Product Codes and Names

Many companies (like Microsoft and Apple and us) reuse product NAMES, for example ‘MS-Office’ means either ‘the current shipping MS-Office’ or it means ‘All the MS-Office products back to MS-Word that I used version 0.9 of back in the early 1980’s. Like many companies, we also have a product code – a cryptic code that never changes.

I (Peter) have been sloppy on following the rules. Starting 2020.01 all of us are going to be consistent.

Rules:

• You must ALWAYS use the product code when referring to a product. In Marketing material, there is a SLIGHT bending of the rule – you only have to use it ONCE on a page per product.

• You must ALWAYS use the product code on quotes and invoices.

• In context, you can refer to a product by number. For example,

  • You can say: nwo41 is a named license but 42 is a concurrent.

  • Or you could say: nwo41/2 is the version (are the versions) with technician asset and inventory.

  • Or you could say: nwo11 is the Legacy, but most people buy 41/2 now.

• Use of the product NAME is mandatory when talking with customers generally (invoices.) note this means you must have BOTH the code and the name.

• Use of the product name alone is almost never permitted.

Quick Tricks:

• The first letter tells us the ‘class’ of product.

  • n means ‘normally sold or something close to that’

  • s means ‘special’

• The next letters are ‘descriptive’ even if cryptic. Many are MCe modules, some are standalone products like LoginHub.

  • wo means Work Order
  • p procedure
  • lh loginhub
  • dh datahub
  • gis gishub
  • ic full inventory count

• The first one or two numbers are ‘random’.

• The last number is license type.

  1. Named

  2. Concurrent

  3. Enterprise

  4. Named

  5. Concurrent

  6. Enterprise

To avoid confusion between numbers and letters, we try to avoid using the letter l, and we try to use lower case letters. HOWEVER nwo11 and NWO11 are the same product. The main reason is that so many programs trick you and uppercase the first letter, so Nwo11 is also the same product.