Bonita Open Solution version 5.6.1 is available for download – not really news, but hey, it’s a new year!

Usually our minor releases are maintenance releases only, but this time we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs and improved some annoyances to make using Bonita Open Solution just that much more user-friendly.  (And – we’ve made some changes to the database schema that require a migration.  See below.) Read the rest of this entry »

More hidden-in-plain-sight stuff you can find in the new BonitaSoft documentation…

The collaboration and advanced productivity features available with the Bonita Open Solution Subscription Pack are now included in the publicly available documentation – so everyone can better see how they are used.

Subscription Pack features are marked “SP” (the image below shows an example).

These SP features are described in the section for which they apply – for example, under:

• Process Design (User Guidance, process templates, category labels, KPI/BAM, using contexts, design collaboration, generating process documentation…)
• Connectivity (graphical database and SAP queries, Salesforce connectors, web service calls with XML and POJO…)
• Data and variables (complex data objects as variables…)
• Form field design (define page order dynamically, using templates for forms and for field widgets, grouping field widgets, contingent fields, multi-instantiated fields, using connectors in forms…)
• Web applications (redirect forms to external URL, customize applications, form internationalization…)
• System administration (multi-tenancy)
• Process administration (filtering in User Experience, modifying timers and deadlines in running processes, error management, user privileges, advanced monitoring and reporting, changing User Experience look’n’feel…)
• Document management (managing documents with running cases…)
• Process simulation (using unlimited resources, detailed simulation reports…)

If you don’t have a version of BOS-SP to play with already, take note of this bonus: all BonitaSoft training includes a trial version of BOS Teamwork. Cool.

BonitaSoft recently hosted a Webinar with Bruce Silver, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) champion and guru. (If you missed it, it’s available here.)

And here’s something BPMN we recently added to the BonitaSoft documentation – though the feature itself has been available in Bonita Open Solution since the 5.6 version release.

(Call it a hidden treasure.)

Export a process model in BPMN2.

Working as a team requires information to be shared around safely and in real time.

The Documentation team has just finished updating tutorials and videos explaining the collaboration features in the Bonita Open Solution Subscription Pack.

The includes a repository management feature which allows processes and artifacts to be made accessible, to be synchronized and edited in real time on a shared SVN server.

Special features such as automatic synchronizing, locking processes in use or reverting to previous versions, are quick and easy to use.

All you need is a SVN repository to be set up and configured beforehand, and an internet connection.  All features are accessible from the Repository menu in Bonita Studio.

Design collaboration features

A series of videos briefly and concisely explains the different functions which are very useful in teamwork.

Check them out in the BonitaSoft documentation video library.

One of the added-values included in the Bonita Open Solution Subscription Pack is the contexts feature. Contexts are useful to handle different “environments/status/contexts” of a process.

For example, by defining a “test context” and a “production context” and associating different variables to each context, there is no need to change variable values in connectors, forms, or other places where variables necessarily differ in different environments.

A context is a set of key-value pairings. Context keys (which will be replaced by a predefined value) can be used as input in most text variables.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just finished migrating the Bonita Open Solution Simulation Guide from its ancient PDF format into the new online documentation system.

This should make it a bit easier to find the bit of information you need as you configure simulation.

You can use simulation in Bonita Open Solution to evaluate the way a process runs in multiple iterations, under different resource availabilities and different load profiles.

A simulation runs a specified number of iterations over a specified period of time, using either simulated data or assigned probabilities, and the cumulated result of all iterations is shown in a report.

At the process level, you’ll need to define resources needed needed at various steps in the process.

You can choose to define simulation parameters on individual tasks (e.g., data to fill variables, resources needed to complete a task, and more) and transitions (e.g., conditions using simulation variables, or probabilities that the process will take one path or another.)

And again at the process level, define a load profile which will be used to characterize the iterations of the process to be run in the simulation.

Running a simulation produces and exports a report which details what happened at the process and task level in the simulation.

Inside the documentation, there is a how-to tutorial for each of the simulation parameters that you might want to define (see below). There is also a new video available, Overview of Simulation Feature (thanks to Frederic Bouquet), that shows where to find the various places to configure simulation parameters and characteristics.

Overview of Simulation Feature is also available from the video library:

BOS 5.6 includes an example process called Delivery-Simulation, which illustrates how to configure a very simple simulation, using two processes with the same steps but slightly different flows. Try running both to see and compare the simulation reports.  You can find this example from the Welcome page of Bonita Studio:

More improvements are on the way.  Stay tuned!