Category: Collaboration

Flat World … Big Cloud

Last week, I received a call from London.  An American lawyer, based in London, with clientele in Florida was setting up a firm “in the cloud”.  He was planning to use a Salesforce.com application for lawyers called AdvologixPM and an accounting service called Xero.com.  After some research, we discovered there was integration between Force.com and Xero, an accounting software package offered as a SaaS model (monthly fee) and hosted out of New Zealand.  After speaking to an accountant in Auckland, New Zealand, we were able to advise the client.  What makes it interesting in the “multinational” nature of this engagement made possible by “The Cloud” and requiring “no software installation”, but rather the engagement of “services.”

Here was a lawyer in London, contacting a consultant in New York, to assemble a practice management suite with “case data” hosted in the U.S. on Salesforce.com and “accounting data” hosting in New Zealand, to service clients in Florida and England.

Go figure this brave new world.

The Open Source Manual

We are going to try an experiment.  We are going to use Wiki technology – MediaWiki (the same used by Wikipedia) to create an open-source manual for Time Matters.  We will start out the core of it with our current knowledge of Time Matters.  We will require contributors to “register” in order to make contributions and revisions to the manual.  The hope is that this Wiki will fill the void between what is in the “help text” and what constitute “best practices”.

We will be making a general announcement later in the month when the Wiki is ready.  All contributions will be subject to a “Creative Commons” license.  That means that Basha Systems LLC as host will have license to use and republish any contributions submitted to the Wiki.  However, you will also be free to “republish” content and link to it, so long as that content contents source attribution and a hyperlink back to the website source for the article.

The more people contribute, the better the resource will become.  This Wiki is designed to “refine” the knowledge out there as to best practices and specific tips, using group-sourcing to improve on the content.

Wordle and Cloud Maps

I recently WORDLED this blog.  It turned out the hot word was SAAS.  Even though our predominant focus is document assembly and workflow, those words did not show up.  HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM did NOT show up. There was some mention of ContractExpress and DealBuilder.  This could be because Wordle focuses on the RSS feed which is the Summary para of the blog entry, and not the body.  It also could reflect that HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM don’t have prominent mention in the summary. And so if I use the words: HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM more often in my summaries, then it is likely that HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM may show up more often.  And so I am testing Wordle to see how responsive it is for these words: HotDocs, XpressDocs, GhostFill, Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, and AdvologixPM.

My apologies for the redundancy, but I am checking an experiment.  This is also an advise to those using social media to pay special attention to Summary/Abstracts if they are targeting key words.

And yes, there is method to my madness.

Database Connection – Vista64 and Windows7

Have you ever tried to add an Access database as a new “datasource” in Vista64 and Windows7? In most cases, you will go WINDOWS START -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC).  When you click ADD, you will get SQL Native Client and SQL Server.  There will be NO opportunity to add Access or any of the OLDER data types.  These 32-bit datatypes are effectively banished from the system.  Quelle disaster!!!  Well we have a solution, one that is REAL EASY

The Source of the Problem

The problems is that the Data Sources (ODBC) is really limited to 64-bit drivers.  MS Access uses a 32-bit driver and so DOES not show up in the Administrative Tool.  Lucky for us, Windows stores all the old tools in a special legacy folder:  C:\Windows\SysWOW64.  Yes, WOW!!!!!  That could stand for “where is my OLD Windows” Who knows.  Here is how you get to the key file.

  1. Create Shortcut

    - Name: ODBC 32bit Admin

    - Path: c:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

  2. Launch shortcut and ADD Access database as a data source just as you would in the past.

Website Redesign

Every other year I assess our firm’s web-presence and look at the state of technology.  My goal is to build a website that is informative, describes the products we support, and gives useful comparative and illustrative information about those products. Two years ago my interests were wide ranging, but the core of our business was HotDocs, GhostFill and Time Matters.  Since that time, our skill set and product offerings have expanded, as well as our staff.  We now have significant programming and database management capabilities by virtue of the inclusion of Steve Stockstill and Marc Wexler in our virtual offerings, and have engaged our partner Holly Humphreys in several billing engagements.

We have entered into the web-development business with a new offering coming out in the 4th quarter through our partner businesswebsitedesigners.com.au that addresses the needs of lawyers interested in both social media and document automation. We have diversified our offerings of practice management solutions to include AdvologixPM and Amicus Attorney Premium Edition.  We have built solutions with Exari document assembly and DealBuilder, now offered on a SaaS model as ContractExpress.  And we have partnered with NetDocuments to provide cloud-based document management.  And so, our website, as comprehensive as it is, is hopelessly out of date.

We plan to be dividing our website along product lines, with offerings describing in detail each product we support and our twist as to which of you they will best serve.  We will also be providing some feature comparisons between competing products to help you decide which features are important to you.  This will not happen overnight, but will be a work in progress.  Also, we will be offering this blog feed, alongside the feeds of vendors and opinion leaders in a new website (more on that at a later time).

So please, bookmark this website and comeback often, or enable your RSS reader.  There is more to come.

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