What's New in Agilian 2.2 Service Pack 1?

Latest build: sp1_20100222 (February 22, 2010) View release notes

Simulate business process

New feature

Visually simulate the execution of business process diagram. Instances of pool and lane, required resources and activities' durations are adjustable for process improvement.

Configurable time scale

Configurable time scale

New feature

Simulate business process in real time, minute scale, hour scale or day scale to see the whole execution timeline.

Generate charts

Generate charts

New feature

Automatic generate resources usage chart, input chart and queue chart for quantifying different process improvement options.

Reference model element in documentation

Reference model element in documentation

New feature

Insert reference model element references to rich text documentation pane. The referenced model elements will be linked and highlighted.

Reclaiming and eliminating spaces with sweeper and magnet

Reclaiming and eliminating spaces with sweeper and magnet

Enhanced feature

Modeling is not just about creating diagrams but also the ease of refinement. Good visual modeling tool allows modeler to create and manipulate diagrams in effective way. Agilian provides sweeper and magnet functions for expanding and compacting diagram without messing up the layout. Please see how sweeper and magnet in action in the following movie.

Traceability and model transitor

Traceability and model transitor

Enhanced feature

Traceability between model elements helps to identify and locate the source of origin of specify model element in project. For example, "Process Order" use case is derived from a task called "Process customer order" in a business process diagram. Agilian supports model transitor to manage and maintain the traceability between model elements.

Manage and apply styles

Manage and apply styles

Enhanced feature

Style is a set of formatting attributes for diagram elements. Applying style to diagram element enables you to quickly change the formatting of diagram element without setting attributes one by one. The manage style function allows you to change formatting attributes of existing style, and all changes will be applied to all diagram elements applied the same style. The following movie shows you how to manage and apply styles.

Publishing project to web server

Publishing project to web server

Enhanced feature

The sharing of latest and accurate business process and system design to customer, team member or other department staff greatly increases the efficiency of communications. Agilian supports publishing project to web enabled format. The published content contains all information in the project, including documentation, detail property, internal references and external references of each diagram and model element. The published content incorporates some navigation functions to increase the usability such as jump to shape, open reference and popup documentation when mouse over the element. There is no special requirement in both server and client side. Project Publisher can run with system job scheduler to publish and upload project(s) in regular bases. The following movie shows you how to publish project with Project Publisher and use the published content.

Tool customization

Tool customization

Enhanced feature

You may want to hide away some diagram types, menu items or toolbar items to avoid your team creating wrong types of model. Agilian supports customization of User Interface (UI) objects by XML. The following screenshots outline the steps to customize the tool.

Agilian User's Guide Online

What's New in Agilian 2.2?

Release date: January 11, 2010View release notes

Define business process working procedure

Write operation procedures for business process

New feature

Specify detailed steps of business process flow objects with procedure editor.

Specify testing procedures

Specify testing procedures

New feature

Add testing procedures and expected results to flow of events and generate test plans automatically. The latest version supports defining multiple testing procedures for a single flow of events. The following movie demonstrates how to define testing procedures for use case flow of events.

BPMN conversation diagram

BPMN conversation diagram

New feature

Visualize communication between organizations with BPMN 2.0 conversation diagrams.
The following movie demonstrates how to draw conversation diagram.

UML Profile

UML Profile

New feature

Customize UML notations by profile diagram. Define your own set of stereotypes and tagged values.

Project management properties

Project management properties

New feature

Specify status, difficulty, priority, version, iteration, phase and discipline of each model element for project management purpose.

Automatic translation

Automatic translation

New feature

Translate diagrams to different languages by the automatic translation function. Both model element name and documentation can be translated. The following movie demonstrates how to translate activity diagram from English to Chinese.

Automatic expand diagram margin

Automatic expand diagram margin

New feature

Automatic expand diagram base on the growth of design. Margins can be defined visually. The following movie shows you how automatic expansion of diagram margin works in class diagram.

Flow of events editor

Flow of events editor

Enhanced feature

Capture detailed steps and flows with intuitive flow of events editor. One use case can contain many flow of events to specify different scenarios. The latest version supports inserting actors, use cases and requirements to flow of events editor as linkages.

Glossary grid

Glossary grid

Enhanced feature

Identify, document and manage domain terms with glossary grid. Each term can have multiple aliases. All terms will be highlighted and linked in model element documentation and flow of events. The following movie demonstrates the basic usage of glossary grid.

Business process diagram

Business process diagram

Enhanced feature

Communicate and document business workflow with worldwide standards, BPMN 2.0. Agilian supports BPMN 2.0 notations with some advanced modeling features like animacian, visual diff, impact analysis and more.

Visual Diff

Visual Diff

Enhanced feature

Compare diagrams visually with visual diff. Export result of comparison to PDF file for documentation purpose.

Animacian

Animacian

Enhanced feature

A picture worth a thousand of words, and a movie worth a thousand of pictures! Animacian can be configured and can generate animation of static design. Animacian is ready for business process diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram. Seeing design in action increases the level of understanding of the design. In the latest release, you can define your own animation path in business process diagram.
The following movies show you how to animate your business process diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram with Animacian. The forth movie shows you how to export animation to Adobe Flash format.

Concurrent modeling with VP Teamwork server

Concurrent modeling with VP Teamwork server

Enhanced feature

Share design with VP Teamwork Server. All changes will be stored in revision bases. Agilian employ local workspace concept for collaborative modeling. The normal usage of VP Teamwork Server is to checkout project from VP Teamwork Server, then modify project and commit changes to VP Teamwork Server. Thanks to the concept of local workspace, you may bring your notebook to customer's office, and start working with the project without connecting to the VP Teamwork Server. After all, you will commit the changes to VP Teamwork Server when you back to the office. In the latest release, permission can be configured when importing project from Agilian.
The following movie demonstrates how to checkout project, commit changes to server and update changes from server.

Rich Text documentation

Rich Text documentation

Enhanced feature

Write detailed description to model elements with rich formatted text. The latest release highlights and links glossary terms from documentation to glossary grid.

Matrix

Matrix

Enhanced feature

Overview dependencies between model elements by matrix diagram. The latest version supports exporting matrix diagram to Microsoft Excel for further analysis. The following movie demonstrates the basic matrix diagram usage.

Report template designer

Report template designer

Enhanced feature

Design your own report template with visual template designer. The latest version has added a lot of customizable elements and increased in usability. The following movie shows you how to use report template designer to design your own report template.

Generating MS Word 2007 report

Generating MS Word 2007 report

Enhanced feature

Generate UML design to report in Microsoft Word 2007 format. The MS Word 2007 report generation feature is available in Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix platforms. The latest version supports specifying MS Word document as template.

Ad hoc report creation

Ad hoc report creation

Enhanced feature

Design a tailor-made report with report writer. The follow movie demonstrates how to use Agilian report writer to prepare a report.