Category: Case Studies
CoolSpools Case Study – Global Clothing Business
Posted on March 01, 2018at 10:26 am
Our client provides consumers around the world with its diverse portfolio of iconic lifestyle brands. Founded over 100 years ago, they are one of the world’s largest apparel, footwear and accessories companies with operations spanning numerous geographies, product categories and distribution channels.
CoolSpools is used in several ways at the company:
- As an add on to their custom software, specifically for Inventory tracking and website feeds.
- All Inventory reporting is emailed to many users (using CoolSpools’ email address lists) as spreadsheets, created from both DB files and SQLs using CoolSpools’ Conversion to Excel Spreadsheet software.
- Several CSV files are sent to third party application suppliers, using CoolSpools’ Conversion to CSV software.
- For daily website processing, an XML file, created using the database-to-XML mapping tool in CoolSpools, is sent to a third party.
The client’s Senior Systems Analyst comments “I wanted to thank you and your support staff for the invaluable help you have provided to me and my organization this year. At the organizations at which I previously worked, I had not worked with CoolSpools. It would have saved innumerable hours (maybe months) in the initial creation and simple modification of files and reports!
You have a great product and you and the entire staff should be very proud of all the hard work that has been put into the (continuing) design and development of it.”
Case Study: Take 2
Posted on March 03, 2017at 10:03 am
Take Two is a leader in providing automated information management products and services for administration in school districts and colleges across Canada.
Their Comprehensive Information Management System (CIMS) manages everything needed in a school division from Employee, Finance, Student, Public and Warehouse Management which enables Take Two to offer a very powerful combination of Software, Consulting, Development, Hardware Services, and Support. The business is celebrating it’s 30th year of operation in 2017 and prides itself in listening and reacting to customer needs.
Take Two sees Ariadne Software as a key business partner as it’s customers have successfully relied on the CoolSpools software suite for many years to convert their reports and images to pdfs, and to allow email/file transfer distribution from iSeries software. They have 11 districts across Canada from Manitoba to British Columbia using CIMS and CoolSpools, meaning thousands of users and millions of emails rely on it and couldn’t live without it!
CoolSpools Spool Converter and Email modules are 100% imbedded into the Take Two CIMS applications which:
- Customers auto-email daily student attendance from 100’s of schools to 1000’s of parents.
- Many emails convert reports and images to Microsoft Excel and Adobe PDF.
- Take Two rely on CoolSpools for email/file transfer distribution.
- And they create picture rosters:
Ariadne’s CoolSpools applications have been super-beneficial to Take Two who realised that CoolSpools was an ideal tried and tested development tool to integrate into all of their 5 CIMS modules.
And another huge benefit is a web application that draws from an original iSeries application that already had 100’s of reports created. Instead of re-designing they use CoolSpools convert spool file to PDF product and file transfer the PDF to their website to deliver to the end users…. 1000’s of reports a day that are now also enhanced with pictures!
Take Two rely on CoolSpools for email/file transfer distribution. And they create picture rosters:
Ariadne’s CoolSpools applications have been super-beneficial to Take Two who realised that CoolSpools was an ideal tried and tested development tool to integrate into all of their 5 CIMS modules. And another huge benefit is a web application that draws from an original iSeries application that already had 100’s of reports created. Instead of re-designing they use CoolSpools convert spool file to PDF product and file transfer the PDF to their website to deliver to the end users…. 1000’s of reports a day that are now also enhanced with pictures!
Commenting on Ariadne, Take Two said: “The CoolSpools product and support team are excellent – emails are responded to quickly and appropriately, instructions are always clear. CoolSpools is a major utility that our customers are dead without! You meet our high standards of quality and support. We are happy to have you as a key partner!”
CoolSpools Case Study – DUO, Netherlands
Posted on July 14, 2016at 9:27 am
Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO) is the executive arm of the Netherlands national government for education. DUO finances and informs participants in education and educational institutions and organises examinations.
DUO uses CoolSpools for sending emails from IBM i partitions because prior to release 7.1 there was no native tool that would let you send emails with IFS based attachments. Most of the attachments are .zip files and .pdf files – the .zip files are created by DUO’s own software, the .pdf files via standard CPYSPLF functionality. The emails with attachments are used for both internal and external communications.
Ivar Eizenga – DUO’s IBM Power Infrastructure Manager says “Implementation using CoolSpools was pretty simple and working with CoolSpools and the support team has been brilliant so far. We’re currently moving our systems from Power7 to Power8 and we received all the extended licenses for our side-by-side operation without any major hassle, which in this time and age is kind of unique”.
CoolSpools Case Study – DiVal Safety Equipment
Posted on June 13, 2016at 8:45 am
Spool to PDF conversions help DiVal Safety Equipment, a large, US based distributor of safety and industrial products. They own and operate several offices and warehouses throughout the Eastern, Central & Southern United States.
How does DiVal use CoolSpools?
DiVal have hundreds of automated spool to PDF conversions for such things as emailing invoices, statements, purchase orders, acknowledgements, etc. and they are also starting to use CoolSpools to archive day-end reports which have historically been bound and stored.
CoolSpools is used by DiVal to convert (to PDF) and email artwork held on the IFS for their silk screening, needlework and tool repair processes and their team have written a CL with a prompt for a query name/library and email address, so that any member of staff who uses Query/400 can send & receive worksheets via email.
To achieve a workflow solution DiVal use RPG XML to create HTML which is put into the SNDCMN or CVT command so their customer gets an email with a “response” link, an attachment of the PDF document to be approved, buttons to Approve, Approve with Change or Decline, and a text box for comments. They are also able to embed a logo header and footer into the email using HTML pointing to a web server.
Paul McMahon of Dival Safety Equipment says “Having previously used IBM’s SNDDST with stand-alone PDF and Excel converters CoolSpools is day and night as to flexibility and ease of use, plus it’s more reliable. If you ask me to describe the CoolSpools product and support team it’s easy because I’ve said it to lots of people. They are absolutely hands down the best I’ve worked with. From guiding me through maps and template creation, to figuring out (and fixing) why certain Query/400 results error out, to help with attaching and embedding files and gifs for enhancing the display of emails. Every time I think I’m pushing the envelope, the CoolSpools folks have a suggestion or solution!”
CoolSpools Case Study – Bogod and Co (Bernina)
Posted on May 16, 2016at 9:00 am
Established in 1895, Bogod and Co Ltd are importers and distributors of sewing machines and the UK representative of the high-end Bernina sewing machines of Switzerland and the iconic Singer sewing machines.
Bogod & Co originally used CoolSpools to create PDF files from AS400 Spool files using the splitting function. Over the years their use of the product suite has increased and now they use CoolSpools to:
– Include graphics on outputs to create invoices and stationery that are used for customer communications and internal archiving.
– Email PDF’s.
– Generate Excel spreadsheets and html for business reporting
– Create and email Excel for sending information to suppliers e.g. purchase orders.
– Create order status xml AS400 reports for customers, for example John Lewis Director Stephen Bogod says “CoolSpools is very function rich and meets essential business requirements. It’s very well designed for integration with AS400 applications. Working with the CoolSpools team has been an excellent experience. The support team are just as helpful as the product developer in offering advice on how to use the product. They provide regular and responsive software updates and developments to address particular glitches or requirements – these updates are exceptionally valuable. In one example the CoolSpools team helped fix an issue we were having importing excel data into our AS400 for delivery reports from suppliers. The support we receive from the CoolSpools team is very impressive – they really do go above and beyond!”