Inaugural Users Group Meeting: See the Results Now

This November, DPS Telecom held our first annual T/Mon Users Group meeting at our headquarters in Fresno, California. T/Mon users from across the United States came together to vote for the features they wanted to see in the next T/Mon update, as well as to get a sneak-peek of the latest monitoring technologies in development at DPS.

"This meeting isn't about DPS. It isn't about T/Mon. It isn't about our hardware, and it isn't just about the users. It's about all of us coming together to improve T/Mon," said DPS Telecom President Eric Storm during his keynote speech at the opening of the Users Group meeting.

The meeting was structured to do just that, with time allotted to the development of new features for T/Mon. Attendees also had the opportunity to share their specific T/Mon applications with fellow Users Group members.

Users Group Members Get an Introduction to the History and Future of T/Mon
The meeting began with a brief retrospective of the T/Mon platform. President Storm then guided the Users Group members through the different platforms of T/Mon, as well as the most recent software update. Storm even gave attendees a summary of improvements to be included in the next T/Mon update, as well as a description of features currently being developed by the DPS Engineering Team.

Users Group members had the opportunity to learn more about each other's monitoring applications during presentations by many of the companies represented, including Salt River Project, Duke Energy, Cameron Communications, and 3 Rivers Telephone. These presentations allowed attendees to discover new features and monitoring best practices and they don't currently use in their own networks.

Feature Development Sessions Focused on Additional T/Mon Monitoring Capabilities
Following these presentations, the Users Group members launched into their first feature development session where they proposed new ideas for the T/Mon platform. During a working dinner, members suggested new monitoring capabilities to build into the next version of T/Mon. After several rounds of these proposals, the Users Group members voted for their top three feature ideas to be developed by the DPS Engineering Team. In the first session, the top three features were:

1. Autodatabasing SNMP and enhanced inbound processing
2. Drag 'n' drop ASCII rule building
3. T/Mon radio voting applications (detecting signals to pinpoint technician locations from a main dispatch console)

On Friday, the Users Group kicked off the second day of the meeting with a special demonstration of the new T/Mon GFX with MapPoint. This was the first opportunity for DPS clients to work with the new MapPoint feature.

The Map Point demonstration was followed by a Factory Tour. After getting to see where T/Mon is engineered, tested, and produced, Users Group members returned to the meeting room for their final feature development work session.

Users Group Brainstormed T/Mon Enhancements for Development by the DPS Engineering Team
In this session, the group members worked to develop ideas to make T/Mon even more user-friendly. After a number of suggestions, the brainstormed features were once again put to vote. Each member was able to vote for three of the proposed T/Mon enhancements, with the following features taking the top three places:

1. Graphical GUI for T/Mon database editing
2. Access to all open trouble logs, as well as the ability to view all trouble logs within a given time frame or sorted by alarm point.
3. There was a three-way tie for third place, with the features later ranked as follows:
   • Move a group of ASCII-based point files and action items to a different device ID on the same port/channel
   • Option to execute 1 or 2 line on history reports, displaying one long line versus multiple lines
   • Interface with a 3rd party trouble ticket program

DPS Engineering will now move these features into the development queue for the next T/Mon update.

Sign Up Now for the 2008 Users Group Meeting
In order to obtain even more client input, DPS is excited to announce that we will be holding the second-annual Users Group meeting on October 16th and 17th, 2008, immediately following the October 2008 Factory Training course. Registration for Factory Training is limited, so be sure to make your plans early to attend both events.

Click here to register for the next T/Mon Users Group meeting, or to sign up for any of our 2008 Factory Training classes. Our January class is just around the corner, so register early to guarantee your spot!