The Official Caseworks Blog

Dashboard Version 2 - last blog of 2009

2009-12-31T13:13:00.001-08:00

On the last day of 2009, and getting close to the last hour, I thought I would do a "first" and publish two blogs on the same day. Why? Mainly to give due credit to my colleague Krish, who carried on working until 9pm on New Years Eve to work out the best dashboard option for Caseworks. Version 1 (the previous blog) looked nice, but the underlying software was going to be a severe limitation for future enhancements. Krish started again at lunch time today, and worked on achieving the same result by a completely different route. Nine hours later, I think it is a pretty good prototype, and bodes well for an exciting New Year for Caseworks.

All of us wish our customers all the best for 2010.

A new dashboard for Caseworks

2009-12-31T02:57:00.000-08:00

Those who received The Christmas Caseworker Newsletter, will know that we are continuing to work on the system over the holiday period. As the final Blog of 2009, I thought I would share a prototype with users, of something which will become a big development in the 2010 release.

Having, perhaps, been a bit late into the "Dashboard" concept we are using our new toolset to catch up and create a better facility than anyone else. Below is a first prototype of what will be one of many Dashboards, which will be user configurable and user-selectable. There will be User Dashboards and Team Dashboards and the ability to nominate any of them to be the first screen when you log in, or otherwise access them from the new Menu under "My Work" and "My Team". Infact, this is early days, and my resident wizz-kid, Krish is, as I write, experimenting with a variety of options to give the best results for Caseworks Users. So keep logging into the Blog to be at the cutting edge, and dont forget you can add your own comments if you have a bright idea.

Finally, can I wish the people who log into this blog, a very happy New Year.

Happy Christmas and a new Newsletter is out

2009-12-23T02:28:00.000-08:00

The HUBSolutions Team celebrated Christmas in a Malaysian restaurant near London Bridge this year. The restaurant was intimate and exotic, the food and service excellent, and we all had a good time - as this picture, hopefully, shows. Email photos of your ASB Christmas party to caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk and it will join this one.

The crew around the table is unchanged from last year except for one on holiday and another off sick. Pride of place at the head of the table goes to Kitty, aged 6, daughter of Selvi and Krish who are next around the table. Then there is the author (Peter), Arlene, David and two of the four members of our Revenues and Benefits team - Manish and Kishore.

I feel I should give some positive publicity to the restaurant called "Champor-Champor" in Weston Street, London SE1. It is very accessible from London Bridge station so whether you are visiting London from afar, or live in the London area it is quite accessible and much recommended.

The main news for this Blog, is that we have launched a new e-magazine as the new format for the Caseworks Newsletter. If you havent received a copy, email caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk for one. There is a competition in this month's issue.

Estate Management User Group

2009-11-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

HUBSolutions had its first ever Estate Management User group meeting on Friday. Topics for discussion included; how people were using the system in different ways, the benefits and difficulties experienced by users at different sites, mobile working, and future developments. It seemed to work very well - much of the thanks for this must go to David Perry at Hyndburn homes for providing the venue and laying on an excellent spread for lunch.

Below you can see a couple of photos from the event; users from Leeds in conversation with Peter, and a display stand that Hyndburn Homes had made that we were delighted to see included our logo!

New Look and Feel on display

2009-10-30T03:04:00.000-07:00

Readers, who have read the last Blog entry, will know that we are re-designing the "Look and Feel" of Caseworks to make it look more modern, more planned and more consistent. As promised I am including screen dumps in the Blog, when we pass a milestone, but the Nat Fed Exhibition will be your first chance to see it for real. Come to stand 18 and ask for a demo.

The good news is, the exhibition is completely FREE whether you register in advance at http://www.itinhousingexhibition.co.uk/ or simply turn up on the day. The website gives the exhibition opening times, and travel information.

Where have we got to with the re-design?

Well we have now done the Details pages - both View and Update - and our ".net specialist" is working on the main menu. This will be a complete rebuild, not just a cosmetic change. Here is our prototype so far:-

This screen has many options opened up, but in the final version, only one at a time will expand.
The intention is that the new menu will be fully user-customisable with user bookmarks and user search screen options.

Modernising the User Interface

2009-10-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

We were all at it today.

Well, almost... I had a super-super urgent report which had to be set up for South Lanarkshire before 11am and David had a meeting at Enfield in the afternoon. Other distractions included a user locked out from Lewisham and some woman trying to sell me advertising space over the phone. All resolved satisfactorily then we got on with the main purpose of our meeting...

We have decided to modernise the user interface, bring it into line with Office 2007 and generally make it pleasing to the eye. A lot of trial and error and informal voting - "I quite like that..." , "I definitely dont like that" and unhelpful comments like "How do Microsoft decide on the look and feel of their products?" - "pay a graphic designer a fortune to play around with shapes and colours, and not write a line of code" was the cynical answer.

Well, it is definitely time to change the wallpaper. 18 months ago we introduced the new visually appealing Buttons, with a rollover hierarchy, but we never changed the background or thought about the impact on the eye of bold colours and numerous hyperlinks.

This is not a quick project, and while we consider ourselves to be software experts, we would not pretend to be graphic designers. Unfortunately we suspect, our customers - the readers of this blog - will want their system to be visually pleasing, and won't want to pay the premium for an art expert. Seems like a good use for a Blog, to invite opinion as the project unfolds. As a reader, this is your chance to have an impact on our thinking and on the system.

We started with the Case History, surely the central screen in the whole system. We have adopted the Office 2007 colour scheme, we have replaced the hyperlinks with icons, we have introduced roll-over highlighting. Outstanding items, get a red flag if they are overdue, and orange flag if they are pending.

What do you think? There is a "Comments" button at the end of this blog. The next blog episode will be the main data display page - what we call View Details.

What a week... and congratulations to Riverside

2009-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

What a week, and probably worth a Blog, partly because people who have emailed me may have wondered where I was, and partly because the various meetings I had were important for HUBSolutions and its customers.

Monday, witnessed a meeting with Capita plc in Victoria, to plan a proposal we are making jointly to the DWP. Relevance to Caseworks? Well the reality is that for much of the last 10 years, Caseworks development has been subsidised by work on Revenues and Benefits.

Tuesday, got off to an early start (5:30 am) to get to the HITEX exhibition in York. A lovely venue, loads of stands, but not enough visitors. However, we made one good contact, which may yet lead to developments for Caseworks, as the approach was from an IT Department of a RSL with a very specific technical view.

Wednesday, 10am, and I was in Accrington, discussing future enhancements with my Think Tank, David Perry. In just a couple of hours we had planned the Fire Safety Checks enhancement to Estate Management, specified the proposed new Project Module, and set a date for the Estate Management User Group.

Thursday, 10am and I had driven to Glasgow and was discussing the new Mediation Module with the Mediation Team from South Lanarkshire Council. Very worthwhile hammering out of detail, which has given me another couple of weeks of work. Then a quick chat with Lynn about South Lanarkshire's statistics, and a short drive to East Dunbartonshire for a follow-on demo about the Estate Management Module in the afternoon.

Firday, was another early start, and (as it wasnt quite early enough), as very fast drive down the M6 to Liverpool to meet Riverside Housing Group. This was another very worhtwhile meeting, which has also given me two weeks of work to do to complete their upgrade. Best of all, they are keen to come to the Estate Management User Group meeting, I had arranged two days earlier. Also, congratulations to Riverside for winning the Social Landlord of the Year Award.

At the end of the week, I felt that quite a lot had been achieved. Maybe driving 1,500 miles wasnt the best way to preserve the environment however. Back to the trains next week I think!

Congratulations to Solihull

2009-08-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

Solihull Community Housing, one of Caseworks longest standing users, has won a landmark victory in the Courts, by getting a "CRASBO", even though they are not a law enforcement organisation.

Having picked it up on my ASB News Search (something we will be trying to link into Caseworks one day), I thought I would give Mandy and her team the publicity they deserve. Maybe other Caseworks customers might want to go down the same road. The extract is from the Birmingham Mail, the link is:- http://www.birminghammail.net/news/solihull-news/2009/08/07/solihull-commuinity-housing-secures-crasbo-against-local-troublemaker-97319-24336765/
- its just a pity the paper didnt spell "Community" correctly!

A great night out at the Emirates Stadium

2009-07-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

Its always nice to win something!

Last night at the rather splendid Emirates Stadium in London, HUBSolutions and a delegation from South Lanarkshire Council attended the "The Good Communications Awards 2009", having been nominated for an award under the "Mobile Technology" section.

Mark Williams from South Lanarkshire IT, dressed up in a traditional kilt, brought a PDA with our mobile Instant Capture software on it to prove it still worked! The look of delight on our faces, showed that we hadnt expected to win.

Above is Alison Moore with the award on her table.

Left is the Scottish contingent - Alison Moore, Annette Finnen and Mark Williams.

Below is the coveted glass trophy

The evening was great fun, with excellent food and a very funny introduction by Hugh Dennis.

Now we are wondering if we can submit another winner for next year.

Below is the official photo

South Lanarkshire storms into the lead

2009-06-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

It's always more exciting when one of our customers take the lead in developing or promoting Caseworks, than when we do it ourselves.

South Lanarkshire certainly scored full marks this month, first going to a Conference in Aviemore, demonstrating and presenting their achievements with our mobile technology and then holding a follow-up seminar for interested parties in June.

On top of that, we have just heard that their Mobile Caseworks project has been nominated for a "Good Communications Award" (see http://www.gcawards.co.uk/) website to find out more.

It has been a real team effort; I previously showed readers a picture of some of the Wardens using our mobiles, but here you can see the people who pulled the strings - Alison, doing the presentation at Aviemore, and Mark Williams from IT making sure it all worked on the day. (Click on the photo to see it enlarged to full screen)

The Caseworker Issue 5 is out

2009-05-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

The May edition of The Caseworker is out, and has been emailed to our Users. If you have not received yours - you arent a User, or your IT Network has gobbled it up, email us at Caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk for your copy.
Already the magazine has invoked a response from an existing customer, which really makes it all worthwhile:

"I see that you have developed an estate management module. is this up and running yet or is it just in development with Hyndburn Homes? Does the module have all the elements of estate inspections, scoring and tenancy matters or are these separate components? I would be interested to have an idea of costs and for your to give us a presentation on the module. "

The answer to the question, is that it is up and running at Hynburn, the Tenancy Audit feature is up and running at East Durham Homes and Leeds are currently testing, with a view to go Live in July.

Red Nose Day in Durham

2009-03-14T05:03:00.001-07:00

This year, Red Nose Day also marked the end of our week of Caseworks customisation at East Durham Homes.

East Durham Homes had decided to support the cause, by having a dress casual day, where everyone had to wear a funny hat and also making a buffet lunch, for which everyone made a small contribution.

As with previous "Blitz Implementations" at Leeds and Accrington, the week was pretty intensive but very productive. EDH already had an Access Database of ASB Cases and part of the challenge for us was to ensure that everything they had already recorded was fully included, as well as adding a lot of new features to make it all worthwhile.

By the Friday, we had a fully featured database, packed with all their case details ready for an all day work-in and training session. The funny hats added a bit of enjoyment to the process as you can see from this picture of my colleague David Roper showing the system to the ASB Manager, Amanda Fulcher.

Did we add anything worthwhile? Hopefully lots, but probably nothing shows this more graphically than the creation of the first ever map of ASB in East Durham opposite. (The map is obviously capable of street level detail with a colour key, but this zoomed-out, cut-down view tells you where East Durham is, without telling you exactly what or where any of their cases are!)

Now, the managers are looking very seriously at our Estate Management Module, with a view to working with us to develop the Tenancy Audit function. Watch this space..

ASB in the Caribbean?

2009-02-09T16:49:00.001-08:00

Some readers will know, I am currently on holiday -

in St Kitts in the Caribbean. However, I am always on the lookout for evidence of ASB which might offer market opportunities for Caseworks.

On the face of it, the West Indies does not have a very noticeable problem, but I found this poster in several places in the capital, which maybe indicates there is an issue about what young people do with their free time.

I like the slogan "Get on bikes, not in fights" - maybe one of the British Local Authorities might like to adopt it.

Anyway, later in my travels I came to a painted rock which served as a reminder that graffiti is as old as the hills. Sometimes, with the passage of time, people view the things rather differently and see the establishment as the bad guys.

This is a drawing on a piece of rock by the Carib Indians (who were largely slaughtered by the French and English in St Kitts)

Its nice to be thanked

2009-01-28T15:32:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist copying this little exchange of correspondence into my blog. I often think that customers underestimate the importance of being appreciative if they want to ge the most out of their suppliers. Nic from Portsmouth gets full marks, not just for saying thanks, but also doing a good job for the Users, taking the trouble to disable user profiles, when staff leave and transferring their cases to others. This activity, was the background to this little exchange which took place through our issue log.

Hi
Selvi kindly sorted out our issue with inactive users and alphabetical
sort order, and this now works perfectly thanks. But would it be possible to be
able to see all those cases set to MONITOR also, as there are quite a lot of
these that often need transferring.
Thanks - Nic : Portsmouth on 28/01/2009
09:46:59

I have modified the page such that the cases that are active and are on monitor are listed for you.
: Selvi on 28/01/2009 12:52:11

Subject: RE: Issue Id: 1680 - UPDATED with new Notes.
Selvi, you are wonderful. I no longer have a fear of developing carpal tunnel syndrome!
Thanks for your help.
Nic
Sent: 28 January 2009 12:52

The story of The Hound of the Glasgow Ville

2009-01-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

I thought my readers would be amused to see this dog, which is strategically located in the offices of Glasgow Community and Security Services.

He has pride of place by the lift and I literally bumped into hin, while liaising with staff on the 6th floor. When I enquired about him, from staff, I got a somewhat mixed reaction. One officer told me that it was a school project to tackle ASB - Dog Fouling in particular, and was clearly impressed with the efforts of the children who had created this human-sized monster out of papier mache.

The ladies, I was actually going to see seemed rather less impressed with the work of art, and suggested I might like to take it away!

Happy Christmas

2008-12-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas is the season of silly snaps of meals and parties, and HUBSolutions is no exception. People always like the ones which show someone in a compromised position, but our meal never got to be quite that silly, maybe the presence of the younger generation, and David wanting to get back to add some more issues to the Issue Log somewhat contained the Christmas spirit.
The meal seemed an ideal opportunity to publish our photos, as I am sure there are some staff who customers have only spoken to over the telephone or by email. From bottom left around the table, they are Prathibha who started the Caseworks Mapping facility, Kitty, Selvi's five year old daughter, Selvi, who built all the Caseworks Web Pages, Me, Arlene who does the accounts and a spot of Caseworks training, David who does most of the Caseworks training and a great deal else besides, Krish who created the email facility, mobile working and finished the mapping facility and Manish, whose Oracle skills power our various Revenues and Benefits Applications.
Absent, were Kishore (who took the picture) and colleagues in other countries, David Scott - in Scotland, Zareena - in Saudi Arabia and Chris Parker skiing in the Alps.

EMAIL TheBlog@hubsolutions.co.uk with the snap of your ASB Team Christmas party - we would all like to see it!

Finally, Christmas is more than anything about children, whether you are religious or not, and I couldn't resist including this sweet picture of Kitty, the first (but not the last) baby to be born to a member of staff while working for HUBSolutions.

Happy Christmas and New Year!

Men in Red

2008-12-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

Guess who they are!

Eddie McCall and Rodger Harley, two of South Lanarkshire's army of 30 + trusty Wardens who patrol the streets day and night looking for things like this - a load of old rubbish.

A deliberate act of Anti Social Beahviour, and what are they doing? No, not playing Solitaire!

The rubbish is being recorded so that a photograph, the GPS Coordinates and full details of its volume can be uploaded to the Caseworks Database and forwarded to the Cleansing Department the same day.

There is a close-up on our News page, which lets you see the PDA Smart Phone more clearly. As readers will know, the Blog is a little bit less formal, and I always like to find a lighter side to any story. A little while after I took the first picture, the phone rings. Would any of my readers care to provide a speach bubble for this call? Yes, a bit like Private Eye. Come up with a good one, and you will get a prize.

On a more serious note, there was light rain when I took this picture, and it is forecast to be heavy rain, every day for the next four days. After six weeks of wet and often sub-zero weather, isnt it amazing that all the devices are still working! Actually, isnt it amazing that Eddie and Rodger are still working!!

The Caseworker is Out!

2008-12-12T08:09:00.001-08:00

Issue 4 of The Caseworker hit the World Wide Web this week, and is already filling many user's In Box. Those of you who also read this blog, please give me a bit of feedback! Either comment on the Blog, or email Caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk

Anyway some feedback has arrived in my In Box so I will share it

"The caseworker model looks and feels very nice .... St Georges Square looks amazing as ever and brings back fond memories" Gerry McDougall, Portsmouth

"I have to say I really enjoyed reading The Caseworker....... A great update for me since i've been away for some time now." Zareena

Many thanks to both of you - and to my colleague David for sending them all out.

For those who haven't seen it, this is a "thumb nail". EMail Caseworker@hubsolutions.co.uk for your copy.

Christmas Cheer

2008-12-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

Christmas coming... then it will be time for new year's resolutions. Mine, is to ensure I do at least one blog entry each month - whats yours? You can tell me by clicking the comments box, then you will be committed.

The Caseworks Newsletter is going out soon, with a rather impressive picture of Christmas in Glasgow on the front page. It seemed a good idea to include it here, to cheer up anyone feeling a bit depressed by the Credit Crunch. Whatever the weather, and whatever the financial situation, Glasgow is determined to have a good Christmas, and I have no hesitation in recommending readers to come here for a Christmas break Check out their website to see the rest - http://www.winterfestglasgow.com/
mmm, has this got anything to do with HUBSolutions or Caseworks or are we going a bit off message here? Well slightly. I have been spending most of my time in Glasgow for the last six weeks, so when I say the city, shopping, night life, cultural events and surrounding countryside are great, I am talking from experience. More importantly, I have recruited our first Scottish employee to help me out with the volume of work.

There is quite a lot of job satisfaction up here right now, with Glasgow Community and Security Services expressing delight with the new Mediation Database and other goodies which my colleague, David, and I have delivered. Then South Lanarkshire has gone live with the Mobile solution, and yesterday declared it to be a success worthy of publicity. I am hoping to get a photo of one of those wardens working in wintry conditions, keying some vital piece of information into his smart phone, for transmission to Caseworks Notify and Respond. All credit to my colleague, Krish, for this achievement, having taken the prototype Mobile solution to pieces and rebuilt it as a completely robust and sophisticated piece of software.

A sign?

2008-08-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Back in business?

Well I took a holiday from the Blog, largley because of the workload crisis caused by Leeds, so it is perhaps appropriate that the most interesting feedback I have had from my Blog has come from that same Yorkshire City. Remember this sign post, I bumped into on my first trip to Leeds - features in an earlier Blog?

Seemed like a pretty strange thing to put in the city centre, especially when it is so far from the sea. Well the truth is even stranger. Apparently it is a quote from the bible (Luke).

Leslie, who has been a trusty intermediary at Leeds, between HUBSolutions and the Leeds ALMOs sent me this fascinating piece of research.

"I was having a look on your website to see if I could find anything about the user groups - we're going to set up an internal user group here for Caseworks.

I got sucked into the blog & came across a question about the throw yourself into the sea signpost. Please see below, if you're still curious. Two Christian artists, Pippa Hale and Stuart Tarbuck, have been posting unusual lines from the Bible around Leeds to mark a city-side festival of the visual arts. Their project is called Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin -- words from the story told in Daniel (Daniel 5: 25-30) which appeared on King Belshazzar's palace wall and warned him of his impending death. There are 13 of these Biblical quotes, which include some of Jesus's sayings, posted on signposts, paving stones, park benches, shop widows and billboards. The public are likely to be taken aback by some of the lines chosen, which include: "Go throw yourself into the sea," and "Blessed are the breasts". The latter is taken from Luke 23: 29: â??Blessed are the barren women, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed,â?? (NIV). Outside Toni and Guy's, a fashionable hair salon in one busy shopping street, appear the words:

"The hairs on your head are numbered".

So now you know! Lesley Aird"

Oh, and by the way in just three months Leeds have entered several hundred cases, and yes it is the time of the year to plan the next Northern User Group.

Thanks Leslie for getting me back into Blog mode - feedback makes it all worthwhile!

Thankyou to South Tyneside

2008-05-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

I thought I would have to dedicate this Blog entry to the staff at South Tyneside, who made me very welcome last week, and booked me into a lovely hotel overlooking the harbour mouth. South Shields must surely be one of Britain's lesser known seaside resorts, but it really has a magificent sandy beach second to none, brilliant restaurants and a fascinating history with connections with Grace Darling and the Venerable Bede.

Part of the purpose of the latest photo competition in The Caseworker is to promote the destinations where our customers work, and this is a real hidden gem. The photo is the view from my bedroom window (yes, a port hole) in the Little Haven Hotel. I will get my web developer to set up a photo gallery to show readers my other pictures.

Oh, and it was two days of hard work, as well, productive for me and the Client I think.

Memory for Caseworks

2008-05-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is the first blog entry for a month. An unbelievably busy one, in which I have been working on the Leeds implementation for a part of every day, and found time to visit customers in the Midlands, Scotland and the North East and have two days holiday on the continent.

However, back on the Blog now, and keen to share with customers a little learning experience about memory. I have come to the conclusion that you cant have too much of it, and the "recommended memory" for new customers needs to be considerably increased. It came as a bit of a shock when the new Leeds system was unbearably slow in training. The server never seemed to be working very hard, but the relatively small amount of on-board memory (1 GByte) was permanently used to capacity. I recommended they increase it, and within 24 hours an upgrade to 3 GBytes was performed and the problem was resolved. Since then I have been looking at the memory other customers have, and found the record to be held by South Tyneside at a staggering 10 GBytes. I had the pleasure of using their system on Thursday and Friday, and the benefit was obvious. Every page - including some of their staggering 500 + link cases - loaded with lightning speed.

The lesson, memory is cheap, waiting is expensive!

Day 10, 100% success ratings

2008-04-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

Back in London, and a chance to go through the Customer Feedback forms we handed out on a very rushed Friday of meetings and workshops.

Definitely a success. There were 5 representatives from the 3 ALMOs present on day 10.

Score for "Was the amount of time spent about right" - 5 out of 5 said YES.

Score for "Do you feel Caseworks can accommodate your needs" - 5 out of 5 said YES.

Any doubts?

One delegate indicated a desire for more understanding of the system before the session started. One regretted not having worked out their own procedures better before the two weeks started. One delegate wanted more individual time for his ALMO, rather than everything being a team activity.

General Comments?

Maddy Edwards, East North East Homes, said "Time spent on customisation was quite intense at times, but was necessary in order to achieve the desired outcome"

Our thoughts?

Very hard work! It felt like doing two jobs at once - a day of workshops, followed by an evening of customisation and enhancements.

Very difficult to deal with, effectively three customers, in the same workshop. Each ALMO could easily have justified their own database. I had a great deal of sympathy with the representative who would have liked one-to-one time. I hope we can provide some of this in subsequent meetings planned in Leeds.

Customisation might have been easier, if everyone had better understood the system and if they had got together and found more common ground on their procedures and forms, before we started.

Is there anything in this for other customers, who have had to wait for upgrades / enhancements?

Definitely. We have implemented many enhancements, most of which will be of general interest. Here are some of the more significant ones.

An Interview Preparation Screen, which will compliment the planned mobile solution

A Counter Allegation facility, which will save everyone a lot of time

A Tension monitoring database, previously requested by two customers

Action Plan enhancements

Context sensitive Help facilities

Numerous enhancements of Notify and Respond, to make it suitable for Estate Inspection

Day 9, Leeds Cafe culture

2008-04-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

Day 9, found me abandon the workshop to my colleague David, in pursuit of a missing 70,000 properties from the Property Gazetteer. A brief meeting with Rachel, sorted this out, and left me in the city centre, with time to kill and a lot of work to do on my laptop.

People who know me, know that one of my habits, is finding a nice cafe which has powerpoints and plugging myself in with a very large latte and cake for an hour or two. Leeds boasts plenty of interesting venues, and, indeed the walk around town, was interesting. I passed this giant chess game outside the library, and then walked into the city art gallery (well worth a visit) and the cafe. The Council run cafe was quite a magnificent Victorian tiled room, which at first sight seemed to offer everything except power points - they obviously did not want to spoil the 100 year old tiles. However, the problem was solved when I noticed floor level trap doors, under which were double sockets. Excellent - and the coffee was nice as well!

Night 7 in Leeds

2008-04-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Its nearly 10pm on Night 7 - and this is the view from my hotel window. Yes, the HUBSolutions Office Manager, Arlene, has put David and myself in a hotel right next to the giant Tetley's Brewery. Was this deliberate? We may even have indulged in a glass or two this evening.

The day shift worked hard today, testing the new data entry forms, and the Action Plans. I must confess, I took time out from the workshop to cross the city and pick up a fresh property extract from the NLPG team - hopefully, with all the properties included this time around! Now I have the rest of the night to import it ready for tomorrow's testing.