Yup, you read that right your reporting efforts have paid off! As of Monday, December 9, 2013, Ultimate Back Office Version 6 is at ZERO Reported Bugs! It’s an early Christmas gift from visp.net to our faithful UBO app users… The little critters have been exterminated.
We’re now on the hunt for any remaining survivors. Please let us know if you see one and we’ll get the white suited spic & span sanitation team all over it!
Now for the rest of the story:
This is a Major Milestone!
Behind the scenes we’ve been working feverishly toward a ZERO REPORTED BUGS Milestone Goal. Previously, we achieved the Zero Reported Bugs milestone with Version 5 (which was called ISP-in-a-Box).
But Version 6 was ambitious, with literally hundreds of new features managed from a Java front end with PHP middle-ware that integrates tightly with dozens of redundant supporting servers to make running a wireless ISP easy. It had so many new features serving ever larger ISPs, that some thought zero reported bugs in Version 6 might be impossible. If it was ever impossible, we’re delighted to report that we have achieved “the impossible”.
This doesn’t mean that there won’t be any new issues to be reported, but the average count of new issues reported each week has slowed to a trickle, and new issues are being resolved faster than ever before, sometimes even overnight.
And now, because of this milestone, our development attention is shifting to Version 7. Visp.net’s Ultimate Back Office Version 7 has been re-architected from the ground up to eliminate more than 90% of the root causes of common bugs issues and significantly speed the release of new stable features. That means that critical new features and improvements can be developed faster and will work better on the first release.
Bugs
UBO 6 Beta "Soft Freeze"
In the first 2 months of 2013, we released all the final features we had scheduled for version 6. This was nearly as many features in 2 months as we released in all of 2012, which was already a fast development pace.
I mentioned in my Feb 18 post that we’d soon “soft-freeze” version 6. That time is now, which means no more major features are scheduled to be added. The work that will be done will only be bug fixes, minor tweaks, usability fixes, UI improvements, and polish.
Our aggressive release schedule resulted in a surge of reported bugs. While our bug count was down to about four open issues as of Tuesday March 12, it surged over the next two days to 25 reported issues. The version 6 beta bug count is currently at 13 as I write this but most of those issues are isolated. The average age of the open issues is just a few days, so the open issues in the Beta are getting resolved quickly.
I confess that we learned some lessons from this most recent round of feature releases. As a result, we’ve changed how we set goals and deadlines for live releases to minimize introduction of new issues. In addition, we’ve vowed more exhaustive testing and we’re also implementing several architectural and methodological changes for the next version that will significantly improve the inherent robustness of Ultimate Back Office.
This week, we initiated an all-hands system-wide “Test-a-thon” to flesh out issues in version 6. This resulted in internal reports of over a hundred-fifty minor, non-critical polish issues, many of which have already been fixed and rolled out or will be fixed in the coming weeks. These are reports like tab orders, focus events, and other general polish. Without the workload of major feature development, we’re able to roll out around 50+ internally reported fixes, plus 10 to 20 reported bug fixes a week. Do the math, and you can see that the outstanding issues are dropping fast. Most of the fixes will be hardly noticeable. The flow will just seem smoother and more intuitive.
In the mean time, we’d like to invite you to a CEO Round Table to share your thoughts about how Ultimate Back Office can make your life easier. Our common goals are:
- To radically reduce your costs of doing business through automation
- To streamline your work and daily activities
- To give you greater control over your business
- To help you grow
A CEO Round Table is an opportunity to speak directly with me and our developers to share your experiences and ideas. CEO Round Tables are held on any Wednesday or Thursday at 4 PM Pacific time, which is 7 AM for me here in the Philippines. And our entire development team is in the office and available to join as needed. Simply call DJ to join at 541-955-6915 or email him at dmodica@visp.net for gotomeeting details.
I average count will continue to drop, and approach zero soon over the next few weeks. We’ll do several more cycles of Test-a-thons and polishing until version 6 is the most polished, robust, and solid software we’ve ever produced. We hope to declare an official release as soon as we’ve sustained a near zero bug count for at least one to two billing cycles.
Thank you for your patience and feedback!
To your success,
Todd Grannis, CEO
UBO 6 Beta: Adding Packages is Easier
A new package can be added from Packages in the ISP Config (just as before) and now from any package.
As you click this button, a small window appears prompting you to enter the name of your new package.
UBO 6 Beta: Usage Stats Now Account for Swapped Equipment
Version 6 has built-in Usage-Based Billing that makes it even easier to track and bill subscribers based on how much bandwidth or data they consume.
It turns out a small number of subscribers each month change out their equipment. A new MAC address resets the data counter allowing a subscriber to consume more data than they were allocated. Usage stats now track all subscriber’s usage regardless of how many times they swap out their equipment.
Here are several ways you can monitor a subscriber’s usage:
- In the Notes & History tab, a detailed Auth MAC update gets recorded every time an app user changes the Auth MAC of the Wireless service in the Packages tab.
- It also gets logged in the Usage Based Billing Report. And as you can see in the figure below, in the ID column, the MAC of the subscriber changed on Feb 07, 2013. However, this update does not affect the total usage summarized per month.
- Finally, in the Account Manager, a graphical summary of the subscriber’s usage is available to the subscriber and app users.
UBO 6 Beta: Now with Multi-Credit Card Support!
As part of UBO’s final polish to Version 6, you’ll now notice support for Multiple Credit Cards per subscriber.
Look for a plus icon in the Billing Info Tab under Billing Options. This indicates that you can add more credit cards to the subscriber file.
Clicking on this will open the Subcriber Credit Card Info window that allows addition of multiple credit card numbers. It is also here that you choose the default Credit Card to be used.
If more than one card is already on file, an arrow icon replaces the plus icon.
UBO 6 Beta: Enhancements to Make Tax Management Easier
Taxes are now easier to manage with Ultimate Back Office Beta 6. Part of this feature release means that Texas ISPs can now easily automate the $25.00 Internet Exemption unique to Texas.
Adjustable tax-exemptions can now be applied on Package Items with selected services, Equipment, and on Custom Invoice Items.
A complete tax detail for a specific invoice is now available with a single click on the tax from the Invoice.
And even the tax details of a particular invoice tax are now customizable to manage unique exceptions.
