Interlocking Applications is happy to provide a series of tools to help make those tough executive decisions. The Decision Support Tools suite comes in four versions:

Home Edition
Professional Edition
Enterprise Edition
Cosmic Overlord Edition (coming soon)

The Home Edition is free and can make simple yes/no decisions.

The Professional Edition has all the functionality of the Home Edition with the addition of being called "Professional Edition." (How do I upgrade?)

The Enterprise Edition builds on the functionality of Professional Edition by being able to be installed on employee's computers. (Unlike the Home Edition which can only be installed on an individual's computer. If you're unaware of the difference between an individual and an employee, you're an employee.) In addition, Enterprise Edition offers Bifurcative Interrogatory Technology (BIT) to make difficult decisions easily. (How do I upgrade?)

Cosmic Overlord Edition has much of the same functionality as Professional Edition with the addition of a UI written in Esperanto. Coding is 95% complete and release is scheduled for "Real Soon Now."

The Executive Decision Support Tools require Microsoft .Net 2.0 and employ Interlocking Applications' wsDice web service to help make decisions. ( Click Here. )

Executive Decision Maker

The Executive Decision Maker (EDM) is a precision Decision Support System tool designed to assist in binary decision making tasks. As delivered, it is prepared to assist in any yes/no decision you might have. For example, you might wonder, "Should I go to lunch now?" Executive Decision Maker, using the latest technology, can help. Click on the picture of the sliver dollar, and EDM will quickly return a yes or no answer.

(Home Edition shown.)

But that's not all!

By upgrading to Enterprise Edition, you can change the text in the text boxes under the coin display to enable Bifurcative Interrogatory Technology (BIT.) Consider a situation where you have separate events to choose from: should you buy a bass boat or pay the mortgage? With traditional yes/no technology, you'd have to ask two questions separately and the answer to both might be "No," leaving you with a confusing aftermath. Using EDM's exclusive BIT you can fill in "Pay the mortgage" in the text box under "Heads" and "Buy a bass boat" in the text box under "Tails." Now triggering a flip will give an unambiguous answer!

(Enterprise Edition Shown.)

Using BIT also provides a written record of the decision made and the alternatives considered -- an important step in CMM or ISO 9000 compliance! (Note that no permanent record is made. The user is expected to develop his own record-keeping standards in this regard and Interlocking Applications can't be held liable for bad decisions accepted or lack of records available for SEC, Grand Jury or other investigations.)

Menu Choices

EDM generally doesn't believe in providing a lot of confusing menu choices, but the "Server" menu probably needs a tiny bit of explanation.

"Server" gives you the choice of the source of the randomized value used to flip the coin. It defaults to "Web Service" which means that for each flip, EDM will query Interlocking Applications' web service for a randomized value. This should be a moderately fast operation. If you don't have an internet connection or would rather get your random value from your local computer, just check "Local." If the attempt to get a value from the web service ever fails, EDM will automatically fail over to your local machine for a random value.

Executive Team Builder

Building effective teams is a difficult process that requires careful organization of people in combinations where positive traits reinforce each other while negative traits are minimized. Executive Team Builder helps you side-step all this while maintaining the illusion that you care.

ETB starts up with a blank grid. You fill in the names of prospective team members in no particular order. Note that you must type type return after the last name to complete the entry

Select "Create Team!" from the menu, and Executive Team Builder structures the team for you.

Click on the "Order" column header to arrange the team

Installation

Download Installation Program

Executive Decision Tools are .Net 2.0 Windows applications. They are deployed in a digitally signed installation package that should identify itself as having come from Interlocking Applications. Both the installation program and the individual executables are signed by Interlocking Applications using a code signing certificate issued by Thawte. Code signing is designed to verify the origin of the code and that the code has not been tampered with.

How do I upgrade to Professional Edition?

Interlocking Applications has gone to great lengths to make upgrading easy. Simply start referring to your Home Edition as "Professional Edition."

How do I upgrade to Enterprise Edition?

Again, Interlocking Applications' innovative upgrade technology makes it easy. To upgrade to Enterprise Edition, simply replace the "Yes" and "No" choices in the Heads and Tails text boxes with other choices as shown in the documentation. IMPORTANT: please be sure and write down the previous contents of the text boxes and store the notes in a safe place. To drop back to Home Edition or Professional Edition, you will have to re-enter those values. If you can't find your notes, you may have to re-install the entire package.

Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

*Digital odd-jobs is a registered service mark of Interlocking Applications.