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Entricom's entriNumber software was created to help CLECs and Telcos
manage their telephone number resources. This huge web-based application
was developed in a great burst of activity by a feisty development team.
This was an all-new application for the company;
I designed the page layout and first working prototypes, and developed many of the
JSP pages and servlets.
Click on an image below to see a full-size version in a new window.
This is the entriNumber home portal, showing all the modules available at the time.
There's a lot of stuff under the surface; some sections went several layers deep. The
left side navigation bar was built dynamically by a security-conscious Java module reading
from an XML data store. If the application looks structurally a bit like the
Bahá'í Prayers website, it's intentional. This model of dynamic
navigation on the left, bold page titles and content pushed clear up to the top of the
screen works well on sites with many pages of difficult material.
Here's a typical entriNumber screen; this one shows historical utilization of
phone number resources. The top frame in the content portion displays search criteria,
the bottom shows results. The links lead to edit panels. There were dozens of
screens structured like this, some with multiple edit parameters, a dozen search criteria,
elaborate lateral navigation.
The block management portion of the application was intended for use by telecom companies
who needed to allocate blocks of 1000 phone numbers at a time. Various agencies keep
track of which company has what numbers; phone numbers are something of a vanishing resource
in this day of cell phones, modems and beepers. Note that the left nav bar is
collapsible down to the narrow configuration shown here. This was needed due to some of
the double-wide result sets returned in the search screens.
The subscription versions screen is something of a control panel. Jeff Smith, one of the
developers on our team, came up with this one. The color-keyed buttons are intended
to be easily recognized at a glance by someone who works with the screen all day every day.
The search criteria could be used to return arbitrary rows, and the operator was then able to
apply changes to individual rows or to the collected result set.
Forecasting was sort of the opposite of historical utilization. The utilization screens
told a carrier how many phone number resources had been used in the past; the forecast screens
were predictive about future use.
This is one of the formset screens, which allowed operators to compile the forms used to
request phone number resources from oversight agencies. Different forms were
required for different situations, sort of like tax forms for the IRS. The printable
version buttons brought up PDF file recreations of paper forms with the values filled in.
The printable reports were one of my projects; I built them using a third-party
Java class library
designed for reporting. I suppose it is somewhat telling of the telecom industry
that a huge complex XML-based system capable of serializing and transmitting forecast
data was instead used to generate paper forms that would be faxed to some poor clerk
somewhere.
The service provider area let carriers keep track of local phone service providers who share
responsibility for customers, numbers, blocks or other resources. This was another complex
interface; in this case,a successful search displays an edit screen and several lateral
property screens, navigable via the links near the top of the content area. One of my
regrets about this interface is we didn't have the time to develop breadcrumb navigation.
This would have been a helpful feature; it was easy to get really deep in the weeds.
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What was it like working there?
Intense. It was a startup, you know, with limited funding and no sales yet.
We always felt we were racing the clock to make that first big sale that gives
the product validity. Our potential customers (CLECs, Telcos) were all
hurting even worse though; I got the impression that they didn't
care much about managing telephone numbers - the numbers they really cared about
were managed by alarmed accountants.
Entricom still seems to be making a go of it though. They're down to
a tiny handful of people; one developer only I think. Moved out of their
big space with a view of the lake to a little office they could afford.
Finally made their first entriNumber sale too.
What I miss most from Entricom though is the dev team, easily
one of the best I've worked with. We still keep in touch; a couple of folks work
together on contract projects, there's a small core reforming at the Tommy Bahama
headquarters in downtown Seattle, I see them out at lunch sometimes.
But when we were all together, what a great
boisterous bunch we were, and what a lot of fun we had. There were
long hours and some fierce interactions, but a great deal of respect and affection.
There was one marriage.
As Jeff would say, "it's all about the love."
Entricom makes telephone number management software for the telecommunications industry.

Entricom put together an informational website called NumberPooling.org to help educate the
industry about number management issues. The site is a good resource if you're
interested in how the allocation of phone number resources works.

Did I mention that entriNumber was brandable? Jeff and I stayed late one Friday
night to put together the Britney Spears Signature Edition. The
nav bar was pink, the titles were pink and a faint background
photo of guess who floated behind the text. Certain keystrokes
entered in the Terms of Use page triggered a password prompt; if you ever get this far,
try the password "snorkel".

Finally, my favorite Entricom product: the Entricom Entri-Cup. Created as a marketing
giveaway, these were great coffee mugs. Nice weight, large handles, attractive
shape, well-balanced, hold a lot of coffee. There's a logo (complete with
swoosh) and on the other side the tagline, "Bringing Order to Telecommunications."
We outgoing workers were encouraged to take various promotional items (cups, t-shirts)
along with us as a sort of consolation prize for not having become internet millionaires,
so the Micheletti family has a treasured set of four Entri-Cups.
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