As an enterprise BPM platform, the metastorm worklfow platform offering includes five essential elements – powerful process designer tools, runtime execution engine, integration functions, powerful agility facilities, monitoring and management functions, and process analytics. The Metastorm Designer is the best in its class, and offers a powerful graphical environment in which business users are able to model and design processes, create forms, and develop process actions. To facilitate visibility and continuous process control, Metastorm BPM’s reporting and analytics capabilities are flexible and can be adjusted in real-time to meet immediate information needs. Metastorm’s BPM software offering is unmatched in its ability to rapidly implement complex, human-intense processes and support rapid changes to dynamic processes and roles – delivering the fastest ROI and lowest total cost of ownership for partners and customers.
As in a paper-based process, a folder contains the information to be acted upon. In Metastorm BPM an electronic Folder contains the information to be acted upon. A Folder contains the forms and data accessible to the user at a particular Stage in the process based on their Role.
User roles can be static or dynamic and evaluated at runtime. Roles can be based on data entered into forms, data extracted from databases or information stored in directory services. Users may have different Roles at different Stages in a single process, or across processes. Metastorm BPM does not rely on maintaining separate organizational charts to establish roles as other workflow system do. This is would not be scalable for organizations with thousands of employees and complex reporting relationships.
Users receive and prioritize the tasks they are to perform as part of a process from their To Do List accessed via a web-browser or their email client.
Unique to Metastorm, the Watch List is how users can monitor their own or other folders in a process (such as supervisors). Where process appropriate, Watchers may take Action on a Folder, such as a supervisor reassigning a customer service request.
Like an electronic in-box, a Stage, identifies on a Metastorm BPM process map, where a Folder is to reside. When viewed from a user’s Watch List, you see where the Folder is in the process. A process may contain various System Stages that do not require human interaction to move the folder to the next Stage.
Unique to Metastorm, and one of Metastorm BPM’s most powerful features, User actions are what the user is allowed to do with the Folder at a Stage in the process. Actions are specific by user role and eliminate the need to write conditional logic for each route leaving each Stage. Actions are kept separate from Stages in Metastorm BPM so that security and routing options can be controlled separate from the Form itself, which means the routing options are not hardwired into business rules like more traditional workflow systems require. System actions are also available and do not require human intervention.
The Metastorm Designer (or now called the Opentext MBPM Designer) is used to build the process map using simple icons – Stages and Actions. Through process publishing, the process is deployed and made available to users via the web, SharePoint or their email clients.
Metastorm BPM also includes an electronic drag-and-drop Forms Designer. Forms used in the process are created only once and Metastorm BPM automatically renders the forms in the Web browser, the Outlook client, or through Microsoft SharePoint, eliminating the development time required to produce forms for each client type. Alternatively, HTML forms can be designed in an HTML application, or PDF forms can be designed in Adobe Acrobat, imported into Metastorm BPM and displayed through a browser or Adobe Acrobat Reader.