What's New in Business Process Visual ARCHITECT 3.2 Service Pack 1?

Configurable time scale

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

Generate charts

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

Reference model element in documentation

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

BPEL generation

Business Process Visual ARCHITECT supports create, edit, visualize and generate Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). The generated BPEL and WSDL can deploy to standard BPEL engine such as Apache ODE.

Tutorial

• Generate BPEL - Create WSDL Diagram for Customer Service

Reclaiming and eliminating spaces with sweeper and magnet

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. Business Process Visual ARCHITECT 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 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. Business Process Visual ARCHITECT supports model transitor to manage and maintain the traceability between model elements.

Manage and apply styles

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.

Publishing project to web server

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. Business Process Visual ARCHITECT 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

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

Tool customization

Step 1 of 4: Open the Customize UI dialog box

Select Help > Customize UI... from the main menu.

Step 2 of 4: Select the UI components to hide

Select the menus, toolbars and popup menus to hide.

Step 3 of 4: Hide them

Click > to hide the selected components.

Step 4 of 4: Continue modeling

Restart the application and continue modeling. You will find that the chosen components are hidden.

Tutorial

• Customizing Business Process Visual ARCHITECT by XML

Writing operational procedure

Write step-by-step procedures to each business process tasks. A single task can have multiple set of procedures for different scenarios.

Tutorial

• Define working procedures for business tasks in a business process diagram

Project management properties

Specify project management properties to business process flow objects. Supported project management properties include status, difficulty, priority, version, iteration, phase and discipline.

Automatic expand diagram margin

Automatic expand business process diagram base on specified margin. The following movie shows how automatic expand diagram margin works in business process diagram.

Automatic translation

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

Business process diagram

Visualize inner and inter organizations operations with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 2.0. BP-VA fully supports BPMN 2.0 notations and comes with a bunch of diagramming toolset like voice documentation, sweeper and magnet.
The following movies demonstrate designing sales order processing business diagram with some handy features like sweeper and magnet.

Tutorial

• Develop As-is and To-be Business Process Model
• BPMN2 business process modeling

VPeers

• Define the workflow BPMN (YouTube)

Visual Diff

Compare as-is business process diagram and to-be business process diagram. Identify new, deleted and updated tasks between diagrams. The latest release supports exporting differences to PDF for reporting purpose.

Animacian

A picture worth a thousand of words, and a movie worth a thousand of pictures! Animacian can be configured and generate animation from business process diagram. This increases understandability by seeing design in action. Path customization is supported in the latest release.

Tutorial

• Export business process animation to flash
• Animate Business Process Using Animacian

Concurrent modeling with VP Teamwork server

Share business process design with VP Teamwork Server. All changes will be stored in revision bases. BP-VA 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 BP-VA.
The following movie demonstrates how to checkout project, commit changes to server and update changes from server.

Rich Text documentation

Write textual description to business process flow objects with rich formatted text. The latest release highlights and links glossary terms from documentation to glossary grid.
The following movie shows you how to write rich text documentation and reuse a predefined template.

Matrix

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

Report template designer

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

Tutorial

• Design and generate business process report

Generating MS Word 2007 report

Generate business process report in Microsoft Word 2007 format. The MS Word 2007 report generation feature is available in Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix platform. The latest version supports specifying MS Word document as template.
The following movie demonstrates how to generate MS Word 2007 report with business process diagrams. The movie also shows how to customize the order of model elements as well as the setup of cover page, page header and page footer.

Ad hoc report creation

Share business process design within and across teams with project publisher. Project publisher can generate business process diagram to web format. There is no special requirement to host the published content. The latest version supports glossary grid in published project.
The following movie shows you how to publish project with Project Publisher and use the published content.