Download Spanner 2

Technology

Spanner 2 is a space planning (laying out products on retail fixtures) software programme. It is a .Net application built to run on Microsoft Windows machines using Microsoft .NET 10 and Windows Presentation Foundation.

Inputs/Outputs

Apart from user mouse and keystroke interaction, the main inputs are product dimensions and product sales data which are both usually loaded via spreadsheets, and Spanner 2 uses Microsoft's DocumentFormat.OpenXml library to interface with Excel. DocumentFormat.OpenXml is also used for fixture exports to PowerPoint, and PDFSharp is used to write PDF documents. Otherwise, the main outputs are images of, diagrams of, and reports about fixtures (planograms) produced by the software. Users can also export a series of images in an animation sequence, and produce a video using FFMpeg (packaged with Spanner).

Deployment

By standard it is provided via a digitally signed Windows .msi installer, but also requires .NET 10 to run. Upon running the software for the first time a user will get a prompt to install the relevant .NET platform. Spanner 2 licences are via an annual subscription (per user per year) controlled via an installation specific licence key code. The software provides an installation code, and Productive Insights Ltd provides a time-stamped licence key code for use against that installation code. For convenience, multiple licences can also be managed via a multi-licence multi-key file.

Files and Network

Spanner displays images of the products used in the application. Individual product images are accessed by reading image files that are saved according to a naming convention (e.g. product id code, name or UPC). Where organisations have multiple users, they typically choose to store product images in a shared network location. To minimise the reading of multiple images over the network, and to maximise user interaction speed, Spanner can include settings to replicate images between a local and a network location. Often organisations will use syncs between local machines and SharePoint to share such resources, in the rare instances where this is not an option Spanner can also use Microsoft Graph to perform this function. Spanner 2 has its own file format *.spanner (zipped combination of text and image files). (Spanner can also read and write .psa space planning files, which are flat text files).

Requirements

Spanner 2 is designed for Windows 10 & Windows 11, for earlier technology please use Spanner 1. Spanner 2 is developed in a 16GB 1.7GHz Windows 11 environment but is also tested in an 8GB 2.2GHz Windows 10 environment.