How to Use the End-of-Support.com Site

This article is a quick guide on how to use the end-of-support.com web application to create reports on the support status of products you're using. There are a few steps:

1. Register or log-in to the site so you can save your list of products.
2. Search for the products you're using.
3. Add them all to your product list.
4. Download the report.

In this case I am working on a web application that my company has purchased, the supplier requirements are that it runs on Windows Server 2008 with SQL server 2008 Workgroup. To get it online it's using some Cisco switches and a Cisco ASA Firewall. In this example I'll generate a support roadmap for the system.

End of Support Roadmap

As you can see the site is still under development!

You are welcome to sign up and have a play, feel free to send any feedback to contact@end-of-support.com or leave a comment here. If you have any suggestions, find any bugs or would like any particular features considered then please get in touch.

The current roadmap plans are:

• In the next few weeks upload a newer code release with a few less bugs and more features.
• Add lots more products to the database!
• Improve the front end.
• Improve the searching of products.
• Add the ability to link a product to suggested replacements.
• Map out a roadmap for your product list showing what needs replacing, when and what products will be used.
• Allow users to submit their own products
• Add a help file and some videos showing how best to use the application.
• Add some links to suppliers to see prices.

What is end-of-support.com for?

This site is for tracking hardware and software going out of support. Anyone is welcome to use it but the target audience would be managers and architects planning the future of their IT systems.

Web Application I'm aiming to build a web application that can provide several bits of info:

• Searchable database of products (software, hardware, etc).
• Dates for those products going end of sale and support.
• What the options are for replacements, with community input into this part.
• What the issues are when migrating between certain systems, hopefully based on users experiences.
• Ability for users to keep a list of products they are interested in.
• Reporting and alerting of users products

Links to:

• Where can I buy those products and how much do they cost?
• Who can provide training on those products.
• Who can come and install them for me.

Blog Articles

The site blog will also contain some articles on various aspects of building the app, discussions on support issues, obsolescence issues and anything else that comes to mind. I'm tempted to put up a forum but don't want to spend my life fighting off spam bots, so will see how things go.

Suggestions

Feel free to drop us a note with your views, you can contact us via comments on this blog or alternately:

email - contact@end-of-support.com
Twitter - @EndOfSupport
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/endofsupport
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/end-of-support



Thanks for visiting and hopefully you'll find this a useful resource.