Barium Live!

As a web service provider we love web communication. One of our favorites is Facebook where we communicate with each other at work, customers and partners. Therefore it’s natural for us to have Barium Live present on Facebook.

Our brand new Facebook page is for all our users who enjoy using Facebook and want to connect with us at Barium Live and get updates on news and features.

Connect with us on Facebook today. Click on the icon below.

Regards,
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
Barium Live!
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! facebook, connect, social media

Yesterday Microsoft held a partner event in Stockholm to present the new Microsoft Partner program, new applications such as SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, SQL Server and a number of products in the Forefront category.

Also, the .Net Awards winners were elected in the 6 different categories available. Barium Live, being a Software as a Service application (SaaS) on www.bariumlive.com was nominated in the category Best Software + Service.

We came in second among three nominees and we’re proud of it! This means a lot to us who believe strongly in Business Process Management (BPMN) and our Business Process Management System (BPMS) which is unique in the way that it is available for everybody with an internet connection.

Model Processes, Collaborate with others, deploy and run the processes as process applications, all in one single Web Service. That’s true Software + Service.

Try it yourself for free: www.bariumlive.com

We’ll be back with an even better contribution to next years competition with our goal set on First Place!

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter. Get the latest news on BariumLive! or contact us with questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com
www.twitter.com/bariumlive

Barium Live! microsoft, awards, saas, software+service, bpm, bpms

We have been working on the 2009.4 update to Barium Live! and are happy to announce that it is now available to all of our users!

Release 2009.4

This time around focus has been set on the following stories:

• External start of process applications
• Modeler support for restricted networks
• A number of fixes

Publish your process app on the web and create your own e-services

Transform your process application into an e-service by publishing process applications on a public web site, intranet or extranet. With just a few clicks you can turn on external start on your process application and generate a public URL for your process application to use on sites where people can start instances of your process. There's no need for them have an account on Barium Live and no need for complicated e-mail inbox monitoring. Everything ends up in your task inbox on Barium Live!

Better support for restricted networks when modeling processes

Many of our users model processes from within their restricted computer networks - with proxies, firewalls and other security measures. These security measures have made it difficult for some to save process models to Barium Live! directly from the browser.

We have now enhanced the networking capabilities of Barium BPMN Modeler to better work around these problems. Modeling processes online is essential to get access to all online features such as Forms, Business Rules, Document Repositories and more. If the modeler is unable to contact the Barium Live! server it will automatically run in disconnected mode, letting you model processes with all the features available online but prompting you to save your modeled process locally on your computer instead of online when saving.

When your are finished modeling, simply upload the .BPMN file to Barium Live! to continue work on your process.

Fixes

A number of smaller problems have been fixed to enhance usability and functions across the entire web service. Among others:

• Data Objects are now visible when viewing process models
• Support for embedded PDF files in Firefox and Chrome
• Improved saving of sub forms when performing tasks

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

In the last couple of weeks we have been working hard on redoing the content, structure and design of our web site content. We felt that we needed to explain our offer and service more clearly to the growing number of visitors that find their way to our site.

Yesterday we released the new content as a first step to make our web site more informative and intuitive.

Focus has been on making it easy for visitors to quickly understand our offer and at the same time present information for those who wish to learn a bit more about the service.

Instructional videos and documentation that earlier were only available to our registered users are now available on our web site for all visitors

The forums can be viewed by all users and not only by the users that have logged on to our site.

We plan on releasing more content in the coming weeks so keep an eye out.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! updates, web site, forum, videos

Collaboration is one of the key issues that will allow an organization to succeed or fail when creating a process model for a company, department or business area. It is essential to collaborate with key stakeholders with an in-depth knowledge of the work being done, in what order it is being done and by whom. Usually there are several key stakeholders to a process as well.

As a Process Coach at Barium I know how difficult it can be to model a process. Usually this is done with key stakeholders in different geographic locations, time zones and of course with difficulty of making time for questioning and involvement in the process of documenting a process model.

Collaboration made easy in Barium Live!

In Barium Live! we have focused on collaboration around process modeling in a number of ways. We want it to be easy to share processes with other stakeholders in order to share the workload or to speed up the process without the hassle of sending documents or files to and from each other via email or likewise.

Collaborate with other Barium Live! users

All processes are permission-based and give you the possibility to share permissions for a process with other groups or users on Barium Live! It’s possible to create different groups for different stakeholders and to re-use groups for all the processes you create.

Set permissions when creating a new process or by clicking on “Process Settings” for an already created process.

The different permissions include:

• Show (Allow or Deny the user or group to see the process)
• Copy (Allow or Deny the user or group to copy the process)
• Edit (Allow or Deny the user or group to edit the process information or model)
• Publish (Allow or Deny the user or group to publish new versions of the process)
• Full Control (Allow or Deny full control, including deleting the process)

Combining Allow or Deny allows for an advanced permissions management for all your processes.

Collaborate with external users

It’s also possible to collaborate with stakeholders who do not have an account on Barium Live! You may want to share your process with an external customer, supplier or other party. This is possible in Barium Live! by activating a Web Link for a process.

Activating a Web Link makes it possible to view the process from any computer with an Internet connection. It is possible to add a password to increase security.

Use the “Create email” button to automatically generate an email containing the link to send to the users of your choice. Clicking on the link will show the process model in a web browser.

Tip: The web link can also be used in other places such as Intranets, Extranets or public web sites to communicate the way you work as a process model.

Note that a web link can only be activated after you have created your process.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! collaboration, process modeling, publishing, permissions, external

Microsoft Summit 2009 is over for this year and we’re heading back home to Gothenburg after an intense day at Kista fair. Overall we are satisfied with the event, we had opportunities to present our product to some new people, put out some feelers for new customers and new partners.

Being a finalist in the Microsoft .Net Awards enables us to showcase our product for members at Microsoft, the people organizing the awards and to our fellow competitors in the event.

Overall we had very positive feedback from all the people who were interested enough to visit us. The simplicity, ease to get started and the power of being able to create useful applications with a huge depth impressed all who we had the opportunity to demonstrate our service to.

We do believe that we were the only ones propagating for the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). It’s interesting to see how people react to seeing the notation for the first time and how most people see it as being very simple to use with no prior experience or training.

On the 10th of December the winners for the Microsoft .Net Awards 2009 will be announced and we hope to stand up as winners, we will keep you updated.

Stay tuned!

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! conference, bpmn, microsoft, partner, awards

On the 1st October Microsoft Summit 2009 in Kista, Stockholm is Microsofts conference where Microsoft partners can show IT-systems and solutions which help businesses improve themselves. This year focus is set on showing the IT-solutions of the future. On the agenda are important issues such as green IT, the important choice of which platform to use, cost effectiveness, ROI, Cloud Service and more.

Microsoft have invited an number of interested speakers to the event, who all can give an interesting view on one or more of the issues at hand:

Magnus Holmqvist, director at Volvo Innovation Centre.
Jörg Bassek, director of economy at the county council in Dalarna.
Sven-Erik Bucht, municipal commisioner from Haparanda, elected ”Swede of the year 2007” by the magazine Fokus.
Kaj Mickos, inventor since 40 years, innovations consultant and marketing placer.

But the best of all is of course that the Barium Live! team is there as well. We will be exhibiting at Microsoft Summit and give you the opportunity to come and visit us, try our revolutionary service and ask us all questions you may have.

Barium Live! fits into all of the categories focused on at Microsoft Summit.

Green - We host your processes on our servers, no need for you to invest or run your servers.
Platform choice - Since it is a web-based solution, any browser will do, your choice.
Cost effectiveness - Our business model ensures that you only pay for what you need.
ROI - We challenge any other company to present a solution that allows you to model, collaborate, configure and execute a process in one day.
Cloud Service - Barium Live! is a cloud service, no hosting needed for you.

All who visit us at Microsoft Summit will receive a 1 year Premium Account on Barium Live! All you have to do is show up and shake our hands and we can help you get started.

We have a number of tickets to Microsoft Summit to give away, if you would like to have one, simply comment this blog entry. You have to be fast, and if there are more entries than tickets, we will draw a winner.

Tickets to Microsoft Summit and more info can be found at the Microsoft Summit web site: http://www.microsoft.se/summit2009

We hope to see you there.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! meet and greet, microsoft, conference, exhibition

We are very proud to be one of the finalists in the Microsoft .Net Awards 2009. Every year a number of Microsoft Partners have the opportunity to compete in who has the best solution created on a Microsoft platform.

Barium Live, being a web-based service is competing in the category best Software + Service.

All nominees are judged on five criteria; environment, cost-effectiveness, innovation, business value and votes from the .Net Awards web site. The winner will be announced in December.

Help us win! Vote for Barium Live on the Microsoft .Net Awards 2009 web site found here.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
www.bariumlive.com

Barium Live! microsoft, awards, competition

Our development team has been working on a new update, which is now available to all Barium Live! users!

Barium Live! is developed using the SCRUM methodology, working in iterations of one or two months at a time, after which a new release is rolled out to our web service www.bariumlive.com. Each release includes new features, as well as bug fixes. In this release we have focused on e-forms and process execution. If you are interested in knowing more about our development process, drop us a line. We might publish it on our blog if we get around to it!

Release 2009.3
The main focus areas for this release has been 1) improving our e-forms designer and 2) improving process execution, making it easier to create process-driven web applications with strong collaborative capabilities. Several bugs have been fixed and Internet Explorer 8 is now officially supported. A few improvements have also been made to the Barium BPMN Modeler.

Process execution improvements
Support for sub process instances.

• Example: a project can be a process instance, every project generates change requests according to a change request process. All created change requests are shown as sub process instances to the main project process instance. Process instances and sub process instances are shown in a hierarchical structure.

Planned activities can be inserted into your Outlook or Google Calendar using the iCalendar standard format.

Human participants can now be manually assigned. Choose from a list who should be assigned as the acting participant for consecutive steps in the process.

Process application creators/operators can now restart process instances and solve process application problems.

• Example. Process applications with integrated web services may fail if a web service is temporarily out of service, which might affect the current process instance. With the process application dashboard, errors can be identified and fixed.

Public web service-based integration API

• Integrate process applications with other web services and line-of-business applications.

E-form improvements
General enhancements of the e-form creator making it easier to use and more transparent.

Support for sub-e-forms. You can re-use commonly used forms e.g. contact information fields.

General feature improvements
Better support for Internet Explorer 8.

Barium BPMN Modeler improvements
The first pool that is added to your process is automatically given the same name as your process.

Use the F2 key to edit the name of pools and lanes just as you can with any other object.

Lanes automatically assume the name of a drag-and-dropped process participant.

Fixed bugs
A total of 25 minor bugs were fixed ranging across all aspects of the service.

If you have questions or comments regarding this update, drop us a comment here in the blog or let us know in the forums on http://bariumlive.com (available for all registered users).

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
Barium Live!

Barium Live! updates

Barium Live! offers you a unique tool to create business applications to help you increase the productivity of your business. We are willing to stick our chin out and guarantee that you will improve your business two-fold in half the time it takes other companies to help you with similar tools when you use Barium Live!

How, you may ask?

1 - Collaborative process modeling
We offer a state-of-the-art process modeling tool which allows you to model all your processes, add documentation, instructional information and descriptions. Collaborate with other process modelers online by sharing your process with the people you choose. Publish your modeled process on any other web-site (Intranet or homepage) and share it with anybody.

Process models are superior to any other tool in describing work sequence and flow, a picture does say more than a thousand words. In Barium Live! you can combine instructional documentation directly in your process model for further description.

Oh, and did I mention you can do all of this for FREE!?!

2 - Process configuration
Once your process is modeled wouldn't it be nice if you could configure it to actually run? In Barium Live! that is possible. Assign individuals or groups to process participants, create an e-Form with our built-in form designer and make it process-aware. Create business rules that helps you automate decisions or that provide information from other data sources in your e-Form such as article numbers, customer names or other lists of information.

3 - Execute your process as a process application
Processes can be used to create Process Applications. This makes your process run! A process instance is created by filling out the e-Form, you can even allow you customers to fill out the e-Form by publishing it on your web site or extranet.

With an account on Barium Live! you automatically get an inbox where all the created instances are shown for all participants, of course you only see the instances that you are supposed to see. Read the information from the e-Form, add additional information and send it forward in the process for handling. In the mean time your customer is constantly updated by the status of the instance through e-mail notifications.

What does this mean?
Having full control over non-conformance issues, tasks and cases is critical in all businesses. With Barium Live! you can model your process and convert them into fully functional case management systems thanks to our state-of-the-art Business Process Engine. If you change the process model - it will change your case management systems - no programming needed!

As a manager, you have full control of all reported issues. You can see an overview of how many issues are reported, curves and trends and are able to drill down to a specific task.

As a participant, performing work in the case management system is simple. It is always clear who has the ball and what needs to be done. An inbox, a process room, the process model, documentation and guides makes each activity easy and effective.

As a customer, it's easy to follow the created task and to see where it is in the process, no need to bother the handlers with phone calls or e-mails.

Which process do you want to improve today?
Get your free account on Barium Live! and start improving your processes today. You only need to ask yourself one question; "which process do you wish to improve today?"

Visit our site http://www.bariumlive.com for more information, videos and sign-up.

Regards
Jonathan Franze
Process Coach
BariumLive.com

Barium Live! collaboration, execution