A cost forecasting tool that lives inside Excel and pulls live data from Oracle Fusion / PPM and Aconex.
A short, plain-language look at where TrueCast stands today and the decisions ahead to get it ready to offer to multiple vendors. For each one, I have set out the options and where I would lean.
TrueCast already does the hard part: it forecasts project cost and talks to Oracle and Aconex in real time. It was first built for a single customer. The work ahead is less about new features and more about a handful of structural choices that decide how secure it is, how easily customers can install it, and how cleanly the same product can ship to many vendors.
This is the biggest choice. An Excel add-in can be built three different ways. They differ in how secure they are, how easy they are for a customer's IT team to approve and install, and how much reach they have across Windows, Mac, and the browser.
Logic written in Excel's built-in macro language, shipped as one Excel add-in file.
The tool rebuilt, fully or in part, as a compiled Windows program that plugs into Excel.
The tool rebuilt as a small web app that runs inside Excel on Windows, Mac, and the browser.
| Macro add-in | Compiled (C#) | Web add-in | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows | Windows | Windows, Mac, browser |
| Security | Weak | Strong | Strong |
| IT approval | Hard (macros often blocked) | Moderate | Easiest |
| Install experience | Copy a file, trust macros | Signed installer | Add from a catalog |
| Effort to get there | None (current) | Medium | High |
| Long-term outlook | Declining | Stable (Windows) | Microsoft's direction |
TrueCast signs each user in to Oracle so it can pull their data. How that login works is the single biggest security question, and it shapes whether a customer's IT team will approve the tool at all.
A login window opens inside Excel using older browser technology.
The user gets a short code and approves the login in their normal browser.
A small, trusted, signed component handles the secure login and hands back only what is needed.
For resale, install has to be smooth and trusted. A file a user copies by hand sets off security warnings and is hard to update. The options range from manual to fully managed by the customer's IT.
The user copies the add-in file and tells Excel to trust it.
A proper installer with a trusted certificate, the way commercial software ships.
The customer's IT pushes TrueCast to their users through Microsoft 365.
Today, customer-specific settings and names are spread through spreadsheet cells and baked into the tool. To resell cleanly, each vendor's details should live in one place so onboarding a vendor is configuration, not a rebuild.
Settings live in cells, and one customer's names are written through the code.
Each vendor's Oracle and Aconex connection details, IDs, and branding live in a single profile.
None of this requires a single big rewrite up front. The sensible order tackles the biggest risk first, then makes the product easy and trustworthy to sell, and keeps the broadest-reach option open for later.
The immediate first step is to stand up single sign-on for the first new vendor, Huron, and confirm the end-to-end login works against their Oracle environment. From there, replace the old browser login and stop exposing tokens. This is the change that turns TrueCast from an internal tool into something defensible to sell.
Ship a signed installer customers and their IT trust, and move each vendor's settings and branding into a single profile so onboarding a new customer is configuration, not development.
When we want TrueCast to run beyond Windows and install with near-zero friction, begin moving toward the Office web add-in as the long-term platform.