Nine Awesome New Features on SolveXia’s New Designer View (NDV)

Introduction

SolveXia is about to change (for the better). Over the coming months we will be releasing our new and enhanced Process Designer, first to our customers in the UK, USA and South Africa in late July, and then for Australia in the second half of August.

We are very excited about this upcoming release. It is so much more than just a refresh of the SolveXia interface. In this article, we will share 9 cool new features that are going to make it easier for you to build, edit and maintain your processes in SolveXia. The new features include:

1. A revamped and redesigned interface
2. Support for Chrome, Firefox and Safari
3. All new home screen
4. Tabs for quickly switching between processes
5. Ability to filter steps
6. New and improved step dependency editor
7. Support for richer text boxes (images, GIFs, hyperlinks etc.)
8. Simplified user access and permissions
9. Faster linking to files and tables in action steps
   

Important: We realise this article may raise important questions on how the new release will impact you and your processes. The good news is that things will just keep working the way they always have. That said, we have prepared a separate FAQ answering some of the questions you may have.

Background

The original SolveXia Process Designer interface was created using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. Web-based applications have come a long way over the last decade and plugins like Silverlight are no longer needed or even supported by most web browsers.

We have, therefore, spent the last 24 months creating a new SolveXia Process Designer interface, using modern, HTML-based technologies. As a SolveXia user, you would have already seen some of our work including:

• The new Subscriber interface (for running processes).
• The new and enhanced Managed Table and SQL editor.
  

The new Process Designer interface is the final chapter of this journey (to remove the need for Silverlight). Whilst the focus has been on replacing the interface, we have also added new features and enhancements based on feedback from our users. What’s more, our new Process Designer is the start of something new, acting as a launchpad for the amazing innovations that we are planning to bring to you in 2019, 2020 and beyond.

Enhancement #1: The new and improved SolveXia process builder. Re-designed from the ground up.

The first and most obvious change that you will notice is that the interface for SolveXia has been completely revamped and redesigned:

The new interface is modern and slick, while still being very similar to the SolveXia that you know and love. For existing users, this means that you can pick up the new version and keep working as you always have. We have also simplified the interface, make it easier for new users to start automating in SolveXia.

We’ve prepared a separate article outlining the key changes to the interface that existing Process Designers should be aware of. You can find it here.

Enhancement #2: Support for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

You will now be able to use SolveXia in your favourite browser

This includes the latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari!

Enhancement #3: New home screen.

A new feature that you will notice immediately after logging into SolveXia as a Process Designer is the new home screen:

This page provides a summary of your SolveXia environment, including:

• A count of all the processes, tables, dashboards and reports in your organisation’s environment.
• A list of the most recent process runs, including the status of each run. This list only includes runs that you have the relevant permission to access.
• A list of runs (that you have access to) that are scheduled for the coming 7 days.
• Announcements from SolveXia, such as notices about planned downtime (for system maintenance), or alerts on new features.
• A pie chart of your 10 largest managed tables by storage.
  

We know collaboration and sharing processes is an important reason for using SolveXia. This feature provides greater visibility into what is happening across your SolveXia environment.

Enhancement #4: Tabs.

Tabs allow you to conveniently switch between your processes, Managed Tables and reports:

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This is a really important enhancement. Most of the “solutions” that people automate are made up of multiple processes, tables and reports. This enhancement will make it really easy and fast to work on, and switch between, all of these different components.

Enhancement #5: Ability to filter steps.

A feature that we think will make life much easier for Process Designers is the ability to filter the steps of a process based on their names or the files or tables that the step uses:

This enhancement will make it easier to debug your process and make changes. For example, if you encounter an error in a particular file, you can now simply filter the process to show only the steps that use that file.

Here is an example of how to filter steps:

To find all steps that use a particular file, click the ‘Filter steps’ button and type key words from the file name into the search bar and click ‘Apply Filter’. The filter will then show all steps that use the file. Furthermore, this feature can be applied to search for steps that use a particular table or steps that have certain key words in the name:

Enhancement #6: New step dependency editor.

Step dependencies have received some much needed love and attention in the new Process Designer:

We have improved the dependency editor, making it easier to configure both simple and complex dependencies (with AND/OR and SKIP logic). We have also added a real-time summary to the editor, explaining exactly how your dependency will be applied:

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Enhancement #7: Support for markdown

Because, who doesn’t want Emojis and GIFs in their processes?

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Markdown is a formatting syntax that allows you to enrich text in lots of different ways. You can:

• Add formatting (bold, italics, underline etc.)
• Embed hyperlinks (for example to another site or system or to your company’s shared drive)
• Embed images and GIFs (like a screenshot of where a source file needs to be collected from).
  

To use this new functionality, Process Designers can simply edit text blocks as they always have and add markdown syntax as shown below:

It is important to note that you do NOT have to know or use markdown syntax. You can simply type text into the editor as you always have. Markdown is simply a way to enrich the text. This will be really useful for designers who want to add instructional text and images for their subscriber users.

For further information on how to use markdown, please refer to the following cheat sheet.

Enhancement #8: Simplified user access and permissions.

User access rights and permissions have been dramatically improved in the new Process Designer interface in two ways:

1. Simplified user roles; and
2. Introduction of User Groups
   

The roles that can be assigned for a process are now more consistent with what the user will actually be expected to do:

You can set the following roles for users (for any process):

• Reader: Someone who can only view a process
• Executor: Reader + ability to run a process
• Editor: Executor + ability to edit a process
• Owner: Full access to a process (Read, Execute and Edit) and also delete the process.
  

You can learn more about about the permissions associated with each user role here.

User groups are are powerful and fast new way to assign permissions. Multiple users can be added into a group which can than be assigned permissions to processes, tables and reports:

This makes it much faster and easier to on-board new users to a process. Simply add the new user to the relevant group and they will automatically inherit all of the permissions of that group!

For more information on our new ‘Access and permissions’ feature, please follow these links:

• How to set permissions for a process?
• How to add new users or user groups through the SolveXia Admin application?
  

Enhancement #9: Faster linking to files and tables (in action steps).

You can now link to files and tables by typing all or part of the name of the file or table into the action step. As you type, a drop down list will appear containing containing files or tables that have a similar name:

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We hope you enjoy working with our new Process Designer View. As always, we welcome any questions, requests and feedback.