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| Other Visual Intercept Products: | Visual Intercept Web | Visual Intercept SDK |
| Visual Intercept Relay |
| Visual Intercept Enterprise Edition: | Customizable fields | Customizable notification |
| VBA enablement | Status promotion model | |
| New Explorer interface |
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Visual Intercept organizes information on incidents, contacts, and accounts into a project hierarchy, letting the arrangement of your information mirror that of your organization or the structure of your software projects. Visual Intercept makes it easy to instantly set up project hierarchies that are appropriate for your own development effort. The Visual Intercept Wizard lets you install and edit project templates, using models of typical applications. One can also use the Wizard to import a project hierarchy from Visual SourceSafeTM, so that SourceSafe users can instantly begin bug-tracking with the same familiar project structure they’ve been using for version control.
A friendly, intuitive interface is critical for a bug-tracking system, since lots of different users in different positions will be using it. We gave Visual Intercept a clean, sleek Win95TM interface that looks and behaves exactly like other Microsoft programs. Users of Microsoft development tools will feel right at home in Visual Intercept, minimizing or eliminating the time and cost involved in training.
Incident information is most useful when users can see exactly as much information as they need, and no more. Many bug-trackers make the mistake of dumping too much information on the user at once, making the data retrieval engine do needless extra work while confusing the user.
We designed the Visual Intercept GUI to show only as much information as the user needs. Using tab dialogs, Visual Intercept gives a convenient "map" of all the incident data, so users can quickly find the data they need without burdening them (or the system) with data they don't need. By optimizing the process of data retrieval, Visual Intercept can support hundreds of users without slowing down.
Unlike most other bug-trackers, Visual Intercept uses a Multiple Document Interface (MDI), so it lets you keep more than one document open at a time. This is especially useful for doing side-by-side comparisons of bug reports, to determine whether certain reports are duplicates.
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Bug-tracking and source code control are two indispensable aspects of managing a large software development project. The two systems handle the two halves of change management. Source code control lets developers bang away at their code without getting in each others' way; bug-tracking makes it easy for them to know what to bang on. The two processes are so closely interrelated that it is inconceivable to not have the two systems integrate tightly with each other. We designed Visual Intercept to be the perfect compliment for Visual SourceSafe.
Visual Intercept's integration with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe is radically superior to any other bug-tracker's. Other bug-tracking products will only allow the user to attach a code module to a bug-report, but nothing more - the user still has to use VSS interface to actually work with the code. Visual Intercept gives the user complete access to the Visual SourceSafe database from within Visual Intercept - modules can be checked out, attached to incidents, updated, and comments inserted, all without leaving the Visual Intercept program. In addition, the Visual Intercept Wizard lets you import your Visual SourceSafe project structure straight into Visual Intercept, so you can immediately start doing bug-tracking with the same project structure your developers are already using.
Visual Intercept Studio is a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio development tools. Visual Intercept Studio lets developers work with Visual Intercept right in their development environment
Visual Intercept Studio can be used with all Visual Studio development tools that support plug-ins, including:
At the press of a button . . .
Visual Intercept Studio provides a floating toolbar in Visual Studio, which provides basic incident management functionality.
With Visual Intercept Studio, you can:
Visual Intercept is a true Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) application. Visual Intercept can store and manage its incident data in any database management system that has an ODBC driver. Using an open database structure makes Visual Intercept both scaleable and flexible. Smaller groups can use an MS AccessTM database, and scale up to more powerful SQL ServerTM or OracleTM database later on. An open database gives you the flexibility to use whatever DBMS you are already using, and allows you complete access to the data for reporting or analysis.
Currently, Visual Intercept supports MS Access, SQL Server, Oracle, SybaseTM and Visual FoxProTM databases. The product ships with an MS Access database and drivers for Access and SQL Server.
Visual Intercept is designed to cope with enterprise-sized development groups. The program’s Engine is written in C++, so it’s fast and efficient. Visual Intercept only fetches exactly the information you need, when you need it, so the absolute minimum load is placed on your system. Because Visual Intercept is ODBC, you can get exactly as much database power as you need, to support dozens or hundreds of users.
To give Visual Intercept users the most power and flexibility in their report-writing, we turned to the best-selling report writing software on the market: Crystal ReportsTM.
Visual Intercept uses Report Engine from Crystal Reports to generate graphs and other reports for Visual Intercept data. Visual Intercept provides a number of "canned" report formats so users can immediately print out useful information on their incident data. If users need more customized reports, they can use the Crystal Reports application (or any other report-writing software) to create exactly the output they need.
Visual Intercept can be customized to meet your company’s particular development procedures. The incident Parameters (Priority, Severity, Status, and Category) can be fully edited - adding, subtracting, or renaming parameters is easy, so you can use the terms with which your developers are already familiar. Users can create Filters that automatically pull up only the particular information they need when the program is launched. Filters and other user-defined database queries make it easy for each user to customize his Visual Intercept to meet his particular needs.
Visual Intercept assigns user privileges at the object level. For a given project, a user has insert, refresh, update, and delete privileges assigned separately for Contacts, Incidents, Accounts, and Projects. A given set of privileges is labeled by a Group name, letting you reuse security settings for an entire group of employees (such as developers, tech support ,etc.) This makes setting security fairly intuitive—"I want to give Manager privileges to Joe for the GUI Project" translates into just a few mouse clicks. UNIX fans will notice that this security scheme is almost exactly like UNIX’s.
Visual Intercept keeps users informed of incidents that concern them via an internal Notification Server. The Notification Server automatically informs users when they have been assigned to handle an incident, and also notifies users when changes occur in incidents they initiated.
Users can choose whether to receive a pop-up message, or to be “beeped” when notifications arrive for them to look at.
Visual Intercept’s Notification Server has strong advantages over other bug-trackers’ notification schemes, which usually work only through email systems. Because the notifications arrive within Visual Intercept, users can easily pull up incidents of which they’ve been notified with a single mouse-click.
Visual Intercept is integrated with MAPI-based (MS Mail, Exchange) and VIM-based (cc:MailTM) email systems. This allows users to send Visual Intercept documents directly through your own email system, without leaving the Visual Intercept program. Email integration is especially useful for keeping non-Visual Intercept users informed of developments.
Most users of Visual Intercept will not be concerned with the bulk of incident data in the database—they just want to look at the bug reports that directly concern their job.
The Visual Intercept Query Builder lets you design and execute custom queries to retrieve precisely the Visual Intercept documents you need.
The Query Builder lets you build complex queries using with a simple point-and-click interface so that sophisticated SQL queries are accessible to those who are not familiar with SQL syntax.
Using Filters, custom-built queries can be run automatically on start-up, so a user is immediately presented with the incident data they need when they launch the program.
Additional Options:
A big problem with bug tracking is that you must often gather information from lots of people who are spread out all across the country or the world. If a company makes a billing system that is used by thousands of employees in hundreds of offices, then the programmers who design the system have to receive feedback from thousands of different people.
Web-enablement for Visual Intercept makes it much easier for the end-users and the developers to communicate about bug-reports. Elsinore has developed Visual Intercept Web which is a web-enabled extension to Visual Intercept that lets remote end-users or beta-testers submit bug-reports straight to the central Visual Intercept database via the Internet. The end-user fills out a form describing the bug, and the report is sent straight to the Visual Intercept database. End-users are also be able to request updates on their bug-reports, so they will instantly know when the developers are responding to their bug-report.
Visual Intercept Software Developer’s Kit
The Visual Intercept Software Developer's Kit (SDK) is a programmer's resource for building your own custom bug-tracking solutions with the Visual Intercept incident management system. The SDK provides an OLE Automation interface to all the basic functionality of Visual Intercept, so you can make your own bug-tracking programs in Visual Basic, C++, MFC, or any other environment that supports OLE.
In addition to providing ActiveX components and thorough documentation, the SDK also includes several sample applications that demonstrate the tremendous possibilities:
Visual Intercept Relay is a new client interface to the Visual Intercept Incident Management System. Relay lets your end users, beta testers, and other non-developers easily submit incidents into the system and they can be automatically notified when their issues are addressed. It is an affordable way to give everybody in your organization access to Visual Intercept information.The creation of an incident is performed through a Wizard interface so the user is stepped through the process with little room for error.
New in the Enterprise Version of Visual Intercept:
Get all the power of Visual Intercept, plus more features designed for advanced software development:
Visual Intercept already tracks most of the information you need to do effective bug-tracking. However, each company may have factors unique to their particular development projects that require extra fields in the database.
Visual Intercept Enterprise will provide 9 customizable fields (of 4 data types) perobject: 9 for projects, 9 for Incidents, 9 Contacts, 9 for Accounts and 9 more for the new Hardware document so that the Visual Intercept administrator can configure Intercept to track whatever information your organization requires.
This approach to customization gives you both the flexibility you need for your particular process without allowing you to configure yourself out of a working system or an easy upgrade path.
Fully-Customizable Notification
The next release of Visual Intercept will feature full parameterized notification, allowing users to be notified of changes according to complex queries set up by the system administrator or the users themselves. Your company can customize its notification scheme to let exactly who you want to know exactly what they need to know, exactly when they need to know it.
The next release of Visual Intercept will also be VBA-enabled. Now you will have unprecedented flexibility and freedom to create new interfaces and added functionality, all with the most widely recognized and stable standard, Visual Basic for Applications.
With the Status Promotion Model (SPM), you can define on a project-by-project and group-by-group basis exactly how the life-cycle of an incident report can evolve. With the SPM, you’ll never have to worry again about someone accidentally moving a “New” Incident to “Closed” or someone advancing the state of an incident prematurely or without authority. You have complete control.
In addition to the regular Browser view of bug data, the Enterprise edition sports a new Explorer-like interface. Like many common email programs, this interface simultaneously shows organizational hierarchies, lists of items, and detailed information in three separate panels. This familiar interface speeds data browsing with a minimum of mouse clicks.
For more information on Visual Intercept, contact:
Elsinore Technologies Inc.
1-866-866-0034 (PHONE)
1-919-532-0023 (FAX)
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