that being said, I'm a jr. level developer at best, so combining my js training with NetSuite-specific training is relevant.
There is a solid website that recently did a informal survey on this topic, if you want to learn more about value added from NS certifications you can visit: https://netsuite.smash-ict.com/
I recommend all NS newbies to complete the SuiteFoundation training. This applies to everyone, developers, admins, and end-users.
Related
I am an azure customer and i have had very bad experiences with the support so far. The developer support ($25/month) does not help with server outages because they take 8 hours to respond.. and since everyone is in india or some foreign country, that means all i get is an email, so i respond and wait another 8 hours for a response.. theres really know way to get an issue resolved any faster than 2 days it seems.
So my question, what are your personal opinions/experiences of the azure premiere support ($300-$1000/month) vs developer support? Is premiere support American engineers or still from india? Are the engineers more knowledgabe or are they the same as developer support but faster response time? And opinions would be helpful (i have the link to Microsoft's website, i want real info from people who have used it, not sales talk :) )
#kwill stated:
Every time you open a support incident the first communication you
receive from the support engineer will include their normal working
hours along with instructions on how to get support from another
engineer in a time zone that more closely matches yours.
From personal experience I can tell you this:
While this may very well be true, however, the first communication with the support engineer is the tricky part. The last ticket we created, after almost a week we're still waiting on that first communication with a support engineer which had expected response: 4h ; This is with a Gold support account.
I used all service plans (Developer > Premium), not only Azure but also a few Microsoft products (e.g. SharePoint). First of all, I'm not going to criticize Microsoft service supports but most of the paid tickets I raised give me NOT good experience.
Note that Developer support plan aims to help basic troubleshooting. I'm unsure if you are given an experienced engineer (or you are lucky enough) but the first level is support escalation engineer. I have no idea with this role but per my experience, people with this role have no developer background. They have skills in system, network and IT background enough to kind of understand what you encounter, and may answer general questions. In the loop of email also has a few people to monitor the case.
Standard Plan is quite similar to Developer plan. The difference is the support time (24 x 7) because Microsoft engages people from different shifting time zone. The role is still Support Escalation Engineer.
Professional Direct is quite more professional and has experience with the specific Azure service you encounter. This person may come from Premier Field Engineer (PFE) team who understands the service and also have good troubleshooting skills. You are asked as deep as possible so they can drill down to see the root cause.
Premier Support is more to consulting, architecture and code review. If you encounter system or application error when working with Azure, I don't recommend you to pick this plan. Go with Professional Direct plan is enough. Premier Support also has (but rarely) PFE guys engaged. Role engaged mostly is Consultant and Architect (not Cloud Solutions Architect).
My experience (mostly):
I was shared many long articles (from Microsoft Docs for Azure) which even had obsolete information, missing guidance or unclear points without indicating which I should pay attention to. And you know articles from here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ have so many issues (e.g. wrong API version, wrong configuration, invalid class,invalid directive, poor documented SDK sample....)
Developer and Standard Plan would not give much value. Slow response and no consensus (someone handles case then off business hour. Another one takes over and asks what is encountered again). Such a loop resulted waste of time.
Professional Support gives best practices of DOING, or DESIGN, without actually understanding the scenario. Every design has a reason and decision consideration. It's not just giving a documentation then recommend to follow.
Premier Support: it is good but don't really expect something so high. Sometimes your customer asks you to open Premier Support ticket to JUST get confirmation of valid architecture design or coding pattern from Microsoft.
Again, I really love Microsoft and would like to make it better by giving positive feedback.
Kris, the Azure support team is a 24x7 global team with engineers in every region of the world, including the United States. The US based team is the largest team since that is the time of day when the majority of incidents are submitted. All of the support plan options, severities and response times, and email/phone options are available at http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/.
Every time you open a support incident the first communication you receive from the support engineer will include their normal working hours along with instructions on how to get support from another engineer in a time zone that more closely matches yours.
If you ever feel that you are not getting extremely high quality support you can always ask to speak to that engineer's manager, at which time a manager and an escalation engineer will review the incident to make sure you are getting everything you need.
I'm brand new to Dynamics CRM and have been asked to see if this is a viable replacement for the employee tracking software we're using now (AlexSys Team 2 Pro). We're not so much of a sales based company as the tutorials i see for CRM focus on. I know CRM is more for customer relations and sales tracking but i also know it's highly customizable and can do what i need it to do. I need something that keeps track of how many new tasks have been created and how many have been done and to show a graph or a report with the results. I've looked at some PluralSight videos and some windows videos but they all seem to focus on and really push the use of its sales side usability. We do sell our product here (i work at a software development company) but we need something that isn't focused on sales and is usable to management for tracking progress. So for example, lets say im aksed to do 4 things(tasks), I do 2 of those things and am in the process of handling my 3rd. I'm not a sales agent, lets say im a programmer, I need CRM to be able to show my manager that I had 4 new tasks, completed 2, and if possible to show that im in the process of working on the 3rd. AlexSys Team gives you different options for what state the task is in, such as In-Process and Completed but it does poorly when it comes to reporting. Are there any good places to learn how to do that in CRM, we are not using a partner and will not have someone coding this or changing this for us, i will possibly be the one working on that so i need something that can help show me how to customize it without constantly talking about sales. Im off to watch more PluralSight videos but maybe a user here knows of somewhere better to learn from or maybe just a specific PluralSight video i may have missed. Thanks for any input.
Dynamics CRM is as you've discovered very customisable and will almost certainly meet the requirements you've described. Whether it is the correct choice only you can decide.
YouTube is a really good resource for CRM videos, you can also take a look at the CRM 2011 Technical Training Videos on Channel 9 produced when the product was first released. These give a high level overview of CRM 2011 technical capabilities.
You may want to look at the basics of Activities ( in particular Tasks ) and Queues. Make sure you're clear on the usage of Status and Status Reason and how you can customise them. For reporting you can either use the built-in dashboard capabilities or create your own SSRS reports using BIDS that can be hosted within CRM. The process of producing these reports whilst subtlety different will be easily understood by anyone with some some basic SSRS skills.
I'd recommend enlisting the help of a partner in the first instance even if it's to just verify your initial design. The overall cost of their time in relation to the install and running costs of CRM won't be too significant and they may even be able to save you some money.
I'm not sure of a better place for videos, but I can speak to CRM's ability to serve as a rapid application development platform and the areas it excels. It allows you to create new fields and entities (think Database Tables) without touching a database, as well as customize forms, roles, and security with 0 code. You can also sign up for a free months trial online to setup a quick Proof of Concept.
There is so much that it can do, and do quickly, that your company may be better served to seek outside help, resulting in a better product, delivered quicker, with less overall costs than trying to do everything "in-house".
My company is in need of a task management system to handle scenarios as simple as "Purchase a computer for X" to "Relocate a person to another country". The simple scenarios are a single tasks handled by a single person, whereas bigger tasks can be broken down into multiple sub tasks delegated to multiple people during the workflow. Additionally the clients and vendors need their own views into the process.
We are evaluating different solutions from a custom application built on Workflow Foundation to SharePoint to BPM products like Metastorm and BPM.Net.
Here's my current understanding of these solutions:
Workflow Foundation - Low level workflow designer and/or library with no host environment. It seems we would have to reinvent some wheels if we went this route such as fault tolerance and document management. Some of the answers on stack also cause concerns such as the lack of versioning and a complete overhaul for VS10/.NET 4.0
SharePoint - Built for document management and collaboration but trying to create advanced workflows and tasking on top of that seems like a hack. Plus all workflows have to be tied to either documents or lists. I cant envision how a list (or list of lists) can address this issue.
BPM products - Mature workflow engine at a seemingly high price. BPM.Net is the only solution for which I could find some level of technical detail but im still not sure how different developing against this product would be from developing against Workflow Foundation.
Are there any workflow engines dedicated to solving all the workflow pains that can be easily deployed with their own hosting environment and initiated through a webservice?
Are there any other options I am missing?
Thanks in advance.
****Edit**
To answer the questions below the workflow needs are pretty light. Basic routing of tasks to approvers and subcontractors.
Whats driving us too look deeper than PM software is the nature of the business not the need for advanced workflow. We are basically in the business of procuring goods and services through subcontractors for our clients which can also include full employee relocation. The interface of the package should reflect this by being customer branded as well as intuitive for this line of business.
Basically if im moving my family to the other side of the world Im not sure i'd want to interface with Jira or Sharepoint or any other PM software to facilitate this.
If you are on Microsoft stack I would definitely recommend SharePoint for this scenario. As it seems to be very simple you can go with Windows SharePoint Services edition because it is free and it has everything you need.
You are right when you say that ShartePoint workflow are bit limited. IMHO the best way to overcome that limitation is to purchase Nintex workflow to create your workflows. It is cost effective solution that can help you design workflows you need.
You can find workflow samples inside the product (as workflow templates) and on the web site.
Nothing you mentioned has much to do with workflow. You're just doing project management. If that's the case, a simple bug tracker (like FogBugz! ;) would work - but if you're going to show it externally, it may not be the most professional presentation.
The closest off the shelf solution I can think of would be Project Server - though, depending on the number of projects and project managers, the desktop Project with a sync to a webserver for client views may be enough.
If that's overkill - because your projects don't require a lot of resource scheduling, Gantt charts, or other PM artifacts - you can take something like Trac and replace "bug" with "task". ;) (Seriously though, that'd probably get you 90% of the way there.....)
Have you looked at RT? I believe it can handle all your requirements, including that it's designed to let customers interact with the system by email, rather than having to log into the website. If you've emailed IT support desks then you've probably interacted with it without knowing... You can also completely customise the web interface and allow customer access.
Can't vouch for the quality as I haven't used it, but I did watch an online-demo video of Intalio, which has BPM and workflow capabilities.
We use Basecamp to control this sort of "task management" stuff. I'm not sure if it fits your needs totally, as it's a little light on the document management side, but it has a web service (REST) API, customer / vendor facing components, and basic interaction / chat capabilities.
The best part about it is that the API is simple enough where you can offload a lot of the "management" for it to admin support personnel, like assistants and interns, by providing custom scripts. If you've got people who aren't programmers using it you'll probably have better luck with it than even something like Trac or FogBugz.
I have/am going through a similar process. We wanted a lightweight workflow for internal use by our sales team. Most of the third party apps we looked at ,K2 and Skelta BPM.Net in particular, looked way over the top for what we needed. I'm now 2 months into working with Windows Workflow Foundation 3.0 and I have to say it isn't the most pleasant coding experience I've had.
If your workflows will truely be simple then it is pretty easy to build a workflow and hook it up to some web pages for the UI. But if you need to be able to change it on the fly, or do versioning (ie the user says we want another step added, then its a whole lot of hacking to get it to work - and it only works if you limit your workflow to being really simple), then you are in for a fair bit of work. And forget about it if you use an Oracle database.
The next version of windows workflow will have it's own runtime environment, code name dublin, with will provide a WCF interface into the workflows.
If your timeframe allows you could use that.
For information on Dublin and the next version of WF see:
http://www.microsoft.com/net/dublin.aspx
My vote is for FogBugz. Unless I am missing something in your requirements, why would you want to reinvent the wheel by using a code based workflow solution where you have to code up the flows yourself when you can use a perfectly good project dependency solution like FB or even MS Project Server - which lets you create nice dependencies for resources and people.
Check FileNet
FileNet is expensive but makes a good job with content and process management, but I guess is not what you are looking for.
We use Captaris Workflow, it is pretty good but it may be expensive for your needs.
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Right now, our teams are using a combination of a bulletin board and an excel spreadsheet to keep track of tasks and to draw a burndown chart. Backlogs are keep on index cards in envelopes.
This works well when the stakeholders are in the same location. However, we will soon have Scrum teams in two geographically distant locations and I am looking for best practices on how we can leverage Sharepoint to help us communicate around Scrum artifacts (backlog, burndown chart, velocity, etc.).
How did you leverage Sharepoint for that purpose, what are the best practices and the potential pitfalls?
We actually use Sharepoint for our Agile development and have found it works pretty well for project management/collaboration.
There are 2 things we do which I found particularly useful, metrics tracking and automated testing. We use the document library and infopath to add all of our stories for the project to the site. The infopath form should contain all the information you need for a story: points, estimated time, developer, tester, story tasks, test cases.
For metrics, we create web parts for: burn down charts, velocity, points per iteration, etc.
This is especially nice for Managers or customers to see that progress being made on the project and will help them make decisions regarding features vs. release time.
For testing we have a simple SEND-RECV-ASSERT language which runs the tests nightly by scraping the XML for automated tests. The we have a little Green/Red webpart on the main page which tells you the stat of the tests.
This can be done pretty simply with some XML parsing since the backend of the document library is XML. (We currently use some simple ActiveX and javascript)
The metrics are pretty easy to set up (just some xml parsing and html charting). The automated testing takes some time to set up a test runner, but once its in place, and easy enough, you can even have customers/managers write acceptance tests! Agile! :)
If you have SharePoint in house already,along with a user base that is comfortable using it I think it would be fairly easy to get started with using it for SCRUM. I would start with the following:
A site collection to hold 1 scrum site per project
A scrum site should contain:
Document library for the electronic files (add columns for categorization as appropriate)
List of team members
Discussion board
The site can be built from a Wiki site template if its necessary.
Once you get the scrum site "feeling right" save it as a template so its easy to spin up a new one.
This solution may not be designed for SCRUM to the nth degree, but it should be enough to get you started. It seems a lot easier than having the entire team learn a new tool when it sounds like you are undergoing some other pretty radical changes.
my $0.02
jt
You really should consider something like Trello, VersionOne, Rally, or even Basecamp for this. They all have hosted solutions and offer free community versions that you can try out to get started. My experience with SharePoint is that it takes a lot of resources to maintain. If you were using Team System and had a lot of the stuff pre-built for you, that might be different -- although I have Team System and still choose to use a Wiki for my project management tasks. If you already have an investment in SharePoint as an intranet and all of the support staff, then it might be a viable solution in that case, too.
SharePoint is not the tool I would think of first for agile development. YMMV.
You need to try and keep the tool from getting in the way of working. In an ideal world the team will all be sat in a single room with big white boards, however often this is not the case and teams are distributed, or theres a push for some form of backup for the post-its.
I'm a big SharePoint fan and where you have this in house already, your already doing collaboration and team work on the platform. Adding another tool, with unique login's can work but the team need to really want to use them.
I've tried getting SharePoint out of the box to do what I wanted but it fell short. I've tried using Version One (on a number of occasions over many years, with many teams) but I find the tool is too much, there are too many otpions and things that need to be done that it gets in the way - it is a long way from the Whiteboard.
So I decided to develop what I needed for my projects. I needed a simple tool, and using the 37signals (creators of basecamp) approach I needed something with less features than the competition.
21Scrum is a simple scrum tool built on SharePoint that uses the platform, add the things that you need (white board, burndown charts) and leave you to get on with the project.
Perhaps this may be the best option for people who already have and use SharePoint - at least thats the goal.
We've setup a SharePoint workspace with lists for Release/Sprint planning, Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog.
Central element is this Task Board for SharePoint - we can drag & drop stories and tasks - even if we are not at the same location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW89M0C3N7Q
A burndown report visualises the progress automatically.
Works great!
AFAIK, Sharepoint is ASP.net with free goodies. It is not designed for agile project management.. so you'd have to roll your own site.
IMHO instead of trying to bend the job to the tool you have.. switching to a better tool for the job would be a better option. Check this thread out to see if there is something more lightweight that fits your bill.
Also personally I'm a big fan of not digitizing the development activities.. So I'd use a spreadsheet for the backlog and post its and Big Visible charts. Use a digicam to persist diagram/design discussion snapshots (google whiteboard photo for tools) or for reports. I find that most of the "project management" tools are just excuses for generating instant status updates.. it gets in the way of software development (which is the main goal) and inhibits social interaction way too often.
(disclaimer: absolutely 0 experience with sharepoint.. except what I've read in the last 2 days so may be totally off track)
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Have any of you ever tried to run from sharepoint? I've worked with sharepoint enough to know that it is not something that interests me. My interests are more along the lines of APIs / backend / distributed development. Have any of you found ways, as consultants, to move away from sharepoint and keep learning other things of interest? I'm currently in a position where sharepoint is in huge demand and I can't quite find a way to simply step aside from it. any suggestions ?
If I infer correctly that you work for a consulting firm then find out what other kinds of things your firm works on. Learn those technologies better that the people who currently work on them for your firm, involve yourself in those projects, even if just in a hallway conversation manner, and come up with better (faster, cheaper) solutions for the problems your firm is solving.
Your options are really seem to be 3-fold
convince your boss your talents
would be better used elsewhere
convince your co-workers they want
you on those other teams
convince your company's clients that
they want you, specifically.
Learn Java, or Ruby.
The Microsoft sales model of "attach" whereby they sell a solution comprised of multiple technologies and then sell the next solution on the basis of "well you have already invested in SharePoint so you already have the skills in place and the infrastructure for this new bit of technology we have" is here to stay... it's very successful.
SharePoint is cloud computing for business who have MS shops... you avoid it by not doing C#. If you're doing C# then given enough time, your apps will need to run in the corporate cloud and you should be looking after your career by embracing it.
Just my 2p. Sorry if it's not quite the answer you wanted.
I know exactly what you mean. I think you don't mind the idea behind a product like SharePoint, but really hate the way its been implemented and how problematic it is. I know its a nightmare to work with.
As a C# developer, I cringe when I hear the SharePoint word, SharePoint is Lord Voldemort. But unfortunately it comes with the job of being a senior C# / Microsoft developer.
I say unfortunately because its likely if you're working in a corporate structure sooner or later you will end up having SharePoint in your solution. Not because its good, but because as others have said - MS use SharePoint as a Trojan horse to get and keep business.
There might be some hope with the new version of SharePoint coming out (2010). Maybe this will finally include a better programming / implementation model.
Otherwise either work for smaller companies (usually less pay, but not always), or try to play down your skills as a MOSS developer if possible. Never actively market them unless your salary depends on it. Remove the skill from your skill matrix, and turn down jobs that completely focus on MOSS. Some MOSS integration here and there you can live with. An entire solution focused on MOSS will drive you insane.
If all else fails, learn other non Microsoft languages, and within a year or 2, SharePoint will be but a faded memory.
I know lots of developers who are thinking about quitting IT because of SharePoint. I would say don't let it be the end of your career.
And finally bitch and moan, and inform managers on a weekly / daily basis, as to why you are battling in SharePoint. Let them know, and constantly remind them how bad a technology it is.
When life deals you lemons. Make Lemonade.
Seriously, if you are seeing SharePoint in such high demand, maybe working with the beast is the best idea. SharePoint is really just middle-ware. SharePoint can simply be a distribution point for your solutions (i.e., a user interface such as a web application can be hosted on SharePoint through a Web Content part). If you look at it, SharePoint may even prove useful as a document respository or small scale data store, in the form of lists.
Maybe you should turn down SharePoint contracts and accept contracts that interest you.
Depending on the market you are in you can simply tell your boss at the consulting company you work for that your not interested in doing Sharepoint projects anymore and that you'll be forced to look elsewhere if they continue putting you on Sharepoint projects. That would work around West Michigan where the developer demand is high and the supply is sub-par.
I'm, on the other hand, just starting to use SharePoint to enreach my currently boring C#-only projects. I'm starting to use it as a front-end to the distributed and complicated systems: simple configuration and customization, reporting, management, system control - looks like all this is available in this package it it's easy to make is usable by non-techies and by beginners.
I personally don't want to work with SharePoint anymore. I've worked on developing a solution for it and even went full charge with a web integration of it. I hated it.
First you have to master the awful programming model then handle all the deployments and it's not even the beginning. If you are developing a product for SharePoint, you have to debug the software itself which is a feat on it's own.
My solution to this is to be very upfront about it. I don't mind doing knowledge transfer and helping out people but I don't want to be developing/deploying SharePoint applications.
My boss get it, my friends get it.
Our latest joke come from someone who said a few months ago that it was "easy and fast to deploy application with SharePoint". The joke? "Did he just put easy/fast in the same sentence as SharePoint?"
So unless you salary would be lower because of it... downplay your skills on it and be upfront to your boss. :)
Have you ever looked at Alfresco (http://alfresco.com)?
It serves many of the same purposes as SharePoint, but does it from an Open Source J2EE application. It will leverage your existing collaboration / content management experience and expose you to a whole bunch of open source technologies.
Full disclosure: I work for Alfresco.
I've already given this suggestion to another guy...Running from SharePoint won't be difficult because technologies are similar to each other according to their structure. SharePoint is not the worst technology to be used, although it is limited in some way... Fortunately, software sphere is too wide to be afraid of not finding anything you can be interested in.