May 2020 Release Guide

In the May 2020 release, we have added new capabilities, enhanced existing capabilities, and fixed a number of minor issues. The changes include:

• To support businesses who are using this time to capture process domain knowledge from subject matter experts we are providing a solution that allows you to send survey forms to capture the activities and then automatically convert the responses into a business process model. See Rapid Process Discovery
• We have made a few changes to Workflow that include improved checking of the users being assigned steps; automatically marking steps complete in a user's task list and extended the workflow status dashboard to get an overview of all in-flight workflows. See Workflow.
• For Authors and Participants using comments, it's now easier to filter the complete list of Discussions in a library to the models you are engaged on. See Model Management.
• For Administrators, we've made it easier to set-up access control based on user license types and also to use Groups to configure which content displays on the home page of Version 7. See Access Control.
• And in Dashboards, we've enhanced the in-page filtering capability to allow your users to filter on more than one data point. See Dashboards and Data Sources.

Rapid Process Discovery

Rapid Process Discovery provides you with a new way to capture and create a process model in BusinessOptix. The knowledge about how to complete each step in your process and the sequence they happen is often inside the heads of subject matter experts and operational teams.  Using a survey form in BusinessOptix you can ask them to describe the step and where it fits in your business process. As you survey more subject matter experts the process will organically create itself from the survey responses. A process analyst can then refine the responses and the BusinessOptix platform will automatically create a well-formed BPMN process model based on the survey responses.

[Contact your account or customer support team for more information on how to enable and use this functionality]

Library

Workflow

When an Author starts a workflow we've added validation to prevent the workflow from being assigned to invalid users. This includes not allowing user names who don't exist in the library and also assigning workflows to users who have a license type that cannot action workflow (i.e. participant). This also means that an Author who starts a workflow will now always be shown the workflow dialog in order that they can see and confirm the details before the workflow is started.

In order to reduce manual administration for users who are reviewing or approving models in the workflow when they complete the workflow we now automatically mark the task as complete, so that it no longer appears in the My Task lists. This also happens if the workflow moves forward without the user carrying out the review/approval task.

The Workflow Status dashboard has also been extended to include information about the status 

[Functionality available automatically in Version 7, except Workflow Status dashboard which requires a Library refresh]

Model Management

In libraries with lots of discussions and comments of varying ages, we've improved initial performance by retrieving only the most recent comments. By default, you will now only see discussions that have had a comment made within the last 365 days. We've also made it easier to filter the list of discussions to the models and forms the user is most interested in (based on whether they receive notifications for the model/form)

In libraries that are publishing content to either Stakeholder or Public folders, we now prevent an Author from deleting the model from the Shared folder until the published version is deleted. 

When an email is sent on resolved comments on a model component we now include a link to the component and not just the model. This means you can be taken directly to the step in a process that the comment relates to. 

[Functionality available automatically in Version 7]

Access Control

In the Manage administration function, a library administrator can now more easily set-up access control based on whether the user is an author or participant license type. One of the more common use cases for this is to prevent viewers from seeing models that are still under development and haven't been published to the wider organization.

As the authors for some content can also fulfill the role of a participant on other content and a viewer for your wider organization content then users with a license type that grants them more capabilities in the BusinessOptix platform also inherit the access of the lower license type. This means that an Author is also granted access to content that a Participant has access to. 

The Viewer license type does not have its own group as that it is considered Everyone in a library.

These license based groups are also available in other parts of the platform, such as workflow assignment and role-based content displayed on the library home page.

[Functionality available automatically in Version 7]

Dashboards and Data Sources

In a dashboard, we've extended the page level filtering capability. You can now have more than one filter applied at a time and also select multiple values in each filter. When selecting values in two filter values the page will then only show data that matches both of the filters. When you select two values in the same filter the page will show data that matches either of the values. For example, you could select filter models that have the status of "Draft" or "Approved". Or you could filter a list of models that have an owner of "John Doe" and the same model has an author of "John Doe".

When you first create a new data source it can be useful to see the data that is retrieved. When you view Data Source output you can now see a table of the data retrieved.

We've also extended the form data source to include all the properties that are held at the Model level. 

Form and component data sources now also return the internal identifier for a parent component. 

[Version 7 Library Update Required]

Import

When you import a Visio of your workflow or process into the BusinessOptix platform the lane orientation cannot always be automatically detected. When this happens you can now explicitly set the lane orientation.