ARIS BUSINESS PUBLISHER - feedback on the model

In the ARIS world, control mainly refers to quantitative analysis of process performance. Here, a bunch of products like ARIS PPM or ARIS MashZone can do the trick.

Если в этап контроля Вы вкладываете только получение обратной связи и управление изменениями, то самый простой вариант – скрипты для BusinessPublisher, к примеру, через диалоги пользователем может вноситься необходимая информация и отправляться, скажем разработчику модели по email. Второй вариант - ARIS Process Governance, но и стоит он.

Dear Sebastian.

I understand your motivation to promote new ARIS-toy (MashUp), but control of process design has nothing  common with control of process execution (which is beautiful MashUp has been designed for).

Process design is a process by itself with it's own KPI and measurements.

As far as I see the feedback mechanism doesn't exist in Aris Business Publisher.

Would be nice to have it out of the box.

Hi Sergei Real-Picture

I'm not promoting anything. I just tried to explain you how we define the term "controlling". This definition differs from what you have stated in your post as point 4.

Control is not meant as "to validate". Validating is part of the design phase verifying that the business analyst correctly modeled the process. As pointed out above by Alexander, you would gather such feedback through ARIS Process Governance before you publish your models in the Intranet using ARIS Business Publisher.

If you need to gather such feedback after it was published, you will probably need a custom extension for ARIS Business Publisher.

PS:  Controlling can be applied to both: executable processes (workflow) and to ordinary human processes.

Dear Alexander.

This is "We Love BPM" English-speaking stable (конюшня) and is the only place where our dear community designers allow us to publish our wishes and ideas. Since the title and the subjects are in English and no  other language allowed- it would be nice if you will stay with approved by community designers guidelines and publish your comments in approved English language to make sure all other BPM-Lovers can read and enjoy the beauty of community designers decisions.

Would you be so kind to stay in line with the English-Only-Allowed area guidelines and write your replies in officially-approved English language.

Imagine, if English-speaking-writing Chinese will post their topic in Chinese and Indians - in hindi?

Thank you for your understanding of this forum regulations.

Speak English, please.

Just one correction: Everyone is free to post in his preferred language (also Russian in "We love BPM" group is ok). There is no community rule forcing anyone to use English. As a rule of thumb, I suggest to answer in the language the question was asked if possible.

Dear Sebastian.

There is a small difference between gathering feedback and leavig feedback.

I hope there is an understanding that after publishing model (for wide audience) it could be a case when knowledge holder would like to LEAVE feedback about what has been published. Alternatively it could be a case when changes in external world recongised by model viewer (not designer) and model viewer would like to LEAVE feedback to model designer to alterate model and start the change management process.

It would be nice if you will leave your marketing filters to promote ARIS products for better audience and use. This will help you to understand the needs and do not promore cocktail of ARIS products where is the  simple need for a small feedback about what has been published by ARIS Business Publisher.

Sergei Real-Picture,

we never met in person, so it is quite surprising for me that you judge my person with statements like "it would be nice if you will leave your marketing filters...". Please don't post such statements as it doesn't add anything to the discussion and just insults people (in this case me).

ARIS Process Governance was created because people were looking for a feedback mechanism. In the past, there were many customised solutions for ARIS Business Publisher used for this purpose. Those customised solutions were the input for the product design of ARIS Process Governance. It might be that ARIS Process Governance is not what you are looking for and that you need a different kind of feedback mechanism. Also, I don't claim that ARIS Business Publisher contains such feedback mechanisms you are looking for. I just try to explain you what options exist. It is up to you to decide if that fulfills your needs.

Dear Sebastian.

This is true that we didn't meet in person as well as this is true that you better leave your marketing filters for other audience.

Let's stick with subject and please provide a valueable feedback to product desighers.

Thanks in advance.

Dear Sergei,

I am VERY sorry that I’ve answered you on YOUR native language. It will never repeat again.

And thank you for enlightenment, it was very useful for me.

Dear M. Sergei,

If i get it right you are looking for a fuctionality in ARIS Business Publisher (ABP) to send feedback. Unless I missed something, I believe there is such a functionality in ABP -

I can assure you that we are making great use of this functionality to obtain feedback from stakeholders, etc.

Moreover I think the ARIS Process Governance is of much help too.

The next thing I could get from the above discussion is the language problem.

I must say that the people who are administering the ARIS Community website did a great job by adding a more than useful functionality called 'Translate this Page'.

As I myself speak only French and English I make good use of this option.

So each time someone posts a reply in another language than English I can translate it without any problem.

Best regards

Shameem

Hi, Ismael.

Thank you for your reply with e-mail button. I expected this reply by IDS (SAG) specialits - instead of this simple solution I was advised to have a look to the functionality of other products. It is understandable from marketing/commerce point of view but I am here for ideas and solutions.

As for feedback via e-mail - how does it work and which email address it goes to?

The functionality which I am looking for has roots in knowledge creation and management. it is not a feedback - it is model-related discussion, forum to some degree.

It is not a rare case when diagram becomes out of date or changes in external environment has to be reflected in the diagram. I am looking for functionality/soution to have a web-based discussion about the diagram.

What I see as solution for me in the moment is that I have to maintain special attribute, which will have URL with ID to the forum, where diagram viewer will leave their comments and feedbacks.

One-to-one communication is a communication but doesn't create knowledge on the corporate level and I do not see email as a good mechanism for knowledge creation. Email is good for notification, but when it comes to the discussion - would be handy to have link to the model discussion forum close to the model.

The forum engine could notify via e-mail appropriate person (model owner) that there model-related messages. And this can initiate change managemen activities.

To Alexander:

As for the language... I actually speak several languages, including Ukrainian. My point with languages is that if someone published message in English and someone can read it in English it is not completely right to reply in Japanese/German or Russian.

To be honest, do not understand Alexander's frustration with this English language issue. I saw his posts in English and his English is probably better than mine and he is quite capable to support this discussion in English.

As for translation of pages... Sometimes they make me laugh and I do not take translation seriously. For instance, there is a BMPN vs EPC post - I opened, looked in it and went away. As majority of others.

Dear Sebastian.

Thank you for explanation that we all have freedom to publish articles in the "WE LOVE BPM" category only in all possible languages. I also appreciate your acknowledgement that it would be nice to stay with the language original message was posted to.

We already discussed and I accepted the freedom provided to the community of posting articles in the "WE LOVE BPM" category only even if I "DO NOT LOVE BPM" and have love aside from it.

Sorry for bothering you with such comments - it is clear that there is no FEEDBACK functionality in ARIS Business Publisher.

Would be nice to have it in the future. Thanks in advance.

PS. Corrected next day - I was wrong with my statement about FEEDBACK functionality.

There is FEEDBACK functionality ABP which was unknown for discussion participants until Ismel joined this discussion.  Many thanks to Ismael.

Dear M. Sergei,

My apologies for late reply.

Quite hectic here:)

Here is what we did in our organisation regarding feedback.

We currently have 15 modellers and 1 Administrator. Each Modeller is responsible for designing Process Model for a particular section of the Organisation.

So what I did as Administrator was including each Modeller's email address when I defined the Modeller in ARIS Business Architect (ABA).

Here is how it's done:

• Adding E-mail Address

In 'Administration' Module of ABA, select the appropriate DB and click on 'Users'.

Right click on a 'User' and select the option ' Attributes'.

The following window will be displayed:

In the 'E-mail address' corresponding field, insert the 'User' email address.

            Note: You can insert any email address you want in this field. If you want feedback to be sent to a group of person, then  have one 'Group' email address defined for these persons first, then you insert the email address in this field.

After completing the desired fields, save and close the window.

Now you need to ensure that the 'Profile' you are using to publish your models includes the 'E-mail Link'.

Here is how it's done:

• Including Links

In ABA toolbar select View > Options

The following window will be displayed:

Select: Publisher export profiles (1) > 'Your Publisher Profile' (2) > Edit (3).

In the displayed window click on 'Next' until the 'Include links' option is displayed (option 4):

Ensure that the 'E-mail address' option is checked.

Click on 'Finish' to confirm the operation.

Now you need to publish your Models using the above 'Publisher profile'.

• Using the Feedback option in ARIS Business Publisher (ABP).

When end users access the ABP and use the 'Feedback' option, that is:

An email page is opened with the defined email address displayed.

In the above example, I defined 'my.email@mycompany.com' as email address, so here is what is displayed:

Then the user can write any comment or feedback in the email and the 'Person' or 'Group of Person' responsible to collect feedback/comments about the model will be notified.

The model name is displayed in the 'Subject' field for ease of reference

Hope the above help :)

Best regards

Shameem

Dear Shameem.

Speechless.

Sounds like a reply of a dream from product developer tech support.

I reckon this forum should have nomination for the most usefull and informative post. By promoting such attitude we (users) can shift this site from pure marketing out of touch replies towards practical solution.

Many-many thanks for your post, we will include your use case into discussion about future use of  the ARIS Business Publisher which still lies on the shelve.

There is a little difference in how we are planning to organise and utilise feedback. Feedback should go to the role, rather than individual, which could be moved inside organisation or leave organisation at all and many persons could be in the role. I am talking about future of ARIS Business Publisher and other products inside 35000 staff multinational organisation.

So, direct feeback to email address - not a solution because emal address is not a commodity with long life expectancy. In our scenario feedback about the process should go into some sort of corporate wide Service Desk, where all calls should be serverd in accordance with established SLA. From another point of view - all comments should be visible to the authorised group of people (which we maintain by user group and access rights). As knowledge worker I have to establish communication ground supported by technology to support and incubate new knowledge.

That is why we need participation of many other people, some of them could be resided on the different continents of this beautiful planet.

As we see, the link mechanism or HTTP URL in model attributes with some backend engine  intercepting  requests with Artificial Intelligence capability to make decision on whom model change request should be delivered to - this is scenario of ARIS Business Architect use we are investigating now.

There is another issue with model publishing. We are looking for solution to support a concept of ""My Goals" , My Processes" or "My Functions", which will utilise BPM knowledge across organisation on many  levels of management. The way ARIS Business Publisher publishes models doesn't allow to build such type of the portal and it looks like there should be some custom solution of doing so. The Governance and Performance engines (could be ARIS could be open source) should be closing the cycle to make sure models and people stay in synch with real life.

Unfortunately ARIS Business Publisher comes with Setup documentation  only without customisation guidelines which could bring type of solution we are looking for. Please do not accept that as complain towards product developer - I take it as is.

If ideas I described here already have some implementation - would be nice to have information about that. This could lead either to outsourcing of prototype development or development of the new product based upon ARIS Business Publisher.

Dear M. Etowar,

Thank you very much for this clear picture about this ABP functionality. I have one more question : can you configure several e-mail adresses (not as a group) so that when you look at the model on the intranet the e-mail adress can be different depending on which model you are looking at ?

Exemple : I'm on the intranet looking at model#1 and I want to send an e-mail to the process owner so the link is e-mail#1. Then, I have a look at model#2 and for this one the process owner is not the same person and I want that the link send the e-mail to e-mail#2.

I hope the question is clear enough...

Kind regards, Sébastien.

Hi Sébastien -- We too wish such a feature is available out-of-the-box !!

ABP can display the email-id of model creator & last change user in the Details frame (ie, email-id defined for the user who is the creator / last change user). But nothing for Process Owner. (Maybe they thought the model creator / last change user will always be the process owner??)

We did think of a round-about way but haven't got to implement it yet (due to other issues).

In every model, you could have an attribute (maybe User defined) where you populate the Process-owner's mail-id and display it in the model details frame -- to facilitate ABP users to directly contact the Process Owner with the process / model feedabck. This will ofcourse require this attribute to be kept up-to-date in every model.

Hope this helps !

Hi Shankar,

Thanks for the answer.

This would be a good idea to have a user defined attribute to write this e-mail adress in. In this case, the remaining question will be : will ABP recognize the text in such an attribute as an e-mail adress and provide a link or will it just write it as a simple text ?

Regards, Sébastien.

Hello.

It doesn’t work for me.

The only difference is that we are using LDAP to import users in ArisArchitect.

Do you have any suggestions to solve this problem?

Kind regards!

The last comments here are 5-6 months old. Is there any development on feedback in the publisher beyond te e-mail feedback mechanism?

What we are looking for is more of a feedback and co-operation facility, where stakeholders see a common model and comment on it while the model is 1) under development, where users are business users & designers, and 2) when it is published, where the users are also the end-users in addition.

We are also looking for a co-operation and feedback mechanism that collects the feedback in the same repository, where reports can be generated, request history can be published (so that same requests are avoided), and where repository can be used to generate FAQ's and help etc.

"We" in this case is Oracle BPA Suite (OBPA) customers. OBPA is built upon ARIS, as you probably know.

That brings up another question: Is ARIS Process Governance available also for OBPA as an enrichment (add-on)? Or a separate installation that communicates seamlessly with OBPA? Mr. Uwe Roediger of IDS Scheer had stated about a year or two ago that ARIS enrichment would be possible for the OBPA when OBPA reached version 11g, which it did almost a year ago.

Regards (and advance thanks for any response)!

Hi Sebastien

I realise that your post was quite a few years ago now. But I have decided to post anyway incase anyone else does a search (just like I did).

I had got the email feedback to work previously but had to look up how to do it again. When I came across the instructions and your post.

You can add more than one email to the email field. See below.

Please note the semi-colon between the emails. I have tested this and it does work.

Hopes this helps someone out there.

Kind Regards

Kathryn Barry