News

As we have worked with organisations looking to start using Spira and Inflectra products, we have seen that there is a consistent need for the following assistance:

• Initial set-up and configuration
• Integration with other tools/platforms
• Custom report writing
• Custom templates/workflows
• Data migration
• User and Administrator Training

As you know, every Inflectra product comes with legendary technical support, which offers unlimited email, phone, help desk, forums, and knowledge base support. However, sometimes customers need more hands-on assistance than the support team can provide. For example, the support team can assist you in migrating your data from a spreadsheet to SpiraTest, whereas our Implementation Services would provide you with a resource who would be dedicated to doing that migration for you either on-site or remotely!

The following sections, outline the types of assistance we can offer, in each of the three categories.

Initial Set-up and Configuration

Having made a great decision to purchase a Spira product, you may want help to set-up your new tool and we’re here to help.  Either on-site or remotely, we have dedicated resources to understand your needs and then to implement them on your behalf.  Work with our team of specialists to set-up your SSO environment, define and configure roles and users and prime your environment ready for use.

Integration

Some of our customers want to continue using other tools for other parts of their process.  That’s fine.  We can’t be everything to everyone!  With more than 55 FREE integrations available, we may already have the interface you need to have your new Spira environment working alongside your other tools in no time.  If you need dedicated help, we’re here, on-site or remotely to assist.

Custom Report Writing

Ever since we released the custom reporting and custom graphing features to Spira, users have been excited about the range of reports, graphs, and charts they can create. Inflectra frequently publishes sample reports in its knowledge base and forums:

• Sample Report Knowledge Base
• Sample Report Forum

The custom reporting functionality lets you create tailored documents in Excel, Word, PDF, HTML, and Raw XML formats as well as create beautiful bar charts, donut charts, and line graphs that you can team can embed on your reporting dashboards.

However, some customers have asked if we could create custom reports for them as part of their support. Much as we’d like to help, our support team is not structured and staffed in the way that allows them to provide such consulting and report creation. A large part of the effort in creating a custom report is understanding the customers’ needs and mapping it to the data available in Spira. In many ways, the easiest part is usually the final creation of the report inside Spira.

Today, Influence IT is pleased to announce that we are able to provide custom report services by dedicated personnel (separate from the support team). So if you’re interested in having us create some custom reports for you, we can now help.

Custom Templates/Workflows

Another common need from prospective customers that are just embarking on their journey with Spira is the need to configure the product templates, fields, and workflows to match their organisation’s standards and processes:

Most of our smaller customers will usually use our readily available YouTube and SpiraDocs assets, using the intuitive user interface to add workflow steps, add/remove transitions, configure the fields in each workflow step, design the approvals, and add any necessary custom properties. For larger customers or those looking for a more accelerated implementation, we offer dedicated consultants who can consult with you to learn about your needs and design the appropriate workflows and product templates in the system.

Data Migration Assistance

Finally, the other large task that confronts customers will be the task of migrating data into Spira from their legacy systems (if they are lucky) or from a plethora of documents and spreadsheets (sadly very common). Spira comes with a wide variety of easy to use migration tools for document formats such as Excel, Word, Project and Google Sheets, as well as other tools such as Micro Focus ALM, TestRail, TestLink, TestDirector, Microsoft Test Manager, IBM DOORS, etc. So normally the migration is straightforward and can be performed entirely in-house:

When you have a large number of documents to be migrated, or their format needs some conversion before they can be used in our migration template, our dedicated implementation services professionals can take on this burden from you and your team.

Our implementation personnel will not only assist in doing the actual migration into Spira, but will also consult ahead of time to understand the data you are working with. This means they can offer suggestions and improvements to the data so that you can maximise the functionality in Spira and improve your processes rather than just blindly migrating your data and not being able to take advantage of the best practices inherent in Spira products.

How do I Learn More?

If you are interested in learning more about our IITC Inflectra Implementation Services, please contact our sales team.