In the September 2021 release the BusinessOptix platform has been enhanced or amended in the following areas:

Author

Model Attachments

When you add an image or other attachment to a model they are often stored in a single attachment folder. And whilst some authors may be good at creating a sub-folder structure that makes management easier that's not always the case. In Author you can now save attachments to the Model Attachments virtual folder. Any attachments saved in the Model Attachments virtual folder are saved as part of the model structure. Along with making management of the associated attachments easier it also means that any model level access controls are also applied to the associated attachments. There are no plans to remove the Attachments folder and as an author you can use either the Attachments or Model Attachments folder as appropriate for your organization.

Process Layout (Beta)

When you are editing a process model sometimes the layout of complex step sequences and associated links make it hard to edit and add new steps. To aid in changing the process you can now chose to automatically layout a process model. Process layout is a repeatable layout and uses a set of rules to to sequence the process steps in a visually sensible sequence. Steps remain in the lane they are assigned to and links are re-routed to the default (equivalent of relink all).

Note that lanes and some components are not moved by the automatic layout. You may find that when you have multiple links crossing lanes that re-ordering the lanes and trying the automatic layout again results in a clearer representation of your process model. Non process specific components such as image or groups are not moved by the automatic layout. You may want to reposition these shapes following automatic layout. 

Process layout can be found in Author on Actions/Layout diagram. You can undo any changes made. If you have example process models that automatic layout does not refine that well, then please feedback via client support. 

Other Changes in Author

When an author wants to view a previous revision in Author it wasn't as easy to revert the revision to be the latest. If you chose Save on a revision Author will then confirm that you wish to save as latest and advise you to refresh to get the new latest version.

When the property sidebar is hidden, clicking on the diagram when scrolling around caused it to display. When the property sidebar is hidden, clicking on the diagram will no longer reveal. For some model types that don't include a diagram (such as master data) the property editor, which on a non-diagram model displays all the content you may wish to edit, was hidden on small screens. This has been changed, so that it is not hidden on model opening.

When exporting a process model to Visio multiple views were exported to the same Visio page. This has been corrected.

Master data models can now have the table of contents sorted on the master data item code.

Verification of process models did not recognize Split as a default direction for gateways. This has been corrected.

[Changes to Author are immediately available]

Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

The BusinessOptix platform will not work with Internet Explorer 11 from 1st November 2021 onwards. User who access BusinessOptix using Internet Explorer 11 will receive a notification advising them to switch to alternate browsers such as Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or Firefox.

Workflow

Workflow email notifications have been changed to use the same styling as model change notifications. The content of the email notifications is unchanged and is configurable in the Workflow definition.

On workflow configuration we have added the option of selecting the author who starts the workflow as an option to receive email notifications. 

When the workflow configuration for email notification included images they were not being displayed as the URL stored did not contain the library URL. This has been corrected. It should be noted that if  the image is in the BusinessOptix library and the user receiving the email is not currently signed-in then they will not see the image until they are signed-in.

When a model had a workflow initiated and the author subsequently renamed the model the workflow did not proceed to completion. This has been corrected.

Process Model

When master data has code numbers assigned the code numbers were not shown in the process model output. This has been added.

The sub-section numbering in the PDF for a process model that contained multiple process maps was not restarting for each process map. This has been corrected.

[Library Refresh Required]

Model Output

When a diagram has a shape with a long description the hover tooltip could be partially hidden. This has been corrected.

[Library Refresh Required]

Dashboards

When the dashboard (or data source) has configuration issues these are highlighted in the dashboard output to aid you in resolving the issues.

Data Sources

When you create a component or form based data source you now have the option of adding a filter on one or more columns. This allows you to select a subset of forms/components that match the filter criteria. For example when the dashboard only needs to show the activities that are 'Manual Tasks' you could filter the data source. The filter can be set-up with multiple comma delimited values and the component/form must match one of the filter values. When a filter is created on multiple columns then at least one match must be made in each column.

The data source for form submissions did not display data when the data field name on the form configuration was changed by an Author. This has been corrected. 

When viewing a data source output you can now select View SQL to see the generated SQL.

Library

When you upload multiple files through the Browse interface and switched folder before the file upload had completed the files were saved to the currently selected folder. This has been corrected.

Import

When importing a process model from Visio the model filename was set to the timestamp of the import. This has been changed to reflect the name from the Visio file.