1. edoras one Overview
1.1. What is edoras one?
edoras one comprises a new generation of integrated platform that combines business process management, case management and content management simply and effectively. It makes work processes much more economical. Running in the background, the platform guarantees quick access to whatever content is relevant for your company’s tasks. To achieve this, edoras one doesn’t rely on a rigid process structure. Instead, it’s based on "design by doing"; each individual user decides how much structure he actually needs and determines for himself which work fragment will help him achieve his task. All process steps have grown organically and, as such, are part of natural productivity. That means your company stays well organized in an unstructured world and sustains the dynamics necessary for success.
1.2. What is the main concept behind edoras one?
edoras one organizes everything you do around the concept of work items. No matter whether you create a single task, start a new case or process, or upload a document, everything is a work item and supports a common set of functionality like ownership and assignment, due date and priority. Forms are used to manage the data associated with work items. Work items can have relations to each other and support hierarchies. The behavior of a work item is driven by its model, which is called a definition. For instance a process is driven by its process definition which is modeled using the modeling standard BPMN 2. These models can be designed and configured within the modeler dashboard of edoras one. An edoras one App contains all types of models and configurations to support a specific aspect or area of your organization. An App can be deployed and all of its models become available to drive the behavior of your work items.
1.3. What is the concept behind "cases"?
The work item type called "case" is key in edoras one as it acts as the main context around a collection of work items and information. A case can represent many things depending on how you define it. Think of a case like a box with a label where you can find everything that you need to work on a particular task. There are small and large boxes, square and round ones, boxes with one compartment only or boxes with a lot of compartments to organize the contents. For example if you handle customer complaints with edoras one, a single "complaint" could become a "case" and everything that happens while solving that complaint can be stored in and made available in that case. Or if you use edoras one for your recruiting, each job applicant is represented by a "case" where all structured data like name, birthday etc. for the applicant is part of the case form and documents like CV and references are simply stored within the case as attachments. Another great fit for edoras one is request and approval handling where a vacation request, a travel request or even a request for a quote from a customer becomes a case, supporting the handling and approval process through edoras one.
1.4. What can I use edoras one for?
The best matches for edoras one are all types of processes where people are involved working and collaborating together, on-site or distributed, with internal colleagues and even external participants like customers or service providers - wherever data has to be collected, approved, discussed and solutions have to be found using a process style that is a combination of structured and unstructured, ad-hoc work. Let’s have a look at some examples.
1.4.1. Approval Processes
Think about a request in your organization which contains data that has to be approved, decided on and processed. Examples includes a vacation or travel request, an order form to be approved and processed, or access rights and permissions for applications that need to be approved by several people in your organization. An approval process could even be a typical e-government process, where a citizen submits an application for processing by the government. edoras one allows every participant to be part of the whole process as needed.
1.4.2. Help Desk
There is a lot of unstructured work in a typical help desk environment. It needs to be fast, nothing must be lost and the customer needs answers. From submitting a help desk request either via email or over the phone, it all starts with a need from the customer. Some requests such as ordering a new license or upgrading to a new version of your product might be standard and can be fully structured or even automated. But complaint management or support issues are typically less structured and more driven by knowledge, not routine. That’s exactly where edoras one fits best: the combination of structured and knowledge driven work. If your help desk sees repeating patterns, start structuring them and you will gain added value every day, but even without any structure at all you will never loose a case in your help desk, you always have full access to all data, information and past discussions and you don’t miss a due date, at least not because of the tooling.
1.4.3. HR
HR processes are a great fit for edoras one as there are many people involved. Think of using edoras one in your recruiting process, let applicants apply for a job through an initial job application case form and upload their documents (CV, references etc.) . Then work on the application internally - everyone from HR people to superiors and managers that are part of the recruiting process can participate in the case and make it an effective place to collect information, have discussions and make decisions. Onboarding a new employee is another great example where a lot of people are typically involved - did you think about and remember everything that needs to be done? edoras one will help you with that organization. Once the employee has started work, vacation requests, expenses or travel requests are typical processes where edoras one is a great fit.
1.5. How do I start using edoras one in my organization?
Using edoras one is very simple and even without your own collection of processes, templates and forms, you can benefit from edoras one from the first day by using default templates like a simple case, ad-hoc tasks and review process. Start collecting feedback from the people working with those default templates and then start modeling your own processes, forms and templates accordingly in small steps. Adjust them, deploy them, use them and collect feedback again to constantly improve. That’s what we call "desgin by doing" where your App emerges from your organizational needs in small, but continuous steps.
1.6. What license do I need to work with edoras one?
There are two options to use edoras one, either on-premise or as a service in the cloud. Both options are based on the same license model which is built around three user types:
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Agents
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Participants
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Modelers
Agents and modelers are licensed as named users and participants are all free of charge. An agent has full access to the edoras one features, except the modeling features. You have to be a modeler in order to access the modeling capabilities of edoras one. A participant is able to start new cases and is able to participate with full feature capability in all the cases he started. In foreign cases, a participant can be included for single tasks (like approval) with limited access to the case, for everything else, you need to be an agent to have full access to all features.
1.7. What are the supported runtimes for edoras one?
edoras one is available as a service in the cloud from edorasware directly, as a domain specific service in the private cloud from one of our partners or on-premise in your own infrastructure. On-premise, you can simply use edoras one as a platform and integrate it into your infrastructure and applications or you can even use edoras one as a development platform in order to build your own solution on top of it.
1.8. Architecture Overview
The following diagram shows the main components of edoras one.
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Web Container (e.g. Tomcat)
edoras one runs in a Java web-compliant container like Tomcat for instance. You can also deploy edoras one into a JEE compliant server like JBoss, although the JEE parts of the container are not necessarily needed but are integrated with, if available. -
Client / Web Browser
edoras one is fully web-based and only needs a web browser to work with. Even the graphical modeling environment is fully running within the browser without the need of an extra plugin. The client part is based on HTML5 / CSS3 and uses a client side model-view-controller framework (AngularJS) to abstract the data from the view and the controllers. -
RDBMS
All information within edoras one is stored transactionally within an RDBMS. The following database systems are supported by edoras one: Oracle 11/12, MS SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, H2 and Derby. -
Content Repository
File-based content or large unstructured content is stored within the content repository of edoras one. There is a simple, built-in repository supporting a light-weight content storage system with built-in versioning capabilities. The content can also be stored in an external system like Alfresco, Sharepoint or any other system using the CMIS protocol. -
Search Infrastructure
edoras one supports a full text search integration, each work item is searchable as well as its content. The search can be integrated with the featured Java based query API or through the search REST endpoint, supporting full text search as well as structured search. -
Work Item Infrastructure (edoras gear)
The core of edoras one is it’s work item infrastructure supported by edoras gear, the work management framework. You can read more about edoras gear later in this document. -
Modelling Infrastructure (edoras vis)
Part of edoras one is the modelling infrastructure named edoras vis. It is embedded into edoras one for a smooth modeling experience, deploying directly into edoras gear and runtime experience using edoras one. For each supported type of models there is an appropriate provider interpreting that model. Process models for instance are modeled with the BPMN 2 standard and being executed by the process provider, based on the Activiti process engine. The form models are stored in JSON and rendered through the form engine in the client. -
REST API
edoras one supports a REST API based on the JSON data protocol. The edoras one client actually uses the same API as well for all of its features. Additionally, the REST API can be used for any kind of integration with edoras one. -
Extensions / Listeners / Providers
There are a lot of well designed extension points in edoras gear that can be used to extend the work item platform in many ways. Read more details about the extension points later in this document. -
Client / Server Communication
The client / server communication is based on the REST API supported by the edoras one backend services. JSON is used for the data in the requests and HTTP / HTTPS as the transfer protocol. edoras one can be integrated with SSO infrastructures as well.
2. edoras one User Guide
2.1. Basic application layout and navigation
2.1.1. Dashboards
When you log into edoras one, you will normally see the edoras one user dashboard:
The edoras one dashboards each provide a summary of information that is relevant to a particular user role, in this case the user’s active work items. Only work items that are visible to the current user are displayed. You can change between dashboards using the dashboard selector in the application toolbar:
that depending on the user’s permissions, some dashboards may be available. |
2.1.2. List view
The dashboard widgets typically show a summary of a particular type of work item:
Clicking on the widget header will open the corresponding list view to show the full list of work items (the widget itself only shows the first few):
2.1.3. Work item page
Clicking on a particular item in the dashboard list will take you directly to the work item page where the work item details can be viewed and/or edited:
The work item page will typically provide a number of different work item views, which can be selected using the icons in the top right-hand corner:
and a number of work item actions in the action toolbar on the right hand side which can be used to perform operations on the work item:
2.1.4. Work item views
Browse view
The browse view shows the work item details and is available for all work items. Select the Browse icon to open the work item view:
This will show the work item work form and if the item is active then the details may also be modifiable: