Overall Satisfaction with D-Tools 5 - D-Tools Forum

11-15-2007, 06:41 PM

I am not writing this to smash the D-Tools company, however, I think it is only proper and honest that consumers be aware of the number of problems that exist in this software and the lack of "solutions" for these problems. I do not blame the support group (they have been more than helpful) however, these existing problems have resulted in a number of negative consequences for our business.

1. Inability to delete projects - In an environment that relies on communication, multiple clients, multiple clients with the same name, same types of projects, organization of projects in extremely important. For example, I have three "Martin" clients that have/are all getting their entertainment centers retrofitted. Two of those projects have been completed, the third is still in progress. Let's say someone needs to get the project updated. I am not here. They go into D-Tools and print the wrong project and make changes to an completed/invoiced project. The new changes 1. aren't part of the actual project but the installers don't know that 2. the prices of the products installed have changed since the "archived" project. Now, the invoices don't match and the billing department doesn't know why.

Granted this is hypothetical, we have had issues in the past with projects that have had errors, we had to "re import" the project to get it to work. Now, we want to delete the bad one, and we can't. This is a TRIVIAL function that should be ridiculously standard on any program. What if I am showing the "new guy" how to use the program and he wants a demonstration. I don't want "AV TEST" to be in there forever.

Don't build things or prepare for the optimal situation. ALWAYS build them for the worst case scenario.

2. We have been unable to alter our Reporting Center projects because the license has "expired". Although we have contacted customer support, they have been unable to fix this issue. This means any changes we need to physically make have been impossible.

The consequences here have been disastrous for us. We have clients who do not want their information public knowledge and so I need to go an change this in the Reporting Center (set visibility to false). I can't get into the reporting center to do this. They get a proposal due to schedule constraints (and lack of solution from D-Tools) that has this information on it. This makes us look like 1. We don't listen 2. We are incompetent 3. It's our fault. As with any company, the customer is always right, therefore the above three things are true.

3. The issues we have had in the past were problems that were not "Technical Support" which I think we should not have to pay for. When we spend the money on a program, which to me, seems unfinished (three service packs (almost 4) in a year) why should we have to pay for support for buggy programs? If I make and sell a square (the shape), but you get a circle when your purchased product arrives, why should I charge you to help you figure out why it isn't the square that I supposedly sent? If D-Tools wants to claim it helps businesses, that is what we buy, the help. Since we purchased this program, it seems to me it has only added undue stress because of errors and the inability to get them resolved. Plus we have to pay for "phone" support.

A few other bugs that make life "hell"

4. The Product Data Matrix doesn't sort correctly: When we are looking for products to replace, many times the product will not show up in the search. The report tells me it is /zoned/located to "Unassigned" yet the product is, in fact, assigned to a zone/location such as Audio. When I go and filter for "Unassigned" it returns no result. If I go and search for Audio, the particular unit does not show up. If I right click on that product and click "Assign" --> Location/Zone it will show up as "Unassigned". Hunting for these errors is the most awful waste of time. With projects as big as ours (I don't know about the rest of you) I have spent up to 5 hours trying to figure out why the report is generating incorrectly.

5. Scroll Bar does not size properly: Within Project SI Text, as a project is built, the scroll bar does not change. This means I could have 10000000000 line items, yet the scroll bar is the same size as the window. I can still scroll down, yes, but if I know the information is at the bottom of the list, I have to actually scroll the wheel or press the scroll arrow as opposed to clicking on the scroll bar location I want to "zoom" in faster. This is annoying considering the next complaint, "Adding or Deleting Items Refreshes the Matrix to the Top"

6. Adding or Deleting Items Refreshes the Project SI Text to the top: As I am adding/removing items from the project matrix, each time the screen refreshes to the top. Therefore, if I am working at the bottom of the list, I have to go back and scroll down EVERY TIME. This is extremely annoying since complaint number 5 exists; I have to hunt for the right area.

7. Selecting multiple products to delete is impossible if they aren't sequential:
If I want to remove a number of products from a room, I have to delete them individually. Normally (as in Excel) you can hold down "CTRL" and select the individual cells (in the case of SI 5, the products) as opposed to an entire range/column. Not so with SI 5! Therefore I spend three times the amount of time left click, right click, delete, repeat! Loss of productivity!

8. The Scroll Bar in the SI TEXT does not Actively Scroll:

Within the SI TEXT mode, I cannot actively scroll down the list. This means "left click and hold" on the scroll bar and move the most up and down, I should be able to "scan" the page quickly. Try it in Internet Explorer, I'll wait...

See? Now try it in SI TEXT....no dice. This is a huge pain when I am looking actively for products that I should be able to quickly find!

9. Bugs Checking In and Out Projects:
The largest problem we had initially was networking our copies of SI 5 together. We could not get the LANSync to work correctly which resulted in us having to work on three separate stations as opposed to one network. The change was as simply as allowing rights to ALL USERS (and I mean everyone, not just the people who need it) which is good and bad. Good, we figured it out. Bad, we don't want Everyone to have rights to D-Tools. Once we figured this out, however, the Projects in the list (now shared and accessible) now appear permanently checked out by the user trying to open it. So if User 1 is trying to open the "Jones" project, it gives us an error "Error: Project is already check out by [user 1] (me)." If I go up and try to check it out on [user 2] the same error, except it says "Error: Project is already checked out by [user 2] (not me). The only solution is to "reimport" the project, adjust the name (you can't overwrite or else we get a stop error and SI 5 closes) and save. Because we can't delete the "bad" one, we have 2 copies of the same project. SUCKS!

10. Cannot export directly to Excel.
Although there is an option for an excel file type (*.CSV), we want to export to Excel standard file types (*.XLS). This seems simple enough to add a different file type option.

The last thing is a request.

Is it possible to be able to double-click an item in MMPD and get it to the edit screen? Or at least be able to add/delete an item from the SI Text Project folder so we can add things on the fly?

I think just the first problem should be enough to withhold product release, but 10 issues personally is ridiculous...all of which have no answer in sight. You have to understand that this is my job and if I can't perform the job correctly, either I go or D-Tools goes.

To people interested in buying the product, be extremely cautious. I personally would have waited longer or searched for options if I had known about these problems before purchase.

michux1 · 11-15-2007, 07:14 PM

AMEN TO THAT! Worst part about this is that you only skimmed the surface of the problems that exist in this version. I really want this software to be the timesaver that it claims to be, but I've actually lost work due to the fact that building a proposal takes me twice (sometimes three times) as long as it did with version 4.6. What is also frustruating is the "We are Working on that" or "it is on our list" answer we seem to get regarding important fixes and features. I have exhausted tons of energy listing my complaints on this message board and will not go into a long rant again, but this is ridiculous. D-Tools had ample time between 4.6 and 5.0 to get this right and there should be no excuse for these delays and bugs. Don't try to blame Vista either. There was no need to come out of the gates Vista compatible.

Reed Phillips · 11-15-2007, 08:34 PM

I understand your frustration, but no tool will ever provide a 100% match to your existing business processes. The good news is that D-Tools has a client centric focus and enough bandwidth in the development team to continue to deliver more flexible solutions for the low voltage market. I was privileged to have had the opportunity to see the process work from the inside. I am sure SI will continue to evolve according to the stated needs of the users.

As for SI5, yes it had a rocky start, but the current product seems to be very stable. I can’t speak to your specific issues, but for the sake of those reading I would provide the following thoughts:
1) I too would like to delete projects, but I found that Archiving works almost as well. At a minimum it allowed me to not have to look at “AV Test” as you mentioned in your post.
2) Active Reports is a great addition to SI5. Without having to purchase another software product (Crystal etc), one is able to dramatically modify reports. Detailed technical documentation has been a little slow getting out, but Randy and Rick C have responded to almost every post on the forum, many times providing specific solutions to user requests. I’m sure that documentation on controlling report look and behavior via parameters is on the way, if not already available. Yes it will require learning AR, but that is a small price to pay to customize your reports to specifically meet your business requirements. As a work around you can create two reports, one with Client info, the other without. Given the documentation that currently exists in the reporting section of the forum, that change should not take more than 30min.
3) While it may not be ideal, D-Tools has provided multiple ways to report issues and receive solutions and work arounds. The development and services teams monitor the forums. Most posts are responded to in less than a day.
4) For very large projects I would suggest that you use Filters in the Product Data Matrix to allow you to focus on one part of the project at a time (Zone, Location, etc). This will help manage the scroll problem until it can be resolved. Also making Zone/Location assignments as items are added to the project will help cut down on the number of Unassigned items. I’m sure the dev team would like to take a look at the project that is experiencing the “Unassigned” issue. So far I have not had that particular problem.
5) Again, making good use of Filters will help get around the Scroll Bar issue, particularly for large projects.
6) Similar to 4 & 5. May not be ideal… but personally I get confused when looking at several hundred rows of data without the use of filters.
7) You can use “CTRL” to select and delete multiple products. However, you may not be able to delete products that have accessories. I would imagine this would be on the dev team to-do list.
8) Yep that would nice…
9) I cannot speak to these issues, it seems to work for me.
10) CSV creates a very portable file format. The extra Save As step to create the xls seems like a small price to pay. Also, all projects are stored as XML and are directly readable in Excel. I’m not sure what you plan to do with the xls data, but you may wish to search the User Guide for “xml”.

There are lots of things I would like to see improved with SI5. The good news is that many of them are being considered. The reason there has been three releases so far is because the development team has dramatically changed its approach to product improvement. Instead of piling a lot of features and fixes into a single release, they are addressing the most important and critical issues in a much shorter time window. Personally, I prefer this approach. Issues, like some of the ones you mention above, have a much greater chance of being addressed if there is enough consensus in the user community.

SI5 is not perfect, but it is a good tool that is getting better. I’m sure the support and development team will do what they can to help you with your issues.

michux1 · 11-15-2007, 10:10 PM

Quote:

9) I cannot speak to these issues, it seems to work for me.

Reed,

I'm curious...do you actually use D-Tools actively on a day-to-day basis to manage the processes in your company, or do you mostly build "Sample Projects" for Demo to potential customers and occasionally "play" with the software. The reason I am asking is because I get the feeling that D-Tools may not have a full grasp on the importance of this software to some of us. Not to say that they don't care, but I don't think that your QA department is really using this like we do. Sample projects is one thing, running a business is another.

Quote:

no tool will ever provide a 100% match to your existing business processes

Nobody expects D-tools to be a perfect match to all of our business processes. We just expect it to be stable. Perfect example....I cannot check any of my projects in right now. I suspect that if I reboot my computer, that function may return. Currently I get an error that says I do not have enough resources to complete that request. I have also lost the ability to communicate with my server (even through windows explorer) If I close down D-Tools, everything starts to work properly again and my file shares return.

Quote:

I was privileged to have had the opportunity to see the process work from the inside.

Did you work for another company that used D-Tools for building projects or did you just visit a company that was using D-tools? I think you guys really need to spend some good quality time with a company that uses D-Tools on a daily basis to understand the challenges it causes us. I see that project alpo is close to doing that, but the real important thing is that you do not interfere with that visit. By that I mean......you cannot offer tech support on site. You need to see the process as it is in reality. If someone encounters a bug or error, you cannot help. You need to see the process as a fly on the wall to understand the challenges and how difficult it can be on a real company.

The problems we are having out here are very real. Just because the D-Tools staff has a stable copy running in their environment does not mean that it is stable for everyone. I definately complain a lot on these boards about this version, but it is mostly because I really really care. I have a lot of time and money invested into this software and cannot afford for it not to work. I promise you...I will speak praises when the software deserves it, but for now it just gets a lot of sad smileys...

I tend to agree with priblejr. If you are planning on buying this as it is now, I would wait until a more stable release. Either that or start with version 4.6 and wait to upgrade it.

11-15-2007, 10:24 PM

Reed,

Thank you for posting your lengthy response and even more so for choosing to take the high road and not deleting this post. I believe that shows a huge dedication to customer service and desire to show a company's true color.

I don't disagree with you on the possibilities of SI 5. I think the program has great potential if one can learn to harness it (without the slow down of certain issues). Regarding the filtering problem, the issue is the filter itself. I believe there are errors within D-Tools keeping the filter from working correctly.

As I mentioned before, there are products/packages that are assigned visibly (meaning they say they are assigned to zones/locations in SI TEXT) but when the report is generated in active reports, it shows up as "Unassigned". I have to then go and search for the product/package that is "Unassigned" in the generated report. You have to understand if there are 100 wall plates and 2 are showing up unassigned in the report but are all assigned in SI Text, I have to open up EACH instance of the wall plate to find out which one isn't actually assigned. This is the only way to find out (to do this I have to right click on the product, go to Assign--> Location/Zone and look at each one individually. Although it says it is assigned within SI Text, in the Assign Location/Zone function the offender will actually be "Unassigned". The filter, however, doesn't read that offense. It looks at the SI Text and sorts from there, so the filter, in this case, doesn't work. If it did, I wouldn't be complaining

I know it is a confusing example, but one that none the less adds (and I am being extremely serious/honest in this) hours of search time that shouldn't happen at all. If the plan is to make things speedier, I can promise you it isn't. Mostly it is frustrating.

Like I mentioned before, I am definitely not criticizing your company. I am dissatisfied with the number of issues that have thus far complicated our business process. These seem like trivial issues that shouldn't be problematic but it does in fact slow down our production.

Lastly, I am well aware that not everyone is having these issues. Although that may be the case, there are people that are having the issues and that I believe is the more important issue. I know I am preaching to the choir, but I always remember that saying that it takes 10 good things to outweigh 1 bad. I have always approached problems from a worst case scenario, so I guess it is a difference in viewpoints regarding the current situations.

The problems I am presently facing are extremely important and do not have solutions. They are impacting our production and quality of work and that I find unacceptable (and the client doesn't care). The issue with the Report Center not opening because it has "expired" and the techs who have approached the problem don't have a solution, I am unable to finish work. That is a fact. I cannot do the work. I had a tech work remotely from his computer and could not solve the problem. Therefore, each day that goes by this is unresolved is a day that a report goes unedited.

That is where the problem resides, and there is nothing I can do about it. I don't have the expiration date changer to attempt a repair on my own and therefore I am just waiting for an answer.

Please take these issues constructively. I am trying to point out issues that are obvious and critical within D-Tools. I would appreciate the same constructive criticism in my work (which I do receive from my bosses from time to time) and I hope you do the same.

Thanks for your lengthy reply.

Respectfully,

Jon Prible

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 11-15-2007, 10:50 PM

we built a database from the ground up for a client using SI5 exclusively.

Thumbs up.

++++++++++++++++++++++

We took that database to build a project in TEXT based on a real project in the middle of production for this client. The project includes all major system types and exceeds $425K MSRP Installed.

Thumbs up.

But I learned somethings about the amount of processing power needed to refresh the datamatrix on a project this size.

I learned that filtering the datamatix to focus one one area or one system helps a great deal.

While editing the project to accomodate changes made by our client's client, we used assign, replace, find and replace, and it worked well, but I began to hit the refresh issues and 'top to bottom' and 'bottom to top' behaviors described in this thread. It does get frustrating for sure and made for a long night.

++++++++++++++++++++++

We created 4 plan views, one for each set of systems and found the drag from the PDM to Visio to be fine to work with. I am very dissapointed in the inconsistency in shapes. Some are nice, some are ok, some are nice but have bad behaviors (icon-keypad in CONTROL SYSTEMS vs icon-keypad in SECURITY...take a look at the differences when you try to scale these down to fit on your plan)

Bottom line, we are going primarily with default shapes based on CATEGORY and PAGE. The naming conventions of the shapes are inconsistent so you are not sure what you will actually get until you try it, and when you find a nice shape for a product, you cannot always find a nice shape for a similar product. In SECURITY there is a shape "icon-door contact" which is an oval with a 'D' in it, its nice, scales well, is named well. I would expect then to find a shape called "icon-window contact" which would be oval and have a 'W' in it, there is not one. So why not just have a shape called "icon-door window contact" and have it be an oval with a 'C' in it? Point is that there are holes in certain places and when you use things which are considered 'STOCK' to customize your shapes and documentation, we consistently hit some inconsistency that discourages us from applying any 'art' to D-Tools and just stick with the 'science'.

Anyway, we made it through the plan views for this project and are very happy with them, they are simple, communicate the wiring requirements, and using layer properties, we added a little color.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Next step is rack elevations and then schematics.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Meanwhile, we are running client reports to see the format we like best and set those parameters. The frustrating thing is that there were a number of reports made available that are nice, but deemed 'custom' by D-Tools. This seems to mean they are not supported. So aggregation issues and other behaviors seem to be found in reports pre-SP3 that are considered 'custom'. I seem to recall SI5 being pitched on the show floors as having 'new report skins'. Nice! They need to all work the same!

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tomorrow, we are taking this vigin project built all in SI5 and putting it into our own system and creating sales orders, then take a shot at pushing it into quickbooks.

Stay Tuned and watch for posts from Heather on her experiences.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

We run a small SI company and push our projects through D-Tools to test all these things. We have not moved to SI5 yet.

Our projects are not large, so we do real simulations with databases and projects built for real clients and their real projects so we can provide real insight to what's the current state of the software.

Reed Phillips · 11-16-2007, 12:13 AM

Guys,

To answer a few questions...

As of Sept 1, I no longer work for D-Tools. I was just relating my personal experience. I was a heavy 3.x - 4.x user in a commercial AV firm with 8-10 licenses prior to working for D-Tools. I admit that I did not use SI5 except for small sample projects that were required to build the documentation. I do not want to discount your experiences or in any way make it sound like you are not having real issues.

My main point was that I know this team and their desire to get it right. They are listening and heavily involved with client issues. They have changed their development and release process to improve responsiveness. Hopefully they will figure out your issues sooner than later.

-reed

michux1 · 11-16-2007, 12:29 AM

Reed,

I hope you didn't think I was beating you up. I actually just am trying to get a perspective as to how you are using the software.

I thought something was weird when your name changed to a Senior Member. That would explain a lot. Hopefully you stick around here for a bit. You are always helpful on these forums.

I realize that D-Tools is out for our best interest and I respect the challenges they are facing right now. Believe it or not, I still think that this software as a complete package is better than anything else we tried to use. (mostly). I think I am just frustruated with the amount of time I have to spend with it. I feel like it somehow became cumbersome.

Either way, good luck with whatever it is you are doing now and we hope to see you continue posting.

11-16-2007, 04:21 PM

I can't agree more with most of the issues mentioned here guys! Hit it right on the head. We moved to SI5 from BidMagicAV - we were under the impression this would be a MAJOR improvement for us, but have actually wished we stayed in BidMagicAV at times... there are a lot of little bugs that this multi thousand dollar program has, that my multi hundred dollar software did not. So that was very upsetting. I can't agree more on a lot of the navigation issues (UI) as well - changing an item and the entire system re-freshes to the top - that's a MAJOR annoyance (as well as if I have a bunch of stuff collapsed, it re-opens them or ub-collapses them).

One thing that DOES bug me though - is if I had 30 of a product - I have to see 30 line items... that's VERY annoying as it takes up a lot of clutter... PLEASE default this to a QTY line item that I can change or similar. I can understand times where I might want 30 of a line item (for example wanting to break an item into multi-zones etc...) - but there are times where I'm just adding 20 to a single zone / room (for example if we do a 7.1 system, there are 15 terminations at each side - thus 30 total - it would be nice to see QTY 30 instead of 30 line items).

It's just the text UI is cumbersome, buggy and unfriendly overall. Even at SP3... it's getting better, but I STILL want my old BidMagicAV UI back... it may not have offered the same features (and I know the benefits moving forward with DTools) - but at this point, I sure wish we would have waited another year.

11-19-2007, 03:43 PM

Aside from these bugs, the real issue I have with this is that this program is preached to do certain things (trust me, I saw them at CEDIA and obviously they were gone to another convention when a huge issue happened and no one was available to help) however, they do the exact opposite.

The main point being the "ease" and "increased productivity". These problems aren't issues necessarily with product additions and project creation; rather, navigation, saving, errors, and reliability.

To this day, I still cannot access the Reporting Center because it is "expired" and have not been contacted by D-Tools regarding this issue. Gee, I think if I paid for the program it should work, don't you think?

This issue alone is speeding our productivity up immensely! (yes, I am being sarcastic). Basically, I cannot change/create reports, therefore I am using the defaults from D-Tools because the tech troubleshooting the problem deleted D-Tools as a solution and reinstalled it so I lost my custom reports.

The best thing is that no one in the past (two weeks almost) has contacted me/us regarding our problems. No one has offered a solution. This is an investment and as customers I believe we are entitled to certain rights and promises regarding said investment. Right now, it seems like a waste of money. I can create an excel spreadsheet proposal by proposal as an alternative to D-Tools and sadly, at this point, seems much more reliable, easier, faster, and stable.

Obviously I am upset. I can deal with down time for a day (although I shouldn't have to) but this has been weeks now and nothing has been resolved. I don't know if there is a higher power to complain to, but I am just about ready to find out.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jon