You may have noticed that we have quietly added a item to our Support menu on LegacyLink.  It is called "Get Live Assistance".  The screen is pretty self explanitory, but here is how it works:

Here's how to get live computer help right on your desktop:

1. Tell us what you need. Type your question as specifically as you can, then click the button. If you get a message that no representatives are available, please call or open a support request ticket to schedule a live support session.
2. Get the quick download. The screen-sharing plug-in automatically downloads onto your computer.
3. Meet your Technical Support Rep in real time. Your Technical Support Rep helps you directly on your computer, as if he or she were sitting right next to you.
4. How? The screen-sharing plug-in lets both you and your Technical Support Rep communicate via a Chat window, see your computer screen, share your mouse and keyboard and draw on your screen using the special Whiteboard feature.

This feature will make it ALMOST as good as having a Legacy rep sitting right next to you!  We can problem solve, troubleshoot, help with processes, and generally provide better support - no more screen prints, faxes, etc. trying to share information!

We look forward to seeing you on the Live Chat!

If you are a current customer, then by now you have noticed that we have upgraded our LegacyLink portal to the latest version.  This change not only represented an updated user interface and better graphics, but some other non-so-obvious improvements that I wanted to share:

• The product uses a folder/tree view now for your company and your applications on the Home page as well as a folder/tree view for the "My Files" page as well.  You can expand or compress the tree by clicking on the yellow folder.  You know if it is expandable because it will have a '+' sign beside it, and compressable because it will have a '-' sign beside it.
• You can manipulate many of the menu items using the right mouse click.  Hover over an item and click the right mouse button; depending on the item, you will get a pop up menu of options you can apply to that item. For example, try this on one of your reports under "My Files".  You can print, copy, save, delete, open, etc.
• The User interface has been improved to help you better identify the page you have opened.  Hover your mouse over the top menu and you will see a red box appear around the menu items as you pass over them.  Click a menu item while it is red and you will open that page.
• The User Administration functions, which are available to your local site admin, is greatly improved.  The process to view users, add users, add applications, manage passwords, and manage security is much more intuitive.  Many of the functions now use a 'drag and drop' method, as in the process to add or remove users and applications to groups.
• The "My Account" section of the Link now displays much more data about your account, including the applications and reports that you have access to and what processes are scheduled to run for you or for your company on a regularly scheduled basis.
• The "My Files" page is set to auto archive all reports after 7 generations are produced. This will reduce the amount of clutter left in your home folder.  You can always ask for a report to be restored back to your folder at any time by opening a support ticket.
• Behind the scenes, we have upgraded our ReportRunner to make it easier for us to schedule reports and extracts and automate the delivery of the output, whether it be to your "My Files" page or a secure FTP server or a third party report server tool like Report to Web.

If you have any questions about our new Link, please open a support ticket to schedule an overview.  We are always open to suggestions and comments as well so if you have an idea that would make it even more user-friendly, let us know that as well.

Here at Legacy we have been working hard over the past year to forge strategic partnerships that of course not only help us as a company but that will help our customers as well.  We want to make sure we can offer a variety of services around data extract, storage, archiving, and access as possible.  To that end, we are seeking companies that share our values and our culture.  Of utmost importance is integrity and the focus on doing what's right, not necessarily what is the most profitable.  Our world here at Legacy revolves around the customer.  We are looking to partner with companies that are customer-centric as well.

We are continuing to work on this as a strategy.  We are looking at the companies in the healthcare IT market daily and determining if they meet our requirements.  We have made a few partnerships that, quite frankly, we may not continue because we might not be as aligned with those partners as we thought we were - and that is OK. It is nothing against the partner, or us - it is just a compatibility issue. At the end of the day, no matter how prestigious, or friendly, or BIG our potential partner is, if it is not adding value to the services we provide to our CUSTOMER and is not differentiating us as a company, then it does not need to be part of our strategy.

We are preparing for a large day of demos next week and it brought to mind that many of you may either not have seen what we can do or maybe you have not seen it lately.

Because of our tool set, we can turn ANY production site we host into a demo site.  We have data redactors that allow us to transform any PHI and customer information as it comes out of the database, making any application instantly available for demos.  This is especially helpful because (as hopefully you know) each application we do is custom to the data set it supports.  In this way, we can show you what YOUR application could look like with data that is similar to the system you are looking to archive.

Is your audience clinical? No worries - we have a clinical-specific demo ready made.  We won't be showing a revenue cycle system with some clinical fields "added in".  ERP?  No worries - we have many different ERP systems we host and can show you demos of all of them.

Curious?  Send us and email from our home page and schedule a demo today!

Testing itself can create a lot of issues for your project just in the planning phases.  Once you have decided on an approach, the test scenarios, the participants and the timing, now you have to decide how you are going to log and track problems that come up during the test.  In a prior post, I talked about Project Protocols that dictate communcations activities, issue tracking and the like.  You should have covered Testing in this document, or hopefully your project issue tracking method can be expanded to cover testing issues.

At Legacy, we use our built in support application to track issues. We have links in our portal and in every application that is used to open support tickets without disrupting work flow.  If a user is in the application, they open the form, document and submit the issue or question with the current patient info on the page, and then get back to what they were doing.  This is obviously handy once the application is in production, but we have expanded its use to include the reporting of testing issues as well.

A ticket that comes from an application in test mode automatically gets a special category assigned.  In this way, we can easily publish issues lists related to that test and report progress and status for management.  Not only does it make reporting issues fast and easy, but it allows the customers to get used to our support methodology.  Once a ticket is opened, the user gets a confirmation email and then email updates as the issue moves through our support team.  Upon resolution, the user is notified that they can retest or validate the reported issue or change.  All that is required to then close the issue is a simple email reply to the retest support notification and the issue is automatically updated.

Then, once we are live, we not only have fully trained users on our Support System, but we also have built a nice knowledge base for that particular install that can be referenced by the Customer and by LDA staff.

The beautiful thing about installing Legacy is that you have the REAL work that is being done in the retiring system that can be the test cases.  I am not talking a full parallel here - although that is possible if you have the time. I often recommend pulling together test cases right during the project kick off.  What better way to get situations that need to be role-played and functionally entered into Legacy than real-life?  I encourage the end users to get a folder and put it on their desk and label it "Legacy".  Then as we are doing our build, the users should put copies of source documents or write ups of situations they have come across while working in the old system.

When we do our test build, we get a cut of the entire data base for testing.  This allows us to balance the cutover, run reports that can be compared to production reports, test load times and make accommodations for large databases, etc. The extra advantage this has is that all the patients that get thrown in the folder??? They are in the database.  So the folder becomes your set of instant test cases and scenarios.  No need to go writing complicated scripts with fictional situations.  This allows REAL situations to be put through the system so that users can not only validate that it works but can also modify their internal policies and procedures to handle the special situations that seem to be the main focus of legacy systems towards their retirement date.

For the 2 or 3 of you out there in cyberspace that actually read my blogs, I think you have figured out that I like to give myself a break on Friday's.  I have given myself permission to write about what ever I want on today - it does not have to be related to healthcare or Legacy or healthcare IT.  I actually have tried to enforce a rule that I WONT blog about work topics on Friday's, just to get my brain spinning in a counter-clockwise direction once a week!

As I write today's blog, I have a lot on my mind - mostly work - but also some personal stuff. My 13 year old daughter has been gone with my parents on a 5 week road trip across America in their RV.  My dad and my daughter participate in a sport called Cowboy Action Shooting. It is just what it sounds like - they dress up like cowboys and shoot guns at targets.  They have been doing this for several years - my dad for a while and my daughter for at least 3 - and the goal of this trip is to go to the End of Trail - the World Championship of Cowboy Action Shooting. All in all, I think it is pretty cool that my dad and my daughter have this hobby together.  They are creating memories that will last her a lifetime and a bond that most grandchildren/grandparents don't get to forge.  I was pretty close to my own grandparents and those memories still comfort and calm me today in a way nothing else can.

You can read about their adventures on their blog:  http://georgiaslick.blogspot.com/

You can read about Cowboy Action Shooting and End of Trail (it is happening RIGHT NOW) at:  http://sassnet.com/EoT/

Funny where I get inspiration for blog posts.  A friend posted the following quote on her Facebook today:

Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two
people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get
him to inspire his people.
-Lee Iacocca

I am certainly doing the work of two people.  Or Maybe 4 people.  But I am learning the hard way that I cannot BE two people.  Running multiple projects on both coasts across 3 timezones, all with summer go lives, is proving that to me.  I am wearing myself out!  It is all good news though, as we are adding staff here at Legacy so that the "inspiration" will spread "down the line".  Look for some job postings and some expansion announcements as we end the 2nd quarter and look at our mid-year results. We are working on our internal tool sets and processes so that we don't HAVE to do the work of 2 people. As Warner likes to say - "It's all good!".

P.S. Don't email me about the jobs til they are posted! And they are NOT "High Level Executive Positions". I must get a million emails from head hunters each day with some high-dollar problem solver that is supposedly going to rock my world. I might need one of those eventually, just not right now!

I learned a new word this week:  ORTHOGONAL. It's original meaning has to do with geometry and right angles and such, but I have recently been told that it has been generalized to mean something that is independent relative to something else.  It has meaning in the computer programming world in that it is used to describe programming functions or languages that can be used without consideration as to how it will affect something else.   It can also be said to be orthogonal if it does not require separate operational functions to accomplish different tasks.  In other words, you can perform a single task or function to accomplish different goals or outcomes.  I also understand it to mean that independent functions or activities can be put together in different orders to accomplish different goals with the knowledge that the orthogonal functions will remain intact regardless of how they are put together.

I find this interesting because our product features can thus be described as ORTHOGONAL.  We provide a list of functions that can be performed by a user.  Often, the user may state a list of business goals or tasks that need to be accomplished or outcomes that need to be achieved, and we can use our same list of functions to perform these activities. We may vary the order, or the inputs may drive how the function performs, but the actual steps to use the system to perform the function or accomplish the task are the same.  In this way, we have simplified the user experience with our applications, making it easier to transition off of their retiring system and reduce the learning curve they may experience when working with data in Legacy.  They may have one business goal  that requires them to do Function A, then B, and then C, but another may require them to do C, then A, then B.  In both cases, the functions are performed the same way each time regardless of the order they are done in, but the order may drive a different desired outcome.  Alternatively, two requirements may both need Function A to be performed, but Function A easily serves both purposes by the user varying the inputs.

Almost makes me want to go back to geometry class...

Here is why I actually LOVE testing.  Once you have gotten through the heavy lifting of the test scripts, test cases, stops and starts for permissions issues, closed files, etc., it is really fun to watch people get excited.  They start playing around, clicking on various functions, experimenting, and learning the ins and outs of the new system.   You start to hear words like "How Cool!" and "Look what I found!" and "Did you know we can do this?".

And the dialogue starts.  They start really talking about what is currently going on in the old system - the real business of what they do every day  -  and what functions they really need in the Legacy system. You hear about the one-off situations that they are dealing with and how they are managing them AND they start to problem solve on how they can use Legacy to work them.  They start to think of Legacy as its own, capable system that can (Yes, it can!) actually get the job done.  It builds confidence in them and, frankly, in us as a validation to our build.

The other cool thing is that in the test lab, we have users from all different areas.  They start collaborating on their activity and their procedures and working together to streamline workflows.  You start to really see them operationalizing their use of Legacy.

And that, my friends, is fun...