The Cutek Blog

Symitar shipped Release 2008.00 of their Episys software recently and now that I’ve had a chance to play with it, I wanted to share some of my thoughts about it. Here they are:

It’s nice to see online pubs as a single file again, even if it’s still a CHM file and even if they’ve decided to change the name again to eDocs. Personally, I think the name just serves to confuse people — Helpful person: “Did you check eDocs for the answer?”, confused client: “What’s eDocs?”, Helpful person: “it’s the new name for the combination of the Admin online pubs and Finance online pubs”, really confused client: “there are two online pubs? I only have something called ‘Episys Online Pubs’”, helpful person: “oh, that’s the old online pubs before they split it and then put it back together again.” Yeah, I think it would be better if they just called it “Symitar Episys Help”, just like most application help files.

Support for combination fixed and variable loans is a major enhancement for Symitar, but it also means a lot of work for existing clients that want to take advantage of this new feature. You pretty much have to review every specfile in your database that looks at loans to make sure those specfiles will work with the new loans before you try to use the new features. Luckily, if you don’t plan to use the new features, you don’t have to worry about them. But it’s still a pretty cool enhancement with a lot of potential.

I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes between Jack Henry, Symitar and eFunds, but I don’t like the changes to the ChexSystems interface in this release. Perhaps Jack Henry and Symitar had no say in the matter, but the fact that the ChexSystem information is no longer stored in Cred Rep records means that a lot of previous functionality and interoperability between Symitar and ChexSystems is gone.

I was still at Symitar three years ago when my friend Frank Wilms started working on the name and address enhancements that are just now seeing the light of day and I remember being very happy that I wasn’t given that beast of a project. The sheer scope of that project is mind-boggling, to say the least. I completely understand their reasoning behind splitting this project up into several parts over several releases and I look forward to the final product. So far so good on this one and props go to my old team and the product development department and everyone else at Symitar involved in this project.

Symitar home banking… in case you need a road map:

• At some point on or before 1994, Symitar starts to refer to their audio system as “MemberConnect”
• Symitar releases “MemberConnect-PC” in 1994. It requires dedicated phone lines and members must use their modem to dial into the system (this is pre-www technology) and navigate through an all-text interface.
• Between 1994 and 1996, Symitar works on a Windows application that is meant to provide a GUI for MemberConnect-PC. This project is eventually abandaned in favor of a web-based solution.
• In 1996, Symitar releases MemberConnect-Web, one of the first web-based home banking application for financial institutions. At the same time, Symitar announces the release of the SymConnect interface and, around the same time, announces a partnership with Digital Insight to support their home banking product which uses SymConnect. At this point in time MemberConnect-Web does not use SymConnect but instead uses the old audio-based MemberConnect interface.
• Clients and Symitar both start referring to MemberConnect Web as MCW and the audio as MemberConnect Audio. For a few years, there is also a MemberConnect Kiosk product.
• Around 1999, Symitar starts transitioning MCW to use SymConnect in what eventually becomes “the SymConnect version of MemberConnect Web”
• Jack Henry & Associates acquires Symitar in 2000. JHA has their own home banking platform that they brand “NetTeller”.
• Sometime between 2000 and 2003, the marketing department at JHA decides to rebrand MemberConnect Web as NetTeller MemberConnect or NTMC, even though the two products are complete separate applications with different code and different functionality.
• Some clients on Symitar start to refer to NTMC as just NetTeller, even though NetTeller is a separate product from NTMC.
• In Release 2008.00, JHA/Symitar announces the availability of “JHA NetTeller Online Banking Solution” for Episys clients, which is still completely separate from “Symitar’s original NetTeller MemberConnect (NTMC)”.
• In summary: MemberConnect Web equals MCW equals NetTeller MemberConnect equals NTMC, but just plain “NetTeller” is also a Symitar home banking application but it is completely separate from the original with much different functionality.
• Also in summary, Cutek can customize the first product for you in almost any way you can think up, while noone but JHA/Symitar can customize the brand new NetTeller.

Finally, Symitar expands the user number range again. Due to a shortsighted employee that made an arbitrary decision several years ago (and who will remain nameless), you can expect the user number range to continue to expand every few years until your specfile arrays all explode. As the release notes state, this is done “to accommodate the corporate environment”, which means corporate credit unions. “Let them eat cake.”