Metastorm BPM 9.1

Joe Smith

The following is from the Metastorm BPM version 9.1 Release Notes, which are attached.

 

NEW AND UPDATED FEATURES

 

2.1 Form Enhancements

 

• Anchor

A new “Anchor” property has been added to all Form fields. By changing a field's anchor points, Form

fields can dynamically re-size or float in relative position to the edge of a Form. Form controls can now

be anchored to any edge of a Form not just to the top left. Form controls are automatically resized

horizontally when anchored to both the left and right sides of the Form and vertically when anchored

both the top and bottom of a Form.

 

• Panel

A Panel control allows you to group Form controls. By grouping Form controls into a Panel control,

you can move, hide, or display all the controls on it at once. A Panel control can be placed on a Form,

Form Segment, Administration Form, Report Header, or another Panel control. A Form Segment can

also be added to a Panel. Panels can be docked (top, bottom, right, left, and fill) on their parent

container. When a series of Panels are docked in sequence and the Panel is hidden from view using its

Visibility Depends On property, neighboring panels will fill the available space. This can be used to

create collapsible sections of Forms.

 

• Enhanced Form Segments

Form Segments have a ‘Dock’ property that can be used to dock them to the left, right, top, or bottom

of the control on which they are placed. Or they can be set to fill the control. The ‘Visibility depends

on’ property can be used to show or hide the Form Segment based on other controls.

Due to changes in Form Segment behaviour in 9.1, editable fields in Form Segments will behave

differently when layered. If Form Segments with editable fields are placed on top of one another on

a Form, then only the top Form Segment’s fields will be editable.

This change will affect Forms developed prior to 9.1 that use this design. To counter this change it is

now possible to set visibility at the Form Segment level which will allow exposure of editable Form

segment controls when placed underneath another Form Segment.

 

• Person Control

The Person Control allows Process Designers to quickly create collaborative user interfaces. The

person is displayed using a thumbnail1, includes an indicator of the person’s presence1, shows the full

name, includes the ability to search for and select a user, send an email to the user, or initiate a live

chat1 in the context of the current folder.

 

• Rich Text Control

The Rich Text control allows content to be edited and formatted using rich text including different font

types, sizes, and colors. The control is supplied with a toolbar that provides basic editing functionality

such as cut, copy, paste, find and replace, undo/redo, alignment, indenting, numbering, etc. It is also

possible to spellcheck the data and to export data from the edit area to a PDF file.

Rich Text is stored within the database as HTML mark-up and can be directly included within emails.

 

• Grid Enhancements

o Multi line grids

The data within Grid cells will automatically wrap if the data is longer than the cell width.

This provides enhanced visibility and readability.

o Default values

You can specify default values for new rows within an editable Grid, thereby avoiding the

need to write custom Client Side Scripts.

o Column sizing

A new 'Column sizing units' property has been added to the Grid control. The property

allows choosing from Pixels and Percent. If you select Pixels, columns are not resized

when Grid is resized. However, you can change column width by dragging the column

borders. If you use Percent, 'Width' property for columns is recalculated taking the whole

Grid width as 100%. Columns are resized keeping your set proportions when a Grid is

resized. You can also change column width by dragging the column borders.

o Drilldown to existing folders

In the Status control’s ‘Drilldown to’ property, you can now drilldown to an existing

folder. This field allows using the Expression Builder to specify a folder ID. It is then

possible to navigate to the specified folder during execution.

 

• Maximum Size of Form

The maximum size of a Form is no longer restricted to the resolution of the system the Designer is

running on. Scrollbars are automatically displayed when size of Form exceeds the screen dimension.

1 These items will only appear where Metastorm Smart Business Workspace is available.

 

2.2 Scriptable Business Objects

 

Scripted Business Objects allow Process Developers to write Server Scripts that implement Business

Object interfaces so that Business Objects can consume data within a Project from a source other than

tables or queries. They can be parameterized so that Process Designers can customize their instances as

per Table and Query Business Objects. A Scripted Business Object can also use a specified database or

Web Service connection so that Process Designers / Process Administrators can customize it as per

Table and Query Business Objects.

 

2.3 Performance Improvement

 

The following performance improvements have been seen in the BPM Designer (approximate values):

• Editing Expressions via the Expression Builder: 90%
• Deploying Projects containing Client Scripts: 50%
• Opening Designer: 10%
• Opening a Form: 30%
• Opening a Process: 20%
• Opening Visual Script: 10%
• Switching between Form, Process, and Visual Script: 5-15%
• Editing Connections, Business Objects: 10%

2.4 Other Enhancements

 

• Import/Export Languages Files

The Import/Export Language Files feature allows you to retrieve translation (.resx) files with all of the

appropriate strings that are already populated (by the translation agents or services). This avoids having

to manually enter in values for every string and for every language.

 

• Deployment Auditing

Metastorm BPM provides deployment auditing capability by providing information on the logged in

user who has deployed the Solution. This information is available from the Administrative Tools and

the Designer.

 

• FormCaption added to ProcessContext Business Objects

FormCaption has been added to the ProcessContext Business Objects. It returns the caption of the Form

being used. FormCaption is a read-only variable and is available in actions and stages. When used in an

action, it displays the caption of the Form or a blank string when there is no Form available on the

action. When used in a stage, it displays the caption of the active Form tab.

FormCaption is also accessible from the Expression Builder and via Intellisense for Expressions and

Server Side Scripts.

 

• Conditional Form Availability

A new property is available for Form called ‘Only show Form if’. This property enables a Form to be

displayed at runtime only if a condition evaluates to true.

 

• Conditional User Action Availability

A new property is available for User Action called ‘Only show Action if’. This property enables an

Action to be displayed at runtime only if a condition evaluates to true.

 

• Identity Columns for Solution Tables

The Identity property allows you to specify columns for a Solution Table that contains auto-generated

unique values. This avoids having to maintain this within the external table in the database. Solution

Tables that have been loaded with version 7.6 and version 9.0 – 9.0.3 Solutions will have the Identity

property enabled for Integer columns.

 

• Solution Tables in Library

Solution Tables can be added to a Library in addition to existing components such as Business Objects,

Client Scripts, Connections, Custom Lists, Flags, Form Segments, Forms, Roles, Server Scripts, Sub-

Processes, and Visual Scripts.

 

• Currency and Number Formatting for Report Charts

You can set the currency symbol to be displayed for the data displayed on a Chart. You can also set the

number format for the data displayed on a Chart by selecting from Fixed Point, General, Number,

Percent, or Scientific notation.

 

• CDONTS Replaced with SMTP Email

The CDONTS library for sending e-mails via ‘Send E-Mail’ activity will be replaced with the .NET

SMTPClient.

 

• Advanced Find with Ctrl+F

You can use Ctrl+F to open the Advanced Find task pane. The Advanced Find task pane allows you to

quickly find the items in the Designer.

 

4.1 Current Limitations

 

The following features are not supported:

 

• Data Access

o While using Oracle as the database, only standard ASCII characters are

supported in table and column names. These names should only be in uppercase.

Extended characters, double quotes, or spaces in table or column names are also

not supported.

 

o Business Objects do not support tables or queries to Oracle database systems

with columns containing spaces.

 

o You will not be able to define ODBC Connections in the Designer that use 32-bit

drivers if you are running the Designer on a 64-bit operating system. The only

work around, in this situation, is to use the Designer on a 32-bit operating

system.

 

o The Query Builder may fail when used for database providers that do not fully

conform to ANSI SQL 92 standards.

 

o The use of the Update database rows Visual Script activity will fail when used in

conjunction with a Connection that is using the Salesforce.com OLEDB provider.

The workaround for this issue is to use a code activity and issue the command

with the use of the SelectSQL function instead.

This also affects the ability to add or delete rows of data from the Salesforce

remote repository via an OLEDB or ODBC connection if using a Grid within the

Form.

 

o The setField client extension does not work with the Person control. Also, the

getField client extension returns a value instead of the name from the Person

control.

 

• Administrative Tools

o When you create a Web Service Connection in Designer, deploy it, and try to

view the Connections for the Project from the Administrative Tools, an error is

displayed.

This issue is caused by exceeding the limit on the amount of data that can be

transferred between Administrative Tools and Administrative Tools WCF

service. This limit is set in the Web.config of the Administrative Tools. To

change the limit, go to following section in the web.config:

system.serviceModel/bindings/wsHttpBinding/binding/readerQuotas. The

maxStringContentLength attribute value should be set to 2147483647.

 

• External Forms

o Support for External Forms is not included with version 9.1. This will be

enhanced and included with a later release.

 

• Formula Evaluation

o eFolder table query access

Database queries against the eFolder table using the %Script() syntax may fail.

For example, the formula displayed below fails when used to populate a dropdown

options field within the v7 News sample procedure:

%GetData(,eFolder,\\" (eMapName = \\'News\\') AND

(eArchived <> 1)\\", eCategory)

This problem only affects legacy database interaction through procedures like

%GetData. In order to correct this, the syntax should be converted into v9 syntax.

 

o %ServerName

The %ServerName is always empty on v9 Engine.

 

o %User.Input and %User.Input\[n\]

%User.Input and %User.Input\[n\] behavior has changed in v9. When selecting a

row in a Grid field, the data returned by %User.Input contains all data from the

Business Object that is bound to the Grid. In v7, only data from columns

displayed in the Grid is returned. Similarly, the index in %User.Input\[n\] refers to

the column index in the Business Object, not the visible Grid control.