I've been mulling over how to automate our Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) process for a while now.  Currently all our CAT is done manually in front of the customer.  It's not agile at all.  However, our systems are built combining tools like InfoPath, Sharepoint, workflow software, Project Server, ...

Just a bit of self promotion here, and I'm looking for some feedback.  I've recently published 2 articles on Crystal Alliance, and was hoping for some feedback on these.  One is called ''Creating a Task Summary Crystal Report from Project Server'' and the other is called ''Creating a Project Velocity Crystal Report using Microsoft ...

I just recently discovered what I believe is a bug in RS 2005 subscriptions.  I'd love to hear if anyone else has encountered this, and what their workaround is.  The problem I've encountered involves 2 date parameter fields, along with at least 2 parameters that are dependent.  When I edit an existing report subscription, ...

Eric Lee posted a great video on how to create KPI's from the Team Foundation Server warehouse.  Apart from being a great tutorial on how to create new measures for TFS for your organization, I've found this to be a quick and dirty tutorial for creating an Analysis Server project in Visual Studio 2005.  I'm sure there are other good ones ...

Since I use a lot of Microsoft enterprise tools, including BI stuff like OLAP and Reporting Services, this link on Dr. Dobbs was interesting to me.  http://ddj.com/dept/database/188702217?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_DataBase discusses PerformancePoint Server 2007.  The next Generation BI stuff from MS is apparently going to move Excel as the ...

For those of you who do not like Report Builder as your end user tool for creating reports using Reporting Services, here's a tool that is supposed to be simpler, RSInteract. Hat Tip to Chris Web's BI Blog on this one.  However, I would dispute with Chris that Report Builder, in his words, ''sucks''.  My experience has been that end ...

Something interesting I found utilizing the BI stuff available in Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.  Another developer and I were asked to create a quick demo version of a report, that sourced data from a list on Sharepoint.  I have already done this using a custom Web Service I created that goes against a sharepoint site ...

Here's a great post on the Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 blog site about why to use OLAP or SQL Server 2005.  I would add one more reason, which is utilizing a front-end most end-users are familiar with, specifically Excel. 

This may be old news, but the other day I discovered that the new Microsoft Business Scorecard now has a cost.  When I originally looked at it in August, it was a free download.  Now I'm finally ready to implement something, and it's now a product.  I guess I had heard about this, but was not expecting it so soon. In my latest ...

I wanted to mention that I've finished my series of articles on using Crystal Reports in Visual Studio 2005.  The article is available on aspalliance.com and through the crystal alliance site.  The design needs a bit of work, but I got to work a bit more with the newer version of Crystal and there are some good things to like about ...