For Metastorm Integration Manager (MIM) 8.5.1, we expanded existing cross-departmental features. The idea is to improve collaboration amongst the often numerous parties reviewing business transactions. These business transactions may be in-flight (as in “how is my purchase order progressing”) or archived (as in “how do I prove to the business my $1000 PO went through as I said it did”). Having succinct knowledge on business transactions is of course important to enterprise-class solutions. To that end, I’d like to briefly review the new Filter Personalization and Sharing feature of MIM 8.5.1.
We did a click count on how customers gain answers to their common auditing questions. In doing so, we found that projects tend to have a number of fixed questions users later want quick answers to. Thus, the product's Process Auditing views now have a Manage Filters tab. Here you can create filters and give them a name.
Once you’ve created a filter, you can keep it to yourself, share it with one or many roles, or make it global to all users. There is a display list of viewable filters created by others. You can bring these filters into your filters—a personalization feature. Now that you’ve created or imported a filter, it's a simple one-click dropdown to your data—saving time and giving you focus.
We also went ahead and made sure that if your selected filter remains after closing the browser or log-out (using cookies). This looks to fulfill the “where was I” needs common in the diverse interactions of daily work.
Furthermore, filters now apply across visual reports and dashboards. This likewise expects to ease cross-referencing data between views.
Lastly, I think the creation of one or more filters is a new and common project task you'll want to consider for MIM projects. With just a few extra minutes of thought, project teams can determine how users may want quick access to particular project data. Then, a ready filter is available to the right roles in the organization—giving users guided choice to quickly gain access to needed data.
