InPrint Summer 2010

Cityworks July 2010 E m p o w e r i n g G I S f o r I n f r a s t r u c t u r e , A s s e t s , P e r m i t s , a n d L i c e n s i n g TM

Cityworks 2010

By Tom Palizzi, Executive Director, Sales & Marketing, Azteca Systems, Inc.

July marks the release of Cityworks 2010—the launch of an exciting new era of Azteca Systems’ asset, permit, and licensing management software. With this release of software comes a new naming convention that encapsulates the theme of this new direction and includes the entire suite of GIS-centric management tools for public works, utilities, and governments.

Parallel trends in software development from Microsoft and ESRI have combined to help drive Cityworks 2010.

Development models such as ArcGIS 10, Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, and mobile device technology bring a wide array of capabilities.

The most significant of these capabilities allow for sharing code between desktop and browser applications. As a result, Cityworks 2010 not only introduces significant upgrades to existing software but also marks the beginning of the redevelopment of Cityworks Anywhere.

Loveland, Colorado: Cityworks Proves Invaluable for Solid Waste Division

By Shannon Smith, Senior GIS Specialist, City of Loveland, Colorado

Once in a while you find something that just works. After a while, that something has such a way of easing your situation that you look back and wonder how you ever managed without it. At the City of Loveland, Colorado, we have found this and more with our new asset management system, Cityworks by Azteca Systems. Having used the program for over a year now, Cityworks works so well for us that it has already become an invaluable asset to our organization, specifically to the Solid Waste Division.

The increase in overall efficiency and cost savings are tremendous. But what some may consider the most interesting part of our story is where we were before instituting a computerized asset management system. We have made enormous strides and experienced a great return of investment and look forward to seeing how the software will further benefit the City in the future.

Cityworks 2010 brings significant enhancements to the entire Cityworks product line. Azteca Systems’ flagship product—Cityworks Server MMS—will include enhanced tools for managing equipment, labor, and materials (ELM), new contract tools, and enhancements to Project Manager. In addition, overall product performance is greatly increased.

One of the biggest changes in the Cityworks Server product group is the integration of PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land Management) and MMS. Continued on page 2

Before implementing Cityworks, the City of Loveland Solid Waste Division used a pen and paper system. All incoming requests were handwritten on individual slips of paper and organized by color so our staff personnel could, at a glance, recognize the type of request being submitted. Not only was the process slow and tedious, but it also posed many problems due to the original slip being the only record of the request our staff had. Crews often took these slips into the field and, at times, the slips were never seen again while others were returned in questionable condition. Penmanship of the individuals recording the requests varied greatly and sometimes mistakes were made due to handwriting miscommunications. With each error, manhours to correct a problem compounded.

Continued on page 29

Azteca Systems, Inc.

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801.523.2751

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www.cityworks.com

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Cityworks Server PLL 2010

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Table of Contents

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

InPrint Editor in Chief: Tom Palizzi Editor: Kaye Ryser Advertising: Kaye Ryser Azteca Systems, Inc. 11075 South State Street, Suite 24 Sandy, UT 84070 801-523-2751 www.cityworks.com To receive a subscription or to change your address, please send your contact information to: inprint@cityworks.com or call 801-523-2751 Founded in 1986, Azteca Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of GIS-centric enterprise asset maintenance, permit, and licensing management systems for public works and utilities. Built exclusively on top of ESRI’s leading GIS technology, Cityworks is powerful, scalable, and affordable.

How to Reach Us: Tel: 801-523-2751 Email: info@cityworks.com

InPrint is published by Azteca Systems, Inc. (Azteca), at 11075 South State, #24, Sandy, UT 84070. InPrint contains material of interest to utility and public works organizations.

Copyright © Azteca Systems, Inc. 2010 All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

The information contained in this document is the exclusive property of Azteca Systems, Inc. The work is protected under United States copyright law and other international copyright treaties and conventions. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as expressly permitted in writing by Azteca Systems, Inc. All requests should be sent to Attention: Cityworks InPrint, Azteca Systems, Inc., 11075 South State Street, #24, Sandy, UT 84070.

The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.

Azteca Systems, Cityworks, and Powered by ESRI are registered trademarks; Cityworks Desktop, Cityworks Anywhere, Cityworks Server, GIS Empowered by Cityworks, and Empowering GIS for Infrastructure, Assets, Permits, and Licensing are trademarks of Azteca Systems, Inc.; and www.mycityworks.com, www.gocityworks.com, www.cityworks.com, www.azteca.com, @azteca.com, and @cityworks.com are service marks of Azteca Systems, Inc. The names of other companies and products herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

If you are interested in submitting an article for InPrint, please contact Kaye Ryser (801) 523-2751 or kryser@cityworks.com

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE F e a t ur e s • Cityworks 2010 • City of Loveland, Colorado: Cityworks Proves Invaluable for Solid Waste Division • Recovering from Katrina: Cityworks Helps Gulfport, Mississippi, Weather the Storm

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P r e s i d e n t’ s C o r n e r – Cityworks 2010 — Leveraging GIS as a Mission Critical Enterprise System S o l u ti o n F e a tu re : C i ty w o r k s P L L

• Forging a New Frontier — Cityworks PLL Delivers Results at Delaware, Ohio • West Valley City, Utah — Cityworks PLL Q&A • Town of Colonie, New York — Cityworks PLL Yields Benefits

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P r o j e c t M a n a g e m e n t – Cityworks Matters

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Client Services • Improving How We Support You • Azteca’s Goal for Uninterrupted Customer Support • Cityworks Campus • MyCityworks.com • Tips & Tricks

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R e g i o n a l S p o t l i g h t – Northeast Spotlight: City of Saco, MN, and Frederick County Sanitation Authority, VA

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A z te c a Ne w s

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C i t y wo r ks 2 0 1 0 U s e r C o n f e r e n c e R e c a p

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P a r tn e r Ne w s • Bridging the Gap Between Cityworks Desktop and Server MMS at Dakota Electric Association (POWER Engineers) • The Cucamonga Valley Water District, California — Proud Past, Bright Future (Weston Solutions, Inc.) • County of Oxford, Ontario— Integration Saves Time, Money, and Effort (ESRI Canada)

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Cityworks 2010 – Continued from page 1

Users can easily create permits from a work order or service request—or the other way around—work orders or requests can be created from a permit. Likewise, users can easily view or interact with related permits in MMS. Greater map integration in PLL now supports event layers where permits can be opened from the map the same way as work orders or requests.

Other enhancements to PLL include Flex Forms, Public Access, and business licensing.

Flex Forms brings virtually any type of information into the permit process such as yes/no questions, lists, images, and more.

Permit fees can also be dynamically and automatically calculated based on responses an applicant provides. The Public Access module allows users, contractors, or citizens to remotely apply for permits, check the

status of existing permits, and more from a browser. Business licensing brings a robust set of features to cities to track and renew business and other licenses.

More enhancements will be coming throughout the year including the integration of Microsoft’s Silverlight into the rendering engine, standard inspections, GPS integration, and others. Cityworks Server 2010 supports ESRI ArcGIS 9.3.1 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or Oracle 10g or 11g. ESRI’s ArcGIS 10 will be supported fall 2010. cw

INPRINT

President’s Corner

Cityworks 2010—Leveraging GIS as a Mission Critical Enterprise System

By Brian Haslam, President & CEO, Azteca Systems, Inc.

ESRI GIS has become a mission critical enterprise system used for core business processes. The distinction between the software application and the GIS is no longer valid; they have become one. This is especially true for how ESRI GIS is utilized by local government and utilities.

How It Was For more than 20 years, local governments and utilities have prioritized investing in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and in particular ESRI® GIS. Initially the goal for most organizations was to replace paper maps with digital maps that had the added benefit of powerful spatial analytical tools. As ESRI GIS became widely adopted and as GIS incorporated open system standards, particularly database interoperability, organizations started to see ESRI GIS as much more than maps and spatial analysis tools. For many organizations, the ESRI GIS database (geodatabase) became the most current and accurate inventory of their assets. The geodatabase became a de facto standard. Organizations desired to use their investment in ESRI GIS for other business process needs.

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) developed separately from GIS. The first systems were designed around proprietary database systems. At the core of any CMMS is an asset inventory.

One of the primary goals of a CMMS is to track maintenance activities performed on individual assets. Each system designed unique proprietary data structures for cataloging asset data. Influenced by the same open systems market forces as GIS, during the mid-‘90s CMMS moved away from proprietary databases and adopted the open systems databases while maintaining proprietary data structures considered trade secrets for cataloging asset data.

Fast-Forward to 2010 For local governments and utilities, ESRI GIS is the most widely utilized and common platform for cataloging, viewing (map rendering being just one way to view), and analyzing asset data. For a majority of organizations, the geodatabase has become the de facto and most up-to-date asset inventory for dispersed assets. Many organizations have also discovered the geodatabase is a superior tool for cataloging condensed assets such as treatment plants and facilities. With the modern ESRI GIS and geodatabase tools, there is no longer a reason to have separate databases for dispersed and condensed assets. ESRI GIS is the system of choice to support management needs for Public Works, Utilities, Transportation, Land Management, Permit Management, License Management, and more.

ESRI GIS is now viewed as a mission critical enterprise system.

Nearly all local governments and utilities have and maintain an ESRI GIS. Of these, many also have and maintain a CMMS. Maintaining asset data in both systems is an inefficient and redundant allocation of resources.

Most CMMS vendors have responded with interface solutions of varying complexity and sophistication that upload and sync asset data from the geodatabase to their data structures. That an interface to ESRI GIS is a “must have,” and not the other way around, is evidence of the degree to which ESRI GIS is a mission critical enterprise system.

Cityworks and GIS-Centric Cityworks is different from all other CMMS or Permit and License Management software. We have always believed the best practice for local Continued on page 27

July 2010

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Feature

Recovering from Katrina: Cityworks Helps Gulfport, Mississippi, Weather the Storm

By Ron Smith, Public Works Assistant Director, City of Gulfport, and Matt Freeman, ESRI

Since 1900, more than three dozen major hurricanes have hammered the Gulf Coast from Texas to the Florida Panhandle. Located in the middle of this troublesome zone is Gulfport, Mississippi. The 64-square-mile city, bordered on the south by seven miles of Gulf Coast, was severely damaged in 1969 by Hurricane Camille and, most recently, in 2005, by Hurricane Katrina. While Camille was considered the benchmark for destructive hurricanes in Gulfport, Katrina became the new standard.

Hurricane Katrina hit Gulfport on Monday morning, August 29, 2005, with winds of up to 150 mph and storm surge levels up to 30 feet high. Nearly all structures within half a mile of the coastline were destroyed and downtown streets were underwater.

The surge forced ships, casino barges, large dredging barges, and shipping containers inland, knocking down buildings and houses like a bowling ball knocks down pins.

A railroad line on an elevated berm, roughly a half mile inland and parallel to the coastline, became a levee for the storm surge and its dangerous drifting debris. Because of this elevated berm, damage north of the railroad tracks was significantly less, but still catastrophic due to the high winds, multiple tornadoes, and torrential rain. Katrina hammered the Mississippi coastline for more than 17 hours, leaving Gulfport and its neighboring Gulf Coast cities in utter destruction. Some five years later, cleanup and rebuilding efforts are still underway.

predict just how valuable their investment would turn out to be until after Hurricane Katrina had passed.

“When Katrina hit, it destroyed our infrastructure—water, sewer, storm drain—for about three to four blocks inland, all along our beachfront,” says Ron Smith, Gulfport’s assistant director of Public Works. “Almost everything south of the railroad tracks to the beach was destroyed. All the utilities that linked to all the businesses and homes in that area were completely wiped out. The storm wiped it all off the map, but it didn’t wipe it off our Cityworks.”

As soon as it was humanly possible, the City had people in the field repairing the severely damaged water and sewerage systems. The recovery effort began in the middle of the storm and went around the clock amid chaos as workers labored to plug and cap holes and shut off valves to keep Gulfport’s water tanks from completely draining. Many of the damaged lines were underwater or beneath rubble and debris, making their exact location difficult to pinpoint and access. The City’s normal water pressure, 60 psi, was down as low as 25 psi for a week after the storm hit landfall. In addition to its water system, debris had clogged and crippled the City’s storm drain and sewerage system, which only intensified the flooding problem. “You couldn’t have packed concrete into our storm drains any tighter,” claims Smith.

A City under Surge Being prepared for a natural disaster the size of a category-5 hurricane may sound like a paradox but, from an information services standpoint, Gulfport’s Public Works Department was as prepared as possible. The lengthy infrastructure recovery process following the storm was expedited by the City’s GIS-centric asset work management system. The system helped mitigate damages by generating crucial utility and street maps, locating assets under piles of debris more than 10 feet high, and serving as a geospatial damage report depository. The latter was instrumental in gaining federal assistance and aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Gulfport’s Public Works Department actually became more prepared for such a storm in 2002. In an effort to improve its asset work management system, the City implemented Azteca System’s Cityworks software and supported it with ESRI’s ArcGIS technology. Cityworks is a GIS-centric software program used by public works, utilities, and other organizations tasked with managing capital assets and infrastructure. Utilizing the data stored in a GIS geodatabase, Cityworks gave Gulfport tools to manage its public works infrastructure. With Cityworks in place, Gulfport began handling requests for service, conflict resolution, work orders, tests, and inspections in a GIS environment. The City and its 30,000 customers enjoyed the reliability and efficiency of the system, but no one could

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GIS to the Rescue Five days after the storm had passed, the Cityworks server, which had been taken offline and stored in a secure area as Katrina approached, was back up and running. “We immediately started entering and documenting all the waterline breaks, plugs, and caps into Cityworks,” states Smith.

“We were also very busy tracking, mapping, and documenting the damage done after the storm.”

Not all the destruction in Gulfport was done by Katrina. Before Cityworks was back online, the City was unable to provide cleanup crews and contractors with accurate locations of its assets. This became a big problem because contractors were frequently destroying waterlines, valves, gas meters, and fire hydrants with the bulldozers and excavators used for the cleanup effort. Each time a waterline or fire hydrant was broken, water pressure would once again drop and Public Works crews would be dispatched to make the necessary repairs. The problem quickly subsided when the City was able to provide contractors with maps that clearly indicated the locations of fire hydrants, valves, and waterlines.

“We used Cityworks to show the EPA all the areas in our lines that were destroyed and had water leaks and damage, and where they had been fixed or needed repairs,” explains Smith. “When we looked at all the points on the map, it looked like a shotgun blast. From our GIS maps, the EPA [representatives] determined that there was no way we could just repair it. They recommended that we replace all our lines near the beach.”

Crews worked around the clock and within a week of the storm, most of Gulfport’s major roads were cleared and water pressure was restored to 90% of the city. The other 10% of the City’s water distribution system was damaged beyond repair. By the third week, the Public Works Department was able to lift the “boil water” notice and by the fourth week, the sewer system and traffic signals were restored to working order. As cleanup and rebuilding progressed, it was determined that nearly 15,000 traffic signs needed to be replaced. The GIS functionality of Cityworks helped Public Works justify sign replacement by identifying the attributes and original locations of the destroyed signs.

Replacing traffic signs was a small task compared to the estimated 3 million cubic yards of debris that needed clearing from Gulfport’s coastal area and the 50 miles of water, sewer, and drainage pipe that needed to be replaced. Early on, EPA sent representatives to Gulfport to assist with environmental issues. Seven months into the recovery process, EPA brought in a team to analyze the entire impact the storm had on the City’s Public Works infrastructure.

Cityworks map-based interface provided EPA with a highly detailed geospatial platform for visualizing the entire scope of damages. From the City’s analysis, EPA made a recommendation to FEMA that Gulfport receive the funding to rebuild its water, sewer, and storm drain infrastructure near its coast. Such a project also required new sidewalks, curb and gutter, and asphalt roadwork. With EPA’s recommendation, FEMA approved the multiyear project at an estimated overall cost of more than $100 million.

“The EPA came in and, using our maps, communicated with FEMA to get the issue handled,” recalls Smith.

Cityworks was instrumental in the City achieving a facade grant which allowed businesses to restore and beautify their storefront, revitalizing the downtown area. The mapping functionality in its GIS was used to generate lists and identify the addresses that fell in the flooded areas.

As recovery and reconstruction nears completion, Cityworks is still paying off. ”The destruction of Katrina is long gone and at the City of Gulfport, we’ve been very busy the past four and a half years rebuilding our city and it’s coming back bigger and better than before,” reports Smith. “For our needs in Public Works, we’re able to track all this new infrastructure going in along the coast with Cityworks—know what we’ve got, know where it’s at, and what we need to do to keep it up.” cw

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Solution Feature – Cityworks PLL

F o r g i n g a N e w F r o n t i e r — Cityworks PLL Delivers Results at Delaware, Ohio

By Matt Harman, Project Manager, Azteca Systems, Inc., and David M. Efland, AICP, Director of Planning and Community Development, City of Delaware, Ohio

Some exciting things are going on at Azteca. Along with a steadily growing user base, the recent completion of a superb Cityworks 2010 User Conference, and seemingly endless client success stories, there is a new community development system that is forging a new frontier for Cityworks management software. Delaware, Ohio, is one of the first clients to utilize Cityworks PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land) and is already experiencing fantastic results and dramatic improvements over their previous processes.

Delaware was founded in 1808 along the Olentangy River, about 20 miles north of Columbus in central Ohio. The city has a population of approximately 34,000 and is home to Ohio Weslayan University. The City’s Planning and Community Development Department selected Cityworks PLL to manage all building permits and inspections, code enforcement cases, community development applications, and approvals as well as engineering construction processes.

Department of Planning and Community Development: • 17 developments (Final Development Plan, Certificate of Approvals, etc.)

• 4 pre-development (Annexation Review, Concept Plan, etc.)

• 8 subdivision (Final Subdivision Plan, Public Way Vacation, etc.)

• 12 zoning permits (Conditional Use Permits, Sign Permits, Variances, etc.)

Code Enforcement: • 3 code enforcement case types consisting of dozens of code violations Department of Engineering Services: • 1 land development construction process • 2 Right-of-Way permits/violations City Manager’s Office (Economic Director): • 7 economic development (Administration of Grants, Facade Improvements, etc.)

Cityworks PLL is much more than just permit management for building departments. The generic “case” container that each of the above processes utilize provides the flexibility for several City departments to group together and take advantage of Cityworks PLL to manage their business. Cityworks PLL streamlines the community development and regulation processes across local government departments.

One reason Cityworks is so efficient at managing so many different processes is that in Cityworks PLL “everything is the same, but different.”

The same in that everything is managed by a simple “container” and the basic functionality of that “container” is the same across the board, but different because that “container” can be configured in hundreds of different ways to manage hundreds of different processes.

Cityworks PLL is an automated permitting program streamlining permitting and land development processes. Built on ArcGIS, Cityworks PLL has the same easy-to-use interface as Cityworks CMMS and is a fully integrated extension of your GIS. The product allows agencies to track permits, applications, and code enforcement cases from beginning to end.

Delaware moved from a mostly paper-based permitting system supported

by Microsoft Access and Excel to Cityworks PLL. As an early adopter of Cityworks PLL, Delaware has provided Azteca excellent feedback and helped us tremendously with the product. The City implemented Cityworks to manage several business processes across several departments and provide a single place where all their information could reside and be shared. Below is a count of the total applications, permit types, and cases implemented for each department.

Building Department: • 6 commercial permits • 17 residential permits • 1 contractor registration/licensing • 4 miscellaneous

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The 17 items listed below are the basic functional forms of the application.

Each of these can be assigned to a template defined to manage the data of a specific process: • • • • • •

Address/GIS Conditions Contractor Data Groups Fees Flags

• • • • • •

Inspection Request Instrument Licenses Main Notes Payer

• • • • •

Payment People Related Documents Violations Workflow

Thus, if a building permit needs the Inspection Request form and the Final Subdivision Plan doesn’t, their templates are set up accordingly. Likewise, Code Enforcement cases need the Violations form, Pre-Development Concept Plans don’t. Each specific template is ONLY assigned those forms that are relative to that process. City departments can set up as many templates as they need in order to manage all their processes. In addition, Cityworks MMS shares the same database and GUI with Cityworks PLL. Therefore, security roles can be set up within the application to grant permissions or restrict access across the system.

Continued on page 30

INPRINT

West Valley City, Utah—Cityworks PLL Q&A Cityworks PLL has been implemented Citywide at West Valley City (WVC), Utah, since January 2008. Located just outside of Salt Lake City, WVC is the second most populous city in Utah with just over 123,000 residents. The City has been very pleased with Cityworks in the past 21/2 years and is excited to upgrade to the GIS-centric, fully integrated Cityworks 2010.

West Valley City was an early adopter of Cityworks PLL back when it was called “Cityworks Permitting —Standalone.” Standalone means the version they have been utilizing is neither integrated with the GIS or Cityworks MMS Server. However, the underlying power of the permitting application was still prevalent and provided the necessary functionality for City staff to manage their business. Since their “Go Live” in January 2008, West Valley City has tracked over 28,000 permits and cases, which breaks down to just over 900 per month or 45 per day. The City’s 60 daily users are scattered across the Building Department, Community & Economic Development, Planning & Zoning, Code Enforcement, Fire Department, Public Works, and Legal Department.

West Valley has been a valuable partner in the development of Cityworks PLL. Many of Continued on page 28

Town of Colonie, New York— Cityworks PLL Yields Benefits

About Cityworks Server PLL Cityworks Server PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land) is a GIS-centric community development software product that enables agencies to track permits, planning and development applications, engineering construction processes, business licenses, code enforcement cases, and land development work, from initiation to closure.

The built-in workflow engine efficiently tracks all applicable tasks, beginning with the initial application or customer call through the complete process of departmental plan reviews, issuance, inspections, planning commission meetings, abatement, hearings, applications, renewals, and more.

Cityworks Server PLL streamlines automates these work processes: • Applications • Plan reviews • Fee calculations and payments • Tasks and workflow • Inspections • Management tracking and signoffs • Reporting

and

By Robert Mateja, GIS Manager, Town of Colonie, New York

At Colonie, New York, we have been utilizing Cityworks MMS in our Highway, Sanitary, and Water Departments since 2006, having an excellent experience with the software. Because of this, last year we decided to implement Cityworks PLL in our Building Department and are already yielding many benefits utilizing the product.

Prior to Cityworks, our Building Department handled all operations manually. Almost all work was recorded and tracked on paper and index cards. A few years before our Cityworks implementation, we started using Microsoft Excel and Access to track some work activities.

Although this was a better solution, there were still limitations as only one person could edit at a time. We wanted something more efficient.

Last year, the Town decided to put our old work management ways to rest and implement Cityworks PLL in our Building Department. We went live in December 2009. Utilizing Cityworks PLL has yielded several benefits including: 1. Using less paper, which is more environmentally responsible and costconscious.

2. More efficient processes now that we have the ability to look up the status of a permit quickly and easily.

July 2010

3. Improved workflow as there is less redundancy in the Building Department as well as with other involved departments.

4. The ability to run various reports, such as weekly financial reports for our Comptroller’s Office as well as the building permit.

5. More interaction between the various departments involved in the permitting process.

We will be rolling out a mobile solution for our building inspectors in the next 2-3 months to allow inspections to be added to the case while the inspector is out in the field. The Building Department plans to start tracking customer complaints and problems using service requests.

Our Department of Public Works (DPW) will migrate to Cityworks Server within the next few months as well. Relating the permitting case with the appropriate service requests and work orders will be another benefit. We also plan to implement Cityworks PLL in our DPW to track their permits, such as water service permits, sanitary lateral permits, grading permits, and demo permits.

Cityworks Server PLL is fully integrated with Cityworks Server MMS allowing your permit, license, and land data to be viewed in the same application environment as your GIS asset data, work orders, and/or service requests.

Developed in Microsoft .NET and ESRI’s leading ArcGIS Server technologies, the GIS-centric, server- and browser-based design helps your entire organization achieve higher levels of operational efficiency. And, because it’s GIScentric, Cityworks is a fully integrated extension of your ESRI GIS—no linking, no special interface, and no risky synchronization.

Cityworks has not only increased our efficiency and levels of internal collaboration, it has shown us the importance of reevaluating our business processes to create a better, more efficient system. cw

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Project Management

Cityworks Matters

By George Mastakas, Executive Director, Enterprise Solutions, Azteca Systems, Inc.

WOW! What an incredible User Conference. Thanks to everyone who attended; I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

As I look back, what stands out most for me is the number of you who made it out this year—especially during these very challenging economic times.

Sure there’s a lot happening on the development front and it’s important to receive updates about our direction, but the takeaway for me was how important Cityworks has become to your organizations. We saw many examples of this over the course of those three days.

I think back to our User Conference in 2008 and it’s amazing how much has materialized in the last two years— both software and interest.

Back then, Cityworks Server MMS (Maintenance Management System) was the topic of conversation as everyone anxiously awaited its release. I recall describing our progress in the plenary.... At that point, it had only been provided to a select group of customers who we referred to as “targeted release sites.”

Among other things, these customers helped us explore how the application behaved in a real-world environment. By the time that User Conference rolled around, we gained valuable knowledge but a lot more was to come in the summer and fall. Our aim was to release Cityworks Server MMS at the end of 2008 and we did. Right in the middle of a tanking economy! That moment was certainly “interesting” (to say the least), yet we couldn’t help but think that the timing for Cityworks Server MMS couldn’t have been better.

There is no question that organizations become more efficient when they apply some form of automation to their operations.

Cityworks goes farther because it also maximizes the use of the organization’s ESRI GIS, which anyone reading this publication has a reasonable investment in. Still there has never been a greater need to control operational costs and, back in 2008, we knew Cityworks could provide some relief here. The web-architected nature of Cityworks Server MMS allows organizations to centralize and provision it with much greater efficiency. Upkeep of individual client machines is eliminated and the time those machines spend in service can be extended since they no longer have to perform process-intensive tasks. We didn’t stop there however. We looked for other ways to provide more value and reduce costs.

We revisited our software licensing and determined that not only was Cityworks being used as the enterprise software for work management,

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it provides the organization their GIS too. It was important then for our license offerings to align more closely with this paradigm. The idea of an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) was hatched, and it became a quick success because there is no upfront acquisition fee—only annual maintenance. We went a step further and tiered the pricing by taking into account population size. And we created various software bundles that are not only substantial in composition, but they allow unlimited access, making the ELA an extremely cost-effective way to acquire and spread Cityworks throughout the organization.

We also explored more cost-effective ways to deploy Cityworks Server MMS to existing sites. (This is another area where the “targeted release sites” helped us a great deal.) We knew that the first installations would be to current customers looking to advance. These sites already “owned” their Cityworks Desktop/Anywhere installations and so the plan had to make them “owners” of Cityworks Server MMS too. Happy to say that the process we vetted, and have repeated so many times now, does just that. The key is to involve the organization by giving them an active role. Because the responsibilities are shared, costs are kept low and practical knowledge is gained rapidly.

Cityworks 2010 Server MMS Inbox (above) Inspection (left)

Today, over 35 organizations have either deployed Cityworks Server MMS in production or are in the process. In fact, some of these sites have already moved forward to our other Server offering—Cityworks Server PLL (Permitting, Licensing, and Land). For those of you who have not, I invite you to take a closer look. Our Cityworks Server offerings are real, ready, and proven. The conference was an incredible testament to this and, not only did it show just how important Cityworks is, it showed that Cityworks does indeed matter. cw

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Client Services

Improving How We Support You

By Wayne Hill, Executive Director, Client Relations, Azteca Systems, Inc.

For those of you who attended our annual Cityworks User Conference in St. George this year, thank you and I hope you enjoyed your time in southern Utah. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, I’d like to give a brief synopsis of what I covered in the Monday morning plenary session.

This past year has really been great for Azteca. As a matter of fact, we added 53 new clients. With this amount of growth, we’ve had to make changes to support you, our clients. So, last summer we moved Steve Thomas from Project Management to be the manager of our Customer Support Team. We also looked at our different customer support regions and the amount of calls per region. This information told us that we needed to change the boundaries and bring on another customer support representative. So in the fall of 2009, we hired Steven Sushka to cover our Northeast Support Region.

If you haven’t noticed by now, we have a lot of different software solutions—Cityworks Desktop/Anywhere, Cityworks Server MMS, Cityworks Server PLL, Storeroom, our interfaces, etc. With this amount of software, it takes time to put all of the documentation together (user guides, training manuals, what’s new, white papers, and so forth). We saw the need to bring on more staff to help our existing documentation team. Holly Barney was hired in August to specialize on our Cityworks Server PLL documentation. Adam Hunsaker joined our team in December to work with John Jarnagin in training. This past May, Ashley Bills was also hired to work with our training team. Escalating printing and shipping costs along with the time required to print convinced us to “go green” and we are in the process of converting all of our user guides to online help. See the section about our documentation going digital in the article by John Jarnagin for more information.

What about testing? In August 2009, we realized we needed to increase our efforts in software testing. As part of this change, we increased the size of our testing team within client services. Towards the beginning of this year, we hired Daniel Strong to work with Blake Mize as full-time “testing analysts.” We also hired an intern, Devin Hill, to be part of this team. We introduced a “Client Beta Testing Development Program” and dedicated office space to our testing lab where we can build different testing environments for our software. We’re also in the midst of purchasing an automated software testing solution to help to speed up the manual testing process.

So, as you can see, there’s never a dull moment at Azteca. There are a lot of us dedicated to the task of ensuring your success. cw

July 2010

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C l i e n t S e r v i c e s ( c o n t .)

Azteca’s Goal for Uninterrupted Customer Support Pr e p a r i n g f o r Natural Disasters

By Steve Thomas, Customer Support Manager, Azteca Systems, Inc.

The March 2010 Cityworks InPrint included two articles from clients explaining their efforts to prepare for potential disasters. The City of Herriman, Utah, described how they use Cityworks for disaster preparedness and response and the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, detailed how they configured laptops with disconnected Cityworks databases preconfigured for use with Cityworks DataPump. In both cases, they outlined their preparations in case of a disaster. Many of our Cityworks clients have taken steps to prepare for various situations, including setting up remote servers that can be utilized if they lose connection to their local servers.

Natural disasters can strike any part of the world. The Wasatch Front in Utah, where the Azteca corporate offices are located, has many block faults running along the western face of the Wasatch Mountains (known for their spectacular ski resorts).

Collectively these faults are Azteca Systems – South Building known as the Wasatch Fault and run 240 miles from southern Idaho through the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and beyond. Statistically the fault experiences a large earthquake on average every 350 years. The last large earthquake along the Wasatch Fault happened about 600 years ago. Consequently, residents of Utah have been warned for years that northern Utah is long overdue for a large earthquake. If and when that does happen, we don’t want to leave our clients hanging. Therefore, we have taken steps to prepare for an emergency situation.

Azteca administration has taken steps over the years to be able to recover quickly from such an event by backing up code and storing it offsite as well as building redundancy into the services that we rely on for communication.

However, we needed to do more to guarantee continuing customer support.

Around 2004 we provided an emergency phone number to our clients for after-hours support, realizing that issues sometimes arise when our customer support reps are at home. In situations where a client’s Cityworks service has been interrupted after regular work hours, one of our representatives is available to answer calls. We do request that our clients use this service only in emergencies. Please plan ahead and alert your representative when you are planning an after-hours or weekend upgrade to your Cityworks software and database.

In an effort to regionalize our support hours, Azteca began to hire remote customer support representatives. Greg Walters was the first in 2007, Chris Bracht was hired in 2008, and Steven Sushka in 2009. These three representatives based in Wisconsin, Texas, and Indiana, respectively, would be physically unaffected by a Utah disaster. Azteca plans to continue to expand on this successful endeavor by adding other remote customer support representatives as the number of our clients grows.

In January 2010, we moved from a local email service to a global service allowing continuous access to those remote employees in the advent of a Utah disaster.

While telephone access to customer support may be lost for a short period following a disaster, clients will be able to continue communicating via email.

In the future, we may also look at ways to maintain client access to the valuable MyCityworks.com resources.

The customer support database used for tracking all calls is a Cityworks database stored at the main office. Our remote reps have access to that database via Cityworks Desktop and Cityworks Server. They have been asked to prepare a disconnected database using Cityworks DataPump, like some of our clients have done, in case they lose their connection to the central database.

Inbox and request from our customer support database

That main database is full of useful reference data that our customer support representatives refer to when taking calls or responding to emails. If they lose connection to that resource, they would be less effective. Therefore, beginning in July 2010, remote reps will be provided backups of the main database to install on their local computers. While they may not have the most current information, they will be able to reference most of the historical data.

At our last quarterly meeting, the Client Services Department was trained on preparing for a natural disaster so each individual employee and their families would be able to recover quickly and minimize the risk of personal injuries. We also assembled a disaster response kit so that as a company we will have the means to properly respond to conditions that could exist following an earthquake or a hazardous material spill on nearby roads.

Azteca takes customer support seriously and is attempting to make certain that our Cityworks clients will have access to support under all foreseeable conditions. cw Cityworks Customer Support Team

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C l i e n t S e r v i c e s ( c o n t .)

By John Jarnagin, Educational Services Manager, Azteca Systems, Inc.

Many great things are going on in the Educational Services Department from trainings to developing another new course and documentation in the process of going digital.

C i t y w o r ks Regional Administration Trainings—F u l t o n C o u n t y , Georgia, and Naperville, Illinois We had the biggest turnout so far for a Cityworks Regional Administration training in Atlanta, GA, which was hosted by Fulton County on March 2325, 2010. The 15 attendees came from many different locations, including York County, City of Charleston, and City of Gaffney, SC; City of Dearborn, MI; City of Palm Bay and City of St. Augustine, FL; Montgomery County, OH; Hallsdale-Powell Utility District (located in Knoxville) and City of Chattanooga, TN; and Wach’s Water Services (Atlanta office) and Fulton County, GA.

will arrive embedded in the software. The Cityworks User Guide, Designer Guide, and the Add-ons manual will be available in PDF format.

The documentation for Cityworks Inspections and Tests has been redone in a digital format complete with indexing and links throughout. We are still in the process of converting the Desktop, Designer, and Add-ons manuals to this same digital format. In the case of a browser-based management solution, such as Cityworks Server MMS and PLL, documentation will be available in an online help format.

The online help documentation for the MMS end user is complete. The online help documentation for the PLL end user is 50% complete. All of the Cityworks product documentation can be printed in hard-copy form, either in its entirety or by relevant section(s).

Another great Cityworks Regional Administration Training took place at Naperville on June 8-10, 2010. Attendees came from many different locations including City of Beloit, WI; City of Lima, OH; City of Kentwood, Wayne County (Detroit), and Livingston County (Howell), MI; and City of Evanston and City of Naperville, IL. Naperville was a great host site and everyone enjoyed the training.

Fulton County training

C i t y w o r ks S e r v e r A d m i n i s tr a t i o n T r a i n i n g

Naperville training

We are finalizing content for a brand-new training course to be offered at our newly refurbished corporate training center at Azteca Systems headquarters in Sandy, Utah. Cityworks Server Administration Training will be a four-day course focusing on all the things you need to know to get Cityworks Server up and running, including key topics such as SQL Server 2008, Cityworks Designer, and ArcGIS Server configuration. The first course will be held August 30-September 2, 2010.

C i t y w o r ks Documentation Going Digital —It’s In T h e r e

Check the Cityworks Campus website for details on this training www.mycityworks.com/cityworkscampus.

Cityworks product documentation is going digital. With the release of Cityworks 2010, all product documentation will be available in a digital format only. In the case of Cityworks Desktop products, the documentation

Contact John Jarnagin if you have any questions regarding this new training. cw

July 2010

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C l i e n t S e r v i c e s ( c o n t .)

MyCityworks.com

By Greg Walters, Customer Support Representative, Azteca Systems, Inc.

Recent additions to MyCityworks.com include the 2010 User Conference and the new 2010 version of Cityworks.

C i t y w o r ks 2010 User Conference MyCityworks.com has a webpage dedicated to the Cityworks 2010 User Conference. Log in to MyCityworks.com and proceed to the Resource & Download Center/User Conferences/2010.

Here you’ll be able to watch a series of videos from the plenary session as well as view or download PDFs of the preconference training overview and conference workshops.

We also put together an interactive 2010 course schedule where the course description can be viewed by hovering over the workshop title. (below) C i t y w o r ks V e r s i o n 2 0 1 0 Like many other companies, Azteca is “going green.” What does this mean to you?

• We will no longer ship installation CDs and/or documentation.

• All software will be available for download through MyCityworks.com.

• The 2010 Install Guide will be packaged with the Cityworks 2010 zip file.

• All help is embedded within Cityworks 2010 as either online help or PDFs. • Online help will be available through MyCityworks.com. cw

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C l i e n t S e r v i c e s ( c o n t .)

Su p p o r t R e g i o n s

Customer Support Direct Phone #

801.990.1888 Tips & Tricks

By Karen Thomas, Technical Writer/Editor, Azteca Systems, Inc.

Did you know there are some hidden columns in Cityworks Designer that contain additional information? Look for them in tables by placing the cursor at the end of the last visible column header to see if it changes to an arrow with a double bar and drag the column open. (If there are multiple hidden columns, as below, they are all opened from the same column.)

These columns contain extra database information, like the Code element values that point to where Cityworks pulls items out of the element table, default values, IDs, etc. Since this additional information is not needed to access the basic Designer functions, the columns are hidden from view.

July 2010

My favorite hidden column is Default Value found on the General tab of Preferences. Now that there are 39 preference selections for Desktop and 73 for Server (notice the list begins with 0), this is an easy way to refer to and find the one I need. A column for Element is found on Field/Value tables which lists the associated Codes used for that field’s selection list so the administrator can see at a glance which Code Types, if any, are used to populate which fields. Refreshing the view closes these extra columns (or you can drag the right border of the header to the left and resize them out of view). cw

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Regional Spotlight Northea st Region Phil Mogavero

Regional Account Managers

Cit y o f S a c o , Ma i n e

By Doug Howard, Environmental Utilities Supervisor, City of Saco

Before implementing Cityworks at the City of Saco, we used a variety of techniques to document the work we performed throughout the city. A combination of spreadsheets, paper documents, and large filing cabinets did the trick.

However, regularly scheduled maintenance would occasionally fall behind and we needed a way to track our assets and stay on schedule. We also wanted to make sure that all requests from customers were documented and responded to in a timely manner. After looking at different software packages, the City decided that Cityworks would best meet our needs now and well into the future.

We began by implementing the service requst function of Cityworks. All requests for service are now entered in Cityworks and the email function of the service request allows us to respond immediately to customer requests. We then moved to creating work order templates on assets in the collection system and wastewater treatment plant. Work orders were created for scheduled maintenance, such as monthly preventative maintenance on pumps and sewer line flushing. Next we created work orders for all other work being done at the water treatment plant and Collections System Division of Public Works. Starting in 2010, Cityworks has moved into all divisions of Public Works.

Cityworks has now become an integral piece of Saco’s asset management plan. It is also the major piece of what we call our Customer Communication Plan. History on our assets is tracked and customers (residents) are kept informed on the status of their requests. With the combination of GIS and Cityworks, our data is organized and maintained in one spot and is easy to access.

Frederick County Sanitation Authority, Virginia

By Jeff Hankley, IT Director, Frederick County Sanitation Authority, Virginia

Prior to the implementation of Cityworks, our maintenance management information was kept on paper work orders, paper charts, and occasionally in Excel spreadsheets. The Director of the Sanitation Authority at the time, Wellington H. Jones, recognized the need for a system to pull all of this information together and be able to review it without pulling out a stack of paperwork.

The County discovered Cityworks and realized the benefits it could provide. Currently Cityworks is used in our Operations Department to track maintenance and capital activities. We use the Storeroom application to track inventory for these activities. We have not implemented Cityworks in our treatment activities as of yet, but are beginning to investigate that possibility.

Because of our Cityworks implementation, we now have a much tighter control on our inventory and are able to more accurately track labor costs, equipment use, and material installation. We are also much more proactive when it comes to the preventive maintenance of our assets. Eventually we will be implementing Cityworks for mobile access. We also plan on integrating SCADA and billing with GIS and Cityworks in the future.

Cityworks has become an indispensible tool for our Maintenance Department. It only took about 6 months for our people to go from saying, “What are we going to do with this?” to “I can’t believe we ever operated without this.” cw

The next step for Cityworks is to track major storm events—snowstorms, ice storms, and major rain events. This will make FEMA reporting easier and more efficient. In addition, as we get more data into the system, we can use Cityworks for budgeting purposes. The data maintained in Cityworks will be utilized to justify budget numbers.

Cityworks has been instrumental in organizing Saco’s workflow. The ease of use and ability to configure Cityworks meets the needs of the City of Saco now as well as in the future. cw

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Azteca News

Azteca Welcomes Back Two Employees and Two New Employees!

Brandon Wright rejoined the Azteca team this past winter.

While he was born in Utah, he has also lived in Colorado and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado with a degree in Information Technology. He worked for Azteca Systems as a Project Manager, leaving for a time to explore other opportunities in Corporate America. He spent the last 2 years working with Timmons Group implementing Cityworks.

He has been married for 11 years and has 4 kids. He loves sports, especially football—GO COWBOYS!!! cw Ashley Bills joined the Azteca Systems’ Training Department in May as a Technical Trainer.

Born in California, she moved to Utah at age 17 to attend Brigham Young University where she received her BS in Marriage and Family Therapy.

She immediately began working in careers that have no application whatsoever to her degree including a Regional Sales Manager

in Provo and Director of Student Services for a private college in St George. She is ecstatic to be back in Provo again working for Azteca Systems.

Ashley loves life and all that comes with it— laughing, talking, playing with her nieces, being with people, hiking, horseback riding, and—of course—shopping (her favorite store is Nordstrom, and yes, she has the entire catalog memorized).

She can also rip a phone book in half. cw

Andrew Parker works in our IT Department. He was born in Provo, Utah, and has lived in Redlands, California, and American Fork , Utah. He and his wife, Elise, currently reside in Saratoga Springs, Utah.

They just had their first baby, a boy named Kaden, on June 15, 2010. proud papa declares, “He is super cute.”

The

Andrew did his senior project for Azteca Systems with Kylir Horton to develop the GPS tracking system demonstrated at the user conference. He applied for a job after graduating in April 2010 from BYU with a BS in Information Technology.

Congratulations to our Newest Graduates!  Kylir Horton

BYU with a BS in Information Technology

He loves to play tennis and video games and is very excited to be working at Azteca Systems. cw Bryan Chadwick, is returning to Azteca as a GIS Product Manager. For the past year, he gained valuable experience working at GeoFields, Inc. as their Software Implementation Manager and VP of Technology.

Currently he and his family live in Suwanee, GA, but in the middle of July, they’ll be moving to Winter Garden, FL (just across the lake from Disney World and a mile to the back gate—also, down the street from his brother and his wife).

He and his wife have two sons—Austin, age 6, and 20-month-old Bryce. Bryan enjoys tennis, fishing, and cooking as well as Southern culture and cuisine. He still considers himself a GIS geek, getting excited over terms like ArcGIS Server virtualization, ArcSDE performance tuning and scalability, composite locators, SAAS (software as a service), and cloud computing. cw

Azteca Offspring Achieving Great Things!

Cityworks is the Proud Sponsor of th e 2010 Utah MATHCOUNTS State Com p e ti ti o n Championship Team!

Daniel Liu (2nd from left), son of Jiajun Liu (Chief Software Architect), with his Wasatch Jr. High teammates. 

Alan Thomas  University of Utah with a BS in Computer Programming

 Blake Mize University of Utah with a double major in Environmental Studies and Geography with a GIS certificate July 2010

1 st in State Comp e ti t i o n f o r Commercial Bakin g ! 

Garrett Hayes, son of Reed Hayes (Sr. Customer Support Rep.), is heading to the national competition in Kansas City.

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Cityworks 2010 User Conference: Conference Recap May 17–19, 2010 | Dixie Center | St. George, Utah

By Tom Palizzi, Executive Director, Sales & Marketing, Azteca Systems, Inc.

The Cityworks 2010 User Conference was held May 17-19 at the Dixie Center in spectacular St George, Utah. More than 400 people attended, marking another successful and collaborative event—and this in spite of difficult economic times. This year’s event featured an informative product and company overview, an array of technical trainings, user and partner presentations, a large exhibit hall, a fabulous networking and evening social, all in a uniquely comfortable setting.

The conference kicked off with pre-conference training sessions on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday evening, most attendees gathered at the Welcome Reception, some following a day of social activities, including the annual Cityworks Golf Tournament and hikes in spectacular Zion National Park.

The conference opened on Monday with the plenary session featuring Brian Haslam, President of Azteca Systems. Haslam opened by stating, “What we do matters,” launching a video highlighting the use of Cityworks to mitigate the impacts of Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi. He emphasized that the Cityworks user community provides crucial services while dealing with such challenges as the weather, economic uncertainty, and reduced resources.

In his annual Report to Users, Haslam illustrated Azteca’s continued growth, evident on the client map.

With over 400 sites around the world, Azteca’s client count and revenue grew at double-digit rates again over the past year. Staff continues to grow as well with more than 70 employees now working hard to meet our customers’ needs, and over 100 Cityworks professionals working for our business partners. At this year’s event, distributors from Sweden and Canada joined the group.

Haslam reviewed Azteca’s customer focus, showcasing

the numerous efforts the company put forth in 2009 such as the Cityworks Server MMS Rollout Seminars and expanded online resources at MyCityworks.com.

Mr. Haslam reported the company remains solid, profitable, self-funded, and debt free while fully committed to three key pillars—a dedicated software company that remains ESRI/GIS-centric, works closely with a network of top-tier business partners, and provides excellent customer service. Noting that Azteca pioneered the idea of GIS-centric, he pointed out that the idea has grown to a much higher level. While Cityworks is powered by ESRI , GIS is empowered by Cityworks ; thus enabling GIS to become the agency’s management system. To illustrate his points, the opening session featured videos from Ann Arbor, Michigan; Macon Water Authority in Macon, Georgia; and the pioneering use of Cityworks PLL at West Valley City, Utah.

Carl Horton, Executive Director of Software Development, in conjunction with many of the programmers, demonstrated the latest in product development, featuring increased performance in Cityworks Server MMS and the very latest on Cityworks Server PLL. In his presentation, he highlighted the consolidation of Server MMS in Server PLL into a single user interface. He also announced redevelopment plans for Cityworks Anywhere and showed its new f u n c t i o n a l i t y, such as GPS c a p a b i l i t y, dashboards, web templates, iPhone App, c a l e n d a r scheduling, and asset condition assessment.

George Mastakas, Executive Director of Enterprise Solutions, reported on the status of Cityworks products, especially Cityworks Server MMS since its official release at the end of 2008. He focused on 5 of the more than 35 organizations who are now using or in the process of implementing it— Oakland, CA; Montgomery County, OH; Colonie, NY; Delaware, OH; and West Valley City, Utah.

The statistics he shared illustrated the cross-

compatibility and flexibility of Cityworks, such as the number of Cityworks Desktop, Anywhere, Server MMS, and PLL users; the populations served, types of services provided, number of request and work order templates, number created, revenues, budgets, etc.

Wayne Hill, Executive Director of Client Services, followed with a discussion highlighting Azteca’s growing client population over the years (51 new clients in 2008, 53 in 2009, and already 21 more in 2010) and how the company has managed this growth with new customer support representatives.

MyCityworks.com continues to grow and mature, offering a wide array of support-related information.

Monday morning’s plenary was followed by a visit to nearby Zion National Park. Conference attendees took box lunches aboard buses for the scenic trip.

Upon arrival, arrays of interesting options were available to see the park. People ventured on foot and park shuttles to explore and photograph the beautiful surroundings. After a few hours in the park, the group was shuttled to the Switchback Grille for dinner and an outdoor social.

Tuesday and Wednesday featured a series of 55 choices for 11 breakout sessions spread across 5 concurrent tracks summarizing Cityworks implementations, integrations, specific products, asset management, emergency preparedness, GIS data management, Cityworks Server PLL, and Server MMS. The implementation presentations detailed valuable information on experiences and insights gained during Cityworks implementations from the user’s and/or partner’s perspective, and examples of how they are utilizing Cityworks in their organizations.

The conference vendor hall included 19 exhibitors showcasing complementary software and services related to GIS, asset and maintenance management, and other industry interests, as well as the popular Doctor’s Office. Fabulous prizes donated by the exhibitors were raffled at the traditional Vendor Reception. Azteca again thanks this year’s sponsors: ESRI, POWER Engineers, Pipelogix, Riva Modeling, Timmons Group, TC Technology, Dig-Smart, and Woolpert.

The conference closed Wednesday afternoon with the annual User Feedback Luncheon. The session included discussions about the entire Cityworks product line, providing valuable feedback and input for future enhancements.

The Cityworks 2011 User Conference will be held again at the Dixie Center in beautiful St. George, Utah.

May 16 (Monday) – Welcome Reception May 17 - 19 (Tues - Thurs.) – User Conference You won’t want to miss this opportunity in the splendor of southwest Utah. With a new regional airport opening in St George in the fall of 2010, the trip to St George will be even easier. Visit our website at www.cityworks.com for updated information on our 2011 conference and be sure to register early.

See you all next year!

Partner News

Bridging the Gap Between Cityworks Desktop and Server MMS at Dakota Electric Association

By Len Jewell, P.E., PMP, Technical Systems Manager, Dakota Electric Association, and Chris Erpelding, Strategic Consultant, POWER Engineers

Azteca’s Cityworks Server MMS is a fantastic product that will provide lots of new functionality, flexibility, ease of use, simplified integration, and increased performance. Unfortunately, Dakota Electric Association (DEA) is unable to migrate to Cityworks Server MMS at this time, but still desires some of the new functionality to improve productivity and enhance the overall user experience. To help bridge the gap until the upgrade can occur, DEA worked with POWER Engineers (POWER) to implement the following customized add-ons: • Advanced reporting using Crystal Reports.

• Inbox-style functionality that lists all work assignments and provides alerts for new work.

• Calendar-style scheduling tools that are integrated with Outlook.

• Silverlight-based executive dashboards to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

This article describes these add-ons and outlines how they might be of use to other organizations in a similar upgrade situation.

B r i d g i n g the Gap for Advanced Reporting Reporting in Cityworks Server MMS is significantly improved over the reporting available in Desktop. DEA is bridging this gap by using Crystal Reports to satisfy some of their sophisticated reporting requirements. Crystal Reports allows users to graphically design data connections and the report layout by selecting and linking tables from a wide variety of data sources and placing fields and custom formulas on the reports. Sources include Excel spreadsheets, databases, BusinessObjects Enterprise Business Views, and local file system information. A wide array of formatting options can be applied to the report and the data can be grouped into bands, each of which can be split further and conditionally suppressed as needed. Crystal Reports also supports subreports, graphing, and a limited amount of GIS functionality.

1. The user simply selects the Print button to print the work order.

2. The work order report itself is centrally located, making it easy to maintain.

3. Crystal Reports allows for tabulation of costs and quantities.

4. Performance is excellent (even very large work order reports are presented to the user in less than 5 seconds).

B r i d g i n g t h e G a p f o r I n b o x F u n c ti o n a l i ty Cityworks Server MMS contains an Inbox that allows users to see work assigned to them, which is new functionality not available in Cityworks Desktop. DEA decided to bridge this gap by working with POWER to implement a custom tool called the Cityworks Notifier. This tool provides a simple way for users to: 1. Know when a work order or task has been assigned to them.

2. Monitor work assigned to others (e.g., support staff or peers).

3. Monitor the status of designs (from Telvent’s Designer).

4. Know when an integration automation function they initiated did not complete correctly.

Figure 2 – Notifier Popup Message

Figure 2 shows how the Notifier alerts the user that something needs their attention via a balloon popup on the Windows taskbar. Clicking on this popup displays the Notifier form shown in Figure 3.

Figure 1 – Sample Crystal Report (partial)

For example, the Crystal Report in Figure 1 shows how DEA was able to combine key information including cost details and a bar code for the work order. DEA modified the standard Cityworks PW.dot template and replaced the code in the template with a few lines of code that passes the work order number to a web service that generates the Crystal Report and sends it back to the user as a PDF file displayed in a browser. The advantages of this solution are:

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Figure 3 – Notifier Assignments

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P a r t n e r N e w s ( c o n t .)

The display of work items follows an Outlook style where a bold font indicates items that have not yet been opened and a regular font is used to display items that have already been viewed. Each column can be sorted by clicking on the header and the order of columns can be adjusted through a standard drag-and-drop interface. The administrator controls which columns are available via an XML system configuration file. One of the key advantages of the Notifier is that items can be opened directly from the form by either double-clicking individual items or by using the right-click context menu. Figure 4 shows the right-click menu for the work orders section of the Notifier.

Figure 6 – Custom Scheduler Figure 4 – Right-click menu for work orders

The Notifier Preferences tab shown in Figure 5 allows each user to configure what they want to see (their own work and/or the work of others on their team) as well as the type of work displayed (filtered by status, category, and priority), the action to be used when double-clicking items on the grid, and the frequency for checking on new work assignments. Users can also set the colors to use for highlighting items in the Notifier list (e.g., high priority items in red).

Similar to MS Outlook, users can view the calendar using different time frames (day, week, month, or custom). Scheduled start/end dates can be updated directly from this web page and tasks that are currently unscheduled can be assigned, directly updating the Cityworks database. Some of the key advantages of Outlook integration in DEA’s scheduling tool are: 1. The user can keep their personal schedule in Outlook so schedulers can see this information along with the Cityworks work when they are balancing workloads.

2. The Cityworks assignments are automatically added to Outlook, so the user only has to look in one place to see their entire schedule.

B r i d g i n g t h e G a p f o r E x e c u ti v e Dashboards In Cityworks Server MMS, dashboard charts allow managers to monitor KPIs. To bridge this gap in Cityworks Desktop, POWER implemented a Silverlightbased dashboard for DEA that includes a variety of charts, graphs, and gauges with drilldown capabilities, the ability to minimize/maximize individual dash parts, the ability to show/hide data grids, and a variety of user preferences.

Figure 7 shows how easy it is to pop up the Silverlight dashboards directly from the ArcMap environment.

DEA simply added an extra Cityworks Plus icon on the Cityworks toolbar to access the custom dashboards.

Figure 5 – Notifier Preference tab

B r i d g i n g the Gap for Scheduling Scheduling functionality is being introduced in Cityworks Server MMS, so DEA bridged this gap in Cityworks Desktop by having POWER implement a Silverlight-based web scheduling tool that uses and updates data from both Cityworks and Microsoft Outlook. DEA’s scheduling tools provide a number of different views and options for filtering the work displayed. The Scheduler’s primary view is shown in Figure 6.

July 2010

Figure 7 – Extra icon added to Cityworks Toolbar

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P a r t n e r N e w s ( c o n t .)

Summary Rather than waiting until you make the jump to Cityworks Server MMS, your organization can follow DEA’s example and take advantage of industrystandard tools like Crystal Reports and Silverlight to bridge the gap and satisfy your immediate requirements for complex reporting, Inbox-style notifications, scheduling, and executive dashboards. cw

Figure 8 – Custom Dashboard – Page 1

Figures 8 and 9 show a few of the top-level charts, graphs, and gauges that are included in DEA’s custom dashboard portal.

Figure 9 – Custom Dashboard – Page 2

For complete CITYWORKS SERVICES...

LOOK TO THE RAM. Waiting to upgrade to Cityworks Server MMS? Bridge the gap with Silverlight and Crystal Reports add-ons to Cityworks Desktop for: • Advanced Reporting • “Inbox” Work Notification • Executive Dashboards • Scheduling POWER Engineers has been a trusted Azteca Partner since 1996 and has acheived Platinum partner status as a proven integrator and highlyskilled implementation strategist.

Visit www.powereng.com/gis or contact Bart Koenig at bart.koenig@powereng.com for more information.

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P a r t n e r N e w s ( c o n t .)

The Cucamonga Valley Water District, California—Proud Past, Bright Future

By Darron Poulsen, Customer Service Officer, CVWD, and Darrin Farmer, Client Services Manager, Weston Solutions, Inc.

H i s to r y a nd Background The Cucamonga Valley lies between the cities of Los Angeles and San Bernardino in Southern California. Like most of western San Bernardino County, it is rapidly urbanizing. The area’s history, however, has not always indicated this direction. The peak agricultural production capability of the 1940s actually began nearly 100 years earlier. Good climate, excellent soils, and an abundant water supply prompted the early pioneers to develop a long, successful agricultural era. The valley’s name is derived from one of the local mountain peaks of the San Gabriel range which the native Indians called “Quical Monga.” In the 1940s, in the foothills of this peak, many local streams delivered this natural resource to over 60 wineries and 35,000 acres of vineyards. Over 23 local water companies existed to manage the water.

These companies ultimately formed the basis of the Cucamonga Valley Water District (CVWD) which was created as a “Special District” in 1955. The District provides water and sewer services to the City of Rancho Cucamonga and portions of the Cities of Fontana, Ontario, and Upland. All totaled, just under 200,000 residents receive services from CVWD. The agency has: • 48,000 water connections • 720 miles of potable waterlines • 10 miles of recycled waterlines • 450 miles of sewer lines • 30 wells • 36 reservoirs • 3 water treatment plants

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One tool that can share information across all departments Better asset and work order management Maintenance costing analysis Integration with other tools, water model, and SCADA Field tools to improve business operations and efficiency An increased awareness of the importance of accurate GIS information

In 2006, a team comprised of management and field staff performed a thorough review of these systems in order to leverage the GIS data and meet their new goals. Following this review, the team determined that Cityworks was the CMMS solution that best met the District’s needs. The District also selected iWater’s infraMap software for field users and DigSmart to manage underground service alert (USA) tickets. These tools were selected as the base applications in the development of CVWD’s enterprise GIS. The goal of this enterprise GIS is to make geospatial and related information accessible and available to the right people at the right time in order to support the right decision.

The selection of these applications has resulted in improved departmental cooperation, more efficient operations, and an improved GIS system, providing even greater levels of information to aid in the decision process.

I m p r o v e d D e p a r tm e n t C o o p e r a ti o n Weston Solutions was brought in to help implement and support the District in navigating through the installation and startup of the applications. They supported the project management team at CVWD by conducting workshops with key users in all departments to optimize workflow and system design.

They played an important role in developing and shaping Cityworks and infraMap into useful tools supported by staff and management across multiple departments.

Weston was able to bridge the gap between operations staff and the project management team. They coordinated meetings and conference calls that communicated the benefits of the applications from a non-biased position Continued on next page

From its inception in 1955 until 1997, the District, like most utilities, used paper atlases and file cards to keep track of water and sewer asset information.

Each field representative and inspector kept their own information on any field installations and changes “penciled” in on their individual atlases. In 1997 with the change of their general manager (GM), CVWD staff determined that they needed to bring the District into the information age and thus their GIS was born. The original design and purpose of the GIS was to centralize the individual atlas modifications and provide engineering staff an exhibit tool to communicate to upper management and developers.

Although championed by a forward-thinking GM and board, the full potential and power of the GIS system was not realized until recently when it was determined that the District needed to move in the direction of a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) that could fully utilize their GIS system. The previous work order system, a module of the existing financial software that was address- and location-based, was not meeting the needs of the maintenance team. A set of new business drivers was established to select the new system: CSR staff utilizing Cityworks

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P a r t n e r N e w s ( c o n t .) and listened carefully to the concerns and needs of every department. With information gleaned from these meetings, they shaped and developed the applications to meet staff needs. This level of support led to the development of procedural and application modifications, helping teams gaining a better understanding of the CMMS and the goals of the enterprise GIS philosophy.

Weston assisted in developing integration for updating the CMMS from the SunGard HTE billing and financial system. They built a dashboard to facilitate the buy-in and usage of the CMMS and are currently working on getting work order information from the same system. Weston’s involvement has and continues to play a vital role in meeting the goals of the project and bringing the organization closer together with greater levels of understanding and cooperation.

Valve crew utilizing CMMS

primary users of the information. The solutions ultimately selected were their number one selections.

Service requests and work orders are primarily initiated in the office stemming from a customer’s concern. They are automatically submitted to the appropriate field foremen who receive emails on their BlackBerry device when a new request or work order has been created. From their phone, they can determine whether they need to respond immediately or if an inspection the following day will be sufficient. The work orders and service requests are never printed; staff manages the workflow from over 40 laptop computers. Foremen investigate the problem areas and develop work orders from their laptop or desktop and submit them to the appropriate staff for completion.

Field employees utilizing CMMS on a laptop in the truck

M o r e E f f i cient Operations During the review of the CMMS vendors, field staff played a vital role in evaluating solutions. Their buy-in and acceptance of the final product was critical to the overall success of the project as field employees are the

Staff utilize DataPump and access Cityworks service requests and work orders through infraMap where they have tools to help them route and complete their daily work assignments. They use infraMap inspection forms to log details of their maintenance activities, such as valve exercising, hydrant and blow-off flushing, sewer line cleaning, and the completion of USA tickets brought in from Dig-Smart. From infraMap, they take the list of assets where inspections were completed and, at the end of the day, they complete one work order in Cityworks applying labor and equipment hours across all the assets they inspected that day. Staff is allowed to close work orders once they complete the mandatory custom fields and submit them back to their foreman for review. Those jobs are synchronized with the main Cityworks database at the end of each day through DataPump.

InfraMap provides a seamless interface into the Cityworks environment, making it easy for field crews to route and manage their work more efficiently. Daily inspections of routine maintenance functions are simplified and easily tracked in infraMap and Dig-Smart. The current and future success of the CMMS has been achieved by putting the right applications in place for different users. Field staff enjoy the ease of data entry and the organization of information in the infraMap and Dig-Smart environments and management gets the power of improved reporting from the Cityworks application. The solutions assist staff in improving the quality of the GIS through red-line submissions for reporting errors. The combination of these products has been a great success at CVWD in achieving their CMMS goals and expectations.

infraMap

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INPRINT

P a r t n e r N e w s ( c o n t .)

M o r e I n f ormation and KPI Tracking In regards to achieving goals and expectations, CVWD, with the help of Weston Solutions, also developed a dashboard to display and monitor selective tasks within the CMMS and from other applications which are key performance indicators (KPIs). The platform for the dashboard was developed on the ESRI Flex application. The dashboard provides staff and management quick, easy access to information within the CMMS system. CSR staff can see work pending in neighborhoods where customers are questioning the status of a concern. Field staff can quickly get a graphical representation of pending work assignments and know how to plan their day. Management can track specific work orders and maintenance tasks to assure their departments are on track to meet expected goals and established KPIs. Outside applications, like the phone system, are also on the dashboard. These statistics provide staff and management information regarding calls answered and hold

time. The dashboard provides the final piece of the enterprise GIS management goal by getting information to people to help them make the right decisions. cw

CVWD Dashboard

Integrate your data Integrate your IT systems Integrate your workflow Integrate your business

Cityworks implementation Data development & legacy data migration Application Development Contact Weston Solutions, Inc. Cityworks@westonsolutions.com (530)217-3276 July 2010

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International News – Canada

County of Oxford, Ontario—Integration Saves Time, Money, and Effort

By Barry Kelly, Public Works Industry Manager, Business Development, ESRI Canada

B a c k g ro u nd Set among rolling hills and farmland, Oxford County offers a mix of rural and urban settings as well as a rapidly expanding business sector that includes General Motor’s CAMI Automotive facility and Canada’s second Toyota plant. The County boasts several heritage sites; a thriving local arts, culture, and recreation community; and several park, conservation, and natural areas, including 98 kilometres of trails. The County has a population of approximately 102,000 people spread across eight municipalities.

In the fall of 2006, the County established an Asset Management Steering Committee in response to the tangible capital reporting requirements of Section 3150 of the Canadian Public Sector Accounting Standards (SR 3150) as well as an identified need for a more comprehensive analysis and planning approach for County asset maintenance and replacement. The Steering Committee was comprised of Oxford County staff members from Finance, Engineering, IT, Operations, and Maintenance Departments. The Committee’s original vision was to deploy an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to provide an integrated and standardized information technology platform.

The foundation of the ERP solution is to be a system or systems that demonstrate the benefits of modern computing through allowing for stable, yet flexible, and scalable support of municipal best practices in the areas of financial accounting, purchasing, work and infrastructure management, and asset tracking. In December of 2007, Oxford County released a Request for Proposal to acquire a solution which would meet their vision of an integrated ERP system. After a thorough procurement process, the County awarded the project for the provision of an integrated ERP solution to ESRI Canada on March 31, 2008, which included the implementation of Cityworks as a major component of the overall solution for a GIS-based asset management/ computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

Oxford County was one of the first municipalities worldwide to adopt ESRI solutions and has been leveraging GIS in its operations for the past 24 years.

Therefore, the County’s GIS needed to be an integral part of the CMMS solution.

The solution also required integration into the financial system, Microsoft’s Dynamics GP (Great Plains), which is the system they use to manage Material Inventory, Human Resources (HR), Payroll, Accounts Payable (AP), Accounts Receivable (AR), General Ledger (GL), and Budgeting.

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Cityworks by Azteca Systems was chosen because of its ability to handle a vast array of maintenance management tasks and be tightly integrated into the County’s ESRI GIS database and IT infrastructure. The implementation used a phased approach to reduce the impact on County staff. The project code name was Project Matrix to make everyone aware that multiple systems and people are required to make it a success.

The County’s existing Great Plains system was used to support general ledger, vendor payment, and payroll processes. Great Plains was closely linked to the work management system, which acted as the transaction subledger for detailed information in all but the billing/collection process, but was not integrated to the County’s ESRI GIS. The work management system also populated an in-house Microsoft Access database used for the annual budgeting process. The County had a number of departmentally based maintenance management systems in place. Project Matrix’s initial goal was a review of existing systems and interfaces through ESRI Canada’s comprehensive “Business Blueprinting” process. The end results of the Business Blueprint was the recommendation of a final system architecture, “To-Be” workflows based on best practices, and future state system interfaces, with the goal to reduce data duplication and to improve financial and operational reporting. ESRI Canada included two business partners on the project—Diamond Municipal, who was the County’s existing vendor and system implementer for Dynamics GP, and RIVA Modeling for the provision of long-term capital planning of County infrastructure assets.

Figure 1. County of Oxford High-Level Architecture

Part of Project Matrix was to replace manual processes for service requests as well as work orders for water distribution, wastewater collection, wastewater treatment plants, facilities, engineering, and fleet, saving the County time and optimizing efficiency. The initial implementation was mainly for Public Works but eventually, will be expanded to other areas within the County.

INPRINT

On November 3, 2008, the first phase of Project Matrix went live with the electronic logging and dispatching of requests for service submitted by the County’s residents and staff. Councillors, staff, and project managers showed off the new computer software that enables the County’s Customer Service Group to efficiently log and assign the service requests they receive.

“This allowed us to provide better customer service,” says Lynn Buchner, Manager of Corporate Services. “It’s a better tracking system that assists us in more readily identifying weaknesses or gaps in the services we provide which results in improved risk management and planning for future needs of the residents.”

“GIS is an integral part of doing municipal business in Oxford County. With the addition of Cityworks, we have integrated the County’s financial applications as a powerful enterprise tool that will enable us to better plan the services we deliver to the public and predict our corporate infrastructure needs both in the present

Integration Structure Through a series of workshops, every effort was made to understand the existing business practices and the desired workflows. The goal was to reduce the duplication of systems and data, which saves money, not just from maintenance costs on the software but also from the staff time to maintain the disparate systems and data.

The initial gap analysis revealed that to accomplish all the required integration and well into the future.” tasks would first require Lynn Buchner, Manager of Corporate expanding their existing Services, County of Oxford financial system.

The only additional software required for PS 3150 reporting was the Fixed Asset Module for depreciation calculations.

County staff involved in the project along with the ESRI Canada consulting team and their partners from Diamond Municipal and RIVA Modeling.

F u tu r e P l a n s Now that the County has been in full production for over one year, they are looking to expand into other areas. Potential expansion includes managing facilities and replacing an aging permitting application. Robert Walton, the County’s Director of Public Works, explains, “Cityworks gives Public Works the ability to use our GIS database in conjunction with service requests and the financial system to seamlessly provide customer service, log service data, and do project billing. As with all new software there is a learning curve but, in the long term, this system will allow us to provide superior customer service and better planning for capital upgrades.”

Summary Cityworks, with integration to other corporate systems, has automated processes for work orders and service requests related to the County’s infrastructure and assets. It has also enabled the County to improve budgeting by tracking all asset management costs including equipment and material for assets under construction.

In integrating its financial and infrastructure information, the County now has the appropriate system in place to be able to make operational decisions based on data synchronized across corporate systems and establish a powerful tool for effective asset life cycle management.

“GIS is an integral part of doing municipal business in Oxford County. With the addition of Cityworks, we have integrated the County’s financial applications as a powerful enterprise tool that will enable us to better plan the services we deliver to the public and predict our corporate infrastructure needs both in the present and well into the future,” summarizes Lynn Buchner. cw

C i t y w o r ks and Dynamic GP Work management involves tracking resources and their associated costs.

The data is maintained and reported from the database of record. The integration transfers work-related information from Cityworks to Great Plains and core resource cost information from Great Plains to Cityworks.

C i t y w o r ks, JBS, and Great Plains Work management also involves the tracking of labour utilization. The integration allows for the transfer of work-related information from JBS Time Manager to Cityworks so consolidated reporting can account for time related to or not related to work orders. This labour time is then transferred to Great Plains Canadian Payroll to process pay.

This integrated approach provides a complete, centralized system for asset management fully compliant with PS 3150.

Public Works employee – Lori McKinnon – using Cityworks

For more information on the County of Oxford, visit www.oxfordcounty.ca.

On May 1, 2009, Project Matrix went live with Cityworks with interfaces to the latest version of Dynamics GP v10, JBS Time Manager, and Info:HR for water distribution and sewer collection operations and maintenance, road operations and maintenance, water/wastewater treatment, Public Works Engineering & Construction, Fleet, and Facility Management. On Monday, June 29, 2009, the County held its go-live celebration of Project Matrix after nearly 2 successful months of full operation of the County’s new integrated ERP solution, fulfilling its original vision. The celebration was attended by all

July 2010

About ESRI Canada Founded in 1984, ESRI Canada provides enterprise GIS solutions that empower businesses, governments, and educational institutions to make timely, informed, and mission critical decisions by leveraging the power of geography. The company distributes the world’s leading GIS software from ESRI, Telvent Miner & Miner, Azteca Systems, and other technology partners. Headquartered in Toronto, the company serves over 10,000 customers from 16 regional offices across Canada. Information about ESRI Canada can be found at www.esricanada.com.

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Business Partners

Implementation Partners PLATINUM • Power Engineers

• Woolpert

GOLD

SILVER

• Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH) • Timmons Group

• Jones, Edmunds and Associates • Motorola • Rolta US

BRONZE • Burns & McDonnell • CH2M Hill, Inc. • Civil Solutions • IT Nexus

• Midland GIS • North Arrow Technologies • NTB Associates • PACE Engineers, Inc.

• Strand Associates, Inc. • VESTRA Resources, Inc. • Westin Engineering • Weston Solutions

For a complete list of Implementation Member Partners see www.cityworks.com.

International Distribution Partners • ESRI • ESRI • ESRI • ESRI

WELCOME NEW CITYWORKS USER’S! Agua S p e c i a l U ti l i ty Distri c t, T X Elk Grove Water District, CA Harfor d C o u n ty Gove r n m e n t, M D

Canada Costa Rica (Geotecnologias) Israel (Systematics) S-GROUP Sverige AB, Sweden

Jesse Biddle, Son of Cityworks User Marion Storey, Drafted as the Philadelphia Phillies #1 Pick!

Marion Storey, Information Services Director, at the City of Philadelphia, is the proud mother of Jesse Biddle, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound baseball pitcher. Jesse played for Germantown Friends School (K-12) in Philadelphia, PA, where he went 9-2 with one save and a 1.06 ERA in 2010. He allowed just 9 earned runs, 21 hits, and 29 walks in 59.1 innings, while striking out 140 batters.

Congratulations from all of us at Azteca Systems!

Key La r g o W a s te w a te r Treatm e n t D i s t r i c t, F L Manate e C o u n ty Gove r n m e n t, F L Mishaw a k a , I N Mounta i n V i e w C o u n t y , A B , Cana d a SeaTac , W A Troy, M I

Jesse pitching a shutout at his high school championship game.

Draft Day! Marion, Jesse, and father, David Biddle, who conincidentally also works for the City of Philadelphia as a Recycling Coordinator

Wester v i l l e , O H

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INPRINT

P r e s i d e n t ’ s C o r n e r (cont. from page 3) President’s Corner continued

governments and utilities is to be fully invested in ESRI GIS as a mission critical enterprise system. We have always advocated the geodatabase is the best place for cataloging and maintaining an inventory of assets.

Our philosophy has always been to just use the geodatabase as the asset repository avoiding an interface/upload/sync. We gave this a name–GIScentric.

GIS-centric resonates with organizations committed to ESRI GIS as a mission critical enterprise system. Interfacing, uploading, and syncing to a redundant asset database adds unnecessary complexity and duplication of work effort. John Przybyla, GISP, Woolpert Inc., stated, “The GIS-centric design of Cityworks (i.e., single asset repository) is a FUNDAMENTAL difference from all other products—and it is critically important to the overall success of the system in meeting an organization’s goals. Keeping an asset repository current, accurate, and complete is a huge challenge for many organizations and the failure to do so is, in my experience, the primary cause of failure of CMMS. Keeping two repositories updated and synchronized just makes that problem much harder—so much so that success is extremely rare.”

Cityworks is still the only GIS-centric CMMS and/or Permit and License Management software. Cityworks is (and always has been) designed and created to fully leverage ESRI GIS including ESRI’s most current releases of ArcGIS. Cityworks is a leading proponent of the GIScentric approach. In fact, to the best of our knowledge, Cityworks first applied the tag GIS-centric to CMMS. To assure that the term GIScentric remained meaningful, Cityworks has taken the lead with other leading GIS-centric system developers to define GIS-centric (see www.

NAGCS.com). Together we published the rules that define a GIS-centric system and developed a certification process that includes an evaluation performed by a fully neutral third-party (John Przybyla, GISP, Woolpert, LLC). The process is transparent and independent. It is open to all. Not unexpectedly, as with other standard approaches, there are those who choose to belittle and diminish it. GIS-centric remains an important factor in the design and development of Cityworks.

Cityworks 2010 is GIS Empowered by Cityworks® The software development tools available in 2010 allow us to create a system so tightly coupled with ESRI GIS that the constituent parts of the resulting system become indistinguishable to the end user. Cityworks is Powered by ESRI® and Cityworks is Empowering GIS for infrastructure, assets, permits, and licensingTM. For many users, Cityworks is the GIS as it’s through the Cityworks user interface that users interact with the GIS. For Cityworks 2010 it is now appropriate to say GIS empowered by CityworksTM. A common term describing software designed in this way is “content aggregate application.” The resulting application is an aggregate of multiple software systems. In the case of Cityworks 2010 Server, at a minimum the aggregate includes ESRI GIS, Cityworks Server, SQL Server or Oracle, and a browser. It can easily be configured to include many other software systems and apps, too.

The design and benefit of GIS-centricity is still relevant and applicable.

But it is more. This software development approach does not diminish ESRI GIS. Content aggregate software is a realization of ESRI’s vision for GIS supporting core business processes, even mission critical enterprise system processes, yet can be utilized by non-GIS professionals. The end user is not concerned that the aggregate pieces are ESRI GIS, Cityworks Server, SQL Server or Oracle, the browser, and other applications. All the end users care about is that they can easily utilize the application on a daily basis to do their mission critical enterprise system work. This is the future of software applications and Cityworks 2010 is already there. cw

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W e s t V a l l e y C i t y , U T – P L L (cont. from page 7) West Valley City, UT, continued

the features and upgrades that Cityworks 2010 offers are a direct result of feedback from the West Valley City user base. They have also fully leveraged their investment in Cityworks PLL by adding in-house custom tools and interfaces to other City systems. To give our readers an understanding of their implementation, we asked Cityworks users at West Valley a series of questions about how their Cityworks PLL solution is working for their organization.

The following questions were addressed by Ken Cushing, DBA and Network Supervisor, West Valley City: 1. How has Cityworks PLL improved City users work processes?

At West Valley City, Cityworks Permitting has improved the users work process substantially since the go-live. Specifically using the workflow, users no longer have to print out hard copies, hand-deliver, or email plans and permits. Before Cityworks, the divisions had no way to track who had the plans and when they were passed to another person for approval.

Now any of the divisions can use Cityworks to check where in the approval process a development might be, including administration staff.

Receiving the Cityworks Innovative User Award from Brian Haslam at the Cityworks 2010 User Conference

The following questions were addressed by Jeni Siebeneck, GIS Administrator, West Valley City:

2. How has utilizing Cityworks PLL benefitted City departments from a technological standpoint?

1. Describe Azteca Systems’ and West Valley City’s relationship in developing a GIS integration.

Cityworks is an enterprise, web-based software and can be used in all of our locations simultaneously, even in the field. This gives all departments a live view of the current status of every permit and case. Cityworks allows West Valley to track and manage code enforcement cases much more efficiently than previously done.

West Valley City invested in GIS development in the early 1990s. The implementation of Cityworks PLL will leverage the City’s investment in GIS data for parcels, addresses, land use, zoning, districts, and other information, creating a more accurate process for permitting, inspections, and code enforcement. The two systems share information, and through the help of Azteca, will be fully integrated over the coming year.

3. Explain how Cityworks PLL has been expanded into other departments.

West Valley has continued to expand the use of Cityworks in additional departments since going live. The Legal Department is in the process of integration to the Code Enforcement Workflow, rather than entering information into a separate system. The Police Department has been given access to Cityworks to monitor code violations on problem properties.

Building Inspectors are entering inspection results real-time into Cityworks from the field, rather than handwriting and reentering them into the system later. This saves them time and gives the contractor readable, immediate results of the inspection.

2. Explain future goals the City has for Asset Management.

West Valley City plans to implement Cityworks MMS Server for asset management in the Public Works and the Parks & Recreation Departments.

In Public Works, this will include the storm drain network, streetlights, street signs, sanitation, streets, and emergency management. For the Parks & Recreation Department, two City-owned golf courses and all Cityowned parks will use Cityworks for work orders, service requests, and asset management.

We look forward to our future work with West Valley and are excited for the continued and expanding success they will experience utilizing Cityworks in the future. cw

Wasatch Mountains - view from West Valley City

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INPRINT

L o v e l a n d , C O (cont. from page 1) Loveland, CO, continued

When requests were completed and returned to the office, they were filed away. When residents would call to check on the outcome of a request, we would thumb through stacks and stacks of slips to find this information.

The resident would most often hold on the line during this process. Our residents suffered because of our inefficient processes.

The slow paperwork trail also posed a serious problem when billing for special services. With the Solid Waste Division providing residential dumpster service and special fee-based pickups, the delay directly impacted our ability to post charges to residential accounts. Frequently residents moved out of town and accounts were closed before staff received paperwork notifying them of the completed services.

Aerial view of Loveland, CO

Gathering information for month-end reports was also a challenge as we once again sorted and counted each slip. Month-end reports were limited at best and a big issue we faced was where to store all the boxes and boxes of paper. Filing and storing was time-consuming and took a lot of space; it was always a chore to keep the paperwork organized.

The Solid Waste Division has cut back on the need to hire outside labor as productivity levels have increased. With the email feature, crews are dispatched more rapidly and are able to address the issue the first time.

Results are documented in the program and supervisors are instantly aware of potential problems. Cityworks has, in many ways, allowed us to take a more proactive role, rather than a reactive one.

We produce numerous reports all based on data input in the system. Many times, with the help of the search feature, office staff are able to address concerns over the phone rather than send crews and equipment back into the field—another cost-saving measure.

Cityworks has proven to be an invaluable asset to the Solid Waste Division over the course of its first year. The division as a whole has become much more efficient. Our office receives over 40,000+ incoming calls on average per year and Cityworks has made responding to these calls manageable and orderly. The City of Loveland recently completed a citywide conversion of trash and recycling carts, increasing call volume exponentially. With more calls come more service requests. Coupled with ArcMap, Cityworks allows us to quickly and precisely identify our residents’ needs with a few keystrokes.

We now have the ability to create a request and dispatch a crew immediately through the email feature and have documentation of the investigation in the system within the day. Charges for services are applied in a timely manner and have resulted in significant cost savings.

Retrieving information from the program is another feature we frequently utilize. Not only are we able to easily gather information for general monthly reports, but we have discovered ways to use the data to help us improve our staffing levels, training, and education; make accurate assessments of upcoming needs; and identify routes and locations of special-needsresidents who require extra attention. All of this information is available through the Cityworks search function. We export that data and can analyze and develop needed corrections many times before the concern becomes a problem.

We knew we needed to improve our customer service, productivity, and documentation of all services performed. We recognized that improved efficiency would reduce our staffing, outside labor, and equipment costs, resulting in savings we would be able to pass on to our residents. Striving to be good stewards of City resources, the Solid Waste Division felt these improvements were needed to fulfill that goal.

To resolve our issues, we envisioned a user-friendly computer system where we could access all necessary data with the touch of a button. We wanted to measure our performance quickly and accurately, identify areas of improvement, and find a system that could accomplish all of these things while continuing to grow with us as our wants and needs changed. To date, with Cityworks, we have this and more.

Presently, with our Cityworks solution, our office staff immediately enters the resident’s information while on the phone with the caller. With the Cityworks popup feature, street names are instantly identified, allowing the crews to respond without delay. Inquiries about collection days, set-out locations, driver assignments, and past caller histories are also readily available so our staff members present themselves as knowledgeable, competent City employees. Their confidence levels have increased as most information is located on the screen in front of them. Residents are pleasantly pleased by response times.

July 2010

We are currently in the process of establishing a web reporting option for City residents and hope to have that accomplished in the near future.

For Loveland, Cityworks has become an invaluable tool that has improved our Solid Waste program exponentially and has delivered the results we needed. cw

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D e l a w a r e , O H – P L L (cont. from page 6) Delaware, OH, continued

In Delaware, a total of 88 unique templates were configured. Each template is assigned default data that supports the specific permit or case type. Default data consists of: • Workflows • Case Data Groups • Fees • Flags • Conditions • People Roles The 88 templates are supported by 85 workflows which contain 242 individual tasks. Workflows are groups of tasks that track all reviews, inspections, notices, hearings, issuances, and more. Each task supports a step in the business process for the permit or case. All of the necessary fees for each permit are configured and accurately calculated using 171 unique fee codes. Only those fees that apply to the specific permit or case type are assigned to their respective templates.

Workflow chart to build a new deck workflow

Additionally, divided among the templates are 69 Case Data Groups containing 434 custom data fields. Case Data Groups are groups of userdefined custom fields assigned to each template. Cityworks users can define their own fields and use them to capture information that each permit or case requires, such as number of bedrooms, desired start date, foundation type, square footage, etc. Custom data fields assume a field type to control the format. Field types include: numeric, text, date, dropdown list, value, yes/no, and comment box. Each template can have as many custom data groups as needed to support the permit or case.

In addition, dozens of flags, conditions, instruments, predefined notes, inspection corrections, violations, people roles, and more were added to the system to support the City’s business processes. Cityworks PLL is incredibly flexible and very customizable for each organization.

important step in the implementation. Too often, there is a tendency to “stuff” the former process into Cityworks. It’s important to take the time to assess the needs of each department, look at the current processes, and efficiently translate that into the Cityworks application. As one of the many individuals involved in this project, it was a great opportunity to assist individuals and departments in assessing their current way of doing business, working out concerns, and finding a solution within Cityworks to manage it.

As Delaware’s staff learned more about the software’s capabilities, changes were made to the configuration that more closely supported their practices. The reconfiguration of Delaware’s workflows, fee codes, and data groups brought to light Cityworks PLL’s incredible flexibility and the wide variety of ways the system can be configured. Going through the process of selecting the “right” approach yielded a specific and very well organized configuration to manage the City’s business processes. And, in the process, Azteca gained valuable knowledge about Delaware’s needs, many of which resulted in functional enhancements to Cityworks PLL. Comparing the former mostly paper-based permitting system supported

by MS Access and Excel to Cityworks, Dave says, “It is literally like moving from the Dark Ages to the enlightenment to try to describe the difference between pre-Cityworks and post-Cityworks. Our daily pay-in report sent to finance once took an hour or more each day and was still somewhat disorganized now takes literally only a few minutes and is correct every time. Monthly reports that took the better part of a day to complete using many data sources now literally take just minutes from a single source.

Finding case history and even other relevant actions on a property is now possible from the desktop and was virtually impossible before and required hours of searching paper files. This efficiency gain has removed a huge barrier to cross-training. It has unlocked the full potential of staff to focus on the professional job details and not the mechanics of the job.

Staff from ages 30 to 60 have all taken to the application. Once cases are entered, they can then be used to tell the story of what we do and the value we provide to the citizens of our community in an entirely new, visual, and graphic way.”

After a very thorough implementation, the City went live with Cityworks PLL on April 30, 2010. Dave Efland, Director of Planning and Community Development, states, “The implementation process was challenging, mostly due to the fact that it forced us for the first time to write down, flow chart, and confront our own processes. This was actually a really important component and the reflection led to a change in process as a result, but, beyond that, the experience and assistance of Azteca made this possible. Without Azteca and Woolpert helping us through the implementation and teaching us to teach ourselves, we would not be utilizing this cutting-edge technology.”

Indeed, implementing Cityworks provides an opportunity and setting for organizations to completely review and analyze their current processes and, if necessary, make changes and improvements. This is a very

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Fee codes and related descriptions

INPRINT

Finally, as Dave sums up the implementation: “The product will only get better and better as upgrades and enhancements are built into the system in future releases by a company that was interested not only in the technology but, probably more importantly, in getting to know us as people, our organization, and our business processes. Too often software and software companies want you to fit into their system. This ignores the reasons that local governments exist to regulate and provide services to our citizens. Azteca and Woolpert started from the very beginning wanting to translate our way of doing business into Cityworks.”

We look forward to their continued feedback as we continue to improve Cityworks PLL. cw

Application screen for sign permit

He continues, “We can as a complete team see all the steps of permitting in one place and it’s available for every team member to see; they simply log in to Cityworks and search for what they need. This enhances communication and facilitates a much more team-oriented approach to our work and problem solving while increasing accountability.”

It has been a privilege to work the staff at the City of Delaware. As with all implementations of Cityworks CMMS or PLL, the dedicated employees within the organization are the reason Cityworks succeeds. Being an early adopter of the system, they have provided invaluable feedback that has helped us significantly improve the product.

July 2010

Permitting templates

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Cityworks - the Choice of North American Public Works and Utilities!

Cityworks is a flexible and affordable infrastructure, asset, permit, and licensing management system.

Built on ESRI Ž GIS technology, organizations can inventory assets; issue and track service requests, work orders, permits, and licenses; and manage customer needs. Proven technology from Azteca Systems, Cityworks is scalable, easy-to-use, and based on open standards – working the way your agency works.

Azteca Systems, Inc. | 11075 South State Street Ste. 24 Sandy UT 84070 | 801.523.2751 | www.cityworks.com

Azteca Systems, Inc. 11075 S. State Street, Ste. 24 Sandy, UT 84070

If you have received this newsletter in error, please call 801-523-2751 or email kryser@cityworks.com.