Business And Process

SharePoint Folders

2007-06-08T15:14:00Z

Since the beginning of computing someone had the brilliant idea that for storing files and documents the best way to classify them would be to create a hierarchy and structure of folders or directories and begin dumping them in there.

Today we have end up with hundreds and hundreds of folders in our hard disks with lots and lots of files. Sometimes I don’t even remember where I created a folder and even further what the files inside there represent.

And a simple explanation for this is that we as human beings don’t think like a hierarchy. Our memories are not stored in a hierarchical path that we follow to remember where we left the keys of our car yesterday. We just kind of make a full search on the brain for keys and the place just comes up. Now, that’s a way to store and look for things.

My suggestion here is that we try to stop using folders in general applications and in document management systems like SharePoint. Try to classify files in document libraries using meta data fields in SharePoint which get indexed by the search engine and also lets create filtered views about information. Folders will just complicate things creating a hierarchy of files. Investigate a little and you will notice that almost any folder can be replaced for a meta data property. And also you will get sharepoint workflow like an added bonus.

SkyXoft Procx is SQL Server 2005 certified!

2006-09-19T21:57:00Z

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!

Why do a SharePoint installation and implementation?

2006-07-27T15:34:00Z

Yes, you have to do it. No, don't ask more questions about it. Yes, you will need to learn a couple of things, and some of your colleagues are going to refuse using it, but you have to. In the long run, you will increase your organization productivity and you won't be able to live without it.

Some of the things you'll get:

Central document repository: no more storing files on your local hard disk or on a shared folder in the network. With SharePoint you will be able to store documents in a repository accessible via web. When some other person needs to collaborate on the document, they can just go the specified web site, open the document, edit it and save it back to the repository. No more documents lying around.
Document versioning: yes, will have a whole history of all the edits made on the document and go back and recover that version that you need.
One search: search for documents and information inside documents from a single place. When you install SharePoint Portal Server, you will get the ability to search across sites and document libraries everywhere. Now you won't loose a document again.
Metadata fields: Add information about documents. Forget about folder hierarchies for classifying documents. Add metadata fields for describing and searching.
Forms: create a repository of standard forms used in your organization. Training requests, purchase orders, expense reimbursement, etc., etc., etc. Create and publish them in SharePoint.
Sites: create special sites for collaboration. A site for the sale department, human resources department. For that new project we are starting.
Collaboration features: create calendars, meeting spaces, assign tasks and create contacts around documents and other objects of the organization. Everything integrated in one site created for that purpose.
It's the future: yes, it is. We will have one environment, invisible in the background, where all our documents will live and all the collaboration information will be stored. Today is called SharePoint.

Of course, this are just some of the things you will get when deploying SharePoint. There are a lot of other things you can do with it and customize it to your needs.

After your implementation don't forget to go a step further with workflow. Add document approval and routing to those documents and forms in SharePoint using our product, Procx. With it, you can really streamline processes and really do more with less. Go, give it a look at our SharePoint Workflow site and our InfoPath Workflow site.

You need to increase the productivity

2006-07-22T17:07:00Z

Productivity has been key factor of growth of companies now days. When organizations can't reduce more costs and you have others rising, in which you cannot have a direct influence, the only way to increase profits is getting into productivity.

When people ask me to define productivity, I respond a four word sentence: do more with less. That's it. Process more insurance claims without increasing personnel, find company documents and information more easily without wasting time, automate processes and relocate employees to perform value added activities in the business, handle more loans without increasing officials, find new channels of delivering your product without investing lots of money.

Technology has been playing a huge role in productivity, especially information technology. Today organizations have a portfolio of software products available online that can automate almost any part of your company. Identify your needs, look for manual routines that employees do and think how you can improve that part of the business and which software can help you achieve your objectives. A small increase in productivity can yield into high profit values.

Procx 2.5 is out!

2006-06-29T16:24:00Z

Listening to all the feedback we have received from our customers, we are proud to announce the final release of version 2.5 of Procx. This new version has lots of new features integrated that positions Procx not only as a workflow product but as a BPM platform.

Beside the new features, we have added more deeply integration with SharePoint and InfoPath. Regarding SharePoint we have built unique web parts so the user experience is only one. Viewing tasks, approving and completing them can be done without ever leaving SharePoint.

With InfoPath, we have included in the product special web pages to integrate them in the InfoPath task pane. Like in SharePoint, final users doesn't have to leave InfoPath for approving and completing tasks. Also we have included an InfoPath viewer so users doesn't need to have it installed for viewing forms.

Find out more about the new version on the what's new page.

Start measuring your process

2006-06-16T17:17:00Z

How can you really know how your company is doing if are not measuring processes? Do you know how many support requests are you getting from users per month? From what area are they coming?

If you go to the customer service representative, do you know how much time is lasting for giving the customer a definitive answer on their problem? There is no way we can improve these type of services if you are not taking measures of the process. By doing so, then we can think about augmenting our customer satisfaction index or reducing the amount of errors that a product has when going out to the streets.

In this article by Seth Godin, he makes a call to people to stop being afraid of taking care of processes. Yes, we know this is a routinary thing, but it is a strategic value to our business against competitors. If I'm more efficient internally, I can handle more jobs and customers with less the cost of similar organizations in the industry.

So, stop for while envisioning what your company will be in the next three years and take care of those processes that customers and employees are complaining right now.

A small preview of our next release

2006-05-15T19:18:00Z

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

2006-04-17T02:32:00Z

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.

A BPM implementation strategy

2006-03-30T18:41:00Z

Starting big when you are implementing a BPM strategy is a sure way of getting nowhere.

The amount of difficulty for automating processes in the organization can be quite high when these aren't documented in a first point and when they only exist in the mind of the people who execute them. Trying to get these processes automated in a Business Process Management suite can be tricky, because you will spend days and weeks trying to model the process, include business rules, and optimize all at the same time that, when you finish, you will have loose a great part of the ROI.

That's why beginning small can yield results right away. Model you process the simple way. Just send tasks to the person that requires them, move the document from one place to another and just let it run and see what happens. If some step is missing, then just modify the process, publish it, and see it running again. An expense request approval? Just model the process with the person that needs to approve it and see how it runs.

Then, after you've got some information about the process and you see the reports, then begin incorporating the business rules. If something happens here, then send this task to that guy. If this is true, finish the process and send a notification. If the expense is greater than 50,000, then the president needs to approve it. If you are asking for a pizza reimbursement and you belong to the IT department, then this falls into the employee benefits program and send the request immediately to accounts payable without asking anyone. Now you are controlling the process and the company.

When you have finish doing this, then you can start thinking about optimizing the process. You can look at the times, how many days a person spend with request, and introduce things in the process that will make them run faster or reduce costs to the business. In a bank, if you can integrate a validation of the credit score of a person during the loan approval process, then you are optimizing the process. But notice you should do this after you have automated your process and include business rules. If you start trying to include these kinds of validations using web services and advance programming since the beginning, then be ready to spend time building and testing your process.

When you get to this part of optimization, is where the good things come out because you start giving your business competitive advantages and use your BPM investment as a necessary weapon to operate and succeed in your market.

Polite software should be fudgable

2006-03-12T22:44:00Z

When manual tasks and processes are automated, most of the time something is lost in the middle. The most simple thing that is lost is flexibility. When humans interact with a process, they can always adjusts things to their own way. When handling an expense request, the account payables department may want to approve it faster if the request is coming from that project in China that is behind schedule, so the priorities in the process change. When we automate the expense reimbursement request with software, these flexibilities are gone making the software not likable for users.

That is how Alan Cooper describes fudgable software in his extraordinary book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition): "I call this ability to take actions out of sequence or before prerequisites are satisfied fudgability".

For solving the problem, Alan describes in his book that software should be flexible enough to handle this out of sequence tasks in the process allowing persons to interact with it in a more human way. It's like letting the users decide which is the best way to handle a request.

This flexibility in software maybe one of the most complicated task to accomplish during construction. Generally products are locked in the way a workflow should execute, closing any other variables and exceptions that the final user may want to use, as Alan explains in his book. But, if we achieved this kind of malleability in software, we are making software that acts more like a human allowing interaction to be kindly.

This kind of flexibility in software can be achieved using business process management software like Procx. The process per se can be changed and configured according to organizational needs. Exceptions can be taken in and out of the process as management wants. A request for a purchase order can no longer be locked in an specific workflow forever. Process analysts can draw their processes in the workflow product and decide under which rules it will execute.

So, the interaction of the user with the process is not embedded in the software, it would be built in Procx allowing the process to be as flexible as the organization and management wants. It's a new way of automating processes. What do you think?

Forms with InfoPath, XForms and others

2006-03-01T19:37:00Z

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.

BPM is an ongoing journey

2006-03-01T19:36:00Z

Organizations are composed of processes. Not only organizations, but anything that surround us, that has some type of function, can be described as a series of steps followed to achieve some desired goal. For me, I think the perfect machine, with perfect processes, is the human body. Every function is delimited, has a series of steps, and evolution has made of these processes an art, making them perfect. Every single one of them.

The same thing happens in our businesses. There's a workflow to be followed for almost any function. The only difference, with our bodies for example, is that they are not perfect. In the majority of businesses we don't event know the steps of processes because they are not documented, making it more difficult to correct errors.

When you want to make processes in an organization better, you need to correct errors, eliminate steps, maybe automate others, etc. But there's always some tweaking to do until you reach an acceptable level of performance. That's why business process management is an every day task. It's not a project that finished today.

From this article: "Both BPM and SOA could be thought of as a way of thinking about how the business and governance model should be designed and a way of delivering the technology and applications to support that design," Miers says. "Both concepts involve a journey, not a destination. At their core, both employ an iterative approach to business performance improvement."

New processes appear every day. They come from new campaigns, new product or services offering and also from changing directions of companies. Also actual workflows change due to market needs. BPM and workflow solutions will give the flexibility businesses needs for adjusting and creating these processes allowing them to face competition and increase their performance in an ongoing basis.

Insurance Request and Software

2006-02-17T02:15:00Z

Taking a new request for a life insurance is a very complicated process. One of the most interesting things I find is how they ask these strange questions to determine the probability of you killing yourself. But, even if it matters or not, the whole insurance industry is built in probabilities. Nobody though possible the catastrophe that happened in 2005 with the hurricanes for example.

An interesting thing I also find is the length of these forms. They always have multiple pages and have a huge amount of fields. The majority of the time the forms have to be filled in an office or desk or a table. Is almost impossible to do it standing. But with the technology like Tablet PCs these forms can be made electronic and be filled remotely (in the field). This is an area, the insurance industry, that greatly benefit from BPM solutions. That's why we have made a movie that represents a life insurance form been automated with Procx. A simple process was put in place for approving the form in which if the initial insurance amount is greater than 50,000 then needs to be routed to a credit analyst. Hope you like it.

See the movie here.

A visit to Kinko's

2006-02-13T02:11:00Z

An interesting story and how an idea surged. A couple of days ago I had to go to Kinko’s for printing some pricing and marketing material for a customer I was going to visit the next day. I asked for normal color printing with a special paper, something that made it look good. This was in kind of a rush mode. I was on the trip and visiting the client was a pure coincidence.

When the person in the front desk took my order, he took out the huge form (it looks something like a poster for some movie or concert) and he fills it out with my order request. I couldn't understand anything he was writing but I know there are a bunch of fields in the form. He entered the color preference, the paper type, the number of copies, my name, address and phone number. After finishing, he marks every field in the form with a green highlighter (I still don't know why is this). Then he takes the form and puts it in sealed bag (like a huge Ziploc) and then calls somebody in the background to handle the new request.

First, nobody answered. He didn't know who was free to work and who was working with something (and nobody was paying attention to him either). Then he needed to copy my PDF files to the machine where the printing was going to be done. He didn't remember the files I just told him to print so I had to go back and point him the files I wanted. I noticed that with every printing work they have, they create a folder with the customer name. Inside the folder they create three more folders: Original, Process, and Final. Then he placed my files in the original folder. I think the folders mark the workflow that needs to be followed for printing. I suppose it goes something like this: they first open the files in the original folder, then edit them with some program for best printing (still haven't figured out what they edit; documents always have this blank border and they say it's impossible to take it out). Then they put the edited files in the final folder.

After copying and filling the request and everything was done, he told me the estimated time that everything will be ready and that’s it, ready.

When I got out I started thinking (in critique mode) the whole process. I said why they haven’t done something more automatic for handling these request and assignment. Maybe they would only need one person in the front taking the requests and something behind prepares the environment of work and assigns the right person in the back.

Using a workflow application would help them great automating the manual process. And how they can do that? I came with something simple for the problem.

First I though the best way to port the paper forms to an electronic form was InfoPath. In InfoPath you have the ability to create sections inside the form and digitally signed them preventing these sections to be tampered (we don’t need anymore the plastic Ziploc bag for protecting the form). One issue resolved.

In InfoPath you can define an attachment field that allows you to attach a file to the form. You can attach as many files as needed and they traveled inside the form always. Now you can take the files needed for the work and attach them to request. They are never loss and you just have to ask for them one time. Another issue solved.

The form is going to be electronic in first place. You can publish it to a SharePoint site for example and have a central repository form them, allowing searching and indexing. This is not an issue, but maybe would be a great add on.

And now for the workflow part. A simple process can be made for handling the request form. You would have the start activity with permissions for only the front desk person to start the process. Security. Then a second activity for handling the input request form.

As an improvement, we could create a web service that generates a unique number for the request. This can be the second activity in the process. The third activity would be to assign this number to a field in the form. Next?

The next thing we can do is actually create another web service that creates the folders they need for processing the files. We don’t need the first folder, the Original folder, because the original files are already attached to the form. The web service would only need to create the other two: Process and Final. A good improvement would be to create them directly in SharePoint and have a central repository for them.

The most important step would be the assignment of the request to one of the back office personnel that actually executes the job. I though the best way to do this was to use the workload feature. I could specify the personnel available for this and assign requests on a one by one basis or a least busy basis. Then let the software manage the work queue. Maybe every personnel in the back office can have like a Pocket PC and they can receive their tasks and immediately know their new assignments.

The final step would be to send an email to the front desk person notifying that the job was finished. An improvement here we could consider is asking the customer for his email and place it in the form. Then we can put another activity in the process for sending an email to the client saying that his job is finished (customer service improvement!!).

Now the whole process is automated. Errors in the process will be far less. Security in the form cannot be compromised. And we guarantee that every back office personnel are receiving their tasks in a balanced way. The next phase for this would be to make another web service for saving the information in the form to a database table for future statistics and analysis.

A major thing? To simply enabled Procx to receive the form requests via email and have the form publish to the Internet. I can fill the form myself from my house and I only have to leave to actually pickup the final work after I have received the notification. A simple step towards the electronic enterprise. An example of how the process will look like is on the right.

SharePoint Workflow

2006-02-08T23:34:00Z

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.