SkyXoft Procx is SQL Server 2005 certified!

Some months ago Microsoft had a program called
SQL Server Front
Runner in which different companies submitted their product to be tested
against SQL Server. It was a very good program because the tests were conducted
by VeriTest, a famous third
party company dedicated to testing software.

We submitted SkyXoft Procx and got our
certification of good to go!

A small preview of our next release

We’ve been working hard in these previous weeks getting version 2.5 of Procx out on the streets. Most of the new features comes as part of the feedback we’ve been getting from our customers. The winner feature of all was a better web client interface. So, we dedicated the majority of the time in developing a new client with all the features requested. Here’s a preview of what’s coming:

1. The home page: The initial page welcomes every user with a summary of tasks pending and overdue for him. Also, a small calendar shows the tasks a person has for today by default.

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2. The WorkList: this is the main part of the web client. Here you can see all the tasks assigned to you. You can now customize views so you can add or remove fields depending on the process and requests that you manage. For example, if you work for the IT department and handle help desk or maintenance requests, you may have a view that displays the tasks with fields associated to these request. If you work for the human resources department and handle training requests, you may want a view that shows fields from those requests.

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3. RSS Feeds: now you can see tasks in your favorite RSS reader.

4. Tasks detail: You can complete tasks directly from the web, enter and view comments history.

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5. Flow: You can now have a visual representation of the process actually running letting you know in what stage it is right now.

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6. Search: Advance search capabilities and a detail of where is any request.

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7. Reports: Reports can be seen now from the web, including any custom report made using the Procx Studio.

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In conclusion, great features are coming in the next release of our new web client making it very easy for anybody in the organization to receive and complete tasks assigned to them during any process.

Using roles in business processes

When creating a workflow, one of most common activities in them are tasks.
These tasks must be approved or completed during the execution of the process.
Someone in the organization is in charge of completing the task.

For this to happen, tasks must be assign to users or employees inside the
organization. They must then complete it according to their criteria. For
example, in a bank application for creating a new account, the officer will
generally have a task for checking if the person opening the account is already
a customer of the bank, maybe using their social security number (going one step
further this can be automated using a web service that makes a query to the
backend system and returning true if the person is a customer). After the
officer has completed the check, then he can complete the task.

Assigning a task to a person can be made directly or indirectly. In
Procx, you can do it
any way you want. Directly means assigning a task to an employee, a user. For
example, the task described in the previous example can be assign to Jack, an
officer in our Timbuktu branch. You can even get the user from a variable (for
example a user selected in a list on a form). The disadvantage of using this way
is that if Jack is transferred to the Honolulu branch, then you must edit the
process and change the assignment to the new user.

Assigning a task indirectly means not attaching a task to a user, but instead
to a role. A role belongs to an organizational chart and is occupied by a user.
In the previous example, instead of assigning the task to Jack, you can assign
it to the loan officer located in the organizational chart of the Timbuktu
branch. When Jack gets the sad notice that he’s been transferred to Honolulu,
then the only thing to be done is change the user assigned to the loan officer
role in the organizational chart. No other changes are needed in the process and
everything continues to run smoothly.

This is why assigning tasks to roles is the preferred practice when building
workflows generally and one that is totally supported in Procx.

Forms with InfoPath, XForms and others

Every process in an organization is related to document or some other kind of
information. The majority of these documents are forms. From an expense request
form to a vacation approval form. Forms structure information, so these can be
more easily digested by others in the organization.

When you are looking to automate this processes you need to find a way to
also take these forms to electronic forms. Then users in the company will have
like a central repository for these requests, allowing them to fill them more
easily and at the same time reduce errors. For developing electronic forms you
have several options in the market:

- Microsoft
Office InfoPath: It’s the product offering from Microsoft. You can easily
draw forms in a very intuitive way. It integrates with other Office products
like Excel, Word and SharePoint. The final produced form is an XML, which makes
it easy to integrate with other applications. For viewing and editing the form,
you need to have InfoPath installed on the client machine.

- XForms: is the W3C standard for
making web forms. It has a whole structure for developing and designing them.
Any organization can take their forms electronic using these technology. You can
view and edit the forms using one of the commercially available products or just
use the Firefox XForms plug-in
which is free. Also with XForms, the final produced form is an XML.

- Developed your own forms: You can also developed your own forms using the
technology you prefer (PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, etc.). The only thing to have in mind
is that the final output must be also an XML to be compatible with other
applications.

Procx allows you to
add workflow to any type of the previous forms.
InfoPath,
XForms or any other
XML file is supported. You can design the process and use the fields from the
form to build business rules and customized notifications. This provide an
integrated environment for developing forms and the workflow for handling the
requests. Real process automation.

SharePoint Workflow

I think SharePoint is one of the must have components everybody using Windows Server 2003 should have installed. As a free piece, the WSS version allows you to share files and collaborate with peers in the organization. It has document versioning capabilities in the web site and acts as central repository for document storage.

One of the coolest thing I find about it, is the integration with Microsoft Office InfoPath. InfoPath allows you to create forms that are routinely use in the business like purchase orders, expense reimbursement and management, vacation requests, etc. in an easy to use interface. Then you can publish these forms in SharePoint and every employee will be able to see them and fill them. Then you also have a central repository of forms.

The next step in this document and form collaboration environment is to add workflow or approval processes to these documents. That’s why we have made it easy to combine Procx and SharePoint workflow. Procx has features and activities for integration with SharePoint and InfoPath giving already established users of these platforms a huge return on their investments.

See more information about Procx and SharePoint here and see the movie here.