2020 is (finally) over, and there’s a lot to look forward to in 2021 – one of those things is taking your business applications to the next level with WEBCON BPS 2021 – the brand new release of our low-code process automation and management platform, which premiered today!
Every year, we launch a major new version of our low-code application development platform, WEBCON BPS, enriched with cutting-edge functionalities that enable our clients to take their business process management to the next level. The improvements introduced in this year’s version will enable creating even more intuitive and modern-looking applications, streamline application management, and facilitate maintenance. We are also introducing a brand new tool - WEBCON BPS Designer Desk - a web-based solution for collecting new project requirements and building prototype applications even faster than ever before.
Read on and learn about the main new features and improvements implemented in WEBCON BPS 2021.
Introducing WEBCON BPS Designer Desk
WEBCON BPS Designer Desk is a brand new web-based tool any authorized user can use to gather requirements, create an application prototype, take that prototype for a test run, and collect feedback. It’s the perfect model for Citizen-Assisted Development, where the best business solutions are created out of a collaboration between business stakeholders and professional application builders.
Designer Desk makes the first step of constructing an application – the prototype – easier than ever, because it allows business users and IT to collaborate on something they can both see – the prototype – and the resulting application arrives faster and better because of it.
Designer Desk is geared toward the initial prototyping/requirements definition stage of a project. As such, it allows you to design the following:
- The workflow,
- The data/form fields your prototype will need,
- The layout of those fields in a form,
- The reports you will require.
You can create all of these in a browser, using an intuitive drag-and-drop approach, and without a single line of code.
We think this is the best of both worlds: the people closest to the business problem get a way to design and test what they want to see and how they want it to behave in broad strokes, and then let professional solution builders see what stakeholders have done, learn from it, and carry it forward to the finish line.
Changes and improvements in WEBCON BPS Portal
We have refreshed WEBCON BPS Portal interface, enhancing the layout and design experience. New functionalities include:
- Ability to set a custom background image for portal pages,
- Ability to change the size of the application start button,
- New “Favorites” section on the portal’s home page, which will make it easier for users to quickly reach their most important destination,
- Ability to pin favorite reports and dashboard to “Suggested Elements” section. This section will also no longer be empty for new users - they will instead see the elements most often used across the entire organization,
- Conditional column formatting in reports.
We have also introduced a new KPI (Key Performance Indicator) report. It allows to display task completion times for individual workflow steps - comparing actual task completion times with expected targets. It should help greatly with analyzing trends over time, finding performance bottlenecks, and inspiring continuous process optimization.
New form capabilities
In WEBCON BPS 2021, we have standardized the styles used within the form, added new controls, and expanded the functionality of existing ones.
It includes improvements like changing the appearance of the comments section, and to the attachment control behavior when working with PDF files, as well as completely new functionalities, such as:
- New Vacation Leave form control that clearly visualizes the schedule of both claimed and planned absences within the process for handling vacation leave requests,
- New HTML control that makes it possible to create custom form controls using HTML and JavaScript, something previously only possible with .NET code components,
- Brand new form rules, that allow to access the values of individual columns in an item list, manipulate the contents of item lists, modify item list cell styles, and more.
Improvements to application maintenance and troubleshooting
New and enhanced mechanisms for diagnosing portal and form behavior will make it much easier to identify the source of possible configuration problems and restore an application’s expected functionality as soon as possible.
It will also be possible to display the duration of each operation (from the time a request is sent to the data source until the execution of business rules), in order to identify user experience bottlenecks.
In addition to that extended scope of information being presented while in diagnostic mode, we are also introducing the option to save the recorded session and make it available to the system administrator. In the event an error is encountered, the user can enter diagnostic mode, have all operations recorded and made available to the administrator for later review.
Would you like to see the full list of new features and improvements introduced in WEBCON BPS 2021?
You can also check out this version’s official changelog >
WEBCON BPS 2021 is available for download here >