Parker Hannifin Corporation (www.parker.com), NYSE: PH
We asked Robert Miller from the Chomerics Division (www.chomerics.com) of Parker Hannifin to comment on how his company uses FullShot to solve problems and design solutions.

Organization Description

Fullshot has become indispensable in the IT department at the Chomerics Division of Parker Hannifin Corporation.

With annual sales exceeding $7 billion, Parker Hannifin is the world's leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies and systems, providing precision-engineered solutions for a wide variety of commercial, mobile, industrial and aerospace markets.

The Chomerics Division is the world’s largest manufacturer of EMI (electromagnetic interference) shielding materials. Our EMI shielding materials include conductive elastomers; metal EMI gasketing; spring finger gaskets; EMI cable shielding; conductive coatings and adhesives; shielding laminates and foil tapes; and shielded vents and windows.

The Role FullShot Plays in Your IT, Training, and Documentation

Fullshot is used daily by Chomerics’ IT staff in both a help desk and a documentation role. IT supports a variety of manufacturing, sales, and other applications and it is frequently helpful to send an annotated screen shot to a user to help explain what the user needs to do to perform a requested task.

In a typical scenario, a user calls with a question about what an application is doing or ask how to perform a given function. The help desk technician may step the user through the process, but frequently it is most helpful for the technician to create a mini-document with annotated step by step screen shots of the process that can be emailed to the user and posted to our internal FAQ website. Using Fullshot, these documents are created by creating several annotated screen shots, pasting into MS Word, and sometimes adding a small amount of text. The process is fast and users learn quickly with the screen shots. The user now has a lasting reference that others can use that exactly describes the process. Fullshot’s annotation capabilities make production of these work aids very quick and easy; before Fullshot, screen shots, cropping, and annotations required three different tools.

Another use of Fullshot is to create screen mockups for user interface specifications. Screen shots are taken of existing applications and then edited to move or add user interface elements like field areas, buttons, and labels. The new “Fullshot Mockup” gives the user an exact image of what the proposed changes look like for user approval before the project can start. We've even created mockups of entirely new applications using a collection of screen shots of buttons, enterable areas, and other user interface elements using Fullshot’s library feature. The annotation capability allows comments to be freely added to explain features of the proposed screen. Users are able to quickly grasp the workings of the proposal and make comments that save incalculable time by anticipating and avoiding changes that would otherwise have to be made after the screen design is written in code.

How Useful FullShot is to Help Your Organization Solve Problems and Increase Productivity.

Fullshot has given us a great tool for creating productivity-improving user oriented help aids as well as increase overall IT productivity by allowing us to create detailed application mockups before a single line of code is written. We’ve been using Fullshot for about three years after doing a fairly comprehensive evaluation of five or six similar utilities. As we use Fullshot, we’ve suggested a number of ideas and the team at Inbit has incorporated many of these into new product versions. Fullshot is part of our daily support task and we’ve recommended it to users in other departments to annotate digital photos of manufacturing processes and in preparation of QS-9000 documentation. Thanks to Inbit for a great tool!