Chapter IV-5. Delivery

Delivering the system was the final phase of the project. TSC had purchased the CFMX and FCS licenses on behalf of the client. With a CD containing the installation disks and the application's files, TSC's analyst and senior developer arrived at WalkAbout's offices in the morning and proceeded with the deployment.

Installing the CFMX application server and the Flash Communication Server went well, and the team followed the deployment checklist. During the final stages of deploying the system on the production environment, TSC had to make a configuration change. Due to political issues, the directory that held the FCS application was to be placed in a different location rather than under the FCS installation directory.

To accommodate this, TSC had to edit the configuration file that the FCS reads when the server is started. This file is called vhost.xml, and it resides under the installation directory/conf. The new value for the <AppsDir> element was to be a different drive than the installation drive:

 <AppsDir>C:\ProgramFiles\Macromedia\FlashCommunication ServerMX\flashcom\</AppsDir> 

This was edited and changed to <AppsDir>D:\FCS\<AppsDir>.

Then the Chat directory was created to complete the final stages of the FCS deployment process.

Next, the CFMX mappings and data source were created in the CFMX administrator. The next step was the copying of the code files to their relevant directories on the production server.

Finally, the creation of the tables was completed, and the application was ready to be tested on the production environment.

The system appeared to be functional, and the deployment team left after briefing the network administrator on the system and its use.

The next day was scheduled to be a training day to introduce all the attendees to the new chat system. This training was conducted with the original slide presentation and included a few modifications that were needed.

Once the system was deployed and the end users were exposed to the system, TSC issued the invoice to WalkAbout. The invoice was a general format, but allowed for the breakdown of billable items in case of a dispute about the final figure.