Transitioning to FOB3 and Open for Business

FOB3 has passed all our user testing and we’re planning our transition. Right now we’re testing the data migration. Once that’s complete we’ll do a final run-through of the testing with a complete set of current data. Assuming there are no last minute hitches, we’ll move the new application and current data to production sometime over the weekend.

This does mean we’ll need to take Front Office Box offline for a while – maybe up to a couple of hours – but we’ll announce before hand exactly when that’s going to happen.

Transition Plan

To ease any worries about the safety of your data we’ll include a regression path based on a frozen copy of the database immediately prior to going off line. This data will not be accessible by FOB3 but our engineers will be able to get to it for you, in the unlikely event that’s necessary. The copy will become irrelevant as soon as the new app is live, but we’ll archive it anyway.

With normal upgrades this process isn’t required, but in this case we’ve upgraded all the Unix, MySQL and Ruby versions and rebuilt the database layout. To make life even more complicated we’re changing hosting providers. Hence all the planning and change management.

Please note

Any FOB2 export files will not work for import to FOB3.
In the sort term we won’t be offering the .csv import of companies and people address book data. We will be automating this process with an industry standard tool in the immediate future.

New Functions

FOB3 will include lots of stuff users are going to love:

1. More simple navigation
2. Pagination of lists and show/hide of detail for faster response
3. Improved handling of incoming email
4. User specific dashboards
5. User specific External Links in Dashboard sidebar
6. New Calendar tool for selection of dates
7. New confirmations for updated records
8. Additional addresses for Companies and People
9. Webrequest responses in People pages
10. Twitter updates panel in People sidebars
11. Milestones in Plans
12. Tags for Milestones and Actions
13. Pipeline list for sales opportunities
14. Notes for Companies, People, and Plans
15. iCal integration allowing user specific actions to be displayed in calendars
16. User Management for account owners
17. Automated account creation of new accounts on registration.

We’ve demonstrated each of these in the various demo videos along the way. In short order those videos will be replaced with new, more comprehensive tutorials. We’ll also be rewriting the FAQs. Most of this help won’t be available as we go live, but we don’t expect users to have any difficulty. If you need help you know where to come. Increasing our support options we’ll be opening a public Front Office Box wave in Google Wave, and of course email and IM will continue to reach us.

Premium Accounts

Soon after the switchover we’ll be introducing our premium, chargeable, service. Every registered user at the time of the switchover is entitled to an Ambassador account, free of charge multi user Premium, for life. We’ll be confirming these privileges via email and Webrequest soon.

Anybody who doesn’t confirm their account will be downgraded to our Personal free of charge account.

Personal accounts will restricted to single user and won’t have access to the Premium level functions
* Incoming email address
* iCal address
* Webrequest
* User Management
and the new services we’ll be adding to Knowledgebase, our shared content management resource.

Open for Business

We’re working these out at the moment but they’ll be provided under our Open for Business programme and include:

Internet Sourcing

Connecting buyers with sellers. Users looking to source products or services will be able to ask us to RFI the user community, feeding back lists of businesses and owners interested in bidding. Premium Accounts will receive Webrequests from us with the RFI and we’ll pass their details back to the buyer.

Internet Update

We spend a lot of time researching all aspects of the Business Internet. Everything we come across will be reported to Premium Accounts via restricted web pages and newsletters. Typically the research includes Inbound Marketing and SEO, News and Opinion, and Business Services/Software. Where possible we’ll be negotiating special rates for paid services, available only to our Premium Accounts.

Internet Footprint

We also spend a lot of time building our sites’ quality reputation, to improve our search engine ranking. Each Premium Account will be entitled to take advantage of that ranking with a full feature page in our Business Directory, fully optimised for search, guest articles, and our Announcement Service.

Realising Our Vision

FOB3 including Open for Business will begin to realise our vision of a Business Internet harnessed to help smaller businesses exploit the opportunities without needing to worry about the complexity or cost.

Any questions?