February was quite a busy month with the new Maths product GCSE Maths Assessment, this product was a total nightmare to begin with! The reason for it was that it uses the Tomcat Apache service to host a the web application that controls the whole product. On top of that it uses a firebird database server to provide the web application with the database backend. These two services need to run on either the server (for network) or the standalone machine if it is to just be installed to one machine. This program works very well if you can get past the original hurdles but those hurdles were getting bigger and bigger. This was mainly due to the fact that users had to run the script for the two services (which looks messy but this is normal) and then go into internet explorer to launch the webapplication. A lot of people struggled to understand the concept if they were not connected to the internet! This also posed problems with conflicts on the servers as another piece of Maths software uses the same Tomcat port number (as does some Firewall softwares). After careful consideration work will begin in March to create a second version!
There were also a few more bits and bobs with the Maths department, as we had two new pieces of software coming out but thankfully they were quite self explanatory. We also ironed out the final pieces of the Framework Maths issue
The rest of Feb was spent updating the technical support website and providing the Primary teams with support to their up-coming product Maths Investigator, again working closely with the developer to ensure that program would not cause any problems with users
There were also a few more bits and bobs with the Maths department, as we had two new pieces of software coming out but thankfully they were quite self explanatory. We also ironed out the final pieces of the Framework Maths issue
The rest of Feb was spent updating the technical support website and providing the Primary teams with support to their up-coming product Maths Investigator, again working closely with the developer to ensure that program would not cause any problems with users
January in the new year!
This month has been pretty hectic, mainly due to the fact that after two weeks off it is quite hard to fall back into the swing of things. Also we go into January with a sales conference for the sales reps and I have been asked to help on a technical level. The conference was over three days and consisted of Reps being given sales figures talks, promotional talks one on one sessions with editors about new product and of course demonstrations of the interact softwares. I was kind of running round like a headless chicken for most of the three days, setting up projectors and laptops and creating little screensavers for the reps to have on their own computers!
Also in January was the Bett conference which is held in Kensington Olympia and is the biggest display of interactive learning materials in the UK. I was invited to go along and help with the OUP stand, which allowed me to go visit some of the other businesses that were offering software the same as us. It showed me that the interactive software business was one of the most fiercly competitive out there. It also showed me that not just names like OUP and Doring Kinsley were pushing interactives but also the likes of Microsoft had a stand, which was directly opposite Apple! Although I must say the Apple stand had a much more cool approach about it (and several Gibson SG guitars scattered about!).
This month has been pretty hectic, mainly due to the fact that after two weeks off it is quite hard to fall back into the swing of things. Also we go into January with a sales conference for the sales reps and I have been asked to help on a technical level. The conference was over three days and consisted of Reps being given sales figures talks, promotional talks one on one sessions with editors about new product and of course demonstrations of the interact softwares. I was kind of running round like a headless chicken for most of the three days, setting up projectors and laptops and creating little screensavers for the reps to have on their own computers!
Also in January was the Bett conference which is held in Kensington Olympia and is the biggest display of interactive learning materials in the UK. I was invited to go along and help with the OUP stand, which allowed me to go visit some of the other businesses that were offering software the same as us. It showed me that the interactive software business was one of the most fiercly competitive out there. It also showed me that not just names like OUP and Doring Kinsley were pushing interactives but also the likes of Microsoft had a stand, which was directly opposite Apple! Although I must say the Apple stand had a much more cool approach about it (and several Gibson SG guitars scattered about!).
December was a much quieter month mainly due to most schools shutting down because of the Christmas break, and of course my own Christmas break. This month we managed to get a lot of our testing done for some of our Primary (mainly the new Maths Investigator product) and Secondary products. It has become more and more apparant that we need to get serious with our in-house testing, as our external testers are unable to give us the results we really need. This has led to the set up of a testing server.
The testing server wasnt originally my job but due to some previous work I had done on the web I was asked to do it as I knew the most about PHP. We were using the opensource Mantis software that sits on a server connected to a MySQL database and allows bugtests to be saved and other people to look at them and add to them etc. There were no major issues apart from following the manuals instructions for this task!
The latter half of December was taken up by our two week Christmas/New Year vacation
The testing server wasnt originally my job but due to some previous work I had done on the web I was asked to do it as I knew the most about PHP. We were using the opensource Mantis software that sits on a server connected to a MySQL database and allows bugtests to be saved and other people to look at them and add to them etc. There were no major issues apart from following the manuals instructions for this task!
The latter half of December was taken up by our two week Christmas/New Year vacation
November was a busy month with customer support taking off with several problems cropping up with some of the key products that OUP produce. Framework maths which one of OUP's best selling Maths products was having a major fault with some of the newer updates of Windows XP and was becoming very problematic. This was when I first met some of the sales reps, who are to put it mildly a bit of a nightmare in their own right!
Basically our reps are part time staff that go to schools and try and sell our products and obviously if they ever have any problems with our products they need answers imedietly. With the Framework Maths situation it actually caused a bit of a divide with the editorial and sales staff, but this was quickly resolved with our contingency play. As the problem wasn't getting fixed quickly, as it was outsourced to an Indian developer (TATA) and they were taking time replicating the problem. We managed to get most of the content of the Framework Maths C.D's onto the web, and started distributing this to customers that were having the problems.
The other current issue was with a new product that the secondary team were creating, for secondary maths. The product was also being created by TATA and they were having some strange ideas about the basic system. The product was for Maths and it was an assessment C.D which was going to be based on a web server (apache) and we could see that this would be a bit of a problem. Unfortunately at this time in the development there was nothing that we could do so we are awaiting the first Alpha to see how it works!
Basically our reps are part time staff that go to schools and try and sell our products and obviously if they ever have any problems with our products they need answers imedietly. With the Framework Maths situation it actually caused a bit of a divide with the editorial and sales staff, but this was quickly resolved with our contingency play. As the problem wasn't getting fixed quickly, as it was outsourced to an Indian developer (TATA) and they were taking time replicating the problem. We managed to get most of the content of the Framework Maths C.D's onto the web, and started distributing this to customers that were having the problems.
The other current issue was with a new product that the secondary team were creating, for secondary maths. The product was also being created by TATA and they were having some strange ideas about the basic system. The product was for Maths and it was an assessment C.D which was going to be based on a web server (apache) and we could see that this would be a bit of a problem. Unfortunately at this time in the development there was nothing that we could do so we are awaiting the first Alpha to see how it works!
In October I was asked to update the Technical Support website, and I was asked to research into what I thought was a easy to use and currently running comparision. I found the Microsoft technical support to be the best to use, and the fact that all the FAQ questions and answers were on the same page meant it was easy to just expand each question to quickly see if that was for me, and then contract the question back down if it wasnt and move on easily. I decided that this was the way the new Technical Support website would work, and built a template. This was discussed at a team meeting (October 4th week) and I was given the go ahead to create a live example, the product I used was Twenty First Century Science, as this was the one we were getting so many queries about.
The changeover to the new website required me to create the page and then teach one of the editors enough HTML so that they could edit my poor spelling. This was something that I was noticing more at OUP that only me and my boss (Peter Jackson) had any really technical capacity and it was basically up to us to get everyone up to scratch!
The changeover to the new website required me to create the page and then teach one of the editors enough HTML so that they could edit my poor spelling. This was something that I was noticing more at OUP that only me and my boss (Peter Jackson) had any really technical capacity and it was basically up to us to get everyone up to scratch!
Over the first two months I learnt a lot about the current products that OUP were producing, including the new major GCSE framework science product 21st Century Science. There were major problems with this at first and several problems came about (through customers) where the user was unable to add additional packs (it is split into three packs, which breaks down into 6 modules each) and certain parts of the program would just disapear. I managed to locate the problem which was embedded in a part of the CSS structure of the program, from here I was able to identify a way of "hacking" the code so to speak to force it to believe the modules were installed (which they were they just didn't have an install log)
Managed to then create a web-page with a java applet which would create the CSS page for the user.
Which brings me onto the next project. We also had a new minisite released for the Winnie the Witch book series, and I was asked to create a game where you can dress Winnie (the Witch character) I had little experience in actionscript which is what was to be used for the Winnie project, and it was a steep learning curve. Thankfully Google has a lot to help with actionscript and I found several free code websites that provided me with the nessecary drag and drop components to dress our witch!
http://www.oup.com/uk/minisites/winniethewitch/dress/
Is the finished product
Managed to then create a web-page with a java applet which would create the CSS page for the user.
Which brings me onto the next project. We also had a new minisite released for the Winnie the Witch book series, and I was asked to create a game where you can dress Winnie (the Witch character) I had little experience in actionscript which is what was to be used for the Winnie project, and it was a steep learning curve. Thankfully Google has a lot to help with actionscript and I found several free code websites that provided me with the nessecary drag and drop components to dress our witch!
http://www.oup.com/uk/minisites/winniethewitch/dress/
Is the finished product
Plans:
The idea with the first two months of my placement at OUP was to come to terms with the staff, the job role, and the company role and learn where I was to fit into all this. I knew I would have to quickly find out who my superiors were, who would be dealing with my work (the receipient) and the person who would be setting my work. The job role as I knew it was support to both customers and staff within the department, I knew coming into the role that I would be responsible for the up-keep of technical support for the various school orientated products, I also knew I could be called on to do a multitude of tasks. The first major task was to produce the i-Cafe website.
The first thing with the i-Cafe website was coming to terms with OUP's backend system, Mediasurface, where each webpage is given as a node (which helps with the naming convention and allows a much more streamlined approach to web publishing). Thankfully there was a two day course, onsite, that I managed to get on to learn the ins and outs of it.
My first issue of i-Cafe, August 20th 2006, thankfully the bulk of the structure had been put down by the previous Work placement student. I had a few of the flash games that needed updating, including an XML driven one where a knowledge of the code was needed. A few pages needed the content updating (using the back issues) where I have used Dreamweaver.
Thankfully the website went up soon enough and there we no major issues from the Beta to Gold stage. School term is not due till September so the customer support calls were pretty much nil.
The idea with the first two months of my placement at OUP was to come to terms with the staff, the job role, and the company role and learn where I was to fit into all this. I knew I would have to quickly find out who my superiors were, who would be dealing with my work (the receipient) and the person who would be setting my work. The job role as I knew it was support to both customers and staff within the department, I knew coming into the role that I would be responsible for the up-keep of technical support for the various school orientated products, I also knew I could be called on to do a multitude of tasks. The first major task was to produce the i-Cafe website.
The first thing with the i-Cafe website was coming to terms with OUP's backend system, Mediasurface, where each webpage is given as a node (which helps with the naming convention and allows a much more streamlined approach to web publishing). Thankfully there was a two day course, onsite, that I managed to get on to learn the ins and outs of it.
My first issue of i-Cafe, August 20th 2006, thankfully the bulk of the structure had been put down by the previous Work placement student. I had a few of the flash games that needed updating, including an XML driven one where a knowledge of the code was needed. A few pages needed the content updating (using the back issues) where I have used Dreamweaver.
Thankfully the website went up soon enough and there we no major issues from the Beta to Gold stage. School term is not due till September so the customer support calls were pretty much nil.