PD-Trak™ Technical Environment and Considerations

Operating System Requirements

PD-Trak™ can run under Windows 2000®, Windows XP® and Windows Vista®.

Application Requirements

PD-Trak™ consists of a Visual Basic application built on top of MS Office® files (Excel®, Word®, PowerPoint®, Project®) to form an integrated NPD project and portfolio management solution. PD-Trak™ is compatible with Office XP® (2002) and Office 2003. An Office 2007® version of PD-Trak™ is also available.

PD-Trak™ is intended to operate using a file server environment so that team members can access PD-Trak™ functions using by any computer on the client's network that has a compatible version of MS Office®.

Security and Access

PD-Trak™ provides twenty levels of access to define the functions that each level or group has access to use. For example, project team members can be given one level of access that limits them to accessing documents and tools in product development project files. Product development project managers can be given a higher level of access that allows them to access the planning functions for projects within PD-Trak. An IT project manager can be given access to only IT development project files. Executive management can be given access to project files as well as reporting functions, portfolio management functions and resource planning functions. These levels of access are password controlled and project data and documents cannot be accessed except via PD-Trak and this password control. Standard MS Office® security features can also be used to setup folder privelages to control access to individual projects.

PD-Trak™ consists of separate files for all the document templates and several separate files for the various project/process management tools for each project team. This will minimize potential contention problems. In addition, with the standard Excel® protection function, Excel® indicates that another user is accessing the Excel® file and provides a read-only copy to a second user trying to access the file.

Server Options

PD-Trak can be setup in one of two modes. If users will access PD-Trak via a local area network (LAN), it can be setup on a file server. In this mode, PD-Trak files are downloaded to the users machine and opened locally on that machine. This normally will give the fastest mode of operation and will allow for the easiest setup of PD-Trak.

If PD-Trak is going to be accessed remotely via a wide area network (WAN), there are often bandwidth issues that will slow down the user operation of the application to an unacceptable level. In this situation, we recommend setting up PD-Trak on a Terminal Server. When a user runs an application on Terminal Server, the application execution takes place on the server, and only keyboard, mouse and display information is transmitted over the network. Each user sees only his or her individual session, which is managed transparently by the server operating system, and is independent of any other client session. As a result, Terminal Server considerably reduces the amount of network bandwidth required to access data remotely. Using Terminal Server to run an application such as PD-Trak over bandwidth-constrained connections, such as WAN links, is very effective for remotely accessing and manipulating large amounts of data because only a screen view of the data is transmitted, rather than the data itself.

With Windows Terminal Server or other terminal servers such as Citrix, each user’s machine or client is setup with Windows Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) or similar terminal software. To use RDC, simply type the name of the remote computer that PD-Trak is installed on and select Connect, as shown in the figure below. With RDC by default, a remote session is full-screen and high-color. The Connection Bar at the top of a full-screen RDC session enables one to move easily between the remote session and the local desktop.

For further information, please contact us at: info@pd-trak.com or at 925-484-8436.

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