VUEWorks

What do you like best?

There is nothing to 'like' about this software. The best I could say is the absurdity of it's implementation provides a dark humor. You can't believe it is real, so all you can do is laugh as you die inside. The product, as it stands now, is hardly viable. Yet, governments are being suckered into spending millions on a bad, almost unusable product.

Here are two examples;

Permissions don't work. We were told that working permissions are not part of the "COTS" (Commercial Off-The Shelf) product.

Filtering does not give consistent results. We were told that consistent filtering is not part of the "COTS" product.

Due to the nature of this review, I choose to be unattributed out of fear for my job.

What do you dislike?

I dislike that the database has no structure. The representatives of DTS parade this as a defining feature of the database. They say that a lack of structure is "Agile." A database without a structure is nothing. Assets and Work Orders are not linked in a structure - according to DTS. This lack of structure leaves unstable data and the effects of unstable data are clearly visible.

I dislike how bad the user interface is. I would be okay with clunky. This user interface is not merely clunky, but a source of deep problems. For example, pick-lists can be written in and saved with invalid data. The projects module only works after you create your first project - and that requires exploiting the pick-list saving glitch. Very often it is discovered that some button is not working properly. Lists sometimes don't have an order to them. Sometimes lists gather duplicates or multiple duplicates. There is no end to the problems that may discovered in the user interface - every nook and cranny is as glitch filled and broken as the last, and what isn't in a nook and cranny isn't any better. I dislike how in the table view of the Work Order module, that I can "mass close" work orders by hitting the "mass open" button, and as such do not have the option to open work orders in bulk.

I dislike how their database performs with reporting. From what has been shown to us in regard to reporting, both TSQL and PLSQL may be needed for even the most basic of queries. The GIS data is in an Oracle Database and everything else appears to be Microsoft. What information is put in, can't necessarily be pulled out. To this day, no documents have been presented - despite numerous requests - showing how tables are linked together and by what fields. From my own investigations, I find primary keys to be scarce.

From every perspective, VUEworks is simply a bad and broken product. The issues are universal and appear unsolvable - if you dig into the issue log, you find that issues aren't fixed.

I further dislike that DTS fails to be honest or upright in their business practices. They have consistently given absurd answers as to why their product fails to function - that anyone with a background in IT should recognize as gibberish. They use technical language, apparently without knowledge of what the words mean, and expect that their customer won't call them out for it. DTS has also withheld information, such as the existence of character limits, requiring whole portions of implementation to be repeated. I dislike having to work a 70 hour week, redoing my work because I was not informed of character limits.

Finally, DTS does not seem to value the security of their customers (mostly government) and it has been observed that they do practice the most basic cyber-security practices.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Don't use VUEWorks. They will file a lawsuit against you, like they did to Alaska, but it's worth going through that.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The collection of assets into a GIS is a benefit, but it could have been realized using a competitor's product. In a word - there are no benefits to be realized. DTS makes the claim of being "Sole Source" - they are not. As a business practice, they say 'yes' to every requirement that could be presented to them. When the product fails to work, they blame it on 'business process' so that the user must jump through absurd hoops to misuse the software in such a way to meet the requirements they claim their software can handle.

For example: Instead of multi-asset work orders, which is a claimed feature, we found that due to the insufficiency of the software that we would be required to use a business process. We would have to take the maintenance steps for our 56 fire alarm assets and repeat the set of steps 56 times in the tasks tab of the work order, then add fields to the details tab for all 56 fire alarm assets for completion, date of completion, etc. The insufficiency is so horrible, that the multi-asset feature does not allow for the details of each asset to be pulled, but only one. So, it became necessary to have single work order per asset. Their mobile platform can only handle about 80 work orders - with horrible performance and without features allowing good management of these work orders. We have thousands of assets with thousands more regularly recurring work orders. Their mobile platform cannot handle this and we must use paper. Even their print outs are insufficient - using random webdings check boxes (appears as floppy disk drives), radio boxes ( appears as flowers), etc.