When they tell you your program can't be connected
It happens often, above all with business software from a few years back, or with the custom-built kind whose author is long gone, and it happens too with vendors who have no wish to open a door to the outside
There's no direct way to send it data, there's no export file that really holds everything, and whoever sold it to you answers that you need an extra module, when one exists at all
You know the result, someone in the office opens the program and enters it all by hand, every day
We use it the way a person uses it
It opens the program, clicks where it has to, types in the fields, reads what appears on screen and moves on to the next step, along the same path you take today
This is the part we do best, and it's also the reason we never ask you to replace your software
What it manages to do on the screens
- Open the program and log in with the right credentials
- Look up a case, a customer or an item
- Fill in the fields and pick the entries from the menus
- Upload attachments and download the documents it produces
- Read the messages the program shows on screen, errors included
- Save a trace of what it did, with the date and the reference
If the program objects, the system stops
An operator who sees a red window stops and asks, and we get the system to do the same
If a piece of data doesn't add up, or if a warning nobody had planned for appears in place of the expected screen, the operation halts and the case ends up in a list to be looked at, instead of being saved wrong
You decide how much freedom to give the system, you can start with a human confirmation on every operation and loosen the checks once you trust it
Why this work has to be kept running
Working on the screens has one flaw, and it's only fair to say it straight away, if the software vendor moves a button or adds a field the system notices and has to be updated
That's why the service runs on a monthly fee and not as a project delivered and then forgotten, adapting to the screens is part of the maintenance, and no invoice reaches you every time your software updates
When it makes sense and when it doesn't
It makes sense when the same operation repeats many times, takes up real hours and follows rules you can explain out loud
It makes less sense when every case is different from the last one and the decision depends each time on the judgement of the person doing the work