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Projects in JMP

Daniel_Valente

I am doing some research around projects.

Who has used Projects in JMP to collect and store demos or studies?

What has worked well? What has not worked so well?

What has kept you from using the project to store files associated with a demo?

Who has never used or even tried to use the project? Why not?

Accepted answers

All comments

Bill_Worley

Dan,

We used projects for our DOE training classes at P&G, and we would save links to Excel files, JMP files, PowerPoint slides, pretty much any file type needed.

The nicest thing was that everything could be packaged up in one spot and you could then send that to the class attendees via email or post it on a share point for download. One other helpful thing was that you had the option to open files stored in the project (typically Excel) outside of JMP similar to double clicking the file if it were on your desktop.

The worst thing was the file path that was associated with the files when the project was saved to any computer. No matter how it was worked the file path was always so long for a given file that most of time the actual file name was somewhere off screen which required the users to try and scroll to right to find the file they needed for the exercise at hand. Lots of comments were made about that.

Editing the project was not as straightforward as it might seem either. Just adding a new file could mess up the whole project. Saving the edited project was another story in itself. That never seemed to work the way you wanted it to. Luckily you could just close the edited project and reopen the saved project if you had one.

I believe they have fallen into disfavor at P&G and are not used widely there at all.

In my opinion journals are much easier to handle and/or update.

Hope this is helpful,

Bill

Chris_Kirchberg

I have stopped showing people how to make them for many of the same reasons that Bill has pointed out.

I do like what Brady has done with the Journal Packager that takes the files and puts them at the same level as the journal itself and the file path no longer matters. I do like that one can add scripts that run and SQL Queries, but I think that run on open for a script would accomplish the same thing.

Chris Kirchberg

JMP Technical Enablement Engineer

Worldwide Technical Enablement Team

SAS Institute, Inc.

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jiancao

I used Projects quite extensively up till Brady's Journal Packager came out recently. Back when it was first released in 2009 I was even invited to give a presentation and tutorial at W.L. Gore users meetings. and they liked it. It worked well for me when I needed to send my journals, Word docs, PPT, etc. in one zipped file to others users. It works well as a "container" like it is was deigned for. Of course, there are caveats such as file path in OPEN( ) statement should be explicitly specified and uses of relative path causes data not archived.

Also, people need to be aware that when a project is opened you only work with the data and files archived in the project dependencies.

bernd_heinen

Hi Dan,

when I started to work for JMP (with JMP8) I tried projects but I was disappointed as I wasn’t always successful with keeping documents together when I moved the physical location of the project. At the same time I found it much easier to work with journals and folders. Perhaps I didn’t spend enough time to really learn it. But ever since IO got one single project from a JMP colleague, everything else came in journals.

Best regards

Bernd

martindemel

Hi Dan,

I also try to avoid projects. For different reasons.

Besides the file path I got some customer reported issues with the reliability of changes and files used in the Projects due to different Locations of the original file and confusion on customers side, who think this is some kind of versioning. I guess those things happen if you don't know or ignore Jian's comment about files to be worked on in a Project.

The other reason is, that I rather would use any kind of versioning tool like Tortoise SVN or other to do what I would intentionally think projects are good for using JMP for the first time. This will allow tracking, recovering and having all together and many could work on the same project at the same time.

For providing material to customers and so forth I use journals and files. Haven't used Brady's packager so far but will definitely do.

If you really would like to create something cool out of Projects, you may want to lean on Eclipse or other programmer's development environments using projects.

Martin

Byron_JMP

I had heard of one case where projects worked exceptionally well. A small biotech, at the end of a study, would put all the data, supporting documentation and presentations into a project file and burn a copy on to a CD. This became the "Validated" copy of the data (because you can't edit it or write to it) as well as the permanent archive.

My experience is very similar to Bill's comments. After I started finding weird file structures spun around my hard disk, I was skeptical about what they were doing, and then after the second one corrupted and all data and files in it were lost I stopped using them and highly discouraged their use where I was working.

Daniel_Valente

Thank you, everyone for your thoughts so far. As you may know, Projects are on the radar for a refresh for JMP 13, so any requirements you have and pains that you have around current projects (there are many here) are all very helpful, so please keep them coming.

If you had a version of the project that was working well, what would it look like? What would projects in JMP have to have feature-wise to make it a core part of your JMP customer demo?

Daniel_Valente

If you are interested in where we are thinking of going with this in JMP 13, you might want to check out the wiki page I have been maintaining.

Also, if you have customers in your territory that you think would like to provide feedback and direction on this feature, let me know. I plan on taking this "on tour" once we have a working prototype.

http://sww.sas.com/jmpmediawiki/JMP_Projects_JMP13

DonMcCormack

Dan,

I like the direction in which JMP projects are headed. I am frequently asked by customers if we can support process flows or project maps. Minitab has a leg up on us in this regard with their Quality Companion. While asking us for a standardized approach to certain data analysis task is beyond what we can (or should) provide, I think that JMP Projects, if developed correctly, can meet the needs of those who want to better document their projects or build their own process flows. It would also help us compete against Quality Companion. Ideally, projects should would have the ability to graphically link process steps so the analysis flow is explicit and reproducible. The ability to add comments, external documents, and the ability to electronically sign a saved project (for validation purposes) would be great features.

Don

Daniel_Valente

Don --

Thanks for the comments and for additional requirements. This is helpful. Do you have any specific customers that you wish to list (either in this thread or via email) that have specifically requested this functionality? I'm currently in the process of building a set of potentially early adopters to target as we build out this functionality in JMP 13.

Thanks

Dan

DonMcCormack

Dan,

I think that any company with an installation base of 200+ licenses is a good target, particularly if they are doing their own training or if they are involved in supporting clinical trials. Depending on how their acquisition goes, Freescale might be a good candidate. They purchased a large amount of training materials from SAS Ed (train the trainer type stuff) and have developed process flow type applications (albeit via Jim Nelson, who has retired and Jerry Cooper, who is one of us). I'd ask Jerry to get his feelings on this. Companies that have good support from their statistical/quality groups: P&G, Abbott (and Abbott Vascular), GoreTex, Intel (maybe), etc., would be good choices, as the statisticians/QEs would be developing the process flows.

Don

bernd_heinen

Hi Don and Daniel,

I like the idea of getting a workflow management tool but I recommend to keep this as a separate item from projects.A project, as I understand it, is a place to collect data from different sourcces and in different formats. It needs to be portable, i.e. if copied on the OS level from one place to another and then opened again in JMP, all links should work. A project is a unique set of information.

A workflow should be able to support one entire analytical process with data preparation, analysis and reporting. At least it automates sequential tasks (what can't be done by "save script..."), at best it allows conditional branches and user interactions. It is made for repeated usage.

And my opinion is that we should have guided evaluation paths for certain standard situations.

Companies to discuss with from my territory might be Schott AG, Atotech, EM Microelectronic, Novartis

Bernd

martindemel

Hi Dan,

I agree with Bernd that a node diagram is very useful for projects, but a kind of standard process workflow guide should be kept seperate. At Brussels you should talk to Alfredo from Telefonica who is building such a process flow for using JMP. He is willing to talk about his idea and desperate about JMP. Something like you have that Kind of data, then you could do this Kind of Analysis to achieve this Kind of result. When you did this, you now may want to use this Kind of Analysis to check for ..., but be Aware you Need to think about.../take care your data is set up this way ... And this is something different than Projects should be used for in General, unless the user wants to build sth. like this.

From the usability side, to me it's imortant to be able to use projects like an Explorer window (or any favorite one like total commander ), drag/drop/copy/paste/delete/add/run/open...any kind of file. And to have a tree or node graph for an overview whats in the Project. Best would be to be able to change things in the node graph. Not sure if an "Accept Change" button would be good or annoying (maybe not after each change, but when I'm finished with shifting branches arround). However, copying files to a Project Folder should be avoded until it should be transported.

I'm very curious to see what the prototype will look like

malcolm_moore1

Hi Dan,

Regarding the statement:

Projects shall have the ability to graphically link process steps so the analysis flow is explicit and reproducible.

The Cornerstone Workmap is a good reference point. This captured the actual workflow as a set of connected icons with direction arrows showing the flow of work. This would capture the exploratory analysis route taken. Any steps the user subsequently deemed unproductive could be pruned from the workflow. The saved workmap could then be shared with colleagues who could execute the workmap against new data. If we went with something similar we might combine the separate report windows into a combined report to prevent many analysis windows being created on execution of a "workmap" removing potential confusion for novice users. The "workmap" concept would also satisfy needs of Pharma and other regulated industries to log their analysis process.

Regards,

Malcolm