How To Get Started?

To get yourself up to speed with CQC, you will want to go through a few different steps. Though CQC is a large product, at its roots it really only has a few really fundamental concepts. The complexity comes in more because of the open ended ways that these concepts can be applied. Unlike simpler, more limited products that provide a template for you to fill in, with CQC you are presented with a blank slate and are able to create almost any solution you want. The cost of flexibility is that there's often a period of overload until the light finally comes on and you see the big picture.

The steps you will want to take are:

1. Under the Try/Buy tab, download the installer. This is a simple Zip file, which Windows can unzip for you. Unzip it to some temporary directory that you can later remove after you've installed CQC.
2. At this point, go to the Support tab and the Tutorial Videos section. There are a sequence of videos in this section which will take you visually through all the steps required to do an installation and show you how the various aspects of the product work. There are a fair number of videos there, but be patient and go through them all. Most are in easily digestable chunks of 10 to 20 minutes, and they will help you enormously.
3. Once you are through the videos, you will want to get into some of the technical documentation, which is also under the Support tab. Start with the Action Reference which provides details on some of the core concepts of the product. The other technical documents provide detailed information on specific aspects of the product, so read those if and when you get into those specific areas.

The tutorial videos use a device simulator, so you don't have to hook up any actual real devices to CQC in order to go through them. That means you could do it on an airplane if you wanted something to do a little more fun than eating peanuts and hoping you don't crash. The product has a 30 day, unencumbered trial period for you go through the tutorials. When you are done and have decided to move forward with your actual implementation, you can generally just run the uninstaller and remove that version and re-install it where you really want it to live long term. If you already have it where you want it, and you have work that you don't want to lose, then you can just license the copy you already have installed.