Is it April allready? Wow. Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve been pretty busy since my last update. Oracle provided several patches for the bugs we filed, but still hasn’t come up with a satisfactory solution. We did find a work-around for the geocoding problem, still not fixed though. We have the problem under control, we didn’t solve it, but it works: travel times are correctly calculated. The trick? Schedule the “find invalid address” for every 5 minutes. After running it, all tasks that lack a hz_location will now have one. Don’t ask me why, I haven’t had time to dive into the code. Please, please don’t tell me this is how it’s supposed to work.
Also some side projects have taken off. We’re implementing a webservice to create service requests from other applications. Nifty stuff. I had to test it, and review all kinds of documentation. I think we got it up-and-running pretty good now. With this webservice we can also connect a website through which customers can enter their Service Requests. Yeah, I know… sounds a lot like iSupport. But iSupport is not part of the architecture landscape, so we have to find other means. A general webservice does the trick nicely together with the allready existing websites.
Now the technology is working, we need to implement it within the organization. Although that sounds simple, it actually isn’t. SR’s used to be entered manually and any error correction was done at data entry. Now SR’s will be automatically inserted and you have to do some data validation before starting to schedule. This change takes some time to think it through, design the process, find the exceptions in it, fix / work around those, instruct the dispatchers, etc. Might take as long as creating the webservice itself. Maybe by then Oracle has come up with a fix.
I’m working on this problem from the sidelines, because my colleagues are tackling this one. I’m thinking a technical issue, because from a functional perspective (we think) we ruled out everything.
