Re: BPCS Docs

Accessing the DOC menu requires SYS security or relevant exceptions on the 
Security screen ... the first time you go there you have to do some reorg to 
make it accessible ... option 16 or 17 on the menu ... then after you have 
been into it you can see the naming convention where it is stored so as to 
make it PDM accessible.

As we use ours, we delete those huge blank pages & add our own 
cross-indexing, and cut & paste into new documents that contain the most 
essential ingredients so that someone who needs to know some topic, does not 
have to wade thru hundreds of pages of docs that are irrelevant to their 
interest.

Jeff Martin wrote:

> I had gotten my hopes up when SSA sent an installation CD 
>  to me and said it had documentation on it.  
> It turned out it was bits, pieces 
>  and supposed upgrades to existing documentation.  

That "documentation" is for BPCS software install by people who have been to 
the relevant BPCS technical classes or have access to BPCS consultants ... 
those bits & pieces also came with the upgrade media which was also 
accompanied by some printed documents not found on the documentation that we 
got off the PC diskettes from SSA ... it can be quite a challenge to figure 
out which document has superceded which document, and then which combination 
you are to use in which sequence.

> SSA then told me that the only documentation available were the 
> course workbooks that you got if you attended a class.  

They are referring to the only thorough documentation from SSA.  There are 
also bits & pieces from OSG & Help Support ... we often do a General Inquiry 
type call to tech support & get back excellent docs that way in bits & 
pieces.  I provided all my on-line users with a copy of the fax form for 
sending questions to SSA & told them we pay big bucks for tech support, so 
any time you have a BPCS question, this is one place to get answers.  I am 
happy to see that several of my users are in fact doing so.

> I tried signing up for a class but it had been cancelled 
>  due to lack of enrollment.  Whats a person to do?

You can try to sign up for a BPCS class with SSA Chicago, SSA South East, 
Crowe Chizek, Unbeaten Path, probably many others.

Unbeaten Path also sells the course manuals to people who do not have time to 
attend the class ... then the manual can be shared by many different people 
at one company.  Check out their web site to see a list of all the BPCS 
manuals they offer, that are based on their classes.
http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/bpcsconsulting.html

As I stated earlier, I believe that access to good documentation & continuing 
education in BPCS is essential to everyone who uses BPCS at any company ... 
end users, administrators, upper management, people who use the reports & do 
not even sign on, programmer staff, other MIS, people who create queries, our 
auditors, any consultants we call in.  Thankyou thankyou dasmussen@aol.com 
(Dean Asmussen) for providing this BPCS_L resource so that companies relying 
upon BPCS can find out about this stuff.

L.S Russell wrote:

>  I can totally understand document hiding if we were talking about an
>  operating system, I would understand if there was really something
>  special about the software that they are trying to protect, but what are
>  they doing that is that special??
>  I mean, what "tricks" can ya do with a 1099, or a GL entry that must be
>  guarded by some code of honor akin to that of Las Vegas illusionists? 
>  Oh wait maybe be they are protecting their patented performance
>  degrading routines, or their unused disk space allocation routines?

My theory about this is that it is a matter of Programming Standards and 
their enforcement, where there have been changes of management at SSA to 
people who do not share the beliefs in Software Quality Assurance Standards 
of Internally Documented Excellence that were held by their predecessors & 
that during the Y2K conversion fixes they brought in an army of temporary 
programming staff who were not provided with the existing BPCS programming 
standards, so they kind of made up stuff as they went along.

Thankyou Thankyou IBM for PDM-54 that helps us identify all the lines of code 
that SSA changed without documenting according to their own documentation 
standards.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©

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.
Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative.
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong.
Every software improvement comes with some new challenges.
When in doubt, read the manual.

"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be
done." -- Marie Curie 
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