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Actions can be added as before
by selecting the type, and
clicking and dragging from one
Stage to another.
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What has been added is the
ability to drag and drop the end
of an Action, be it ‘untethered’
or attached, and drop it on
another Stage.
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This gives us ‘drag & drop’
action editing at last.
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Actions also no longer have to
be ‘tethered’ to Stages at all
times.
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You can, as shown, add an
Action that is entirely separate.
It must be attached to a Stage
or Stages before Deployment,
however.
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We think this ability will allow Analysts to add several Actions
before any Stages when designing a Process with Business users.
We find that many users are not as familiar with the concept of
Stages as they are with Actions, since they mainly see Actions in
isolation in systems.
Forcing the addition of Stages before linking them with Actions
has always seemed artificial to us. This way constructs such as
Activity Diagrams can be easily converted to Process maps in
Metastorm BPM.
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Deleting Stages with attached
Actions will no longer delete
the attached Actions.
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You are left with a ‘dangling’
Action. You select it and drag
the end to a suitable Stage to
redirect it.
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Copy and paste is
somewhat different
too. If we select
an Action and copy
from the Context
Menu …
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… we do not have a
context menu on
the map, but pressing Ctrl-V
give us a new
Action overlaying
the original as
shown.
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Note that the Action is the same, which is good, but the Action
Name has been changed to keep it unique as is required. Note
also that it is unattached.
Stages behave in much the same way.
Note that for both Stages and Actions, if the Caption is the same
as the Name, both get updated.
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One very common reason is to turn an Archive Stage into a
system stage and add an Action to reintroduce Folders into the
Process. This is no longer so easy. You will have to delete the
Stage and add a new Stage with the same
name (the Caption is
not relevant) and an appropriate action.
Another is to replace a Conditional Action with a Timed Action for
a number of reasons.
This is probably not too hard, but without the simple ‘copy and
paste’ of ‘code’ (MetaScript as we like to call it), it becomes more
complex to do.
We understand this is an issue, it is known and acknowledged,
but the effort to add the functionality is quite significant. If
enough customers request it, I am sure it will be included in
some future release.
For the moment I feel we can live with it. At design time, when
most changes would be made, there is little downside to adding
one Stage and deleting another, especially as the associated
Actions do not get removed as they did in previous versions.
Once code has been added, it may be a different story.
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Notice also that Forms do not
get automatically selected
when adding new Stages. This
is probably because Forms are
no longer associated directly
with Processes as they used to
be. This means you have to
manually select the Form.
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Comments are now a little
more fancy.
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As before you can change the
font,
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but now you can also change
the shape…
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… and alignment of the
comment.
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Not that it always works as
expected, mind you!
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One extremely welcome
addition is the comprehensive
Layout menu. This allows any
kind of alignment you may wish
for. One very useful addition is
the ‘Increase’ and ‘Decrease’
vertical and horizontal spacing.
When inserting steps into a
Process these will be invaluable!
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We can now zoom the map
properly. There is a slider at
the base of the process map …
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… and a menu item to set
preselected zoom factors or
size to fit.
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1. Designer User Interface
