Adding documents behind processes

laurens stul

Dear all,

 

I am looking for the possibility to add existing Word procedure descriptions to certain processes and activities I have modelled. Does anyone have an idea?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

LS

 

Andrew Sharp

There are a couple of options. 

 

The first is to create artifacts for the word documents, then associate them to the appropriate process or activity.

 

Alternatively, if the original documents are not too heavily formatted (e.g. no bullet lists) or long,  you could copy and paste the text into the description field of the process or activity.  You will need to do some formatting to get rid of unwanted line breaks, but I used this technique a few years ago on a large project in Germany.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Regards,

 

Andy

John Grygorcewicz

Take a look at M-Files from Motive systems (www.m-files.com) this is what we are using to link documents to objects in Provision. The good thing about it is that they offer a free version so you can try it. We create an artifact and then copy and paste the m-files url into the artifact. This is a link to a view rather than to the document and we found that this has a lot of advantages over using just the artifacts capability.

 

One of the key points is that it allows us to have access security around the documents and work with access control lists. We can add additional documents to the object in Provision without have it create additional artifacts, and, they become available when we click the origional m-files link. Saves a lot of headaches when maintaining the links to multiple documents. The other advantage is that I can take documents with me so the link from the Provision object works even when I am not connected to the network. This was a major problem for us when we were using the standard artifact approach.

 

In addition we can run workflows around the documents, not as powerful as MBPM but more than adequate if you want document centric workflows. So I can use Provision to show the process, access the relevant document through the link and start a workflow. This allows us to send notifications to team members when a document changes so they can look at the impact that say a policy change can have on a Provision workflow.

 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more information.

 

Regards

John

Hilary Liddell

Hi

I'm new to ProVision (using it as of this week) and straight away have encountered this issue with artefacts.  It's very easy to add artefacts, but I was surprised when trying to share the model with our off-site development partners that the artefacts weren't "wrapped up" with the model, but rather just existed as a pointer to files on our network, which of course they cannot access.

I think this is quite a drawback and would like to see it addressed by Metastorm in future versions of the product.

 

Hilary

Matt_Michael

Hi Hilary,

 

Can you submit this as an enhancement request?  Previously you would have to submit a new case, but t order to provide more visibility to other customers, we are now requesting all enhancement requests to be entered in the Metastorm Community Central website, under the Ideas link.  This will allow other customers to share their opinions on enhancement requests and will give our Developers and Product Management Team one location to look at all enhancements and work more closely with feedback provided by our customer base and employees.   To submit an enhancement request log in to your account on the Community Central website (http://communitycentral.metastorm.com/) and click on the green Ideas box.  From there click on the grey “New Idea” box to create your enhancement request.  Once posted, other customers and Metastorm employees will be able to comment or leave “Kudos” about your post and you will be able to view other enhancement requests and leave your comments if you feel it is a good enhancement as well.

 

Thank you,

Matt Michael