Surendra Sharma

Surendra Sharma

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Sunday, March 13, 2016

The mobile mind shift

Here is an analysis of session “The mobile mind shift” presented by Ted Schadler who is VP , Principal Analysts and Coauthor of The mobile mind shift. 

·         Most important point of this presentation is - Only content in context can deliver great mobile moments
·         The face of the world is changed by mobile. More particularly it was changed by – iPhone. Where developers like you and me developed Apps.
Mobile device is tiny, touch based, it’s always in your pocket, connected to internet and its knows your location.
By using these characteristics of mobile how a company can serve their customer better?
·         Main Agenda of this presentations is focus on
o    What is mobile mind shift?
o    What’s the critical role of context in mobile moments?
o    How can you find mobile moments and their context?
o    What technology will you need?

What is mobile mind shift?

·         Smartphone reached to almost everybody. According to Forrector Research World mobile and smartphone adoption forecast, up to 2016(First quarter), there are more than 230 million unique smartphone subscribers. The number is increasing day by day.
·         People using their mobile and tablets in home, office, even in their bedroom and bathroom. So mobile devices means a mobile life.
·         The demand for mobile apps and websites is generations based. What it means? A different age group people want companies must have a website which they can visit. Similarly they expect companies to have a mobile apps as well. These people want their experience to change based on their need and location which play an important role to provide better experience.
·         In general people browsing websites on an average for 3 minutes where a websites have lots of stuff, images etc. Out of these 3 minutes, some seconds are required to load the page. On mobile, information takes some milliseconds to load and on an average people focus on that information page for 30 seconds. While on smart watches, people look for on an average 3 seconds as it provide more precious information.
This all experience called mobile mind shift – The expectation that I can get what I want in my immediate context and moments of need.
·         What kind of experience changing here for customer. A customer expect 3 things - immediacy, simplicity and context. Overall a consumer wants convenience.
·         Immediacy + Simplicity + Context = Convenience
·         How a convenience can be achieved? For this innovators target mobile moments
o    A mobile moment is a point in time and space when someone pulls out a mobile device to get something they want in their immediate context. For example searching for nearby hotel, restaurant etc.
·         Mobile moments are pervasive i.e. they are applicable for all the customers whether they are at home, business, travel etc. At the same time these moments are powerful ways to focus on customer requirement. For example think about journey map in the context of mobile moment.
o    You are booking your flight tickets before few days of your journey.
o    Before few hours, you are check-in, access lounge, find a gate etc
o    In flight, you are ordering food, order movies, check ETA etc.
o    Once you reached at destination, you have to book a taxi etc.
o    After few days, you filled a customer service survey etc.
          In all these moments, applications have to handle three things
o    Who are we serving?
o    What is their context?
o    What is the motivation?

What’s the critical role of context in mobile moments?

·         In general there 1.5 million apps on mobile but there are 1000 million websites are web. So there is a large gap for websites where we don’t have equivalent apps.
·         On an average people don’t want more than 26 apps in their mobile however on an average they visit 52 websites monthly.
Responsive websites don’t deliver much information on mobile. These small mobile websites does not deliver great mobile moments.
So Personalization and contextual specific content delivery is the key here to serve your customer in better way and to improve mobile user experience.
·         We can achieve this by what customer want and what we deliver through contextual experiences.
·         What is context here?
o    The sum total of everything we know about customer based on her behavior, history, the environment and what she shared.
·         Context in action
o    Personalize web and mobile experiences
o    Target mobile moments based on locations
o    Send notifications based on time or location
o    Build profiles on the fly for segmentation
o    Even connected cars can embrace context

How can you find mobile moments and their context?
·         Use the IDEA cycle for agility. This cycle helps to build platform for agility
o    Identify the mobile moments and context
§  Who is seeking help
§  What kind of device
§  What is het context
§  What can you do to server her in that moment

§  Technics for finding moments
·         Survey research
·         Ethnographic research
·         Journey mapping
·         Ride-along investigations
·         Instrument to measure engagement
o    Define the mobile engagement – their tasks and your goals
§  Based on value to your business Vs value to your customer
o    Engineer your processes, platform and products for mobile moments
§  Are your technology platform ready to support mobile engagement?
§  Are your business processes designed for mobile moments?
§  Are your people recognized understand and iteratively deploy mobile services?
o    Analyze to optimize outcomes and improve the customer experience
§  Check real-time, operational, historical metrics for technology, engagement and business.

What technology will you need?
·         The need for content in context drives the biggest tech investment. We have to concentrate here on WCM, analytics majorly.
A digital experience platform need to develop to provide content according to context.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

How to do database documentation freely



I am working on project where client asked for the documentation.

Developers hate documentation, especially when they have to create it :)

It’s fine if the documentation is about project, but what if client asked about database documentation?

My mind started to think, is there any way to create this documentation automatically or with least efforts?

I found three ways which are great to create database documentation.

1.    Database Diagrams

It provides database schema with relationships and tables-columns details in SQL Server itself as shown below


2.    DB>doc
It’s a free command line tool which can be download from https://sqldbdoc.codeplex.com/ .

It provides option to generate output report in HTML, wikiplex or XML format.

Its syntax is sqldbdoc connection fileName [/y] [/f:value] [/debug]

Parameter details are
·         connection -  connection string of database
·         filename - output file name
·         [/y] - overwrite output file
·         [/f:value] - output format: html, wikiplex, xml (autodetected when omitted)
·         [/debug] - debug mode (show detailed error messages)

How to use this tool?
1.    Download sqldbdoc.exe from https://sqldbdoc.codeplex.com/ and keep it in some folder, for example, D:\Share

2.    Type cmd in RUN window which open command prompt 

3.    Change directory to D:\Share and type below command with SQL server connection string and output file name
D:\Share>sqldbdoc.exe "Data Source=.\SqlExpress;user id=sa;password=test@123;DATABASE= Sitecore_WebForms" Report.htm
4.       You should get below output which indicate successful report generation
Altairis DB>doc version 1.0.0.0
Copyright (c) Altairis, 2011 | www.altairis.cz | SqlDbDoc.codeplex.com
Autodetecting output format...
Output format: html
5.    Open “Report.htm” from current directory i.e. D:\Share. You should get below nicely formatted report as

 
  
1.    SQL Server Compact & SQLite Toolbox

You can download and install this free Visual Studio addon SqlCeToolbox.4.5.0.1.vsix from https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0e313dfd-be80-4afb-b5e9-6e74d369f7a1/

How to use it?

·         Open Visual Studio and click on Tools -> SQL Server Compact/SQLite Toolbox menu item as


·         Connect to any SQL server database which need to be documented.
Once connected, you can create database graph of the tables by selecting option “Create SQL Server Database Graph (DGML)” as

 

·         This tool generate DGML file which show all selected tables with their columns and relationships. You can save this screen as image by clicking on Copy Image option as shown in the same screen.

 

·         You can also save the SQL connection database as SQL Server Compact file format which save this database in .sdf file format.
In this format you can do the database documentation in HTML format by selecting below option


You should get below HTML report


This HTML report is same as DB>Doc tool report. Internally this Visual studio add on uses DB>Doc utility.

My suggestion is that combine SQL Designer schema image with this HTML report to create better database documentation.

Also I found that command line utility DB>Doc is more easy to use for developers.

I hope these steps help you to do the boring documentation automatically and save your time.

Please leave your comments or share these technics if it’s useful for you.