A question for repair shop owners: Software

[km6xz]

I am addressing this to shop owners so it might be in the wrong forum section. After 8 years out of the repair field, after giving my large shop to the employees and moving out of the US, I am opening a new small shop here in my adopted St Petersburg home.
In preparing I am writing a new software package to manage the shop. Since being away, I am sure a lot of new applications have been written and some might be in Open Source. What repair shop software are you running or seen that is based on MySQL?
I used to run a limited release program written for a shop back East called EPR, which I think does not exist anymore. It was very good but the source code was compiled so could not be tweaked or fixed. It also ran only on older versions of Windows such as version 3.1.
What is good, and what can be modified that you guys are running?

The one I am working on, which I would love to find something already functional instead, is designed to be cloud based so remote access , such as agent stores or large theaters or concert halls can enter their own work orders and review current and past work orders or balances. I intend the shop to be small but have easy scalability to ramp up if it takes off. I have about 5,000 lines of php code written for it now and some modules are working well but there is a lot to do yet and I really do not have time to devote to a software development project.
Thanks for the suggestions....

[jrfrond]

Stan, Rich's software that he used is no longer available, however, his old partner Mike (on this forum as Ronsonic) still has the shop in Florida and he might have a copy. It was a good program that aimed at making a paperless shop. You and I were probably at the same Demo that he did at one of the Alesis training sessions.

There are some applications available, but my issue with using anything prefab is that nothing is really open-source, and I don't like paying everytime I need to add a field or change a parameter. That is why we've stuck with our Filemaker database that we've been using for the last 15 years. Easy to program, easy to run, lots of aftermarket solutions available.

C'mon Stan, you KNOW you want to roll yer own!

[km6xz]

Hi John. Yes, I used Rich's program for years....the best $1000 investment I made. There were some problems that never got resolved however because the original developer quit and kept the original source code. So all Rich or I had were compiled versions we could not modify. It would not run on 32 bit windows.

I have a lot done on the cloud version of a new system but it is really time consuming to polish. I want a lot of features that will require either home brewing or getting OS and hacking my way. The main issue is remote access for stores to be able to enter work orders directly, print the work order, equipment tag and customer receipt and notify me that the unit is in the queue to pick up from the store. The store can see all outstanding work orders they generated and their history and current status.

As a matter of need, to get tubes it look like I am going to have to become a general importer and distributor, just to be able to have a proper stock. Tonight had a meeting with a graphic artist who is preparing some trial boxes and packaging graphics for a retail package of various tube to be sold by music stores and on-line.
Lack of parts have kept independent shops from opening, the importers will not sell parts(except one of the 2 main importers has promised me access as the only independent shop. They import top brands of pa and broadcast gear along with some musician equipment.....they also have Behringer which sells by the truck load but they, as the the only warranty station, have poor access to parts. They asked me to help that problem. Behringer does not spec the parts to their Chinese production partners, who supply their own lines with parts of their own choosing. That is why there are no stock of original parts. Part of the Singapore's design center's activity is to disassemble units and try to find generally available part numbers for replacement parts. That is one reason few of the replacement parts Behringer Does send out are not exactly the same it is replacing.
Oh well.......

[Bill Moore]

Stan, we are in the auto repair business, and it took me years to embrace the computer as a work tool. I finally bought a program from my snap on dealer (also marketed by mitchell) that really works well. It integrates with my repair program,(service info), and also estimating. I don't want to be without it now. I have an inventory I can pull up, order parts through it, (which also adds them to the repair order), and of course a customer data base.
Maybe they are missing a opportunity by only marketing to us, and should tailor the program for other businesses as well!

[jrfrond]

You know, I did some basic research on this awhile back and came up with this:

At Your Service Repair Shop Software - Repair Edition

Seems like it might be right up your alley Stan. Don't know if it's open-source though.

If you Google "electronic repair shop service software", you will come up with all kinds of stuff, including Filemaker solutions, in addition to SQL and VB.

For me, the only thing left that I really want would be a customer interface so that they could check on their own repair status. However, that would require revamping our entire network and adding a dedicated server. Not gonna happen anytime soon.

[km6xz]

Thanks Bill
Does your system use a relational database or is it a flat file or XML type data storage system. Do you know what it costs and what language it was written in?
I like to add lots of features that only a relational database can provide access to. I have one system right now that I wrote that is a complete on-line booking system that automates a very complex, variable filled product, created pdf tickets, charges their credit card and schedules vehicles, guides, arranges visas, files forms with the immigration officials, all without staff manual entry. It took about $4,000,000 in orders from May 2010 to the end of Sept 2010. I would like to create a full featured system but it is very labor intensive to create and this little shop I am opening is going to be a 2 person operation for at least 5 months.

The reason the pro audio market is not targeted is its small size and lack of volume users that would spend the money a low volume system would cost.
John F. and I were present at a demo for a specialized system in the early 90s that showed a lot of promise. It was developed by a programmer hired by a moderate sized shop to write it with the intent to market it. It was to sell for $1000 in 1993-4 or about that time.....getting too old to remember decades;>). I bought it and I think one other shop got it also. The development cost up to that point was $65,000 in early '90s dollars, or about $100,000 in today's money. It saved me tons of money and ran a busy shop with 15 techs, each with a terminal on their bench, and a few others scattered around. Unfortunately the programmer gave up on it so nothing got updated or bug fixed, and it only ran on Windows 3.1. I might still have a copy back in California so I might be able to try a Virtual Machine with 3.1 on a node. But even if I could run it, being compiled there was no way to modify it to suit today's requirements.
Now, any decent would require web access so customers and field techs could have access to the appropriate data. My dedicated server co-lo'ed in New York is fast enough to run our office systems with remote access, 5,000 miles away, which allows all sorts of services to customers. For example a customer's full order history, schedules, duplicate tickets, itineraries etc are all accessible from anywhere.
Considering how little interest there was in a modestly priced full function system among the active pro audio shops back then, there is little reason to think the even smaller less profitable market today will be more receptive.
For a shop, I want the system expandable to allow customers to see their equipment history database, where they can add items for a in house extended warranty program, check on the status of current, see what position their WO is in the ToDo list, review past work orders, leave messages and updates interactively with the tech etc.
If open source and generic enough, a community supported and developed work order system could be done in the same vein as Simple Machines, oSCommerce, Joomla etc. Everything would have to be customizable so more industries of small service providers would be interested.

[MarkusBass]

km6xz,

Ifyou want the software to be Web based, you have in general two options: either PHP + MySQL, or ASP.Net + SQLExpress. Alternatively you can use XMLfiles as a data storage but since both MySQL and SQLExpress are free, it makes no sence to use XML files. As you mentioned, the market for such software is small, so there are not many programs available. And the one that exist are expensive. E.g. "AYS - SQL version" for $1300 is a lot taking into account that desktop edition of SQL Server is free. If you have some experience with PHP, I suggest to do it on your own. You will be able to sell it to other shops so you will get some money back. At least this is what I would do.

Mark

[jrfrond]

Hey Stan, remember how we desperately tried to get all of the manufacturers on the same page with warranty claims? I see the same scenario here in reverse. Everyone who owns a shop is interested in tracking repairs, but no one REALLY wants to spend the $$$, so ultimately, everyone develops their own system designed around their needs, and that can be anything from handwritten through flat-file computer-based, all the way up to complex SQL. There's a world of difference in what is needed by different shops, and the needs expand exponentially depending on the number of techs, workload and non-repair functions that exist. I do agree that any database used to track repairs needs to be relational, otherwise there will be a lot of duplication of effort going on as data is manually transferred between files.

[km6xz]

Hi Mark
I want web access but the application will likely be cloud based. I've set up a Ubuntu Cloud server for experimenting and it looks like a valid way to have a secure multi-region network. Although I am starting out small, with almost no money invested in the shop, the plan is to use it to generate a system that can be expanded to other regions. There is no service industry here for pro audio or even consumer electronics so there is a ripe opportunity to create something meaningful and profitable. I've done that several times in my life and see more opportunities in several fields to do it here.
I am building my own now but was hoping to avoid it right now if possible because I have another full time business that takes a lot of my energy. If the AYS system was more expandable and open, it would be worth it but a user of that system is really dependent on them. It appears that not much development activity has taken place since I first say that system 10 years ago.
I have been away from pro audio service for 8 years and have no idea who is still around or who had better sense;>) I suppose it hit a peak in the late 90s in the US. Here in Russia is not even close to a peak since the service end never got going thus far. No parts were available, the two distributors refuse to let any out of their own single repair shop each in Moscow, fearing that if equipment was repaired there would be fewer sales of new equipment. They have trained the customers to know that when the warranty has expired, the unit has to be replaced with a new one. I've talked to dozens of stores, and hundreds of clubs and musicians and that is the general understanding. I've been able to crack that prohibition on parts getting loose in the wild by entering an agreement with one of the two, to be the only independent shop to have access to their parts in exchange for consulting on reorganizing their internal service. I think I am getting the better of the deal since along with it is wholesale system prices for large systems. A week later my friend who has 10 very popular night clubs in this city and several others in Europe asked me to design a turn key system for a chain of 12 restaurants/bars that is in the works, and a major entertainment complex in Sochi. I see a lot more dynamic market for good ideas here than back in the US which has really stagnated in the last decade. This place is exploding and has for 10 years of steady high growth and one year of downturn, which has reversed itself. Property values did not drop at all during the recession so only those heavily invested in the stock market were hurt. Not many musicians were. That is one reason I decided to get back into pro audio. The other main reason is I am a geek at heart and have been designing and repairing since I was 10 and love getting into things others have given up on.

[km6xz]

Hi John
Yes, it was dumb how each company wanted to maintain the least effective documentation possible. We could have adopted the fully electronic claims system that the auto warranty industry developed but it seems that most pro audio companies had primarily salesmen and musicians in management positions so no improvement was expected. Things got leaner after the bubble burst in the early 2000s. The peak of the good times which quickly reversed was, for me, seeing Alesis lease an office building that cost them 1/3 of their gross sales that year, while having no new products in the wings that could return the company to profitability. When they filed for bankruptcy owing me a ton of money( for a year we were doing ALL their factory service, 5,000 units a month, and did not get paid for 6 months of it), i pretty much lost enthusiasm and confidence that the industry was every going to right itself. Every flake salesman who partied with other flake salesmen were filling positions that guaranteed eventual failure of whole segments of the industry. That Santa Monica building lease was a symbol of the wrong people with the wrong skill sets in the wrong positions that suddenly blew up 15 or so companies. When Harmon bought all the failing companies in pro audio, some for a song, it was the handwriting on the wall. They paid almost nothing for Studer and some other prestigious names. The service industry in the US will get by by staying small and fragmented so few people are going to bother investing in developing software for it, when the same developers can create a few highly profitable smart phone apps in less time.

[MarkusBass]

I want web access but the application will likely be cloud based. I've set up a Ubuntu Cloud server for experimenting and it looks like a valid way to have a secure multi-region network.

I'm on the "dark" side of software development (Microsoft) so I don't know much about Linux. I assume that this (Ubuntu Cloud) is something similar to Terminal Services. A long time ago I was working with UNIX but I moved to Windows when I noticed that most open-source projects were abandoned after 2-3 years of development. When you expect that you get software for free, you cannot expect quality and support for several years. Exactly the same story is with MySQL. It was written by a small group of developers and it cannot be compared to MS SQL Server, which was developed for many years by a large group of (paid) developers. And desktop version of SQL Server is free. But PHP is OK- it provides a quick way to create nice looking applications. And it is more popular than ASP.Net.

Although I am starting out small, with almost no money invested in the shop, the plan is to use it to generate a system that can be expanded to other regions.

I see some contradiction in what you want to do; you want to make a profitable business but for this you need high quality software that you get for free (without investing money). Do you think that this is possible?

There is no service industry here for pro audio or even consumer electronics so there is a ripe opportunity to create something meaningful and profitable.

I know the situation in St. Petersburg - beautiful city with great possibilities (but also a little bit dangerous).

If the AYS system was more expandable and open, it would be worth it but a user of that system is really dependent on them. It appears that not much development activity has taken place since I first say that system 10 years ago.

Yes, they have the problem that was already mentioned here; not many customers, no money for further development. The software looks outdated and is overpriced.

Here in Russia is not even close to a peak since the service end never got going thus far. No parts were available, the two distributors refuse to let any out of their own single repair shop each in Moscow,

Moscow is far far away and you can easily compete with services in Moscow by doing services quicker and cheaper.

Mark

[km6xz]

Hi Mark
Thanks for the reply but I was not sure it was a joke or serious.
Cloud is a distributed remote system like MS Azure Compute.....but they are behind the rest of the industry, as usual.
The reasons you gave you avoiding OS sounds like the company talking points that MS tries to instill in developers, but all false.
OS has been around for a long time and still offers a great many advantages over proprietary frameworks, millions of developers agree on that. Not being tied to the marketing aims of a company which has proven not to be very concerned with the long term support of its customers is a big advantage, besides performance, and support advantages to OS.
Microsoft has tried to privatize every advance that has been made in the world of data communications, data storage, scripting, , internet, presentation etc and is usually a step behind with a bloated and costly proprietorial alternative. Linux, both server and desktop is quite simply more reliable, less prone to security breeches, and much better supported. In my own office, were were using MS Server 2003, SQL Server and Windows os on the desktops until I just had enough of the flakiness of the whole system. Windows 7 looked to be a lot better than the mix of XP, Vista, & and Windows 2000( the best version of Windows for reliability in an office environment), in two languages. There was always some outstanding bug report that was crippling some aspect on at least one of the versions in our simple little 28 machine network. Changing over to all Windows 7 would cost a lot but had no promise that support would improve.
I had been using Ubuntu on an old laptop that did not have the resources needed for Vista. It ran great, faster and no problem with drivers, and never failed. I tried installing Ubuntu on one of the desktops where there was a serious problem with Windows with some legacy remote sensing hardware device. The 10 minute install, allowed the user to access all faster. She was used to Windows so complained that icons were different but after a few days she was hooked on having a 100% functional box that was twice as fast on the same hardware. Out of my busy schedule, the last thing I have time for is babysitting flaky operating systems. The next day the mb died in our server. I decided to replace every bit of MS software, some of which was waiting months for patches from MS to be released. I installed Linux on the server, with SAMBA, and replaced all the desktops with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It took most of a Sunday to configure the system as I wanted since there were so many new possibilities and features that MServer did not have, but the server, and desktops all installed with basic functionality from the server in 1 hour. That was March of last year. We have not had a single minute of down time, or driver problem or any problem even though we use a lot more complex features than we could with MServer. I converted most of our apps to MySQL 5.xx later and dumped MS SQL Server. So right now there is no MS software in the office and I do not have to spend a day or more a week fixing BS problems MS software and OS's created. That is just one of millions of examples of people getting smart and working on work instead of working on compensating for MS problems. The biggest improvement that was felt the first hour, besides never having to reboot the boxes, was support. If some bizarre combination of hardware and software causes incompatibilities, a post on the forum gets a response from a developer of the core project, and usually with a fix in a few hours.
OS community supported projects are short lived?? That is weird, most have longer support and life than MS programs. How many incompatible rewrites of Explorer have come and gone? Mosaic, the very first graphical browser is still usable and adheres to HTML standards, MySQL, and every version is still supported, and offers larger more powerful clusters than MS SQL SERVER, and has an industry consortium steering its development path, making more standards compliant....and the programming prowess of SUN(Oracle) behind it. Linux in all its flavors is more secure, more stable, faster and requires fewer resources than competing MS servers. In applications, oSCommerce, Joomla, Wordpress, Druple, Simple Machines, Mozilla, and hundreds more are the best of their breed.
So to answer the question about the contradiction in wanting the most for free, it is no contradiction. If I spend a lot of time modifying a system to my specific needs I want that investment in time to not be wasted by a company changing their proprietary framework thereby obsoleting the application. For companies selling software to trapped-in customers, they love proprietary software, the customer is locked into whatever the company wants to sell, when they want to sell it. The propitiatory package we have been discussing as being too expensive for something where the development seems to have stopped is exactly the reason I do not want that sort of package. I have had them and felt highly restricted in options.
Besides all the technical advantage of modern OS projects, there is the long term question that is being talked about seriously all over the world, MS is losing its dominance and their business model and lack of flexibility has people worried that if they get too heavily involved with MS development, they may find a dead end sooner than later. The industry is moving in various directions that MS has not kept up with and does not seem to know how to adjust to the changing market. It is being seen as the IBM of the 21st century, dominate player relegated to minor factor by its own inflexibility. Even Apple has a higher worth now, and there is a good chance that divisions will be shed within a few years. The only thing keeping then in the black now is upgrades to Office and a short spurt in Windows 7 upgrade....no new products that became leaders in years. It is stagnant in the highly competitive mobile OS and APP market, Oracle/MySQL is taking the top and bottom end of the market from them, and the real wave of the future, has them on the sidelines....cloud, distributed computing. They have been fighting standards and innovation for years and now people are finding ways to avoid them. We know the companies, or most of them, who endorse OS will be around because they are flexible and responsive, MS's survival is much more in doubt. Their business model is 1960s IBM and does not fit into industry growth path.

The comment about St Petersburg being dangerous is just as difficult to determine if you are joking or just not informed, despite claiming you "know the situation in St Petersburg". Whether joke or in earnest, it is still flat out wrong. How long have you run a business here? At least when I make comments about regions or cities of the world it is based on experience, such as currently having an office in Gdansk.

[Steve Conner]

"The Cloud" is the buzzword of the 2010s. As I understand it, it refers to a client/server application (nowadays, almost always a Web 2.0 one) where the server side is distributed. Google's Gmail is the classic example of a cloud-based app, or service, or whatever it is technically called. I believe Google provide a SDK to speed development of Gmail-like applications, but they don't give much away about how their server network actually works.

Open source software works on the basis that Microsoft are so bad at software development, an infinite number of monkeys with an IRC chatroom can beat them.

Seen from the developer's point of view, working with Microsoft tools wastes so much time that you can get together with your friends, rewrite them from scratch, use them to accomplish what you couldn't do with the MS stuff, and still have time left for endless tweeting and talking crap on IRC.

Open-source projects can suffer from the kind of attention span you would expect from an infinite number of monkeys. The highest-profile ones have a millionaire playboy sponsor to give them some continuity, and make the kinds of system-level decisions that ordinary geeks are hopeless at. Like Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth, or OpenOffice sponsored by Sun and Oracle.

I develop stuff for Windows CE and TI's DSP/BIOS at work, so I'm kind of stuck on Windows as a development platform. But I use a lot of free tools like Openoffice, WAMP, Cygwin, Firefox, and so on.

[MarkusBass]

Hi km6xz,

I'm sorry, maybe my comment about situation in St Petersburg was not necessary. I haven't been there -I just know several software developers that live there. I'm sure you know the situation much better than I do.

Regarding the software it looks like you know exactly what to use. Just install it and start using.

Mark

[cminor9]

I'm on the "dark" side of software development (Microsoft) so I don't know much about Linux. I assume that this (Ubuntu Cloud) is something similar to Terminal Services. A long time ago I was working with UNIX but I moved to Windows when I noticed that most open-source projects were abandoned after 2-3 years of development. When you expect that you get software for free, you cannot expect quality and support for several years. Exactly the same story is with MySQL. It was written by a small group of developers and it cannot be compared to MS SQL Server, which was developed for many years by a large group of (paid) developers. And desktop version of SQL Server is free. But PHP is OK- it provides a quick way to create nice looking applications. And it is more popular than ASP.Net.

oh boy. As a professional developer who IS familiar with linux and f/oss as well as many microsoft products (programmed VB/Office for many years, did a bit of C#), I gotta tell you that you are dead wrong here. I have used MSSQL extensively for 5+ years, Oracle for about the same, and MySQL for about 3 years. MYSQL is very similar to MSSQL in many ways, and personally I'd rather use Oracle or MySQL depending on the scale and whether I'd want to pay a DBA.

Besides, MSSQL was originally forked from Sybase, so MSSQL had a bit of a head start. MySQL has been around for MANY years now (since before 2000) and isn't going anywhere. Even if Oracle decides to play shenanigans with the code, it being open source means it can and will be forked.

Also, while some f/oss is written by amateurs you'd be surprised by how much f/oss code is written by paid professionals. I personally worked at a place where I was paid quite well to write code that would be GPL'ed. Like all software, MySQL isn't perfect, but it is very solid. My current employer uses it as the back end for sites that get incredible amounts of traffic.

I don't want to start a flamewar here, and would like to preserve the genteel manner of this forum, but you cannot go spouting off blatant mistruths like that. Especially when you admit ignorance of the subject matter.