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As a new year begins it’s time to review developments to Visual Intercept in the past year. Our releases in 2003 added 30 new features to the Visual Intercept system in addition to routine updates and fixes. In addition to seeing how far the product has come in the last year, this review will introduce you to some features you have might have missed.
The most significant release of 2003 was Visual Intercept 3.5. Although this release had the feature set of a major new version of the product, we offered it free of charge to our customers current on their support and maintenance contracts. Because of the major feature additions and database schema changes, we designated the release as 3.5.
The first and most significant feature of Visual Intercept 3.5 was web based integration to Visual SourceSafe. The integration allows software developers working over the web to document source code changes to individual file versions for each incident as well as perform basic source code control operations over the internet. However, 3.5 had several other features our users found to be equally useful. Mass-update capability for Visual Intercept Web, spell checking, automatic logon, and the addition of over 96 new custom fields were some of the more popular features. The following table describes the major enhancements included in 3.5.
Elsinore Releases in 2003:
Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.5
| Parameter |
Value |
Description |
| Visual SourceSafe Integration for Visual Intercept Web |
Visual Intercept Web |
Associate source file versions with incidents and check-in and check-out source files from Visual Source Safe over the internet |
| Mass-update capability for Visual Intercept Web |
Visual Intercept Web |
Modify multiple documents in one action |
| Spell checking |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Check the spelling of your text entries into Visual Intercept |
| Automatic logon |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Logon to Visual Intercept without a logon prompt |
| Additional custom fields and new custom data types |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Utilize more custom fields as well as new UserID and Boolean custom fields |
| New standard fields for: found and fixed build numbers, version dates, start work date, stop work date, and attached document comments |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Track product build numbers associated with incidents, dates associated with product versions, and comments associated with related documents |
| Recurse option for the Explorer view |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Have the Explorer view display incidents related to all sub-projects of a selected project |
| Clone users and groups |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Easily create similar users and groups without having to re-enter settings and permissions. |
| Support for $PROMPT queries in Visual Intercept Web |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Create queries that prompt you for the search value |
| Reverse sorting on columns in Visual Intercept Web |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Sort a list ascending or descending by clicking on the column header |
| New Document Icons |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Easily create new incidents and other documents from the toolbar |
| Precedence value for setting parameter sort orders |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Override the ASCII sort order to define custom sort orders for parameters such as Priority |
| Electronic signature support |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Require users to enter their password to verify their identity when updating or inserting records |
| Integration to Rational ClearCase |
Visual Intercept Enterprise |
Associate ClearCase versioned objects with incidents and check them in and out from within Visual Intercept |
| Toolbar button for navigating from a document back to a document view |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Easily navigate from an incident or other document back to a list or Explorer view |
| Notification and prompt to reset session timeout before expiration |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Allows users to reset the timeout before their session terminates |
| Option to auto update when leaving a page |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Allows users to have their work saved to the database without clicking the Update button |
| Support for [Incident Search] and [Incident Bookmarks] queries in reports page and related document views |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Allows searches and bookmarks to be used wherever the query list is displayed |
| Visual Intercept Web Relay users can set priority, category, and severity when an incident is created |
Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Allows Relay users to define more information about the incidents they submit |
| New user notification |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Allows the administrator to have new users automatically notified when they are added to Visual Intercept |
Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.5.1
Version 3.5.1 was a minor service release that was introduced to keep Visual Intercept up to date with security changes made to Microsoft Internet Information Server. However, we were also able to add a couple of new features to Visual Intercept Web:
| Parameter |
Value |
Description |
| Mass-update for Work Start, Work Finish, Version and Release Version Fields |
Visual Intercept Web |
Update the Work Start and Work Finish dates and versions for multiple incidents in a single action |
| Templates for large text fields |
Visual Intercept Web |
Create custom templates that pre-format text fields when a new item is created |
Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.5.2
Version 3.5.2 was an optional service release designed to introduce some pending feature requests outside the cycle for the next major release. Template based cloning for incidents and other items was by far the most useful for the majority of our customers. Cloning allows multiple instances of similar issues to be easily generated and tracked as a group of related incidents. Multi-site support for individual web directories allowed larger organizations that run multiple instances of Visual Intercept Web to more easily maintain and update their sites from a single code base.
| Parameter |
Value |
Description |
| E-mail templates by status |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Have different e-mail notification content based on incident status |
| Multi-site support per web directory |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Run multiple sites with different options from one physical web directory |
| Template based cloning |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Desktop |
Replicate and relate incidents together for tracking multiple instances of the same incident |
| Date display options |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Control the format of date display as a user preference |
| Ability to limit Request ID based on project privileges |
Visual Intercept Web |
Control who can be set as the RequestID based on those users who have privileges to those incidents |
| Auto logon is configurable as a per-site option |
Visual Intercept Web, Visual Intercept Web Relay |
Control which sites allow for autologon |
Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.5.3
The last release of 2003 was also an optional service release that included the following two features and a few minor fixes and updates.
| Parameter |
Value |
Description |
| Select all capability for mass updates |
Visual Intercept Web |
Easily mass update all of the records returned by a query |
| Ability to address SMTP server by DNS name |
Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite |
Easily specify an SMTP server for the Visual Intercept notification service that may not have a static I.P. address |
2003 not only included a significant number of enhancements to Visual Intercept – all of the enhancements and updates were available free of charge to supported customers. If you have any questions about the features or releases described above, contact Elsinore’s Product Manager, John Lockhart, at .
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