Spring Release Preview

I’m happy to announce that the Spring release of Blueprint is nearly here. We’ve been working on this one for a while and I think it makes Blueprint hands down the best process modeler on the block, online or off. We’re really excited about it and I think you will be too.

Watch a preview video now.

Here’s a quick peek at what’s coming:

• Improved usability in the diagram view : Significant ease of use and productivity improvements have been made in the diagram based upon customer feedback and testing. The toolbar in the diagram view has been replaced by the Blueprint “plus sign”, which allows you to click where you want to insert an item and have it show there immediately. New Blueprint users will be able to get started quicker and experienced users can get their job done a lot faster.
• Improved drawing functionality in the diagram view : Based upon customer feedback, we’ve closed the remaining gaps in Blueprint’s diagramming functionality. Blueprint now supports multiple end points inside a single diagram as well as loops and parallel flows beginning and ending at any activity. Blueprint should now be able to represent nearly any process flow that you can dream up.

• Expand / collapse sub-processes to show the appropriate level of detail : Sub-processes inside Blueprint can now be collapsed to simplify the diagram view, or expanded to show more detail. The diagram view now allows you to tailor the level of detail shown to best suit your audience.
• Link and “refactor” processes for reuse : Sub-processes can now be extracted from existing Blueprint models and placed into new high level processes. Processes can then link to those common processes to enable reuse of common processes throughout an enterprise. This feature can also be used to organize processes within Blueprint — for example, you might create a process map representing a functional view of your company; each box within that map could in turn be a link to an existing process inside blueprint that a particular department uses.
• Panning and zooming to view large diagrams : Larger diagrams are now easier to view and edit due to the new zoom capability in Blueprint. Users can now easily zoom out to fit the entire process inside their screen at once, or zoom in to focus only on a particular section.
• Copy/duplicate processes : Blueprint processes can now be copied and duplicated within the application. This is a great way to get started on a new version of a process–just make a copy of the “as-is” version, then begin working on that as the “to-be”.
• Links : Blueprint now supports the use of standard BPMN “link events” to make cleaner and easier to understand diagrams. Long flow lines can now be replaced by a pair of links. This not only improves the printed view of the diagram, but also improves interactivity since double clicking on a link inside Blueprint instantly pans your view over to its target at the opposite end of the flow.