Kofax TotalAgility User Manual

TotalAgility™

Release Notes 4.2

Release Notes for Version 5.0

Singularity, the TotalAgility product a nd other product names or services referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Singularity Limited and/or its subsidiaries or of the indicated companies.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent of Singularity Limited.

CONTENTS

SECTION 1  WELCOME 3

Technology Themes ................................................................................ 3

CHAPTER 2  ENHANCED SECURITY 5

Security Tokens and Roles ....................................................................... 5

CHAPTER 3  STANDARDS COMPLIANCE AND INTEGRATION 7

CMIS Configuration ................................................................................ 7

XPDL Support ........................................................................................ 8

TRIM 7 Integration ................................................................................. 8

SharePoint Fault Tolerance ...................................................................... 9

SharePoint Web Parts Enhancements ........................................................ 9 

Dynamics CRM Instance ID ...................................................................... 9

CHAPTER 4  ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE 10

Properties in the Ribbon Menu ................................................................ 10

Screen Tips ......................................................................................... 10

CHAPTER 5  GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS 12

Entity Features .................................................................................... 13

Case Management Updates .................................................................... 15

Field Validation .................................................................................... 16

Lookups Within Drop-Down Lists ............................................................ 18

Disable Form Event .............................................................................. 18

Configurable Activity Details Menu Option ................................................ 19

Default Button ..................................................................................... 19

Exclude a Control from the Tab Order ..................................................... 20

Virtual Folders in Solutions .................................................................... 20

Enhanced Daily Workload Control ........................................................... 21

Job Administration Page ........................................................................ 21

Job Clear Down .................................................................................... 22

Email Node – Send Multiple Emails ......................................................... 22

Process Valid Dates .............................................................................. 23

Import / Export Custom Reports ............................................................. 24 

Job Duration Values .............................................................................. 24 

Active Directory ................................................................................... 25

Recent Simulations ............................................................................... 25

Live Session – Complex Variable Support ................................................. 25

Removal of the Technical Builder, Client and Admin Suite .......................... 25

SECTION

WELCOME

This document contains release information for TotalAgility™ version 5.0.

Technology Themes

At v5.0 Singularity has renamed the Singularity Process Platform™ (SPP) as TotalAgility™. We believe that the TotalAgility name more accurately reflects our business goal, encapsulates the current features of our product today and will better reflect evolution of the product.

It is Singularity’s business goal to help organisations achieve business agility. TotalAgility™ is an award-winning Business Process Management (BPM) suite that enables organizations to rapidly model, optimize and execute their business processes.

TotalAgility™ today helps our customers to improve their business process agility through the following key product features:

 Simplicity: For ease of adoption and to inspire business engagement in

continuous process improvement, TotalAgility™ is intuitive to use, allowing Singularity’s customers to improve business performance through simply two work environments. The TotalAgility™ Builder allows even the most complex processes to be easily designed and the TotalAgility™ Workspace delivers exceptional efficiency, transparency and flexibility to process execution.

 Zero Code: Singularity’s TotalAgility™ product is a zero code environment

enabling customers to deliver faster and more frequent process innovation without expensive reliance on IT-delivered, code-based changes. TotalAgility™ provides as standard, without need for code-based customization, web browser-based forms, SharePoint web parts, automated document and email generation, advanced process design support and flexible process execution on day one – there is no requirement for custom software development.

 Off-the-shelf Integration and Standards Compliance: allows TotalAgility™

customers to accelerate the implementation of their solution and to leverage and extend their existing software assets. TotalAgility™ provides off-theshelf interoperability with familiar Microsoft products including SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, Visio, Office and Outlook, so customers can improve their business process agility while using these familiar product interfaces. Off-theshelf integration to HP TRIM and pre-built CMIS standards compliance further enable TotalAgility™ customers by easing the task of managing documents, irrespective of which document management products the organization may use.

 In-flight Process Change: The ability to make in-flight process changes is

fundamental to business process agility, allowing the business to rapidly

change in response to external market influences or internal business requirements. TotalAgility™ empowers Singularity’s customers to instantly change an in-flight process without professional IT assistance, allowing a new client need to be met, a fast-emerging issue to be resolved or a new business opportunity to be quickly acted upon.

Today TotalAgility™ is helping our customers achieve continuous process improvement, deliver “game changing” organizational transformation, reduce the delivery cost of standardised or repetitive business processes and is supporting the delivery of non standardised or unpredictable business processes.

The TotalAgility™ product roadmap is focused on going even further and is focused on delivering additional savings for organizational departments and systems which have previously been regarded as too complex and undeterministic in their nature to be optimized using standard BPM tools and which hold the most potential for increased efficiencies and reductions in costs.



In addition TotalAgility™ v5.0 delivers the following functionality enhancements:

^ Enhanced Security

At v5.0 TotalAgility™ enables administrators to control the security of information by restricting access to individual areas of a form thus protecting confidential information from unauthorized access. In addition administrators can now create security roles thus delivering flexibility in how security is managed.

^ Standards Compliance and Integration

TotalAgility™, v5.0 delivers compliance with the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard allowing TotalAgility™ to provide integration with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems.

^ Enhanced User Experience

The experience of the end user has been extensively enhanced in the 5.0 release with the introduction of properties in the Ribbon menu and Screen Tips.

^ General Improvements

In addition TotalAgility™ v5.0 delivers a large number of feature enhancements to both the TotalAgility™ Builder and Workspace environments focused on delivering flexibility and productivity improvements for TotalAgility™ customers.

CHAPTER

ENHANCED SECURITY

The security of customer and internal business data is a business imperative. Building on the current security capabilities of the product, TotalAgility’s new Security Token feature enables administrators to control the security of information by restricting access to individual areas of a form.

For example, access to a section containing salary details could be restricted to the Finance team. This protects confidential information from unauthorized access.

In addition, within the Workspace administrators can create security roles, e.g., a Finance role, and associate tokens and users with the security roles thus delivering flexibility in how security is managed.

Security Tokens and Roles

The key steps in creating and associating security tokens for a control are:

 Create security tokens.

 Create security roles, e.g. a Finance role, and associate tokens and users with

the security roles. This is completed in the Workspace in the Security Roles Configuration page.

Note: this page is available within the Workspace package as a form and

must be imported into the solution for which you want to configure security. You must also add a Logon form to your solution.

 Apply tokens to a control in a form (via the Security Token property of the

control).

Note:

for security to work within a form the Security Tokens property must

be enabled.

CHAPTER

STANDARDS COMPLIANCE AND INTEGRATION

TotalAgility v5.0 delivers enhanced standards compliance. Building on the existing standards compliance within TotalAgility, v5.0 now delivers compliance with the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard thus providing interoperability with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. The 5.0 release includes:

 CMIS Configuration  XPDL Support  TRIM 7 Integration  SharePoint Fault Tolerance  SharePoint Web Parts Enhancements  Dynamics CRM Instance ID

CMIS Configuration

The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is a standard to provide interoperability of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems. It is designed to be layered on top of existing Content Management systems and their existing programmatic interfaces. It defines a generic/universal set of standards provided by a Content Management system and a set of services for working with those capabilities.

You can use TotalAgility’s CMIS integration capabilities to integrate with any third-party document management product that supports CMIS standards, e.g. Microsoft SharePoint. This enables you to use a common interface to configure multiple CMIS compliant systems from within the Builder and perform activities such as adding and deleting a document without the need for custom coding.

You can:

 add a CMIS compliant site  use the CMIS Add Document node to add a document to a CMIS site  use the CMIS Update Properties node to update the metadata (properties)

of a document already added

 use the CMIS Get Document node to either get a copy or check out a

document

 use the CMIS Find Document Node to locate a document  use the CMIS Cancel Checkout Document node to cancel a check out and

undo any changes made

 use the CMIS Check In Document node to check in a document

 use the CMIS Create Folder node to create folders

XPDL Support

The XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) is a format standardized by the Workflow Management Coalition to interchange business process definitions between different workflow products.

TotalAgility now supports the importing of processes in XPDL format, where the XPDL document conforms to the SIMPLE conformance class (version 2.1). The SIMPLE conformance class meets the requirements for portability of models containing a simple set of BPMN elements.

TRIM 7 Integration

TotalAgility is now compatible with TRIM 7.

SharePoint Fault Tolerance

The 5.0 release enables you to utilise SharePoint fault tolerance by adding MSMQ bindings to the relevant configuration files. The fault tolerance feature provides guaranteed message delivery functionality for configured events raised in SharePoint and sent to TotalAgility.

Note: fault tolerance is only provided for SharePoint (origin) to TotalAgility

(destination) communication.

SharePoint Web Parts Enhancements

The Create New Job, Job List and Job Properties web parts have been redesigned to facilitate ease of use and to blend with SharePoint sites.

Dynamics CRM Instance ID

To easily identify entities in a CRM site, you can choose to automatically retrieve the entity’s unique instance id when any of the Create, Update or Delete events are triggered in CRM, i.e. whenever an entity is created, updated or deleted.

Note: to accomplish this, while configuring the events, map the 'instance id'

attribute to the relevant field. Once the event is triggered, the instance id of the entity is automatically retrieved and saved to the relevant field.

CHAPTER

ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE

Removing complexity and delivering a simplified user experience is an ongoing focus for Singularity. The experience of the end user has been extensively enhanced in the 5.0 release. Changes include:

^ Properties in the Ribbon Menu ^ Screen Tips

Properties in the Ribbon Menu

All properties are now available in the ribbon menu via Contextual Tabs. By providing access to all properties within the ribbon we are not only adhering to the Windows 2010 look and feel but we are also providing a much less technical means of setting these properties. This will not only provide a much more intuitive user experience but will make less common functionality more accessible.

Contextual tabs contain properties only relevant to the selected object, i.e., a control, node or simulation, and are only displayed when the object is added or selected in the Builder.

Properties are available via two contextual tabs:

 General tab: displays all the generic properties of the selected object.  Extended tab: displays the properties specific to the selected object. This tab

is only displayed for objects that have additional properties.

Screen Tips

To further align TotalAgility with Microsoft Office 2010 standards, screen tips have been introduced to the ribbon menu and also to the New menu of the backstage.

Screen tips are small windows that display descriptive text when you rest the pointer on a command or control.

CHAPTER

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

As well as the features detailed in the previous sections, we have also refined and made significant improvements to TotalAgility with:

^ Entity Features:

 Generate an Entity Form  Create an Entity Instance

Event

 Find Entity Event

^ Case Management Updates:

 Send Emails from the Case

Inbox

 Case Close event ^ Field Validation ^ Lookups within Drop-Down

Lists

^ Virtual Folders in Solutions ^ Enhanced Daily Workload

Control

^ Job Administration Page ^ Job Clear Down ^ Email Node – Send Multiple

Emails

^ Process Valid Dates ^ Import / Export Custom

Reports

^ Job Duration Values

^ Active Directory ^ Disable Form Events ^ Configurable Activity Details

^ Default Button ^ Exclude a Control from the Tab

Order

^ Recent Simulations

^ Live Session – Complex Variable

Support

^ Removal of the Technical

Builder, Client and Admin Suite

Entity Features

To enable you to use entities within your solution, the 5.0 release includes the following entity features:

 Generate an Entity Form - a new Entity Form enables you to use entities

within a form. At run time, you can use this form to create and modify entity instances. This enables you to use already created entities in your form, make changes to it at design time, and deploy it as part of a solution.

 Create Entity Instance event - a new event type, Create Entity Instance

event, is available which enables you to create entity instances on a form at run time.

 Find Entity event – this new event enables you to search for entity instances

from within a form based on specified search criteria. You can search for:

- A single entity instance – returns the instance ID of the entity matching

the search criteria. If there are multiple entity instances matching the search criteria, the search returns the instance ID of the first available record from the database.

- Multiple entity instances – returns all the entity instances matching the

search criteria along with their key fields and entity instance IDs.

For example, you could build a form to return the instance ID of a single entity instance. You can also set a flag to choose which search criteria to use by mapping the entity attribute flag to a control (check box in this case).

Note: when entering search criteria, ensure that the entire keyword is

entered. Wildcard characters or partial keywords are not supported.

Similarly, you could also build a solution to return multiple entity instances. The search returns all the entity instances matching the search criteria along with their key fields and entity instance IDs.

Case Management Updates

You can now:

^ Send emails from the Case Inbox - enabling you to detail case related

information to participants.

To facilitate auditing, details of the email such as the sender, recipient, body etc., are displayed as a note associated with the case.

^ Case Close Event: you can now manage what happens to associated jobs

when a case is closed. You can select to either:

 Terminate: if the case is terminated before associated jobs are complete,

the status of all the associated jobs will change to Terminated.

 Leave: leaves all associated jobs of this case definition running. If the

case is completed before the associated jobs are complete, the status of the case will change to Awaiting Completion.

Field Validation

By enhancing field validation within the Forms Solution, we enable solution designers to provide a smoother user experience as the user receives a clear indication as to what data they need to correct on the form.

You can choose:

 the error indication image  whether to display only the error text, only the error image, or both  whether or not to highlight the error fields at run time

By default, the error handling settings defined at the solution level are applied to all forms within it.

You can also define unique settings for each form, which override the solutionlevel settings.

Lookups Within Drop-Down Lists

When creating drop-down lists within forms, you can now use existing lookups to populate the data.

Disable Form Event

A new Run check box is available for form events which when deselected enables you to disable the event. This enables you to avoid deleting or adding conditional / transactional events around the event to prevent it from being executed at run-time.

Configurable Activity Details Menu Option

If your solution includes a Take Activity Workspace form, you can now specify the name and position of the menu option used to view activity details on the page.

Default Button

You can now specify a default button for a button control in a form or panel when the access to a mouse.

Enter key is pressed. This aids accessibility if the user does not have

Exclude a Control from the Tab Order

Controls can now be excluded from the tab order. When a control is added to the form, the tab index (for that control) is automatically assigned a value. This value is incremented by 1 sequentially for each control as it is ordered on the form. At run time, whenever the

Tab key is pressed, the cursor moves according

to the set value. For instance, the cursor moves from a control with tab index 1 to a control with tab index 2 and then to a control with tab index 3, etc. You can manually change this to modify the order in which the cursor must move.

Assigning a value of -1 to the tab index for a control removes it from the tab order, i.e. the cursor will never move to the control. The user will have to manually position the cursor onto that control.

Virtual Folders in Solutions

You can now create virtual folders within your solution so that you can logically group a set of related forms together. This enables you to structure your solution in a more organised manner and makes maintenance much easier.

Once a folder is created, you can rename it and add forms to it, as required.

Enhanced Daily Workload Control

Multiple Daily Workload controls can now be added to a form in a dashboard style for a worker group or individual resources within a worker group. This is useful for a supervisor to view their team’s workload at a glance.

When adding a Daily Workload control for a worker group or an individual resource within a group, you need to add a SamePage event to be able to map the resource ID to the properties of the control (from a field, form or solution variable). At run-time, the workload for the specified resource is retrieved and displayed.

Job Administration Page

A new Job Administration page in the Workspace enables you to view milestones, events and state history for a job.

Job Clear Down

You now have the option to clear down job data from the Live Jobs and / or Finished Jobs tables of the TotalAgility database as required.

Note: you must have the appropriate access rights and a development licence

to access the Job Clear Down option.

Email Node – Send Multiple Emails

The Email node has been enhanced with the ability to send emails to multiple participants.

Process Valid Dates

You can now specify the timeframe a process is active for using the new Active From and Active Until properties.

You select the date range for the process - the process remains active only during the specified range and expires as soon as this period is complete (if an Active Until date is specified).

This enables you to control how long the process remains active without intervening manually to cancel it.

Import / Export Custom Reports

You can import / export custom reports between different installations of TotalAgility, e.g. from a development server onto a production server. If the report has a publication process and linked report associated with it, you can also select whether this should also be exported.

Note: you can import a single report or multiple reports. All reports are

imported in XML format.

Job Duration Values

Two new job information values are available in the PI database (pi_job table) and the Report Builder, Actual Duration and Time Spent.

These values enable you to identify jobs that are overrunning or exceed their expected duration.

Active Directory

You can now synchronise Active Directory groups and get a particular group within an organisational unit.

You configure the existing AD_SERVERNAME to specify a group, i.e. use CN to indicate a group, for example, “SERVER_NAME/CN=Group1,OU=Singularity” gets the group “Group1” and all its sub-groups and members that are within in the organisational unit “Singularity.”

Recent Simulations

You can now access all recent simulations via the Backstage.

Live Session – Complex Variable Support

In a Live Session, the contents of a complex variable can now be edited when set as an initialisation parameter for a process (dynamic complex only) or as an input / output parameter for an activity.

Removal of the Technical Builder, Client and Admin Suite

The Technical Builder, the Notebook Client and the Admin Suite are no longer shipped with TotalAgility.

Kofax TotalAgility User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

WELCOME

Technology Themes

ENHANCED SECURITY

Security Tokens and Roles

STANDARDS COMPLIANCE AND INTEGRATION

CMIS Configuration

XPDL Support

TRIM 7 Integration

SharePoint Fault Tolerance

SharePoint Web Parts Enhancements

Dynamics CRM Instance ID

ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE

Properties in the Ribbon Menu

Screen Tips

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS

Entity Features

Case Management Updates

Field Validation

Lookups Within Drop-Down Lists

Disable Form Event

Configurable Activity Details Menu Option

Default Button

Exclude a Control from the Tab Order

Virtual Folders in Solutions

Enhanced Daily Workload Control

Job Administration Page

Job Clear Down

Email Node – Send Multiple Emails

Process Valid Dates

Import / Export Custom Reports

Job Duration Values

Active Directory

Recent Simulations

Live Session – Complex Variable Support

Removal of the Technical Builder, Client and Admin Suite