Employment with Symphony

Symphony is actively building a set of Certified Affiliates who have skills to support Federation software in some way. An affiliate is neither an employee nor a contractor; they are independent consultants or companies that have the interest and skills to support Federation.

As an affiliate, your name, contact information, and skill areas are advertised on Symphony's website. You set your own pricing and payment policies with customers. Symphony provides you with all available support materials you need to succeed.

Symphony does not take a referral fee or a cut from the project. The company is intent on focusing on quality control of the software, and earns its income through ongoing software subscription revenues.

The skills most commonly requested are:

Training

Training users either remotely or personally on how to use Federation. Focusing on special modules as requested. Symphony provides outlines, training (for the trainer), and other resources.

One special subtype of training deal with the Sandbox, a companion application that exposes a copy of all tables in separate Access database. The Sandbox lets the user construct custom queries, reports, and more. There is frequently a demand for training on how to construct queries and reports in the Sandbox, ranging from beginner to advanced levels.

Implementation

Installation, setup, populating key lookup lists, determining the best way to integrate the customer's business practices into the way Federation works, and showing how Federation can provide more powerful ways to carry out those practices.

Data Conversion

Converting data from external sources into Federation. Most often involves a migration of data on mailing lists, donor data, client data, members, and customers. Your database querying and cleanup skills are needed for the first half of the process, but the Fed Converter tool handles most of the final data insertion.

Feature Design

Do you have the ability to creatively think of new ways for software to solve problems and make life easier? Can you put that vision into a graphic format, by sketching and/or mocking it up with software? You do not need to be a programmer, but you do need creativity and vision. A majority of Federation users request new features, and need someone to translate their needs into a visual form and a set of requirements.

Federation Programming

We maintain a small group of highly experienced and well-trained Access/VBA programmers to to build new features, streamline existing features, integrate with outside applications, and fix bugs.

There is also a need for web developers experienced with Visual Studio, VB.NET, and SQL Server. Federation has a website extension under increasing demand, and customers also request ways to link their to other websites. E-commerce skills are a plus.

Federation programmers are held to higher training standards, and are expected to sign a non-compete agreement, as you will be exposed to the source code and developers manual.

Companion Application Programming

Federation has two companion applications at the desktop level -- the Sandbox and the Custom Zone. Both are Access database that require database building skills, anywhere from basic querying to advanced VBA coding.

The Sandbox holds a recent copy of all data tables from Federation, and is often used to perform ad hoc custom queries without fear of damaging data. Custom programming here is usually limited to building queries and reports, or teaching users how to build queries and reports.

The Custom Zone is a more elaborate application that has some live connections to Federation data, some unique locally stored data tables, and often links to other applications including websites. This is essentially a custom build application that lets users create specialized reports, input forms, search tools, data transfer mechanisms, and more. Symphony can provide you with a template to get started, and the rest is yours to build for whatever specialized needs the customer may have.

Product Support

Do you have natural understanding how software works from the user's perspective? We need a few affiliates who are able to answer questions and determine if the problem has a solution; or a workaround; or represents a bug, or if the solution is awkward and non-intuitive. We need several affiliates who are able to answer such questions for Federation, perhaps as an extension of an existing job supporting software.

Networking and PC Support

Sometimes the challenges of getting a database system running smoothly go beyond the software itself. Many problems revolve around other issues such as networking, PC capacities, operating systems, and software versioning. If you are skilled in these areas, we can refer business your way.