SoftLanding Completes TurnOver's Transition to Eclipse

Published: February 7, 2006

by Alex Woodie

SoftLanding reached a major milestone last month in the evolution of TurnOver, its change management program for iSeries and other platforms. With the delivery of the January 2006 CD for the client component of TurnOver release 5.4, SoftLanding has completed the transition to Eclipse-based technology in its flagship product, announced Sandy King, TurnOver product manager, in the company's monthly newsletter, The Landing Zone.

"By redeveloping TurnOver in Eclipse, we were able to leverage the graphical and modeling frameworks inherent in the Eclipse environment to deliver significant enhancements at a much faster pace," King writes. For example, TurnOver application definitions can now be presented as images instead of text, which allows the user to understand his promotion structures at a glance and from a single view, she says.

Another benefit of moving to Eclipse is customization. With this release, users can customize their TurnOver perspective and choose which views are shown, how they are sized, where they are located, and so forth. "Compare this with 5250 or client/server technology, where you have little or no flexibility in how this information is presented," King says.

Role management has also been improved. Previously, workers whose responsibility spanned different roles needed to install and work in separate clients. With TurnOver's single client framework, users can now pick and choose from the product functions they will need, King says. TurnOver's "Wise Installation Wizard" asks users to select the roles they will be working under, including options like project manager, developer, help desk, reporting, and administration. Users can select more than one role, and they can update their roles at any time.

The TurnOver client's reporting subsystem has also been enhanced with this release, and now includes 30 pre-defined reports tackling topics such change management metrics, requesters, and resource usage. Auditors will applaud the auditing-related enhancements, including new reports for viewing objects promoted on particular forms, and task analysis. For more information, read SoftLanding's January newsletter.