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Ideas

Metastorm BPM
Metastorm ProVision
Metastorm Integration Manager
Metastorm M3

New Idea

SVN integration

Status: New Idea
by on 04-03-2012 07:27 AM

It would be great to have SVN plugin for Designer to resolve conflicts during parallel works on the same solution.

Smarter Association Grid

Status: New Idea
by on 03-21-2012 12:22 PM

Association grids are very powerful.  It would be VERY helpful, however, if there was an option to exclude empty rows and columns.  When just trying to read the data, it would make things much easier.  When trying to create associations from the grid you would clearly want all rows and columns.

Add formatting properties for action buttons

Status: New Idea
by on 12-14-2011 03:32 PM

A visual indicator to help users understand which available actions are critical path would be nice. Sometimes users need a reminder as to which actions will advance the process and which do not.

 

Similarly, would be nice to format actions available only to super-users differently.

 

This would be best if you did this by adding optional formatting properties to each action.

Currently there are a set of operations/supporting functions that typically you want to have happen on a scheduled basis. To handle this you will typically either create a simple BPM process that does the polling and trigger another new process as needed, or create a custom service for example to monitor what you are looking at and when something new is found trigger the new process. Depending how you kick it off, this could use either a flagged action or a user action from ECL.

 

Examples include (but are not limited to)

  1. Each day or week send an email digest of outstanding folders for a user from their ToDo list (exceeded deadline?)
  2. When the combined amount of all requests for a particular process type exceeed $x trigger a new process to notify others and/or create a new purchase order
  3. New files being dropped in a folder on the server to start some process
  4. Emails arriving in an email box
  5. Messages dropped on a message queue (MSMQ, Azure Message Queues, WebSphere MQ, others) to trigger the process

At a minimum this may be enabling a timed action to initiate a process and we include in the conditional nature of the action the "test condition" and do the work of reading the input from the appropriate location.

 

Having initiating action types specifically for email received, message received on queue, file appears and having the component in the Engine to actually monitor these things (email listener etc with ability to register additional listener type extensions) would be really nice. With this approach the action could indicate the parameters of the item it is watching for (from a particular email address, with attachment, xxx in subject, file extension is .xyz for file monitor etc). These could perhaps be triggered from any stage in the process, not just initiating.

 

What are your thoughts? I know numerous people have created Email Listener programs, but what do you think?

Create end-to-end workflow diagrams

Status: New Idea
by Jane Forbes Employee on 08-19-2011 07:31 AM

[AUG-18-11  7:31 AM  Customer] 
Following the value chain approach to process decomposition means that we often need create end-to-end processes against business services which string together a numebr of businessProcesses. 

We need the capability to be able to create a workflow diagram against a businessService, which consists not of activities, but of various businessProcesses. 

 

 

This Enhancement Request has been submit on behalf of Serle Shuman from Old Mutual.

 

Enhancement Request: When publishing, especially from the Nested Model Inventory, it would be nice to have the Target default to MS Word instead of Default Printer.  With more and more work being done without printing documents on paper, it is hard to believe many people actually use the Default Printer option.  I would think the most often used option would be MS Word, so it makes since that is the default.  If this is something you do not want to change for all users, it would be nice if the user had an option to change the Target default to MS Word.

There are two things which are irritating about viewing Folders at stages.

 

1. The window keeps jumping back to centre screen every time you click on a new tab.

 

This is just not required. I know of no other user interface that does this. Surely if I move the window somewhere else, so that I can view two folders at once, or another application, I would not want the window to jump back to centre screen every time I selected another tab?

 

I believe this may just be a bit of lazy programming that does this in form load, when it should do it only on the window load.

 

2. The window keeps resizing to the current form.

 

This is less irritating, but far more commonly noticed. The window jiggles about as it re-sizes. Factor in some speed issues when it renders complex form slowly, and the result is not good looking. We have to keep all forms in a process exactly the same size merely in order to minimise this issue, yet even so the window still jiggles about!

 

My take on this is, if the window is large enough to fit the current form, leave it alone. If it is not, then by all means re-size it to fit. That would be a fairly simple piece of code to manage, I would have thought. Probably four lines of code in all.

Spell check - Add to custom dictionary

Status: New Idea
by on 11-24-2011 05:20 PM

Please add the "add to dictionary" ability for the spell check field.

 

I have tried turning this on (changing AllowAddCustom="true" this is enabled (in default.skin), it then appears in the browser as an option however it does nothing, ie doesn't add to a dictionary.

 

<telerik:RadEditor Skin="Office2007" SpellCheckSettings-AllowAddCustom="false"  runat="Server" EnableEmbeddedSkins="True" EnableEmbeddedBaseStylesheet="True" />

 

This feature is available via the vendor supplying the rich text control (and spell check)... see http://www.telerik.com/help/aspnet/editor/customizingradspell.html

 

 

Currently the only way to add words (that I have found) is to modify the language files directly.

 

Custom Template Wizard

Status: New Idea
by on 03-08-2012 02:44 PM

Ok, the template idea is good - it provides some very good flexibility.  However, no-one here speaks template-ese.  We have no idea what all the field names mean, etc.  How about providing a template wizard app that allows me to check off the human readable items I want included and have the wizard do the awkward stuff?

 

Modeling Competencies

Status: New Idea
by on 03-08-2012 02:52 PM

Given the importance of people, roles, orgs in modeling, I think it would be very beneficial to develop a standard object and associations for modeling Competencies.  Let's make sure we are fully supporting the concept of change management and the learning process that must go along with any successful transformation.

Picture a notebook with 90 process models (and 90 interpretations of course).  When I check on the process model box in the publishing window it includes all 90 process models AND their interpretations.  Sometimes, we just want the models -- I don't want to hand de-select the 90 interpretations.  Allow me a check box to say "all/no interpreations" for each model type please.

Many of our customers publish to HTML.  They would like the ability to control the frameset percentage as part of their overall  publishing options.  Currently, this is done post-publishing.

 

In addition to the default.htm, it would great to have an option to control the model and it's interpretations (The height of the frame) frameset.

Background:

In our group of 2 persons (more to be added), we are having difficulty in working with the folders of Project Inventory Folder Structure (PIFS) when using KE. We use PIFS to organize models of each project using "folder-subfolder" feature.
Here are some issues:

  1. Since the entire notebook cannot be checked out for "Read Only" one must click individual models to checkout. As a consequence the PIFS does not get checked on Read Only. Enhancement Request: Allow checking out the entire notebook for "Read Only" that includes folders of PIFS
  2. After checking out the entire notebook for lock, there is no quick way to unlock other out-of-scope-of-work models. Enhancement Request: Allow unlocking of the models using PIFS by right clicking top folders or a group of top folders. This way all models in the Folder and sub-folders will get released.
  3. The models of PIFS are coupled with the Publish Structure (See Report -> Publish-> (Create, Modify)). This poses a problem because one cannot use same names in the Publish List and PIFS folder. Enhancement Request: Allow the user to use same names.
  4. It is not clear what is the resulting PIFS if person A checks out the entire notebook for lock, modifies PIFS and models, releases the un-needed models, and subsequently person B checks out the entire notebook for lock, works on the models and PIFS, and checks-in the notebook. Which PIFS prevails? Enhancement Request: Have option to display both common and local/personal PIFS. This way each user can work with their personal PIFS (local) as well as the KE PIFS (common)
  5. Enhancement Request: A mechanism should be setup to check-in, or incrementally checkout models using PIFS, rather than clicking on each model using the Model inventory.
  6. The client ProVision's Project, Model or Object Inventory Index currently does not show who locked the model. Enhancement Request: Please add a column to show the lock status on all three.
  7. Enhancement Request: Allow creation of PIFS's content using Publish List (drag/drop) and vis-a-vis.
  8. Summary: Sharing models using KE is not easy. Enhancement Request: Make sharing easy and fast.
Status: Accepted
Hi Raj, All very good ideas for the Project inventory. In fact, as we release our new versions of the Model Explorer, for viewing KE models in the Smart Business Workspace, we plan to leverage the Project Inventory more than we've had in the past. These suggestions will be very valuable for management and maintenance of those folders. I'll talk to development and plan to add much of this in future releases.

Please provide a customization tool that will allow for the stereotypes that apply to an object to be set as part of the modelling language.

 

Currently on the details tab for most object and links in ProVision there is a stereotype field.  In some cases this field has pre-defined (by Metastorm) drop down values, in others there are none, but a modeler can enter any value in this field.  As we don't use the same stereotypes at predefined by Metastorm this means the modeler has to remeber the valid stereotypes, and manually enter these every time, with the associated risk if mis-entered stereotypes, or incorrect stereotypes.

 

We need to be able to:

  • set the valid stereotypes for an object or link
  • turn off the ability for a modeler to enter a stereotype not in the drop down list
Status: Accepted
Hi Jim, That has been discussed in the past and we currently have an item on the backlog specially for it. I don't have a release date for this, but it will definitely be added. This take our initial concept a step further though. What we've discussed is the ability to add custom stereotypes, but the management of those has not been discussed. I'll take this back to development.

Allow full RACI relationships within models and within Association grids. 
Currently consider the
R - Responsible for is the perfomer of the activity within its swimlane
A - Accountable for - is the Owner of a workflow - as indicated by the relationship between the Activity that is the subject of the model and the Owner of that model (at a higher level)
C - Contributes to - currently we have a customized associations for this but would be good to have a common way to do this (a built in association)
I - Informed about - currently we have a customized associations for this but would be good to have a common way to do this (a built in association)
Should be able to edit these either within a model or to view the RACI in an Association matrix - and edit in both places and if it is edited in one place it should appear in the other.
As a side note the CRUD relationships should be like that too - when you create the C, R, U or D it should create the appropriate association relationship, not just give you a visual representation in a model. Should be able to create the CRU or D relationships either in a matrix or when you are in a model and them to change the database so it can be seen and edited in both locations.

Turn on/ off the display of Stereotype

Status: New Idea
by on 10-06-2011 01:22 AM

Not sure if this has been raised before but it would be useful to be able to turn off the Stereotype display in models - something like the "view indicators" function.  We find some of our models are very busy and having stereotypes just makes it worse. It would be very useful to use the stereotype values on objects... but only display it where it was needed.  It would make the models more business friendly.

Reporting on rich text fields

Status: New Idea
by Apina on 02-19-2012 09:02 PM

We are experiencing an issue when we use the rich text variables in the report, it displaying the HTML tags as well.

Better to have a feature it eliminate the HTML tags from the content when we use the variable in the report.

 

Report.png

HTML is automatically rendered in grids*. It would be nice to be able to specify whether or not HTML is interpreted or rendered as plain text in grids. I believe it would be OK (and probably much easier) to manage this per grid rather than per column.

 

(*although there appears to be some in some versions that do not, although ours seem to work)

Currently you are completely unable to set the default order for Table Business Objects. This means that all editable grids can turn up in a random order. It would be nice to able to set teh default order.

 

We have many requestes to set the order, and we have to tell the customer that this is impossible. This does not reflect well on the product.

Given that the only way to create collapsible field groups is by docking panels to the same edge of their container (see our review with examples >here<), we desperately need a simple way to reorder these panels. At present the only way is to use the 'send to back' and 'send to front' commands. This is awkward, time consuming (for large forms) and prone to error.

 

The most obvious way, I would think, is to use the Tab Order. This is very easily changed on a field by field basis. If applied properly, it would also ensure the overall field tab order would flow properly from panel to panel.

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