Enterprise Finance System Solutions within Countrywide's Corporate Accounting division is in charge of developing and maintaining their internal software. CAWeb, Berretta, CLD, Libor Rate and LedgerReportWebService are ASP.NET web applications and winforms written in C# and C++ that link multiple systems into one web portal that hundreds of internal users access daily for reports and loan information. Countrywide uses Automated Build Studio to build and deploy these applications to its internal users.

Automated Build Studio Boosts Productivity

Countrywide's Corporate Accounting division faced a lot of manual and time consuming processes for releasing files and database changes to their Testing, Staging, and Production environments. "CAWeb has a monthly release schedule with possible hot fixes. We wanted a way to create a build for a specific release, making sure those files all work together and that the files tested by Quality Assurance were the same sent to our production server. This is where Automated Build Studio boosted our productivity and increased quality," said William Brooks, from Countrywide.

Choosing Automated Build Studio?

William described how they chose Automated Build Studio: "Our department chose Automated Build Studio after hearing about it by word of mouth. At a previous company, I had used TestComplete and found it very powerful and easy to use. I heard from a friend that the makers of TestComplete had a software package that could automate complex processes for compiling code. We went to the AutomatedQA's website and downloaded the trial version of Automated Build Studio. We were blown away by the numerous functions possible within this application. In addition to the easy to use Windows desktop interface, we also liked the ability to launch builds remotely using the web interface."

Automating Build and Deployment

Countrywide's Corporate Accounting division has automated a lot of their tedious processes with Automated Build Studio. Below is a brief summary:

• Create a VB script to decide if a macro has been launched by the web interface or a nightly build (if in the nightly build a release version is chosen by current date and time).
• Delete a current web application folder on the build machine.
• Get the latest versions of their CAWeb, Berretta, CLD, Libor Rate and LedgerReportWebService applications, from Visual SourceSafe for a specific release.
• Compile downloaded files in Visual Studio .NET 2003.
• Get the latest version of all SQL scripts set for release.
• Build an installer that holds all .NET code and SQL scripts for all applications, using Inno Setup 5, and copying this installer to a network location.
• Email the results of a build to the whole department.

Making Tasks Easier

"All interaction with Automated Build Studio is done through the web interface. Once the initial setup was completed on the build machine, all developers and administrators can open the web interface through Internet Explorer and launch a build for a specific release date. This helps developers test their individual code with all other checked in code in Visual SourceSafe. When the time is right to create a release candidate, an administrator can then log into the web interface and create that exact build with an installer so the intended .NET code and SQL scripts can be installed on the Quality Assurance, Staging, and Production environments. In addition to the above, every night we have an automated launch of the current build to ensure that there are no build errors. This allows us to always make sure that at the end of the day the .NET code that has been checked into Visual SourceSafe is error free," said William.

Overcoming Challenges

William described one particular challenge that they overcame using Automated Build Studio: "We can now build a single executable that holds all .NET code and SQL scripts, which can be run to install a specified release. Without Automated Build Studio, the creation of an installer that holds all of our code would be time consuming and take too many steps to complete."

Automated Build Studio Benefits

"We have experienced many benefits using Automated Build Studio. The most profound change to our workflow is the organization of code per release. Because our release schedule can be weekly, we wanted a way to organize these different releases easily and effectively. The web interface allows us to create an instance for every release date. We can then create an installer of a build for any release within minutes. This helps us closely integrate with Visual SourceSafe and ensures that the specific files that have been checked into our repository are going to be the files in the installer," said William.

Improving Product Quality

"The quality of our product has greatly improved due to allowing Quality Assurance to catch more bugs in the early stages of development," said William.

Time Savings

William explained how Automated Build Studio has saved Countrywide more time: "A great amount of time has been saved, since we can now easily organize our builds per release. We can launch an installer in the Quality Assurance, Staging, and Production environments that can install all files built into the installer within a minute. Previously we would only pull the specified files one at a time to these environments and then manually compile them. With the many different changes that get released for our department, it was a full-time job just promoting code. Now we have two steps: launching a build and then running the installer on the appropriate environment. This saves about an hour each day for the Build Manager."

Utilizing the Web Interface

"We primarily use Automated Build Studio's web interface. This helps developers launch builds without having a complex interface to work with. All that is required of a developer is to click the build they want and the play button. In addition, the web interface also allows us to use Windows authentication, which gives us the reassurance that nobody outside our department can access our code," said William.

Countrywide on Automated Build Studio

"I would highly recommend Automated Build Studio for build management. I have used other build managers in the past and have found Automated Build Studio to be one of the best. The close integration with numerous utilities, along with the web interface, enables Automated Build Studio to be powerful and flexible. Automated Build Studio can bring together your entire department’s code into one easy-to-use tool," said William.

Conclusion

Automated Build Studio has allowed Countrywide's Corporate Accounting division to manage their build and deployment processes. Automated Build Studio's close integration with numerous utilities, along with the web interface, enables them to easily involve all developers securely and provides the confidence they need to maintain a large code base.