Announcing the Release of Metastorm BPM Version 9 SR1

[#1]

I am pleased to announce the availability of the Metastorm BPM Version 9.0 Service Release 1 and the Client for Office for Version 9.  This announcement provides a summary of the release which is now available to Partners and Customers with current maintenance contracts who have licensed the relevant modules.

Service Release 1 Product Features

Metastorm BPM Version 9.0 SR1 is provided as an incremental update to Metastorm BPM Version 9.0.  This release resolves a number of issues reported to our development team and includes many exciting new features and enhancements including:

• A new Outlook style Navigation Pane that provides a new navigational style to the BPM Designer improving ease of use for non-technical users and familiarity for users of Metastorm ProVision.  
• Integrated Custom Liststhat provide an easy mechanism for creating customized role specific task or work lists.  Service Release 1 includes many enhancements to the Custom List capability including:
  1. Faster Implementation - Custom Lists are now included as a standard capability within the Designer which makes their design and deployment much easier and faster.
  2. Broader Participation – Custom Lists are now utilized by all clients including the standard web client.
  3. Enhanced Filtering – Custom Lists now include enhanced filter capabilities allowing end users even greater control over their task or work lists.
• Enhanced Web Service Connections that provides faster and easier integration into web services with enhancements to the Web Service Connection. 
• Process Debugging using Visual Studio 2008.  This enables process designers to debug any process logic including:  processes, forms, expressions, process and form event visual scripts, and server-side script code. 
• Drill-down has been added to the Version 9 Reporting functionality together with the inclusion of dynamic data driven hyperlinks and inter-report navigation.
• Support for Firefox browsers Version 3.5 and higher has been added.
• Side-by-Side Compatibility for Version 7.6 and Version 9.x enable these environments to be effectively merged so that end users experience a single user interface displaying processes and work items from both systems.  This new capability provides additional flexibility for customers with a large number of deployed processes to choose when and how they migrate. 
  NOTE - The Repository Migration Utility will be released shortly after as a separate package.

Support has been added for the many new 3rd party environments including but not limited to:

• Firefox 3.5+
• Microsoft Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard and Enterprise)

For a full list of new features, enhancements, and changes to the supported environments, please see the Release Notes.

Client for Office Product Features

The Metastorm Client for Office provides unrivaled integration for Metastorm BPM into the Microsoft Office Suite including Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint as well as integration to Microsoft SharePoint and SharePoint Libraries.  This release of the Client for Office provides support for the Metastorm BPM Version 9.0 platform.

In addition, installation of the Client for Office components has been enhanced so that the Microsoft Office 2007 extensions for Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint can now be installed silently enabling easier remote installation and administration.

For a complete list of all changes, please see the Release Notes.

[#2]

Prior to V9, the database schema did not have to be 'dbo' in SQL Server.  Our BPM objects have worked under the 'ework' schema since V6.5.

In V9.0.0, it seems the SQL database must be 'dbo' per a response in ticket SR-02012010-0005.  It appears some of the core BPM stored procedures/objects had dbo.<object> coded.

Is it still the case with SR1 that the SQL database must still be implemented with the 'dbo' schema only?  (I'm trying to figure out the changes we will need to migrate / upgrade to V9.)

[#3]

Hmmmm....

That is a worry for at least one system we support. I suspect it would be cleared up long before we had to migrate, though.