Introduction

The BbyB Beacon is an electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements of important events like training programmes, Management Review Meetings, etc.

Contact Information
 Any contributions to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to padmabaliga@bbyb.sdc.int or padmabaliga@bbyb.com

From the Management                                                                                         (top)

Dear All,

I would like to apologize to those of you whose reviews have not yet been completed. With me being away in UK most of December, and Padma being on sick leave it was nearly impossible getting through all the reviews in time for the Jan payroll. I would like to assure all of you who have not yet been reviewed, that any pay rises will be paid retrospectively from January.

Regards,
Raghu

Editorial                                                                                                                (top)

History was made in January this year when the Tata Group unveiled the Nano, a small car with big technology for a virtually unmatched price. How did this happen? Although the team back home was aghast, the price was set at Rs. 1 lakh when the Financial Times mistakenly published a headline to the effect that the Tatas are to produce a Rs. 100,000 car (Mr. Ratan Tata had said it would cost about one lakh).

The inspiration from the project came from the pathetic state of transport in India, where public transport is either unavailable, crowded or of poor quality and safe, private transport is expensive. The challenge increased exponentially as it evolved at the design stage from a low-end rural car, somewhat like a 4-wheeled autorickshaw, to one that has no quality stigma attached and millions can buy and drive proudly.

The detractors were many, from the articulate Thomas Friedman to Newsweek to environmentalists everywhere. But the Tatas stood firm and proved again their pioneering quality, vision, and foresight. They are an inspiration to small businesses everywhere for they have shown that small can be beautiful. They prove the adage that tough times don’t last, tough guys do. It’s a tough world out there, but there’s always room for another winner!

Padma

Projects News

StaffBank                                                                                                               (top)

January was yet another busy month for StaffBank since important changes like eRecruitment / eTimesheets, ESR changes, MLE changes and couple of huge developments in CS and Web versions are scheduled for Jan / Feb release.

Both Raghu and I are on site at NHSP at the moment, and we have delivered the eTimesheets to NHSP who have implemented it in the Test environment. The interface has been written in .NET, incorporating new technologies like AJAX. The initial reaction from NHSP has been fantastic. Clients are very impressed with the look and feel of the interface and we have had very positive feedback from clients. eRecruitment has gone through testing and is very close to sign off. ESR team here have started user acceptance testing and so far it's been going well. We hope to make the release of the ESR portal in the next couple of days which would automate the ESR import / export.

There have been quite a lot of changes on the non-NHSP front as well. And some more changes are already in the pipeline scheduled for March release.

Staff Roster made its first sale on the 10th of January, and this is what Paul D has to say - Just to let you all know that we have been informed today that Lambeth PCT have decided to purchase StaffRoster. This is our first actual award!! We do have 2 other Trusts currently piloting Roste, but they have not in fact contractually agreed to go Live with Roster – even though it is highly likely they will!.

Wishing StaffRoster all success, and great times ahead for the StaffBank / StaffRoster team!!.

Usha

MESaLS                                                                                                                  (top)

Mesals team was busy implementing changes for the next bi-annual release scheduled for the end of March. We might go in for an intermediate release with changes implemented for Lyncare Trust and redesigned Requisition wizard. A beta version has been released with these changes for testing by BHP. Meanwhile, Falkirk upgraded to Mesals 4 from version 3 on 14th January. Norwich will be going live on Mesals 4 on the 4th of February. Couple of patches were released during this month to facilitate the inclusion of the operational outputs of these trusts as well as some changes in the current live version.

Naveen

pFACT

During January, four Beta versions i.e 2.02.39, 2.02.40, 2.02.41, 2.02.42 and one patch release 2.02.a were sent to BHP, which fixed some of the bugs reported in earlier versions.

This month the whole team was busy with the beta version releases, as well as converting SAPPS from MS access to SQL server 2005 and .net 2005, which is a new project.

While Lakshaman, Naveen and I were busy in designing the classes, Sephali was busy in creating procedures for SAAPS. Sumathy had taken the responsibility of reports module for this new project. Rejith was busy in testing and closing all the issues.

Finally, on behalf of our team, I heartily welcome Naveen K.R to the pFACT team and wish him all the best.

Phani