Re: BPCS Docs

>From Al Macintyre ... I have 2 years experience with BPCS 405 CD & 10 years 
with BPCS/36 before that ... so perhaps I know a lot of stuff about BPCS 
documentation that has escaped your company implementation or your personal 
education in BPCS.

Just like when you buy PC software, and it comes with some documentation, 
often on CD Rom, you can also go to any book store & get 3rd party 
documentation to help you learn that proprietory software.  Likewise with 
BPCS, there is a wealth of 3rd party companies publishing documentation to 
help BPCS users become productive in understanding anything you might like to 
know about BPCS.

I will grant you that if BPCS consultant company-A helped you implement BPCS, 
they might not have been eager to let you know about the documentation & 
other resources available from companies BCDEFGHI to infinity, when they are 
also in the business of making money selling BPCS documentation that your 
company might not have decided to buy.  I suspect that there is a lot of that 
going around.

Also the customer base of BPCS - 20,000 manufacturers world wide times 
however many employees they collectively have - this is not enough to justify 
these BPCS manuals being on the shelves of easily accessible book stores.

In this e-mail I am not exhaustively listing the names of the companies that 
offer BPCS documentation etc. just trying to give the big picture, since what 
you are looking for might be details on only a small part of this picture.  
Also, we are only using a small part of the total documentation available 
ourselves, so I do not have the precise URLs handy ... e.g. one of the next 
ones I want to get is David Slicker's Programmer's Reference Guide to BPCS. 
... I know stuff that exists, I just do not have all of it.

BPCS does come with docs - lots of them - enough to eat up multiple cartons 
of paper if they are all printed.  I am not well pleased with the degree to 
which they are cross-indexed.  The run instructions tend to be aimed at 
people who want information on one particular program, or administrators of 
an application.  They are not real swift for researching questions of gaining 
understanding why some application has some flawed data ... what are we doing 
wrong ... is our end-of-month check list complete ... what do all these codes 
MEAN ... the answers are there, but getting to the answers is time consuming, 
if you rely exclusively on the docs that came from SSA, which of course we do 
not.

When I call SSA Tech Support, I use the FAX approach to deliver my story, 
then let them call me back to give the answer & I also say that if the answer 
can be given by FAX then that is fine with me & I often get it that way ... 
this avoids any phone tag or waiting on hold.  Several companies offer Help 
Desk & other Tech Support in competition with SSA.

If BPCS documentation is being denied you, administrators & users at your 
company, then it is because of choices that have been made at your company, 
not to spend money on BPCS educatiion & the distribution of the documentation.

Do you know about the "F1" help key ... does it connect you to any of the 
BPCS on-line documentation?  Our users know about it, they seldom use it ... 
it is cursor sensitive - now granted on some screens there is no info, but 
there is help more places than there is not.  Our users use "F4" more often 
than "F1" because at the little plus sign they can get at a reference list of 
what all the codes are & what they all MEAN.

Do you know how to operate the "DOC" on-line BPCS documentation repository?

I assume you are able to get into the programmer areas of source code on 
BPCS, although if you are on Version Six, you are denied a lot of resources 
available to those of us on Version Four.  In fact, we also hung onto the 
Documentation which came with BPCS/36 because it includes some reference 
material that SSA dropped from the AS/400 versions.

Many companies offer extensive education in BPCS in which the students take 
home very detailed guides to the operation & administration of BPCS.  This 
includes SSA & several other companies - some affiliated with SSA & some not. 
 This education can be provided at their offices, or they can send someone to 
your company to provide it.  

I believe that if a company does not offer any BPCS education to its 
employees, that is the same as telling the users to do their job with their 
hands tied behind their backs.

Many companies publish BPCS manuals - dead tree editions & on-line versions 
... there have been many threads on BPCS_L sharing info on how to access one 
or another & folks talking about which of the many BPCS documentation 
resources they personally prefer.  We have several of the Unbeaten Path 
manuals ... I am disappointed that they are sitting in one person's office 
not in general circulation.  I had asked for one library of general user BPCS 
Manuals in a public place in each of our facilities.

Many companies publish BPCS newsletters with tips & ideas on how best to 
utilize various applications.  I like Nex Gen's the best, and Crowe Chizek's 
is my next favorite.  I would love to get any more BPCS newsletters that 
anyone publishes & cares to send me (hint hint) ... my street address is down 
at sig line end of e-mail.

Many consultants have newsletters letting their customers / prospects / 
suspects know about modifications they have recently made on BPCS, so that if 
we are interested in something similar, these ideas might strike a nerve.

Many of the AS/400 internet forums have threads where BPCS users have asked 
questions & got help much like that which is offered here.

Many of the companies that offer 3rd party add-ons to BPCS also have freely 
available downloadable docs to help us manage our BPCS more productively.

There is also very inexpensively priced 3rd party shareware that enhances 
your BPCS.

So, bottom line ... BPCS has a wealth of documentation available from many 
sources & this leads to recurring threads on BPCS_L to discuss the merits of 
what all is available, sometimes when we get a poster here who is new enough 
in BPCS_L to not have seen an earlier thread on this.

If this documentation is being denied to people at your company it is either 
due to policy at your company, or because when BPCS was originally installed 
there, the implementation process managed to neglect this very important 
ingredient.

A lot of the good documentation is not for free, so that might partially 
explain why you do not have it.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
Central Industries of Indiana Inc.
1325 East Virginia Street
Evansville In 47711

http://www.cen-elec.com

Y2K is not the end of my universe, but a re-boot of that old Chinese curse.
The road to success is always under construction.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong.
When in doubt, read the manual, if you can find it.

> Subj:  BPCS Docs
>  From:    leslier@datrek.com (L. S. Russell)

>  I am very new to BPCS, only been involved with it for about a year. 
>  I don't hate BPCS anymore than the next ERP, but I do hate the fact 
>  that documentation is withheld from - not only users but administrators 
>  as well. 
>  There have been many, many cases over the past year where I would never
>  have
>  had to call the practically worthless OGS if I had had the docs within
>  reach.
>  
>  The reason I write this is that I noticed a post from someone at iWorks,
>  formerly SSA Southeast. The people at iWorks claim to be more interested
>  in helping BPCS users get things done than their previous incarnation.
>  That being the case I was wondering if there is still a BAN on providing
>  users with DOCUMENTATION.
>  The reason this lack of information gripes me is that I have spent
>  untold hours waiting either on hold or for a call back, when with even
>  the amount of documentation provided by Microsoft might just have saved
>  me a call.
>  I mean, Daffron comes with docs, Optimum Solutions HR comes with docs,
>  Extol, comes with docs, HMS Monitor comes with (award winning) docs,
>  Infinium comes with docs!
>  Why can't BPCS come with docs? 
>  If I can go to Egghead and by a copy of Windows for $98 and get
>  documentation
>  why can't I expect the same from an infinitely more expensive software?
>  
>  So can one of you guys there at iWorks comment on my ranting post?
>  
>  --
>  L. S. Russell Programmer/Analyst
>  Datrek Professional Bags, Inc.
>  2413 Industrial Drive
>  Springfield, TN. 37172
>  mailto:leslier@datrek.com
>  http://www.datrek.com

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