Re: BPCS documentation -- BPCS-L

Dennis - I have a number of suggestions, based on the fact that we do use 
that documentation & are not satisfied with it.

Summary

Ask your security officer to help you access DOC software - check out WRKOBJ 
DOC* in your BPCS execution library, so you know what you might be missing if 
your security is denying you access.  Our security is deliberately more of a 
joke in our education environment, because one of the things we are teaching 
is why we need good security.

Tell your SSA customer representative about the BPCS Files Poster that I 
describe & ask if you can have one of them, then insist that it go in your 
company where easily accessible by end users who NEED that information, 
instead of being a pretty picture in a top manager office.

Check out alternative BPCS documentation sources I mention at the end of this 
e-mail posting.

Ask OGS to confirm what I understood them to tell me & the practicality of 
getting at the PC format that drives what arrives in BPCSDOC.

Get the HELP for SEU & teach your end users how to access its keyword search 
capability, in addition to encouraging use of helpful keys in general.

Tell end users that you can print out the help text for any program they 
wish, without anyone having to actually run the program.

Detail Al-o-gram

To access the "print engine" that BPCSDOC is designed for, you have to have 
an SSA security officer on your deconstructing team.  When first installed, 
BPCSDOC seems to be invisible to the software - you have to run the document 
index reorg to make the data magically appear.

The formatting codes worked on BPCS/36 in concert with system rules for sizes 
of forms, but DOC, at least at the V4 level, does not obey either its own 
formatting codes, or the SYS013 user settings for favorite printer, on-hold, 
etc.  We do not use separator pages, we have different printers in different 
facilities & departments, we use non-standard sized green bar paper, and 
while BPCS has a system so end users can select where they want their output 
to go, onto what kind of form, DOC is one of several areas of SSA exception 
to their own rules - SFC730 is another we just found.

If you think I am long winded, you have not read any of these documents.

However you print them, be prepared for in excess of 100 pages per 
application, although not all of the approx 75 documents are that long, in 
which there is a truely massive volume of either totally blank or half blank 
pages, and some documents are too large to view in SEU.  When I asked SSA 
Help line about some of this stuph, I learned that they now write these 
documents on a PC and transport them to AS/400 objects, and something is lost 
in translation, so a trick question is whether the original PC versions are 
accessible to BPCS customers who only want a PC version, and what PC software 
was involved, in case the same kind would be helpful to end user.

Most of my users forget what the HELP key is for until we are walking them 
through the solution to a problem & they never get into the habit of using 
F1.  Such individuals are not going to get any benefit out of hundreds of 
pages not only poorly cross-indexed, the purpose of some of the formatting 
codes is to capture sub-title heading lines to generate an index to contents 
similar to Table of Contents in Word.  

At best, the BPCS documentation should be used as a reference tool on a 
department by department basis. We use it when researching how BPCS intended 
some codes to be used & what the significance are of fields & terminology we 
stumble over.  It is not practical for helping end-users - the HELP key is 
1,000 times more helpful & who uses that?  

Suppose someone wants to create a query over some BPCS files - the official 
documentation does not get into sufficient structural detail to be of much 
help - IBM external file definition reports are needed, along with an 
understanding of the application file structure & where do you get that 
understanding - check out the SSA Poster used when implementing BPCS - it 
charts what files are dependent on what other files & how they are 
inter-related.  We used to have two of them & I think we now have managed to 
misplace both.  The posters became manager perks, lost when ready for some 
other wall decoration, not easily accessible months later by end users for 
which there is an on-going serious need.

If you are not familiar with the SSA Poster, it is a wall sized color coded 
chart of files by application, showing the flow of data by application, with 
well thought out icons indicating nature of files inter-relationships.  For 
example, when labor is reported via SFC600 or JIT600 - which files get the 
scrap history, and cost updates --- when we find weird costs - show us a list 
of the suspects --- what is the flow of data through shipping files, to help 
us add some reports.

During our Y2k conversion, we used colored markers to indicate like a pert 
diagram, which of these files had a problem waiting on some modification or 
BMR or conversion issue to be resolved, which were being re-keyed because we 
were changing codes, and which were being translated by which collection of 
software.

For the BPCSDOC documents to have value, the user has to have access to SEU & 
know how to use search capability to FIND where the text is that is relevant 
to what they need, then just LP (think DOS inside AS/400 text editor) the few 
pages on that topic, and also know which of the documents explain what those 
codes on the screen mean, how to get to what you want to do navigating 
through the tree of options, how the files are interrelated etc.  If you are 
in the wrong document for the info that you want, there is no pointer telling 
you which one explains MIS under the covers, what those funny codes mean, or 
what to do when something is messed up.

For those users who do check out HELP - some of them are interested in what 
some program DOES without actually executing them & for those individuals I 
sometimes print out the SOURCE code for help screens of the programs of their 
choice, from QPNLSRC (UIM Panels).

Check out the alternative BPCS documentation offered by 
http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/bpcsconsulting.html
which includes both V4 and V6 - pricing on individual application areas 
varies from $60.00 to $275.00 & comes with a guarantee that you will get 
benefit out of this or your money back.  Several key areas that we need 
better documentation for does not appear to be listed on their web page.

and 
David Slicker
DS Solutions
(414) 251-6010 - phone
(414) 251-6011 - fax
dslic@aol.com

for V6.0.02 and V6.0.04 - he offers a more comprehensive perspective for a 
larger sticker price, but I would suggest that the costs of these manuals are 
peanuts compared to the hassles of trying to pretty print SSA documentation 
whose value is questionable for any but the most gung ho MIS person.

and the 3rd alternative offered by George in another posting

Al Macintyre
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