Thoughts and Learnings

Learning the AS-IS process of a system is the first and foremost thing a person has to do while designing a solution to automate it. Here are few pointers on how to go about understanding it. Learn the basic end to end flow Know what are the data entry points Understand what happens to the data that enters a system The places where data are presented to the user The points where communication is send to the customer/user Make a list of systems that interact with the concerned application The different protocols (like SOAP) used to communicate between applications If there is a communication, the acknowledgements being sent/received if any The various validations that happen at various places within and outside the system Check for duplicate validations Make a list of manual interactions that take place in the process Figure out error prone areas- Tip: manual interactions are error prone Thoroughly understand exception handling situations What happens when one of the in...

This pertains to the management of a Sales Order. It is a simplified version of an MNC available in the public domain. The processes that come under this are: Expedite Cancellation Reporting Wrong shipments  Keeping Wrong shipments Returning Wrong shipments Order Expedite An expedite is a request to improve a promise date on a Customer sales order/ship set. It can be raised by customers who have raised the order.  It can also be raised by Account Manager assigned to a Customer’s account Two Types of Expedites Standard Expedite - A standard expedite can be requested by the Customer/Partner Executive Expedite - An Executive Expedite is an expedite request that has Exceptional Items Status (EIS) status or has been assigned a new product hold. Customers/Partners can only request an Executive Escalation through an Account manager, who can decide whether to proceed with the Executive Escalation. If an account manager proceeds, he/she must submit a valid busin...

If you have an application that needs persistent data, i.e. data that needs to be stored for further use, the data needs to be  somewhere. Data could be needed if you want to rework on a work object by taking it from the work list. Eg. You may be working on a work object, close the browser because of some issues and then want to resume from where you left. For this purpose data needs to be stored somewhere. All important data associated with a work object can be stored in pages inside pyWorkpage. Another option that is available is to store the data in data pages While most applications require persistent data, applications that have reporting and SLAs will definitely require.  For all kind of applications page structure is important. Without a page structure, development should never begin. While what has been written is very trivial for most developers, this is the reason why a project where I worked hit a major roadblock. What are the different kinds of pages and what s...

Data transforms have 4 fields- Action, Target, Relation and Source which can be used as per the scenario. Data transforms can be used for the following: Set values for properties Update a page Remove a page Apply another data transform To check for conditions ( When, otherwise when and when) Looping through pages The usage is not limited to these. They can be used for adding comments and sorting though I have not worked on them. If you are trying to use an activity only for the above mentioned scenarios, it is best to use data transforms instead.

Things to do if you want to show a screen The first thing we need for showing a screen is a layout. Layout comes inside a section Section comes inside a harness Harness is shown through flow action Flow action is configured only from an assignment shape An assignment shape requires a flow A flow requires a start and end shape. Hence, to show a screen, start from a flow and proceed backwards from this list.

Things to keep in mind while writing a user story What is being performed – there should be single action in a story What is input to the action? What is output? What if the output is not as expected? – it should be error What do we do for error? – just log the error in system/display on screen/send communication (any combination of these) Are we connecting to any other system? If YES then what is protocol to connect. E.g. HTTP/HTTPS/SOAP/SQL query/STORED PROC What if we are not able to connect to system? – how to handle that error Error message to be displayed??? User Requirement ID User Story Name: User Story Number: Created By: Date Created: Actor(s): Description: Trigger: Pre-conditions: Post-conditions: Success Criteria Special Com...