As noted in Dave’s Summer release post and recent product reviews, Blueprint has undergone some pretty significant UI changes in the past few months. It’s especially important to mention that the majority of these improvements are the direct result of our customer’s feedback and feature requests found in the Blueprint Community Forums. If you are an existing customer and haven’t had a chance to check out the forums yet, I invite you to do so (just click the Feedback link in the upper right-hand corner of Blueprint). There’s a wealth of information there, from tips and tricks to modeling best practices. It’s also a great way to interact directly with the Blueprint product and support teams.
A perfect example of this direct customer feedback is our new rich text editing environment found on the documentation view in Blueprint. For those of you who have been using the product for a while, you may remember that our first pass at rich text was a bit limiting - allowing users to apply simple formatting such as bold, italic or underline styles. To be honest, we weren’t entirely sure how our customers were going to use the documentation sections of the product or the types of information they’d want to store there. So we put it out there, watched, and listened to the feedback. And boy did we get a lot of feedback - in fact we quickly found that the documentation section was considered one of the most important sections of the product. Over the course of a few releases, the text editing sections evolved to support things like advanced formatting, custom font styles, lists, indenting, hyperlinks, images, and colors. We also heard from customers that they needed better integration with their existing documentation, so we included support for things like copying from Word, direct export and printing.
We’re obviously not done yet. We have big plans for improving the existing doc features and adding a few new ones (check out the forums for a few hints). We’re also looking for more feedback from you. We’re 100% committed to making Blueprint THE BEST process discovery and modeling tool available. Tell us what you need… We’re listening!
Scott Francis from BP-3 recently posted a great, objective review of the Blueprint Summer ‘08 release. He does a thorough and insightful job covering the entire product. For example, here’s his take on the Visio import functionality we recently introduced:
Visio importing has long been the “holy grail” for process modeling tools. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if a particular BPM product could import Visio models directly I would be rich! However, Visio import into a process execution environment isn’t always all its cracked up to be. Visio diagrams tend to be quite unstructured, whereas BPMN is very structured, and executable BPMN is even more structured in form. Moreover, Visio models don’t have enough information attached to them to be immediately executable. It is possible to run into issues of “who owns this model” once you import the Visio (the business may have the expectation that they can keep making modifications and “reimport” into Teamworks, for example). At some point, the implementors must take over the model and own it to produce something executable. I’ve been working on some models for OMG certification and I thought they would be a fun (albeit simple) set of examples to import into Blueprint for a test drive. Blueprint imports these easily and accurately. I went back to the archives and tried importing some really awful process diagrams circa 2004. The results weren’t pretty (the original wasn’t pretty), but Blueprint imported the models nicely (a visio diagram with 10 tabs and one process per tab). Going to the Diagram View I was able to sort out the diagram into swimlanes and go from there. Interestingly, when I imported a diagram WITH swimlanes defined, Blueprint created those swimlanes and participants for me.
But my favorite quote had to be:
I actually like the diagramming portion better than Teamworks! And collaborating on the same process isn’t just possible, its actually cool. You almost look for an excuse to try to be logged into the same process at the same time so you can try to step on each other. Blueprint handles all the conflicting edits really well. I’m impressed!
We’re very proud of Blueprint’s collaboration and diagramming capabilities as well because we believe that there’s no tool that’s easier to use or can make you more productive, online or off.
Take a look at Scott’s full review when you get a chance.
Today I’m proud to announce the availability of the Summer ‘08 Update release of Blueprint! One of the great benefits of delivering Blueprint in SaaS model is that we’re able to stay nimble and quickly add functionality that improves the value of the product for everyone. So following shortly on the heels of our main Summer ‘08 release, we’ve added features to address some of the most common requests we hear from our customers.
Let’s take a look at them in detail:
Microsoft Word Export: Blueprint now gives you the ability to automatically generate a Microsoft Word document containing all the details of your process. This is a great way to communicate your process to stakeholders that don’t have a Blueprint account. For example, we’ve been using this feature internally to generate “specifications” for our processes when we need to interact with outside vendors.
Ross Mayfield noted today that one of the biggest challenges with collaboration among distributed teams is actually agreeing on who is actually part of the team. Larry Irons quotes research from Distributed Work to that effect:
Of the twenty-four teams surveyed, not a single team was in complete agreement on its boundary: who was and who was not a member of the team. In fact, the average level of agreement within the sample was only 75 percent, such that any given team member was likely to disagree with the rest of his or her team on one-quarter of potential team members.
We see this all the time in real world BPM projects. Agreeing on what the process is is often the easy part. Identifying the who is can seem nearly impossible, especially if a single team is attempting to define a process that is executed in many different locales all over the world.
A distributed, collaborative environment such as Lombardi Blueprint is key to solving this challenge. Having a structured repository to identify and maintain the players and relationships involved in a business process promotes visibility and knowledge sharing among those involved. Discovering the who in a process becomes far easier when all those that are involved can both document their own role and see how where they fit inside the grand scheme of things regardless of what office or time zone they happen to be working in at the particular moment.
We frequently get asked about the design process here at Lombardi. First off, it’s helpful to understand a little bit about our team, which consists of folks with very diverse backgrounds in user interface and visual design, human factors and engineering. Having such a broad mix of skills enables us to come at a design problem from many different angles and explore a variety of options very quickly. We practice an iterative approach that includes rapid prototyping and end user testing. Sometimes our solutions may seem obvious – but they are usually the result of multiple iterations and variations. A perfect example of this is the new insert or “+” sign that was recently added to Blueprint.
For those of you who have been using the product for a while, you’ll remember that our first design for adding items to the process diagram was very Visio-like, with drag and drop capabilities from an application menu:
We just wanted to check in and report on the first day of our annual Driven User Conference here in sunny Austin, TX.
The day began with CEO Rod Favaron’s keynote, which was all about how we are now at “the end of the beginning.” The secret is out about BPM, attention and visibility are soaring to new heights, and we are now entering a new phase of adoption and maturity.
A big part of this progression is the move from Project to Program to Culture, as Rod put it — in the early days of course it was all about getting your first BPM project up and running successfully, and then it became all about growing that project into a full-fledged program. But the next phase that Lombardi customers and partners are moving into right now is one in which BPM begins to truly impact the culture of any and every part of the organization that it touches, indeed the organization as a whole. This is the true value proposition of BPM ultimately — the idea that BPM becomes part of your DNA, that process becomes an integral part of what your company does every day.
Today I’m proud to announce the availability of the Summer ‘08 release of Blueprint! In the Spring ‘08 release, we delivered what we feel is the best process diagramming tool on the market, online or off. Over the last two months we’ve focused on improving the “other half” of process documentation — the standards and procedures, narratives, and data that make up the details that live behind the picture of the process. Let’s take a look at the improvements in depth:
Rich Wiki Editing Of Process Documentation: Blueprint now provides a rich, wiki-style experience for filling out the details of your process. You can link to external documents, embed images, and format your documentation any way you please. Already have something written up in Microsoft Word? No problem. Just paste it in and we’ll leverage what you’ve already done.
Recently we had the pleasure of announcing that the Finnish Sales Division of the Nordic and Baltic telecommunications service provider, TeliaSonera, is deploying Teamworks and Blueprint. The news was picked up by KMWorld.
This should be a very interesting deployment that we’ll review later after their initial playback and first round of results.
The company will use Lombardi to support sales of business services in Finland, as well as its activation and provisioning and other core business processes. We expect to be able to help them increase their service levels and improve customer satisfaction by designing and automating their business processes so they can be easily controlled and managed.
I’ve been seeing a bit of blog postings lately on the reality of SaaS on Demand or SaaS BPM.
Last week, Jason Stamper at CBR included some commentary on a beta product that he had heard about through the Process Factory. And couple of weeks ago, Jack van Hoof- who writes on SOA and EDA, posted a well thought-out blog entry about the marriage of BPM and SaaS, including the possibilities and the complexities at hand.
I love seeing this kind of dialogue on the Web because SaaS BPM is extremely popular with our customers right now. However, despite the aspiration of many developers, SaaS and BPM is NOT an easy combination. Nor is it likely that the two will ever be completely married in the traditional integrated form.
We launched Lombardi Blueprint a little over a year ago. It’s a SaaS-based modeling tool that integrates with Lombardi Teamworks, which operates behind the firewall. What worked so well in this case was that anyone in an organization could access the modeling tool to help shape a BPM project during the discovery stage. It doesn’t need to be integrated into legacy systems and it doesn’t require IT to deliver company data to the hosted model outside the firewall.
By now, you’ve probably experienced how simple it is to document a process with Blueprint. But we know creating detailed diagrams takes a significant portion of your time. So, we made Blueprint even better! The Spring ‘08 Release of Blueprint is here and it is the next evolution of diagramming. Based on user feedback, we’ve streamlined diagramming and added many requested features to make it even easier & simpler to document your process.
Effective utilization of the process map for simplicity and clarity
Fast and efficient techniques for diagramming
Using subprocesses to reduce complexity and encourage reuse
Leveraging existing work that you’ve done in Microsoft Visio
Update: The webinar is now available on demand. Check it out now. For the Blueprint veterans out there, the webinar focuses on the features we just introduced and I’ll think you’ll find it very informative. But if you don’t have an account yet, don’t feel left out! Sign up for one now and join us on Tuesday.
The Spring ‘08 release of Blueprint is now live & kickin’. You might think Blueprint is a cool process modeler, but there’s much more to it. There is no better BPM governance tool on the market.
Governance? What the heck is that?
Isn’t this just another buzzword? And how does something like Blueprint help with governance?
The term “governance” is often used but little understood. And yet if we think about our customers’ successful BPM projects, they always succeed because of tangible leadership from somewhere in the business. A BPM project is not application development, it is a different type of technology-based project. One that is not aligned with the business, but instead one that is integrated into the business. The foundation for business integration isn’t a shared model, it’s a shared understanding.
I’m very happy to announce that the Spring ‘08 release of Blueprint is now live. A quick rundown of the new features is below. But don’t take my word for it: log in now and check it out. Sign up for a your own account now if don’t have one yet.
Improvements in the Spring ‘08 release:
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.
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.
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.
Last month Blueprint’s Director of Engineering, Alex Moffat, spoke at the GWT: Voices That Matter conference. Alex talked about how we built the product and the tradeoffs we made along the way. His talk was really interesting and provides a great peek behind the veil into the development process.
Google was nice enough to record the presentation. It’s embedded below.
One of the best parts about working on an application such as Blueprint is the ability to continuously improve the product based on real customer feedback (a usability engineer’s dream). That said, we’ve got some GREAT things queued up for release this year - so keep posted here for updates. As always, we welcome your comments & feedback on how you’re using Blueprint and what we can do to help make you more successful.
Also, in case you missed it, Blueprint is featured on Google’s GWT blog. Make sure you check it out & tell your friends!
When you click the Print button, Blueprint generates a PDF version of your diagram. The great part about the PDFs is that they’re extremely scalable–you can view them on screen or print them on any sized printer (or plotter!). Here are a few tips for working with them:
Viewing Diagrams On Screen Zooming
By default, Adobe Reader scales the diagram so that the entire picture fits on one screen. If you’re going to present your diagram to other people, you’ll want to zoom in:
Choose Actual Size from the zoom menu to view the diagram as it will appear when printed.
Need to reorganize your processes? Over the weekend, we added a feature that a lot of people have been asking for: the ability to move processes between projects.
To take advantage of it, go to the Projects page and find the process that you’d like to move:
Then just click the Change Project link and pick the project you’d like to move it to:
The Blueprint product team is continuously improving the product based upon customer feedback. We’ve recently made some exciting usability improvements and introduced some new features that we’d like to tell you about…
Multi-level Undo
Made a mistake? Blueprint views include a new action toolbar with a one-click access to easily undo your recent changes. You can also print your process diagrams and export to Powerpoint for sharing with others.
It Should be Easy
We’ve made numerous changes to improve the ease of use and usability of Blueprint. These changes include improved help, guided wizards for creating processes, search capabilities, improved process lists, and easier navigation.
Diagram Labels
Gateways and splits now include text labels for improved readability and legibility of diagrams. Blueprint also supports having labels on flow lines as shown below.
Ever make a mistake and wish you could go back in time and fix things? I do. All the time. That’s why we’re adding the ability to undo changes in the next version of Blueprint.
Soon you’ll be only a control-Z away from making amends for that accidental touch of the delete key. Eagle-eyed readers may also notice a few other user interface improvements we have on tap for the next release in the video…
As the Blueprint community has grown, we’ve gotten many requests for a place to interact with other people that are discovering and documenting their processes. People have asked for a place not only to ask questions about Blueprint, but to also share best practices and find solutions to common problems when undertaking a process improvement project.
We’ve heard your requests, so we’ll be opening up The Blueprint Forums very soon. Here’s a quick screenshot to whet your appetite…
When we were initially researching Blueprint, we saw one thing over and over again: process diagrams hanging on the walls. If you’re trying to teach the details of a process to someone or just trying to get a bird’s eye view of things, it’s hard to beat a big printout pinned to the wall. We even had one customer tell us that they measured the complexity of their process in terms of the length of butcher paper required to draw it!
Then again, once it comes time to change what you’ve got drawn out on the wall, things get a little hairier. That’s why we recently added the ability to print scalable versions of the diagrams you create in Blueprint. Now you’ll be able to utilize the collaboration and change history features in Blueprint to keep your processes up to date easily and quickly, while still retaining the ability to create over sized diagrams to put on the wall. Better yet, since we generate a PDF version of your process, it’s your choice whether you want your process to fit in your Moleskine or on 30 feet of butcher paper.
Since Blueprint was launched on April 30th, I’m excited to say that we’ve signed up thousands of customersso far all across the world, and we’re growing every day. The earlyreviews of Blueprint were excellent and it’s great to see over a thousand people enjoying Blueprint’s benefits each day. For the team here, this is validation of all the hard work and long hours spent researching the difficulties customers run into while documenting their processes and building the solution to them.
Watch a preview video now.
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