ARIS Express - ARIS Professional platform synchronisation

Hi,

an export from ARIS Business Designer/Architect to Express will not be supported. Instead, with the next service release planned for the end of this year, an import of Express models into the ARIS Business Architect (and only there, not in the Business Designer) will exist.

On ARIS platform side, you are able to define, whether you want to use the Express design of the models (new symbol set) or use the well known symbols from ARIS Business Designer/Architect.

Generally, you are right: there must be one person on ARIS Business Architect side responsible for consolidation. Standard functionality supports this consolidation: using the standard search, you can find objects for each type having the same name. On these objects, you can easily start the consolidation.

Bye,

Frank

Hi Frank -- With the release of ARIS Express as Free product, larger population of designers within an organization will start using Aris Express while the Aris Professional will serve as the Organizational Process Repository.

In this scenario, it is critical that models from ARIS Professional be imported into ARIS Express -- so that the larger designer population could actively participate in the Process Management.

Else ARIS Express Users will be pushed to either participate in designing only new process (or sub-process) OR recreate models of existing processes in AE (again) !!

I'm sure all these scenarios would have been debated in your team as well.

• Is the decision not to allow Export of ARIS Professional Models to ARIS Express temporary -- while such an option could be expected down-the-line?
• Even then what's the reason for not providing this feature -- technical or something else?
• How could we get a glimpse of Future Roadmap of ARIS Express and ARIS Professional?

Thanks & Regards,

Shankar

Hi Shankar,

the scenario you described is a classical round-trip procedure. Since Express and e.g. ARIS Business Designer are based on different philosophies, this would have some ugly consequences. I will explain them later below.

But wouldn't it be generally a much better solution, instead of having a round-trip between systems having different philosophy using directly a central repository based tool?

Do not forget, that the target user group of ARIS Express are beginners and occasional  users. For professional usage, you need a professional tool, and the ARIS Business Designer fits exactly in the scenario you described.

The functionalities which make modeling easier will also be available in the ARIS version planned for the end of this year.

And now to the above-mentioned ugly consequences:

Since Express does not provide object re-usage (occurrence copies), which are definitely used in ARIS Business Designer, this would lead to the fact that object occurrences which refer to the same definition are "split" into multiple objects if you exported them from ARIS platform to Express. If you import that data again, you have a lot of work to do to consolidate all that stuff again. So your wish, to have a free-of-charge tool as a widely used modeling tool can not be fulfilled. You would produce a lot of effort - and therefore costs, also - by the need to re-merge/consolidate all data on ARIS platform side.

Bye,

Frank

Hi Frank -- As much as I appreciate your response, as customers of your solutions, we strongly feel the need for 2 way import - export between AE & Aris Professional... We hope to see this as part of your roadmap soon.

Thanks & Regards,

Shankar

Hi Shankar,

as Frank said, there won't be a 2 way synchronisation between AE and ARIS Professional. If you need this kind of functionality, please take a look at ARIS Business Designer, because it has exactly what you are requesting. There is no point in developing the same product again.

Sebastian

Hi Frank and thanks a lot for your explanations.  Much appreciated !.

The consequences that you describe are real, but could be acceptable as Bus. Architect is well equiped to consolidate objects (every admin knows!) with the same name.  Could the AE objects exported from the platform not remember their original GUID to ease a reconcilation ?

Nevertheless, the other direction seems more important: most modelers that were exposed to AE were not keen to recreate an AE version of the ARIS platform EPC that they want to distribute.  If the new symbol set is also part of the future platform, can't we consider a "Generate Model" to transfer EPC into AE-style models, and then export ?   Any solution to have a continuous flow of operations between AE and the platform would be a real bonus !. 

Best regards,   

Shankar - I agree.  This product needs to be designed such that modellers in Aris Express can work on existing Aris Platform maps in Aris Express and then re-upload to Platform.  This is an absolute requirement.

Jay

@Jay: That is what ARIS Business Designer is made for. Don't expect that this will be available in ARIS Express any time soon...