Some say necessity is the mother of invention… others say laziness is the best motivator of innovation. We’ll let you decide which inspired the creation of the Voracity install program.

Soon after writing the Mobile Membership application we realized that we needed a way to allow customers to easily get up and running. We also saw the need to update the application quickly and often. That lead to what we call the Voracity Control Panel. It’s a quick means of installing new modules and keeping them up to date. It’s hard to describe how easy the installation process becomes, so here’s a quick video:

If you’ve ever installed a custom module you know all of the steps and processes you normally have to go through to get up and running. The complexities of the Mobile Membership app outweigh a normal module install because of the need to create a new portal, yet with the new Voracity Control Panel the installation takes literally just a few minutes.

Not shown in the video is the update process. Once a new update is released, all one has to do is go back to the Control Panel and the update is just a click away. The system is smart enough to look at the Arena version you’re currently running to ensure you only get updates that match your version. For instance there is already a new update for the Mobile Membership application for Arena version 2009.1. Once a customer installs 2009.1 the update will display and their one-click away from the new Mobile Membership.

We’re considering opening up the Control Panel to allow community modules to be able to be deployed and updated through it if developers of these modules wish. Our question to you is: Would this be of interest? We’d want to add a field or two to provide acknowledgement to the source of the module and a link to their support forum or wiki. Also the module developer would have to create the ‘package’ file to work with the Control Panel. So what are your thoughts? We’re very open to your feedback.