Infor Opens New Office in Charleston, West Virginia to Serve U.S. Government Agencies

Infor is not only making strides by growing partnerships with notable businesses, but has expanded their own business by opening a new office in Charleston, West Virginia. This office will run cloud applications for U.S. Government Agencies at the federal, state, and local level, as well as with government contractors in the public sector. The company already has ties with the state, as Infor’s Coleman Artificial Intelligence Platform is named after the inspiring physicist and mathematician Katherine Coleman Johnson, whose trail-blazing work at NASA helped U.S. astronauts land on the moon. Coleman earned her bachelors in mathematics and French with the highest honors from West Virginia State College (now West Virginia State University). Additionally, Infor is partnering with Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and with West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia (just northwest of Charleston), to build a pipeline of skilled talent that is trained in software engineering, cloud operations, and support services related to Infor products. These universities are part of Infor’s Education Alliance Program (EAP), which provides member organizations access to free software used in business computing, as well as hands-on technical training. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is pleased to have the software giant selecting the Mountain state to establish a regional office, bringing more than a hundred job opportunities to the state. The 12,000 sq/ft office anticipates bringing in 100 technical jobs to the Charleston area in software engineering, cloud operations, and consulting and support services to support its public sector customers.  It is located on the 6th floor of the 18-story Laidley Tower building at 500 Lee Street East in downtown Charleston – one block away from the Charleston Transit Center and next to numerous downtown businesses.

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Adding a custom field to a form using Configuration Console

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Find the name of the Form and the Business Class that you want to add the field to (Ctrl-Shift-Click on any field on the form)

Log into Rich Client and go to Start > Configure > Application (make sure that you have been granted access to Configuration Console)

Find your Business Class, and click “User Fields” under the class

Click the “blank paper” icon to add a new user field

Give your user field a meaningful name (no numbers or special characters allowed, and the field name must begin with an upper-case letter)

Next, go to configured forms and find the form name that you noted earlier

If this form has never been customized, you may need to click the blank paper icon to add it to the Configured Forms list

Once the form has been added as a configured form, click on the form name, then click “Configure”

Navigate to the location where you want to add the user field

Click the blank paper and select “User Field”

Configure the user field for the form

Click “Save” and verify that the user field is now on your screen

Infor partnering with Oxford and Carnegie Mellon on machine learning

Infor is making great strides in the education sector by recently signing a new research partnership with the University of Oxford and extended its partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, both to study machine learning. Infor is supporting an on-going work on in-database machine learning to the Factorised Databases (FDB) Project with the Computer Science Department at Oxford in the UK. Leading the project is Oxford professor Dan Olteanu who’s goal for the FDB project is to build a scalable system for training machine learning models over relational databases. Olteanu was a consultant on development of Infor’s LogicBlox – a core part of Infor Retail’s demand forecasting, allocation, replenishment, and assortment optimization capabilities. Infor began a similar partnership with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October of 2018. Head of the project at Carnagie Mellon is Professor Benjamin Moseley and his work on advanced algorithms for scheduling execution graphs of declarative languages. This research is expected to improve the task scheduler of the LogicBlox platform.

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4 Essential Processes for Structured CRM Success

Chris Dohl, CEO of The Alias Group, explores how to improve one of the most critical processes in sales strategy development, Customer relationship management (CRM). Dohl asks managers how important CRM is to their business and how critical it is to ensure that you are measuring and reacting to the correct information. It’s easy to point a finger at your CRM system for producing garbage dumps of customer data that will not benefit your business or strengthen customer retention. Although CRM systems may be the basket that holds all the information, often times it’s the data and the processes that are the root of the problem. Human error such as no lead generation, missing data, and lack of thorough analysis lead to bad data. To improve your CRM with structure and confidence, consider these four critical processes:

  1. Input Lead Source
  2. Populate Account Information/Profile Fields
  3. Create Opportunities
  4. Analyze Metrics

Growing B2B sales consistently requires structure to have confidence in the overall sales plan, and is measured year after year. Use these four processes to confidently improve your structured CRM processes.

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Infor Announces latest Infor CloudSuite ERP release (Infor LN) for manufacturing industries

Infor recently announced the latest enhancements to four of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems: Infor LN, Infor CloudSuite Automotive, Infor CloudSuite Aerospace and Defense (A&D), and Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise. Speed, flexibility, and agility are driving forces to provide a more efficient experience when using any of these systems. These enhancements will greatly affect automotive, A&D, construction, high tech and electronics, industrial machinery and equipment, and industrial manufacturing industries to further align their business objectives with business processes, without sacrificing so much cost. “It’s a dynamic time for global manufacturing. Manufacturers need ERP systems that can quickly respond to market changes, fluctuating customer demands, and the rise of the mobile workforce,” said Edward Talerico, product director, Infor. “These recent enhancements will make it easier for manufacturers to move their business forward quickly and productively.”

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Adding or Replacing Existing SSL CERTS Lawson (WINDOWS)

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This is a PFX cert.

Start – This is being done on a Lawson LSF server.

  1. Drag the folder with the Cert onto the server you want to apply it to.
    1. Once you do that, make sure you check whether or not the server is running IIS. Typically by searching for IIS Manager or checking services.
  2. Double click the cert file that you dragged onto the server.
  3. Select Local machine:
  4. Specify the file you want to import (should default on the cert you just clicked to run) >> Next
  5. Enter the password for the cert and click next.
  6. Open command prompt as admin and type: start certlm.msc
  7. Under Personal >> Certificates, you should see the new cert you imported: The old one is below the one highlighted in red.
  8. Now go to IIS Manager, Sites >> select WebsiteName and then on right pane select bindings as shown below
  9. Select https binding and edit
  10. Select new cert and click ok
  11. Back in command prompt type: iisreset /restart
  12. Test and you’re done

When applying to Landmark server, we need to run the following commands below (Important to stop and start exactly as shown):

For Mingle in ISS Manager, we need to select the Sharepoint secure site and select bindings.

7 Golden Rules for ERP Implementations

Nicolas Nicolaou, CFO of cosmetics manufacturer Mana Products and of the Pepsi-Lipton Partnership, shares his insights in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation. Those who have implemented ERP systems know the challenges that come along, but the system itself can be very rewarding. There are basic principles of good project management that apply to any-size company, though smaller companies must consider a bit more. Looking back from taking on an ERP project with a small sized company, Nicolauo has noted a number of golden rules that are imperative for successful ERP implementations. These apply to all company sizes, but may require different perspective for smaller projects.

  1. Get senior leadership sponsorship
  2. Choose the right technology
  3. Choose the right consultants
  4. Staff the project team with the best and brightest
  5. Apply strong project management
  6. Manage “scope creep”
  7. Don’t underestimate training and post-go-live support

Implementing an ERP system is a major project in itself, but follow these golden rules for successful implementation.

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Adding a report to an existing list in LBI

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  • First, check the criteria of the report list
  • Go to the Tools tab and select “Reporting Services My Reports”
  • Click on your list name
  • Make note of the filter
  • Some filters use attributes to create lists. If your filter uses an attribute, you would want to add that attribute to your report.
  • The list in this example “hard-codes” report id values, so you need to edit the list rather than the report
  • Get the ID of your report
  • Go back to My Reports and find your report
  • If you don’t see your report listed, try clicking the “All” button at the top to display reports for all users
  • Navigate to your report in the list and click “Details”
  • Make note of the ID
  • Go back to your list and click “Edit List” at the top of the screen
  • Click Filters
  • Add the text “Or (Report Id = ‘<your id>’)
  • Click ‘Append’

Here is an example of how to update attributes for a list that works on attributes:

  • Follow the steps above to find your list name and get the criteria for your list
  • Go to the report that you want to show up in that list
  • Click Details
  • Click Attributes
  • Click Add
  • Select the attribute(s) that are used in the list filter
  • Select the filter value

7 Steps for Implementing Reliability-based Maintenance

Manufacturers today are turning to reliability-based maintenance (RBM)  as a strategy to help maintain valuable plan assets, which play a key role in overall enterprise efficiency. Technology has played a role in plant assets failure. A revitalized approach to maintenance strategies aligns with today’s digital evolution, sensor-based innovations, strict compliance mandates and escalating customer demands. The RBM process provides a sustainable methodology with optimal results.  Kevin Price of software giant Infor highlights 7 Steps for Implementing Reliability-based Maintenance below:

  1. Identify Assets in a Master Asset List
  2. Determine the Asset Criticality Ranking
  3. Optimize PM Program
  4. Analyze Spare Parts
  5. Monitor the PM Program
  6. Determine Failure Causes
  7. Rinse and Repeat

With an RBM system in place to help manage your assets, it’s possible to achieve the objectives for your organization for your asset pool.

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What is ADFS?

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There has been a lot of confusion in the Infor client community lately over what ADFS is and what the impact of implementing it will be on the organization as a whole.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) is a Microsoft solution created to facilitate Single Sign-On. It provides user with authenticated access to applications like Lawson without the need to provide the password information to the application.
ADFS manages user authentication through a service hosted between the active directory and the target application. It grants access to application users by using Federated trust. The users can then authenticate their identity through Single Sign-On without having to do so on the application itself. The authentication process is usually as follows:
1) The user navigates to the Lawson URL
2) The unauthenticated user is re-directed to the ADFS service
3) The user signs into ADFS
4) ADFS service authenticates the user via the Active Directory
5) The user is then given an authentication claim (in the form of a cookie) by the ADFS
6) The user is forwarded to the Lawson application with the claim which either grants or denies access based on the federated trust service
Note: The Lawson Server never sees the password information which in the case of external applications (like a cloud implementation) is a lot more secure.
 
What are some drawbacks of implementing ADFS?
 
Although ADFS is a new requirement, it comes with a few small drawbacks that you should consider:
– The additional server license and maintenance – You will need an additional server (likely one per environment) to host ADFS
– ADFS is actually somewhat complex and this new skill set can create a new challenge for smaller clients who aren’t already using ADFS for other applications
– A standard ADFS installation is not all that secure and several steps should be taken to ensure good security. Microsoft provides these best practices recommendations: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-fs/deployment/best-practices-securing-ad-fs
There is also a great free e-book published by Microsoft about claims-based identity and access control: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/msp-n-p/ff423674(v=pandp.10)
To find out more about ADFS and how it can impact your organization, join our webinars or contact us.