I have recently been tasked to look into Workflow Foundation. The actual goal would be to implement a system in which the end users can define custom workflows in the deployed application (and of course, use them). Personally I have never used WF before (and reading around here on SO people are very doubtful about it - so am I reading those questions/answers), and I am having a hard time finding my way around it given the sparse learning resources available.
Anyway, there are some questions, for example, this, which mention something they call dynamic or user-defined workflows. They point out that WF makes it possible to "rehost" the designer, so that end-users can define their own new workflows after the application is deployed (without developer intervention (?), this is the part I am not really sure about).
I have been told by fellow employees that this way we could implement an application in which once this feature is implemented we would no longer have to keep modifying the application every time a new workflow is to be implemented. However, they also pointed out that they just "heard it", they don't have firsthand experience themselves either.
I have been looking around for samples online but the best thing I could find was a number guess app - barely more than a simple hello world. So not much that would point me to the right direction of how this user-defined workflow feature actually works and how it can be used, what its limitations are etc.
My primary concern is this: it is alright that one can define custom workflows but no workflow is worth a penny without the possibility of actually inputting data throughout the process. For example, even if the only thing I need to do is to register a customer in a complaint management system, I would need the customer's name, contact, etc. If the end user should be able to define any workflow the given toolset makes possible then of course there needs to be a way to provide the workflow consumers with a way of inputting data through forms. If the workflow can be of pretty much any nature then so needs to be the data - otherwise if we need to implement the UIs ourselves then this "end-user throws together a workflow" feature is kind of useless because they would still end up at us requiring to implement a form or some sort of data input for the individual steps.
So I guess that there should be a way of defining the "shape" of the data that needs to be filled at any given user interaction phase of the workflow which I can investigate and dynamically generate forms based on the data. So for example, if I found that the required data was made up of a name and a date of birth, then I would need to render a textbox and a datepicker on the page.
What I couldn't really figure out from the Q&As here and elsewhere is whether this is even possible. Can I define and then later "query" the structure of the data to be passed to the workflow at any point? If so, how? If not, how should this user-defined workflow feature even be used, what is it good for?
To clarify it a little, I could imagine something as specifying a complex type, which would be the view model (input model) in a regular MVC app, and then I could reflect over it, get the properties and render input fields based on that.
Windows Workflow Foundation is about machine workflows, not business workflows. True, it is the foundational tool set Microsoft created for building their business workflow products. But out of the box WWF does not have the components you need to quickly and easily build business workflows. If you want to send an email in a workflow, you have to write that from scratch. Just about anything you can think of doing from a business point of view you have to write from scratch.
If you want to easily create business workflows using Microsoft products check out the workflow stuff in SharePoint. It is the easiest of the Microsoft products to work with (in my experience.) If that does not meet your needs there are other products like BizTalk.
K2 is another company with a business workflow product that uses WWF as their base to more easily build business workflows, the older K2 products actually create web pages automatically to collect the data from the user.
WWF is very low level, arguably it lost traction after they re-wrote the whole thing in 4.0. While not publically stated by Microsoft, my personal opinion is Service Fabric (from Microsoft) achieves the goals WWF originally tried to solve which was a "more robust programming environment."
My company needs an Issue Tracking System. There are a lot of tools available on the internet and I have tried some (JIRA, Asana, Bugzilla to name a few). Most of them are great in the job they do. But we have a specific requirement that none seem to cater to. We need to implement a hierarchy in which certain users would have access to only certain parts of the system. Could you please suggest me a tool that could do what we want. May be the tools I tried do enable us to implement this hierarchical structure and couldn't figure out how to do it. In that case could you guide me as to how this could be done using the tools I have tried. It would be highly preferable not to develop the system ourselves owing to the time that would be consumed.
Thank you!
The hierarchy would be as follows:
P.S. - We are not an IT-based company. Hence, 'Site' does not refer to 'website'. Site is a geographic area which comprises of smaller units called locations where facilities are located. These facilities have certain resources that at times break down, a situation which needs to be efficiently tracked and be dealt with. Employees on-site would report issues which would be assigned to maintenance teams who would take care of the issue. The progress of the process of resolving the issue should also be tracked.
I believe you could accomplish your goal using Bugzilla. Although Bugzilla doesn't have hierarchical security groups per se, you could create groups with obviously hierarchical names, one for each node in your graph, e.g. site1, site1-location1, site1-location2, site1-location1-resource1, etc. You could then assign each employee every group in the chain from the lowest to highest, e.g. (following your graph again), a user might have the groups site2, site2-location1, site2-location1-resource3. Then you can assign each bug a group according to how many people should be able to access it; e.g. site2 if's a site-wide issue, or site2-location1 if it's a location-wide issue, and so on.
It's a bit tedious but you could write some scripts to automatically give those security groups to each employee based on their most specific permission level.
I am designing a program that needs multiple level of approval.
when an employee apply for leave 1 notification should go to his relevent Boss & if Boss approved it..
it should sent back a successfull message
Thanks & Wating for your valuable solution
Even if I totally agree with the comment leaved by #gert-arnold, what you're talking about is a "Human Workflow System", and generally a system like that is based on a Persistent State Machine: there are various ways to accomplish that technology speaking, and many frameworks and tools to do that, but this sure is not the kind of arguments to treat in StackOverflow
So far, I've been using TFS only as task management, but never as an time report nor ticketing system. I've been using third party software for each. I want to use more out of TFS if possible to include these reports too.
Is TFS able to handle ticketing system good?
And what about time reports?
What templates can I use for these reports?
Is it be ok to give customer access to TFS to add bug reports?
First of all, any of the work items can be customized. Secondly, in many cases, someone probably has done so already.
I would think it would be good for this. Consider that it already has the ability to have a bug filed against software; have it assigned to a developer; and to record when it's fixed. The Bug work item already keeps track of time (if you fill that in).
I'm not certain about allowing customers in. I suggest you look in to the Web Access for that. You might have to maintain actual Domain accounts for the customers.
Our TFS is one mother-ship where we have our source repository, do our automatic builds/CI, manage our Product and Sprint backlog items (dev task items), and manage bugs - like you would using any full scale bug tracking system like bugzilla or jira (if that is what you meant by a 'ticketing system' - if by ticketing system you meant something like BMC Remedy, then its a different ballgame).
Our firm follows agile methodology and we use Conchango Templates which in my opinion is great for agile shops. Its highly customizable and is easy to learn/follow. As far as reports are concerned, these templates generate reports per day, per project, per team, per person by month, year and all that jazz... depends on what you really want.
Regarding giving customers access, it totally depends on your and your network admins comfort level.
Hope this helps...
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We need to involve our customer development partners in our development process. We're more or less following Agile methodologies. Some customer partners are remote, others closer. We need to minimize travel costs.
Our customers are in health care and tend to be busy, expensive, and hard to schedule.
What practices and technologies have worked to support customer involvement? We're using phone calls, phone conferences and email. We're curious about leveraging wiki techniques and would love to hear what's worked for others.
it doesn't matter whether the customer is in the same cubicle or halfway around the planet, except for communication delays - the critical factor is availability.
a customer that is too busy to answer your emails for several days is going to cause your iteration to be late, or fail
the customer has two critical commitments for agile:
available to answer questions in a timely manner
not to change their mind/priorities during an iteration
the customer must commit to a reasonable service-level agreement (SLA) on availability, e.g. 1-hour response time, or 24-hour response time, etc., and you will need to adjust all estimates and schedules by the lag factor. If the customer will not commit or does not follow through, cancel the iteration and re-plan, bringing the customer's commitment to the forefront again. Do not just "guess" at what you think the customer might want.
Bottom line: without a customer commitment, agile will not work.
My experience with Agile methods is mostly for desktop applications. When our customers are remote, we've spent time to get an engineer to the customer site to configure/install a demo rig. The engineer works with the customer on a test and demo setup/plan that will provide an environment that the customer believes replicates the important aspects of the deployment environment but isolates the demo system from existing infrastructure (so that we can push updates whenever we need to). The engineer also sets up deployment systems to move our applications into production, so that we can "deploy" without being on site. Our applications can self-update (either for each release or each build) and we carefully instrument the releases to log all errors and submit all crashes as bugs to our bug tracker. This way we at least know what went wrong, even if we don't know what's going right.
For each release/build that shows up on the customer's test rig, we provide a (short) screencast, narrated by the project lead or primary developer, demo-ing any new features. The release notes contain any long-term issues or questions we want the customer to think about (i.e. issues that can't be resolved immediately by a phone call or email), and the application displays these notes for the user.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, we get the customer and/or the customer's liaison an account on our calendar server and configure their calendar app to make use of that account. This then goes both ways--we can schedule time (on site, phone, email, etc.) with the customer and they can do the same with our developers.
One option: Install a customer proxy at the "customer partner" site who can extract the information that you need when those customers are available. Have these proxies build the solid relationships that allow them to represent the customer view. Their time is all yours. And when questions arise that they cannot answer, they have ready access to your customer partners - even if in the coffee line.
The whole point of the customer in agile is to have open and free discourse with the developers (IE immediate feedback). If your actual customers cannot provide this, then you need an intermediary/proxy that can fill this role. You don't need actual customers, you just need someone that can represent the customers' interests well enough to meet your customers' needs.
Just a few ideas:
If you do choose to use a Wiki, make sure it supports a whole-wiki-wide "recent changes" list, and preferably one that is specific to the users. The less distant from development people are, the more likely to have email as a metaphor for their computer use. If they can't immediately tell when there's something new for them to see, they will never explore it. You also preferably need ways to signal to them that you need their attention to matters, or they will treat changes like CCs.
I'm a big believer in creating video screen captures of interactions (narrated) and distributing them to users. Unlike a real demo, customers don't feel like they need to interrupt, and they can rewind and re-watch the same interaction over and over, paying attention to little details.
Finally, if you do distribute prototypes, make sure to send someone (or at least a screen sharing session) to see how the prototypes are used. Contextual design is effective. You can count on people using your prototype differently from the way you expect, and you have to understand how they use it to really understand where the issues are, even if they don't report them.
Have you considered something like LogMeIn.
This would allow customers to either log-in to a PC on your network already running your application, or alternatively allow you to install/update the application on one of their computers.
This would solve the remote customer issue and would also support the ongoing continual customer feedback requirement in the agile process.
I used it a previous company for technical support, but there is no reason (except maybe cost) that it would not work for your situation.
It is also a great way to actually see how users are using your application and therefore find out what works and what doesn't.
First of all, make sure that you have a product manager or a product owner close the the developers. This person will be managing the relationship with the customer.
Then, the product manager can demonstrate the product to the customer at the end of each iteration and also ask customers question when the developer need feedback to implement a user story.
It is amazing the positive feedback you can get from customers when you involve them.
We did not use a wiki and most of the communication is done via E-Mail, phone, and a screen sharing application (we are using GoToMeeting, but there are tons of alternative out there).
You should probably do a kick-off once with everyone at one place. Face-to-face time is invaluable. That includes all developers. Prepare some metaplan questions, but also have enough time to just mingle.
I think by most definitions of Agile processes that have high dependence on customer involvement you've already missed "best practice", which would be for an on-site, and preferably "in-team" customer present at all times. So I suppose we're looking for a "next-best practice". :)
There's the possibility of introducing a "proxy customer" on-site. I have to admit to being very sceptical about the value of a proxy customer. I'm concerned about the risk of introducing some sort of second-rate and otherwise unnecessary business analyst function to the mix, with the increased signal-to-noise ratio and potential for garbled messages. It also carries the risk of allowing busy real customers to reduce their involvement in the process, which is likely to lead to dissatisfaction. I wonder if there might be someone with good domain knowledge who has recently retired and might be available to act in this capacity as a consultant?
Communication bandwidth with remote customers is astonishingly lower than face-to-face, something I had not fully realised until I started dealing with users in another country. Even with video the loss is significant.
How long are your iterations? How hard is planning iterations? Might it be easier to go for longer iterations and get more planning done less frequently, or reduce iteration length and go to smaller, but more frequent planning sessions? Are more than one customer involv
Do you have a useable and available build at the end of each iteration? Is there time for involved users to have hands-on time before the next planning session? Keeping users engaged by shipping frequently would seem on the surface to be a Good Idea, which perhaps legislates for small frequent iterations (a week? two weeks?)
The wiki idea might work: have you looked at the FIT Framework? It's a sort of integrated acceptance test/wiki, which might help in getting acceptance tests from remote customers. I think I'd also look to provide some sort of (separate or integrated) "project dashboard", possibly pushed regularly to key customers as well as available on demand. use it as a substitute for things like post-its on whiteboards, Big Visible Charts and the like. There are a number of open-source or low-cost options that may serve - writing your own simple alternative need not be too time-consuming or costly, either.
Above all, remember that "Agile" is a kind-of catch-all label for developments that are carried out with an emphasis on the values and principles espoused in the Agile manifesto. What is considered "best" in one situation may not be so in another. If you understand the principles and regularly review your methods with a critical eye then you're probably going to be close enough to the best practice application to your situation.
I haven't looked at it for some time but with Beck and Fowler on the author list, there should be something useful in Planning Extreme Programming.
In my previous position #drchrono.com I aggregated data/feedback/iteration requests from 20,000 clinicians across the country. The best way to do this is to to evangelize a site like uservoice.com. I held "daily live web demonstrations" with sometimes 50 to 100 doctors (doctors signed up right from our website). In these demos I would demonstrate our current product and evangelize user voice to drive their feedback into a useful tool for our development team. All of this was done remotely and led to a 1,400% overall increase in recurring revenue growth.