Currently we have many applications, where each application has its own error notification and reporting mechanism, so we clearly have many problems:
Lack of consistent error monitoring across different systems/applications: different GUIs, interfaces, different messages, etc.
Different approaches for error notification per application (many applications use email notifications, other applications publish messages to queue, etc.).
Separated configuration settings for reporting and monitoring per application: notification frequency, message recipients, etc.
You could add many other issues to the list, but the point is clear. Currently there is a plan to develop a custom application or service to provide a consistent and common solution for this situation.
Anyway, I am not sure if it is a good idea to create a custom application for this, I am sure that there should be a framework, platform or an existing solution or product (preferentially open source) that already solves this problem, so my question is: do you know what project or product to check before deciding to create our custom application?
Thanks!
Have a look at AlertGrid, it works as a centralized event handler, and notification dispatcher. It can collect events from different sources and you can easily manage event handling by creating rules in a visual editor. So, you can filter events, and raise notifications (email, sms, phone - works worldwide) whenever your custom condition is met. You can react not only to events that ocurred but also the ones that did not occur (detect missing 'heartbeats'). All you need is to feed AlertGrid with events (Signals), by a very simple API.
I'm not quite sure if this is what you're looking for. I'm in the AlertGrid dev team, if you had any questions - feel free to ask. We constantly develop this tool and appreciate any feedback.
Depending on how much information is written to application logs, you could consider using Hyperic. It's open source and has a lot of the features you are looking for.
http://www.hyperic.com/
Bugsnag is an awesome option if you are looking to do cross platform error monitoring. It supports some 50 platforms in one interface. https://blog.bugsnag.com/react-native-plus-code-push/
Related
This is my first post/question. If I missed an existing thread that answers my question, I missed that thread in my search and definitely appreciate you linking me! Please let me know if I should be posting/asking this elsewhere....
My question relates to Salesforce.
I have a use case where a client has a monthly batch of files that need to be made available on various cloud-based storage/distribution platforms like Box and Dropbox but also other less ubiquitous tools specific to the sector. Currently, the client is logging into each distribution platform, one-at-a-time, and uploading the files; then, if at any point any files need to be updated or removed/restricted, the client logs into each platform one-by-one and takes the necessary action. Obviously the process being described is tedious/laborious and leaves multiple gaps for error. The client and I are discussing a solution that would allow for create/read/update/delete actions in all of the distribution platforms without having to leave their Salesforce org. I am aware of existing AppExchange integrations for Box, Dropbox, etc. but they don’t quite do everything we need (to my knowledge)—they tie-in nicely and there are use cases where they are powerful tools...but—my understanding of those existing integration is that they would still each require dedicated tabs within the Object and repeated ‘drags’ and ‘drops’ of the same files to each tab. Again, the end goal here is that, for example, the client wants to drag and drop one time and have it pushed to the various platforms, etc. Or another example is they would like to choose "delete" one time from within Salesforce and have the file removed/restricted on all distribution platforms.
I am a certified SF Admin 1, so...perhaps this should be in my wheelhouse but...I feel unsure how to approach. My feeling is this is asking for a combination of integrations via API and Process/Flow work, but I am hoping for some ideas/input/guidance. Any insight or help any of you have to offer would be so greatly appreciated!!
Thanks so much!
What considerations are needed when creating a web app that is intended to be used in an industrial plant setting for a company? My specific use case is an industrial facility with several different production plants that would each have its own device for the application interface.
How do companies enforce the usage of such apps on a monitor/tablet? For example, could I prevent them from using other stuff on the tablet?
Importantly, how would security work? They'd share a device. There may be multiple operators that use the app in a given shift. Would they all use the same authentication session (this is not preferable, as I'd like to uniquely identify the active user)? Obviously I could use standard username/passwords with token based sessions that expire, however, this leaves a lot of potential for account hijacking. Ideally, they'd be able to log on very quickly (PIN, perhaps?) and their session would end when they are done.
As long as there is internet connection, I would presume that there isn't much pro/con regarding the use of native applications versus web based or progressive web apps. Is this assumption correct?
What's the best way of identifying which device the application is being run on?
Is this a common thing to do in general? What other technologies are used to create software that obtains input from industrial operators?
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Update - this is a good higher level consideration of the question at hand, however, it has become apparent why focused, specific questions are helpful. As such, I will follow up with questions that are specific.
Identifying the Area/Device a Web Application is Accessed On
Enforcing Specific Application Use on Tablets
Best Practices for Web App Authentication in Industrial Settings
I'm not able to answer everything in great detail but here are a few pointers. In the environment as you describe we usually see these two options. 1) you tell them what you need, internet, security, if they give you device and how it will be configured 2) they tell you exactly what you need to deliver.
I do not think you can 100% prevent them. We did it by providing the tablet( well laptops in our case) and the OS configuration took care of that, downside we had few devices to support. You seem to hint that there is always an internet connection so I guess you can collect all info about the system and send it back to you daily?
We were allowed to "tap" into their attendance SW and when you entered the facility you were able to use your 4 digit pin to log in if you were out of premisses you could not log in at all. I can imagine the following: you log in with your username and password - this does full verification, after that, you can use 4 digit pin to login for next n hours.
maybe, kinda, depends on what you are doing. Does the browser have all features you need? Our system needs multicast to perform really fast, so we have a native app
touched on this in 1. You could also use device enrolment process. You can also contractually force them that there will be only your software and it may invalidate support contract. It really depends on your creativity. My favourite( and it works - just tell them, there will only be installed my software and if not you will pay me double for support. I only saw one customer who installed some crap on the device when there were told not to
it really depends on what industry you are talking about, every industry is different. We almost always build a custom solution
The enforcement of the device/app usage depends on the customer, if the customer asked for help in the enforcement, then you can provide guide, training and workshops. If the customer serious about the enforcement then it will be a policy that's adapted by all the organization from top to down. Usually seniors will resist a workflow change more than juniors, so top management/executive should deal with that. Real life story: SAP team took 6 months to transform major newspaper workflow, during that few seniors got fired because they refuse to adapt the change.
Security shouldn't handicap the users, usually in industrial environment the network is isolated or at least restricted through VPN to connect multiple sites (plants in your case), regarding the active user: we usually provide guide/training/workshop for the users and inform them that using colleague account or device will prevent the system from tracking your accomplishment/tasks, so each user is responsible to make sure the active account/device is the one assigned to him/her.
It depends, with native you have more controls than web, but if the app is just doing monitoring then most of today apps use web for monitoring and the common way to receive input is REST APIs (even if the industrial devices doesn't support REST API, a middleware could be written to transform the output). If you need more depth about native vs web you need to ask new question with more details about the requirements.
Depends on the tech you are using (native or web), and things I mentioned in point 2: you can use whitelist of devices that's allowed to run the app. overall there are many best ways to track down the device.
How common in general? I think such information can only be achieved by survey, the world full of variations. And having something common not mean its safe or best, our industry keep changing at all levels. So to stay in the loop, we must keep learning and self-updating without reboot.
I have a web application that displays inventory, orders, tracking information from drop-shippers for orders and tracking updates. When a customer logs in, he will see all the above information in different pages.
I have a Console based application in the server that hosts 4 background workers to do each of the above tasks and updates the database. Now i have one console application for each customer. I did this because for any reason the console application fails because of one customer's data, it should not effect others.
Is there a better approach or any existing tools, api, frameworks available to support this kind of stack in Microsoft? Or what i am doing is correct and best approach? Are there any technologies that are more stable to support Subscription based membership, Offline data sync, Queue User requests and notifying user when they are completed.
I would take a look at the Azure Queues and Webjobs (Links below)
With a queue structure, you can simply decouple your application and make the application only do what is needed. Your main application can then just put relevant and needed information in the Queue and forget about it.
Next (and perhaps the most crucial part of this) you can write a simple console application that will run when a queue is present and ready. The beauty of this is that you not only can have multiple webjobs doing the same thing (I don't recommend it) but also, you only need to have and maintain one Console application. If the application crashes, it will simply restart it again (within a few seconds) and go back at it again.
Below, please find a link to the tutorial of how to make a sample Queue and Webjob:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/websites-dotnet-webjobs-sdk-get-started/?rnd=1
Is it possible to use Google Analytics API's to track Mac OSX applications?
If not could any one suggest me an alternative for Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is designed to work with web applications not for desktop apps. Although it might be possible to collect info about your application and send it to your Google Analytic account but the amount of work required to retrofit might be better spent, building your own Analytic solution.
A good starting point would be to create a simple web service, which collects information regarding clicks. Then rewrite your application to call that web service on every click within your application.
You would ideally want to store this information locally and submit it to the web service in batches. You would also want to design the application, so that if you ever shut down the web service, the application would still be able to operate.
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments by Václav Slavík, they have added apps analytics for iOS/Android.
I made a simple set of classes for doing this:
https://github.com/stephenlind/SimpleCocoaGoogleAnalytics
Google Analytics is not only for web applications, but also for mobile. It's available on the platform like android, iOS, etc. If you want to track your MAC OS X application, you can choose DeskAppTrack or DeskMetrics. DeskAppTrack is only available on MAC. It provide a professional data statistical analysis and it's free. While DeskMetrics is available on MAC and Windows. Either one is ok.
This really depends on how detailed you want to get. If you are are truly looking for analytics with detail and control flow data, you are better suited to created your own web service, as mentioned.
However, if you simply want to know a small number of operations, that occur at a small volume, i.e. when the app is launched (a quick and dirty solution): then in theory you could create a landing page on your site that contains a minimal head section, and a blank body, and then load the URL with an NSURL when you want to trigger the action.
Of course, you would have to include the google analytics tracking codes in the header, and you may need to load an off-screen webview to get the javascript to run. Like I said, quick and dirty.
In either case, you want to make sure the application will continue to perform properly, even if the web service / page is not present.
I am working on a system using php/mysql where I am allowing users to subscribe monthly to various, small browser based web apps. Each app will have different subscription terms and plans. The apps are all currently built and they reside within the same framework.
I am in the modeling phase so I am looking to make this system as flexible as possible wheren the terms from one plan to the next will vary. Any thoughts on how to elegantly model this?
Rather than building this yourself you could look into using something like Zuora.com. Please note that I haven't used these guys or have any affiliation, I just remember reading something about services like this starting to emerge for web-app publishers needing a simple billing/metering solution.
Of course, you also need to consider which payment gateways you support, but I think that Zuora does that behind the scenes.