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Cincom Smalltalk™ Digest: June Edition

Posted on by Author Jeremy Jordan in Categories Cincom Smalltalk, Cincom Smalltalk Digest Newsletter Archive

Smalltalk Digest

Welcome to the June 2021 edition of the Cincom Smalltalk Digest. In this month’s newsletter, you will find the following:

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

  • Three Reasons to Check Out the Cincom Discovery Zone
  • Ways Customers and Partners Use SupportWeb to Be More Productive
  • Listening and Learning from You

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

  • How Purchasing the REV 9.1 Program Just Got a Whole Lot Easier
  • How One REV 9.1 Customer Discovered a New Contributed Item
  • Are You Ready to Contribute Your Work to Cincom Smalltalk?
  • Why You Should Add Whatever and SymbolValue to Your Developer’s Toolkit
  • Not Ready to Purchase? Learn How to Evaluate Cincom Smalltalk
  • Mark Your Calendars for a Special Presentation!
  • Can We Help You Find What You Are Looking for?

CUSTOMERS and PARTNERS

Three Reasons to Check Out the Cincom Discovery Zone

We met with a satisfied consulting services customer who had recently completed an upgrade project. Their application was written nearly three decades ago, and with hardware and operating systems updates, they were experiencing issues. The application was critical to their business, and they knew they needed to upgrade and modernize their solution. The upgrade immediately provided ease of use for the engineering team and the end-customer, and the added recommendations that the consulting team made allowed for unexpected business and revenue advancements.

This story is one example of why we highlight various services provided to customers and partners. Our talented consulting services colleagues have decades of experience in discovering hidden opportunities that bring ease of use, joy, growth, profit, value and success for our customers and partners. To better communicate those opportunities with you, we created a place on our website called The Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services.

Here are three reasons you should check the Discovery Zone out for yourself:

  1. Are you ready to upgrade to Cincom Smalltalk 9.1?
    Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 is now available to customers and partners. If you are excited about the new features and want to upgrade, but you don’t have time in your busy schedule to do this for yourself, this upgrade service is just for you. This service provides you with an estimate of the cost, effort and steps needed to upgrade.
  2. Would you like your application to get a performance enhancement?
    Cincom Smalltalk development environments provide a wide range of functionality. But we human beings tend to lock in the capabilities we know and miss out on the performance ability of those dimensions of the tool we don’t know. A performance-enhancement service looks at what you are currently doing with your application and shows you potential ways to energize it. This service is shaped to meet specific customer and partner needs with defined objectives, areas to review, documented results and recommendations.
  3. Are you looking for confirmation that your idea is doable?
    Do you have an idea for an application but are unsure of its feasibility? A proof of concept created by our services team can take your idea and show you what’s possible using Cincom Smalltalk. This service provides you with a defined limited scope of effort, a project plan with established criteria and what resources, time and cost it will take to achieve potential business success.

Interested in seeing how these services could work for you? Learn more at the Cincom Discovery Zone for Customer and Partner Services here. 

Ways Customers and Partners Use SupportWeb to Be More Productive

In last month’s Cincom Smalltalk Digest, we touched on the Cincom Smalltalk Resolutions newsletter and how it adds value for our customers and partners. This month, we want to remind our customers and partners about their ability to use the Cincom SupportWeb® to quickly solve issues that may come up during development.

Here are some ways customers and partners use this valuable tool to be more productive:

  • Easily check the status of cases– A quick way for customers and partners to see their open and closed cases, as well as solutions that may already be available to them.
  • Quickly create a test case– Allows Cincom Support to better understand the problem a customer or partner is having by helping Support re-create the problem in our own environment. These test cases also help define the problem properly to quickly ascertain if Support is on the same page as the issue a customer or partner is having. Test cases also allow Cincom Support to test the customer or partner issue when future releases come out to ensure that things are still working properly.
  • Information at your fingertips– On the main page, customers and partners will be given an option to get a monthly technical status report. Additionally, customers and partners can see other special announcements about new services or offerings that have come available through Cincom Support.

In this insightful video, listen to Kimberly Thomas, the Director of Global Product Support for Cincom, describe these helpful features of SupportWeb.

Listening and Learning from You

Do you have any feedback for our team? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What could we do better? Are there other ways we can share information with you?  We value your input and want to make sure you know how to get in touch with us. Please send your comments or suggestions to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com.

BEGINNERS, FREELANCERS and DEVELOPERS

In this section, beginners to Smalltalk, freelancers and developers will read informative articles and see specific Smalltalk examples to help users learn new skills or enhance existing skills using Cincom Smalltalk.

How Purchasing the REV 9.1 Program Just Got a Whole Lot Easier

Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 is available for customers and partners. Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 continues to improve and enhance infrastructure, such as in GUI and TLS/Security areas, to allow continued future improvements while keeping API capability. You can check out more on the latest release here.

Learn more about the REV ProgramHowever, version 9.1 is not currently available for the Personal Use License, and the availability date has not been determined. To help interested users take full advantage of the current release and all it has to offer, we created the REV 9.1 Program.  We created this program for you to partner with Cincom and receive all the benefits of being a customer.

What benefits and value do we give Cincom Smalltalk REV 9.1 customers that a trial user never receives with the PUL?

Participants:

  • Don’t wait! Receive the full product NOW
    REV 9.1 participants get the current release of Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 and any other releases that launch during the purchased period.
  • Receive full support for a one-year/12-month time period
    This is a new way to evaluate Cincom and Cincom Smalltalk.
  • Have an opportunity to join the Developer Program
    This exclusive program gives approved subscribers early beta releases of our product to see where we are taking it and to give comments and feedback to help us build out the future of commercial Smalltalk.
  • Have an opportunity to join the Partner Promotion Program
    This program helps participants promote their applications and find the right markets or space to promote what they have been working on.

What do customers think about the program? One recently told us,

“I’m so happy with the REV 9.1 program! During my 12 months in the program, I started with 9.0, then got 9.0.1 when it came out last fall and just recently received 9.1. The best part is that I wasn’t hounded by salespeople. I was simply notified when there was a new release and given easy instructions on how to get it. I appreciate Cincom for creating such a valuable program for a programmer in my situation. It is a perfect experience to get to know Cincom and use Cincom Smalltalk.”
– Alex G.

Learn more about the REV ProgramSmalltalk prides itself on simplicity, and we’ve recently enhanced the REV 9.1 Program process, making it just a few simple steps to get started. Interested? Simply click here and begin your journey!

Get started today!

How One REV 9.1 Customer Discovered a New Contributed Item

A new REV 9.1 customer recently shared a story with us that we thought was interesting.  With his permission, we would like to share it with you:

I’ve been using Cincom® VisualWorks® PUL for a long time and had been waiting for the next release. When I found out it might be a while, I decided to check out the REV 9.1 program you’ve been promoting recently.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this really was an easy way for me to get my hands on the new version of VisualWorks 9.1. Now I have full support AND the full product. Your marketing group is also helping me with a story to promote my application! In fact, they have been asking me some really tough and detailed questions to help me with delivery, pricing and promotion.  We’re kind of joking it’s like, ‘Business Bootcamp.’

As a PUL user, I always liked to check out the Contributed Items to find out what other people are doing with Cincom Smalltalk. One item I’ve been using for quite a while is the ‘PackageCompareTool.’  I use it all the time for comparing one package with another, and I was pretty bummed to find out I couldn’t use it with REV 9.1. I appreciate you listening to my request and contacting the author about making a version that works with Cincom Smalltalk 9.x.

Luckily, the Cincom Smalltalk Community is active and happy to work with other like-minded Smalltalkers, and last week I was able to test out the new PackageComparisonTool for 9.x. It works great!  

I really wish I would have jumped on the REV program years ago.  The products, tools and relationship with the Cincom Smalltalk team is well worth every penny.

Ryan S.
Happy REV 9.1 Customer (Stay tuned for my user story, and link to my site.)

*This contributed item is available for both 9.1 and 8.3.

You can find the PackageComparisonTool here, along with a lot of other useful and cool items to enhance your Cincom Smalltalk experience.

When we contacted the author of the PackageComparisonTool, he was excited to develop this new upgrade:

Being able to set the Package Comparison Tool to focus only on things that had been removed between versions helped me quickly upgrade my contributed package so that it continued to be useful in newer versions of Cincom® ObjectStudio® and Cincom VisualWorks if a user is using Store for code management. James S. (Author)

Are You Ready to Contribute Your Work to Cincom Smalltalk?

Like James and his updates to the PackageComparisonTool, developers often create some great tools, enhancements, frameworks, examples and applications, and they like to share them, get recognition for them or receive suggestions for improvement.

The Cincom Smalltalk Product Team has recently enhanced the section of our website that highlights these contributed items from customers, partners and users. This revamped area gives more detail for each item and is a better-organized and comprehensive home for the list of contributed items available. You can find these items on the Cincom Smalltalk Store Repository and the Contributed Components list on our website.

With more detail and better organization, these items are more searchable and easier to find so that other developers can use them. More visibility and usage of Contributed Items could lead to a success story or article being written about it, much like what James and Ryan shared above. This helps to further promote you, your work and your application to a much wider audience, giving you valuable exposure.

  • To help developers find, understand, appreciate and utilize your contributed work, please use the guidelines for the final documentation of your contributed work here.
  • If you have created something you think would be of value and interest to other Smalltalk developers or could help attract new users to Smalltalk, please apply through the Contributed Application Form here.

Why You Should Add Whatever and SymbolValue to Your Developer’s Toolkit

Two components you should consider for your Developer’s Toolkit when using Cincom Smalltalk are Whatever and SymbolValue. Whatever is a type of “Universal” object and is available on the Cincom Smalltalk public repository. SymbolValue allows messaging shortcuts and has been integrated into the product for many releases, so it is no longer a contributed item.

In the new Hidden Gems screencast for this month, Arden Thomas, the Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager, goes into what each of these components are and how to use them.

This screencast is part of the Techniques Series, which shows various techniques of how to accomplish or solve different tasks using Cincom Smalltalk.

If you have questions, comments, ideas for other Smalltalk examples or suggestions for future Hidden Gems, please send an email to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com.

Not Ready to Purchase? Learn How to Evaluate Cincom Smalltalk

For users who are not ready to make the modest investment into the REV 9.1 Program, but still want to learn about and evaluate Cincom ObjectStudio and Cincom VisualWorks, the Personal Use License (PUL) is a perfect fit.

Try Cincom SmalltalkThe PUL is ideal for developers who are looking to sharpen their skills through a new developer tool and gives users the freedom to evaluate our products before realizing that Cincom Smalltalk is the right fit for their business or project needs.

  • Watch this video to hear examples of how this trial license has been used by others.
  • Click here to start exploring Cincom Smalltalk and all that it can do for you.

Mark Your Calendars for a Special Presentation!

We are excited about an opportunity for Arden Thomas to present Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 at the October UK Smalltalk User Group Meetup. Cincom Smalltalk 9.1 is the current, major release of Cincom ObjectStudio 9.1 and Cincom VisualWorks 9.1. The 9.x series began our path to move the products closer together, with the intent of offering the best tools and solutions as we continue to improve and enhance infrastructure. Arden will be giving more details about the new releases and what these changes mean for customers and partners. This online meetup will take place from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST on October 27, which will be here before you know it. So make your plans now to attend this presentation.

Please take note of these additional meetings and their medium for delivery:

You can monitor other future meetups and conferences as well as any changes to their scheduling on our Events page.

Can We Help You Find What You Are Looking for?

The Cincom Smalltalk website is a comprehensive landing spot for details and information about our products, programs, events and other happenings with our product. We have some big changes to our website coming soon that will help you find that information much easier.

In the meantime, what can we help you find? We have our customer, partner and user resources, programs and product information listed here.

CUSTOMERS:

GENERAL INFORMATION:

Reach out to the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team at CSSTARTeam@cincom.com if you have any further questions or comments.

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