Application and Application Group changes in Production environment

[MountainMike]

I am looking for feedback on how most companies handle making changes to a Production environment. The company I work at has just put a system in Production. We are starting out using only the PDF indexer. The source files are inconsistent in where the trigger is located and analysts have to make adjustments. We are taking the approach that a specific Line of Business analyst handles creating the App and App Group and how the index triggers are positioned because of their expertise with the documents/reports. Should we let them make the change in Production? We have a routine change control in place to handle this.

Is this typical or do most companies use one or two admins that take care of the entire system? We are starting off with five Lines of Business using the system. We are not sure whether to use our LOB analysts to make the changes in PROD or just the system admins do all changes. Just looking for best practices and what is most efficient.

Thanks for any feedback.

Mike

[Joe Wolken]

Speaking as a consultant who has seen many OnDemand implementations, I would say that I almost always am working with a single (or several) OnDemand administrators who are from within IT.  I think that most of the time once your system stabalizes and you get the reports set up the way you want, then changes don't happen very often.  Unless someone is using the Admin tool frequently then they may forget the best techniques to use.  It may be easier to come up with a method for documenting the indexing and other setup requirements and feeding that to an OnDemand administrator for setup.  It may also help with control in the long run.
Joe

[pankaj.puranik]

We have a similar situation and the way we solved it is by adding our own Trigger (This is a hidden text that is not visible on the PDF) using iText APIs. This way we ensure that the TRIGGER is always at a fixed position.