Our first assignment was to find “unusable doors”. No kidding, that was it: scour the campus, sit outside a door, and count failure rates (pushing instead of pulling, pushing the wrong side, etc.). What an eye-opening experience! We learned to observe using the things engineers like us created and quantify failure rates. We were shocked at the high failure rates in something as ridiculously simple as A DOOR. After all, Pausch said, “doors have been around for 5,000 years, and today’s engineers have yet to master them”.

[Side note: while we quantified door failure rates and submitted our reports, Randy went with a little more "soft" approach to grading, quantifying reports as "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". My report - creatively mentioning "the flames of Satan being visible in the door's reflection" - earned "The Ugly" distinction.]

In addition to quantifying failure rates, we learned to experiment with design before, during, and after implementing them. In the intervening years, I’ve decided to write a book on the topic. It is going to be a masterpiece called “The Ultimate Solution to Usability in Everyday Tools, Software, and Life“. But I’ve never gotten past one page. One sentence, in fact. The entire content of my book is going to be a single page, with a single sentence, with three words:

USE IT ONCE.

Recently I was trying to sell some gear on EBay. I had to verify my identity by calling a phone number. Ridiculous form of identity validation, but fine – at least they can KIND OF trace a seller to a phone number – so I played along.

So I called. And for 14 excruciating minutes I was greeted with this:

EBay FAIL

Yes, those aren’t artifacts of the recording – that was a full-on ear rape for 14 minutes of carnival music fading in and out.

Which brings me to my point: EBay has inexcusably failed the litmus test for usability: quantify your results and use it once. If any one of those support representatives had called their own support line, they would have realized that ear-raping the very clients they depend on is not a very good business practice. And making them wait on hold for 14 minutes to use their service doesn’t really cut it in this “need-it-now” world…

So, I implore any and all of you portal system admins: it’s all too easy to focus on a specific aspect of a system like keeping thing running (I find myself in this position more often than I’m comfortable with – not knowing how the system is used but just “keeping it running”). But, if we do something as simple as using it once, we may learn a thing or two about why our end users are so salty when they finally pick up the phone and call to complain.

Fortunately, I was able to get a little bit of satisfaction recently by NOT approving the following post:

Dear Russian Mafia, I didn’t approve this asshole’s comment.  You know what to do. 

For the rest of you all, I’ve turned on Captchas for commenting so at least the automated spambots will be kept out.  Sorry for the additional 10 seconds when posting comments here!

Oracle support, I salute you for the tireless, thankless job you have, but please stop telling clients their problems will be fixed with an upgrade when you’re not sure it will, or worse, know that it won’t.  Also, please honor Oracle’s support policy and don’t withold patches until a client gets to the latest version of the software, knowing that by the time they do, another patch release will probably come out, starting the whole cycle all over.  Of course, it’d be different if the upgraded version actually fixed the problem, but in the below rant, my client couldn’t even submit a patch request that affected the 10gR3 version of Analytics because they weren’t on the “latest version”, which was ridiculous because the latest version didn’t fix the problem either.

Aqualogic Analytics 2.5 has a bug in it (login required) where the “Excel spreadsheet export of the Analytics Collaboration Document Views report has Project Name data in the Documents column instead of the document name”.  That is, you can’t get document data when you export a Collaboration report.  Sure, a relative small issue, but pretty critical for ALUI/WCI portal managers who would like to see which documents are being viewed in a WebCenter Collaboration Server project.

Aqualogic Analytics 2.5 had a patch released for this “bug”, and all was right again.  But then 10gR3 came along, and the functionality was broken again.  No problem – just get the 10gR3 patch right?  Wrong.  There is no patch for 10gR3.  OK, but the bug report says to update to 10.3.0.1, so that should fix it, right? Wrong (according to the release notes). 

We contacted support, and – get this! – were told that Oracle won’t even submit a request to engineering for another patch until we first upgrade to Analytics 10.3.0.1.  But the .1 patch release seems to only provide asian character support, and requires even MORE software installed before putting on this “patch” that does nothing for us:

So we’re expected to install a patch we don’t need, including other additional software that needs to be tested, only so that Oracle will start building a patch for the version we’re on?  This isn’t an isolated incident; I’ve had an issue with NT File Crawlers as well that Oracle promised “will be fixed if you just upgrade” (it wasn’t, we discovered, after a huge amount of effort on our part to confirm that).

It seems to me that Oracle support’s #1 directive is to close tickets.  But, you say, “Every support organizations #1 directive is to close tickets, right?” Bear with me on this: there’s a difference between closing tickets and resolving customer problems.  All too often, it seems, I find clients not getting the support they’re paying for, simply because they haven’t installed last week’s patch – regardless of whether last week’s patch fixes the problem or not.  It seems “just upgrade to the latest version” is used way too commonly for support people to avoid resolving problems, because they know it could take weeks or months for the clients to actually be able to install and test said upgrades.

So, Oracle clients, I suggest this:  The next time you get a promise that an upgrade “fixes the problem”, get it in writing.  You invest a huge amount of time in upgrades (it’s not like Windows Update, after all), and you should have some sort of assurance that this time will be worthwhile.  And to Oracle support: confirm the issue actually is going to resolve the problem.  If you don’t know for certain, then the default answer should be “it DOESN’T”, and you should spend more time investigating the actual problem.

Am I wrong?  I will update this post with any official Oracle response to this post, and will approve any reasonable comment for discussion.

Oh, and stay tuned to a future post for the fix to that Analytics problem, bug #8198674.

I hate spam.  Spam in my mind is like getting mugged at knifepoint for a nickel.  Sure you’re not completely destitute when it’s over, but you just feel dirty knowing that that shady character is going to turn around and keep mugging millions of others.  It’s the people that buy these goods and services that keep shady operators operating, but hey – I don’t blame you, Mr. Penis Extender Guy.  I blame the Nigerian Prince who keeps emailing me in the first place.

I had an idea last year – even registered the domain name counterattackspam.com – that is simple in its premise:  Set up a “white-hat” botnet that would launch denial of service attacks on spammers so that the next Nigerian prince gets 10 million fake bank account numbers trying to help him move his millions across international lines, submit millions of fake credit card numbers to the V1gr1a vendors to steal for their own illicit purposes, or simply launch a DDOS attack on the site to knock it offline and protect Grandma Mildred from making a mistake buying from these people.  My opinion is that if you hand that mugger a fake nickel and he gets busted for counterfeiting when he tries to spend it, the ends justify the means.  But apparently my legal counsel (thanks Bill!) advises me that there are numerous ways to run afoul of the law on this according to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, Virginia Code § 18.2-152.1 et seq.  So, in the absence of doing anything interesting (or illegal), I submit my idea to the world for someone else to implement.

The definition of spam is a bit nebulous:  I have a lot of contacts I’ve worked with over the years.  If I email one of them an unsolicited – but personalized – message, is that “spam”?  I’d say no; it’s just reaching see how they’re doing and see if there’s any way to help them out.  If I email all of them the same form message, is that spam?  A little greyer, to be sure, and something I wouldn’t do. 

Before I get into the root of this rant, just know that there are still a lot of reputable, experienced firms out there that can help with your AquaLogic, WebCenter, or “Enterprise 2.0” needs.  I started Integryst with a specific focus on honesty, integrity, and excellent service.  And I know it sounds idealistic, but I’m just as interested in you having a successful WebCenter Integration as you using Integryst to do so.  As such, here are some other great firms who can help you out (disclaimers included):

1. Function1 (I cofounded this company in 2007, and while I left in Jan 2009, as of this writing I still have a vested interest)
2. PPC (I count several consultants here among my personal friends, but they’re some of the most talented people I know in the industry)
3. Idhasoft (I have partnered with this firm on at least one proposal, and they’ve got another of my personal friends/college roommates among their ranks)
4. Oracle (I worked for Plumtree and then BEA, leaving shortly before Oracle acquired BEA, but I still have lots of friends and colleagues there)

Want to hear the actual Rant?  Click on…

When I got the below spam message, I saw only vague promises of “Web 2.0” and a link to a web site that’s clearly a “body shop” type of organization with no specific mention of WCI that I could find.  The message didn’t even come from this guy’s work email – he used an Earthlink account, and there was no way to remove myself from the mailing list.  Spam indeed: welcome to the Hall of Shame, Joe.

Look, I understand WebCenter is a small market, and it’s tough to break into it and/or get noticed – even if you’re an established vendor with a large staff and huge client roster.  I do a lot of subcontracting, and realize some clients are more comfortable using established firms with a longer history and more administrative support, rather than contracting directly with a small shop like my own.  But, before hiring one of these guys who blindly spams people from an Earthlink account and doesn’t even have the courtesy to provide information about removing yourself from “the list” – think twice.  Do your homework, look for references, and find out what the organization is all about.  Blindly use a middle-man like this guy and you’re doing the rest of us a disservice, just like Mr. “I DO Want To Make $400/hr Stuffing Envelopes”!