Jeff Hamilton
ClearCase Administrator/Release Engineering Lead
Ericsson Inc.
11/12/2002

I am very pleased with ClearTrigger. It has a very unique approach to Enterprise policy trigger management that makes it an extremely effective tool. We have been using it since the 2.X release and have been very pleased the functionality of the product. ABS Inc. has provided outstanding product support in terms of quality and response time. Sometimes, a feature request was actually implemented for us in less than 24 hours. The "clearbits" feature of the tools is awesome. I have been a ClearCase administrator for over 8 years and each time a take up a new position I end up writing the same set of triggers time and time again. No more. ClearTrigger has all the ClearCase industry standard triggers build right into the product. Just enable a few flags and it's done. Your code is now safe from inexperienced ClearCase users. In addition, the basic functionality bit set (clearbits) is an evolving feature.

As new ClearCase/Process vulnerabilities are discuss within the Rational ClearCase community, new clearbits are developed and released in new versions of ClearTrigger. What a deal! I have also found the flexibility the product to be more than adequate for our large company (300+VOBS * 4 ClearCase/Mulitisted regions with 500+ engineers). We actually plan on expanding ClearTrigger to more Ericsson satellite sites. Please feel free to contact me directly if you wish to ask any questions.

Julie Rudinski
ClearCase Administrator
Convergys
11/2/2002

We have been using ClearTrigger here at Convergys for 10 months. This is a wonderful product, especially useful in an interop environment. Creating Triggers has never been easier. ClearCase is a wonderful tool, but without Triggers it is practically impossible to enforce your policy. ClearTrigger has the most common triggers pre-built into their software, so you can you turn utilize the trigger at the drop of a hat. You don't have to worry about applying the triggers to all your vobs either. As soon as you register your trigger with ClearTrigger, it is automatically applied to all your Vobs using ClearTrigger. You can also only apply the Trigger to certain groups, aliases and/or vobs, something that can be tricky and frustrating to do in ClearCase.

Not only is ClearTrigger wonderful, their new product ClearWeb is a Godsend. No more back doors in your policy, since Interactive Triggers over the web are not supported by Rational. ClearWeb allows you to use any trigger via the web, even the interactive ones. It even allows you to do stdout to the web so now your users can know exactly why their operation failed.

Tech support at ABS is also wonderful. I recently reported a bug I was having, and within 2 hours the bug was fixed and new binaries were issued to me. When you call ABS you get knowledgeable technicians who know their products inside and out as well as ClearCase.

By using ClearTrigger I have been able to enforce more policy than before. It would have taken me months to write all the scripts that ClearTrigger comes standard with. If you already have scripts that you use for current triggers, you can still use them with ClearTrigger. Managing, applying and using triggers have never been easier.

Deborah D Jowers
QA/CM Manager
Computer Sciences Corportation
11/12/2002

Our QA/CM department has been using ClearTrigger for over a year now without any problems. As the manager of the department, I don't use it day-to-day, but I can speak to the fact that we have better policy and create and change the policy much faster with the tool than we did with just ClearCase. I know when a product does not work as complaints are elevated to me so I can state that there have been fewer end-user complaints on ClearCase since ClearTrigger was installed.

ABS converted our triggers to ClearTrigger and it is now easier to change policy and create new policy. We know it to be an enterprise solution, but we use it on our only VOB because our CM team was better able to understand the ClearTrigger mechanism for making policy better than the native ClearCase methods and we were able to do more.

I can speak to ABS services more than the tool itself as we make sure that ABS is there when any ClearCase consulting or training is needed as they have always been there to help us through our most critical times.

Scott
Software Configuration Management
e-Security, Inc.
11/4/2002

To accomplish my job as a CM person I have had to grow a set of triggers to implement the policy and procedures I want my developers to follow when using ClearCase. There are some must have policies.....the first being protecting the files the end users are putting under control. What Rational does not tell you out of the box is that any file in ClearCase owned by a developer can be removed by that developer. This has the potential to destroy baselines, interrupt development, and put a burden on the IS department doing restores from backups. You MUST have a protect trigger to change the ownership of files after they are put into a VOB. ClearTrigger does this for you out of the box, no triggers to write. This is my first love of ClearTrigger. The bits that you can set out of the box gives you 16 powerful commands without writing a lick of code. If you are new to ClearCase you may not see the value in these commands, but trust me you need at least half them mandatory. I tossed most of my standard triggers in favor of ClearTrigger. The next love of ClearTrigger is that once it is installed any changes to the config. files affect ALL the VOBs immediately. With the old way of manually installing triggers any changes required me to visit each VOB. The next love is the way you can come up with "Role Based Permissions" you can define groups which can or can not execute certain commands by using ClearTrigger, something ClearCase natively does not have. I can go on, but I think those are some of my major points.

With regards to support, I was one of the first users of ClearTrigger. I provided feedback then and still do and have found ABS very receptive to my input. The latest release has most of the enhancement requests I asked for. There have been several things that I asked for that were already in ClearTrigger and I just did not know how to do it. Calling ABS support got me the answers. There has been more then one time when they convinced me to do things differently.... so having the backing of a professional CM company has been HUGE for me. I would consider their consulting services as well.

Bottom line is I don't regret buying ClearTrigger and I strongly recommend it for any organization. Go for it! It's pretty darn cheap for the functionality you get out of it.

Tre' Brown
Independant ClearCase Contractor
11/15/2002

I am a ClearCase Contractor for hire and have done so for about 6 years with the last 8 assignments being government work. I started using ClearTrigger 3 assignments ago and have carried it with me to each ClearCase assignment since. Especially, helpful for me in that I am able to quickly leverage what was learned in previous assignment to what is needed at the current assignment. I just carry the clearbits file and policy depot with me to the next assignment and I am able to "design" or add new policy to the new client in a fraction of the time. The first impression I can make on the new client is critical and this tools helps me look very efficient during week one as now I can add significant standard policies in a day or two (first impressions for a "contractor" are very important).

Many of the standard triggers that I would have to write for a client are already in ClearTrigger so I only have to turn a bit on or create a new clearbits key. The time it takes to create policy for 300 VOBs is the same as it is for 1 VOB, and I can easily make exceptions to policy on a VOB-per-vob basis (the default is that policy applies to ALL VOBs).

Support is very good and quite personal and my support engineer does not seem to mind if I sneak in ClearCase questions. You are given a direct number to a support engineer (office and cell), direct email and access to ClearWeb Developer Network.

I will take it with me on every ClearCase assignment. I have had similar success on this assignment with their ClearWeb product.

Gerry Tombs
Sr. ClearCase Consultant
ClearVision-CM (UK)
11/21/2002

As a specialist business dedicated to the CM & CRM market, we have many years experience in teaching and consulting using ClearCase. Customers often remark on how complicated and difficult standard Triggers are to create and manage. ClearTrigger not only simplifies the most complicated trigger environment but makes any trigger modification a two second action. Features such as user and Metadata groupings extend the functionality of ClearCase in a simple but effective way. Such default functionality would take a typical administrator many hours of pain staking programming.

Established customers have remarked on how simple the process of migrating existing triggers over to ClearTrigger is. Whilst ClearTrigger does not often require specialist scripts, it does cater very well for the migration of existing scripts.

Most ClearCase customers write triggers using languages such as Perl and ClearCase 'cleartool' commands. ClearTrigger is a run time executable and thus finishes the execution process in a fraction of the time. End users frequently comment on how ClearTrigger has improved the overall performance of Trigger execution.

New ClearCase customers will find ClearTrigger a blessing. Establishing a set of ClearTrigger policies can now be achieved in a matter of days, instead of weeks, thus giving ClearTrigger a very quick return on investment.

Ken Creager
SCM Manager
Rational ClearCase Community Superstar Award - 2002
11/21/2002

While at Ericsson Corporation, we used ClearTrigger to help organization implement an enterprise wide trigger solution. We were able to consistently and uniformly apply triggers across all VOBs (over 250) and across multiple ClearCase regions. I t was simple to implement the same trigger policy at multiple sites. We perfected the configuration at the primary site and just copied the configuration (i.e. the clearbits file) to other sites needing to implement the same trigger policy. Whenever we had issues or requests for additional functionality, ABS provided prompt fixes and enhancements.

I plan on using ClearTrigger to implement similar policies and controls here at my new position.

Wade Towles
Enterprise SDLC Tools
Operations & Infrastructure Support Manager
7/27/2004

I want to take a minute and thank you for the support you've provided over the last few years to my team. Many of the successes we are able to claim can be tied to efforts by you or your support group through either training you provided, or activities you physically participated in.

As you are aware, we determined several years ago that we had a need for a tool to manage the triggers which control our VOB access, even going to the point of trying to create a tool for that purpose internally. While that effort provided for a portion of our requirements, it was cumbersome and essentially insecure. Since we have purchased and begun to implement the ClearTrigger tool, we have been able to meet all of our requirements, and have been able to secure the VOBs to a much greater degree than before. What I am most impressed about, however, is the simplicity of controlling the triggers now. Our ability to support our MultiSite servers now has gone from a very daunting task to a relatively simple one - at the click of a button we can now replicate and enforce VOB policy across the Enterprise, a task that previously would have taken days if not weeks of coordination to accomplish.

In addition to the functional benefits of the tool, I really appreciate the graphics which allow me to see the impact of the triggers quickly. This allows us to show our management the benefits of the controls we put into place, by detailing exactly what could have been happening had the triggers and policies not been there. In my opinion, this is one of the most beneficial features to my team, because all of the support, advice and policies that were once considered by many to be basically theoretical, can now be proven with solid, visible evidence.

On another note, I also want to let you know that the ClearWeb tool is great. The ClearCase WEB functionality out of the box was severely limited in it's ability to support true Web usage, simply because most of the triggers could not function through that medium. ClearWEB has enabled us to drastically enhance our ClearCase Web environment, securely opening up our tools and processes to a whole new set of users.

Getting an Enterprise Licenses of both products allowed us to extend the benefits of the ClearTrigger to our organization worldwide.

Again, I thank you for the tremendous efforts of your team, and I look forward to future opportunities for us to work together.