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I’ve written a lot about using IBM i System Monitoring and Notification software to alert on-call responders when problems occur on your IBM i partitions. I put together a comprehensive list of the possible issues organizations can monitor for in their IBM i environment, using a system monitoring package.
Here are 25 different system issues that most IBM i system monitoring packages ...
Continue Reading →One of the best customer service stories I have ever heard comes in the form of an experiment by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. He tested his customer service personnel to find out how far they would go to please the customer. He did this by asking a mystery caller phone in and ask the reps if they would help the caller order a pizza. Where most companies might treat this request as a prank, the Zappos reps retrieved the three nearest pizza ...
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If you’re running IBM i in a major industry such as banking, health care, distribution, or manufacturing, vendors are probably trying to convince you to move your existing IBM Power hardware environment to the cloud.
While there are advantages to moving to the cloud in terms of costs and personnel, there are potentially offsetting drawbacks. Here are some important items to consider and get answers for before moving your IBM ...
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There are many benefits to buying an IBM i system monitoring and notification package. It detects current issues on your partitions, automatically notifies key responders when an issue occurs, and escalates notifications when necessary. A system monitoring package can also be programmed to automatically take action to solve issues.
Most IT managers understand and appreciate the value of buying a good system monitoring package. But corporate management may ...
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IBM i shops often waste expensive and scarce programming talent recreating commercially available software for common functions like reporting and paperless processing, rather than buying professionally designed software and configuring it to meet their needs.
This tendency poses a simple question for IBM i shops:
Are your programmers in the right business (creating organization-specific apps) or are they creating and maintaining DIY solutions for software that you can easily ...
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When most people think of IBM i report automation software (paperless reporting), they only think of converting and emailing spooled file reports to users. While this is a valuable feature, it’s not the only benefit a paperless reporting solution provides.
If you already own a report automation solution like SpoolFlex or you’re thinking of purchasing a solution, here are four other ways (besides emailing reports) where you ...
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As of IBM i 6.1, IBM now provides native PDF creation capabilities inside the operating system with the licensed Transform Services product (5770TS1 for i 7.x, and 5761TS1 for i 6.1).
While this is a welcome enhancement, it’s important to understand what Transform Services can and can’t do as part of an IBM i report automation environment (paperless reporting).
Here’s a brief overview on ...
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
If you need a programmer to set up and use a commercial software package, you’re implementing an outdated software model.
This is particularly true when buying an IBM i paperless processing solution (report automation & document management) to use in a banking environment.
Banks are notorious ...
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Manually converting an IBM i report into an Excel spreadsheet is messy. The process is time consuming, a waste of technical & financial resources and can produce unreliable data.
In my opinion, it’s reckless and financially dangerous to manually convert existing IBM i reports into Excel XLSX files for analysis, especially when there are good third-party report automation
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The four keys for success in IBM i database queries and report writing software can be summed up in the simple acronym ASEF, which stands for:
Analysis
Selection
Extraction
Formatting
All IBM i queries and reports start and end with these four steps. Here’s ...
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