Introduction
ActiveWIT is an application management and hosting platform that’s ideal for automating many business processes.
Designed for business users, ActiveWIT is self service, low cost and easy to use.
There's nothing to download or install.
There's no need to hire and contract specialized personnel.
There's no waiting for application delivery.
Simply login and select or define what you need.
Setting up an account and the first six months is free.
There's no risk and you can start today.
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Evaluate
If the ready-made applications meet your needs, then you don't have to read any further.
If you want to modify an applicaiton, define new or learn more about our applications, then please continue.
Before defining or modifying an application there must be an understanding of the business activities to automate.
The easiest way to determine activities is to identify the necessary steps to complete a process.
For instance, a purchase order's steps may be the following - customer fills out and submits order, purchasing reviews order and then it's shipped.
When defining an Application, keep it simple.
Normally, an Application has from two to five activities.
Exceptions to the rule of simplicity may be broken for very complex Applications or detailed audits that require granular activity tracking.
Please evaluate the following two examples or login and take a look at our purchase order application's activities.
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1) Expense Report Processing
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- Submit Expense Report - Employee submits expense report to payroll
- Manager Approval - Manager evaluates employee expense report
- Payroll Approval - Payroll personnel evaluates employee expense report
- Complete - Notify all stakeholders that the expense report is being processed
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2) Patch Management – Apply Windows 2003 Server Patches
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- Approval Patch Application - Manager and support engineer evaluates patch to determine if application to servers will be approved
- Business Readiness Approval - Responsible business owner determines the best time to
apply the patch as to not affect end users
- Apply Patch - Support engineer applies patch
- Business Owner Evaluation - Business user evaluates system to determine if the patch
applied successfully
- Complete - Notify all stakeholders that the patch is complete
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Describe Application
Applications are created by selecting the Apps tab from a registered and logged in account.
Within Application Administration - select “Create Application”.
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Id and Description
Provide a concise Application Id and description.
Use “Description” for the wordiness that’s necessary to describe the Application.
Once Id and Description are entered, select Allow Attachments.
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Validate and Continue
Review the Id and Description to determine adequacy. If all is in order, select Next to describe activities.
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Describe Activities
Each Application must contain at least two activities and may contain any number more than that.
Activities are the backbone of the Application.
There are many features that may be configured for activities that include routing, documents, messaging and custom fields.
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Id and Description
Activities may be entered in any order. If mistakes are made describing activities, they may be edited
at a later time. Begin by providing an Id and Description for the activity.
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Button Labels
Up to three buttons may appear on each activity. Button labels assist routing and are used for tracking
and auditing. Button labels need to be concise and descriptive. Additionally, status codes may be
entered to provide reasons for suspense. Reject is the only label that does not require a description.
When a description is not provided that button will not display on the activity.
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Activity List
Continue adding activities until all are entered that are necessary to realize Application.
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Validate and Continue
Review all activites and determine if any need deletion, order needs to be updated or more activities
need adding. Once all activities have been entered, a starting activity must be selected, by selecting
“Me”, to continue.
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Describe Documents
Documents are optional and may be skipped or added later. When added, documents may be
specified for the Application or an individual activity.
Three documents will be added for the Application process:
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- Patch management instructions
- Support engineer reviews patch application on the Apply Patch activity
- Business user evaluates Business Evaluation activity
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Scope identifies where that document will be available for viewing or checkout. When workflow is
selected as scope, the document is available at anytime through an application’s lifecycle. When a
specific activity is selected as scope, that document is only available when an application has advanced
to that activity.
When adding a document, select “Allow Checkout” to provide the ability for users to download
documents, change and upload documents into the system. When “Allow Checkout” and “Get Copy” is
checked, a “Select Option” appears from the document listing allowing users to select documents for
read only. By default if neither allow checkout nor allow get copy is checked, a select option appears
for users to view documents.
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Set Route
Once activities are defined for an Application, it may be routed. There is great flexibility in
controlling what occurs as users select submit buttons from within Applications. View the following image
for the shear simplicity in describing a complex map.
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Advanced Editing
The preceding sections displayed a wizard like process to enable users to quickly build the foundation
of an Application. At times the wizard provides everything that is needed. When that is not
enough, advanced editing provides additional features and the ability to edit what you have already
completed. Select the Appss tab and then select patch management.
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Activate Application
Applications are not available for creating work items until the Application is activated.
To activate an Application, select “Yes” from Active Application and select “Save”.
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Edit Activities
Activity descriptions, Id’s, starting activity, delete activity, and controlling the sending of email is
available at this location. Custom fields for specific activities may be added by selecting “Edit Activity”.
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Edit Route
Modify the Application's route.
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Custom Fields
When you need formatted data, then specify a the custom fields for formatting.
Any number of custom fields may be added.
When custom fields must be added to activities, select 'Edit Activities' and specify format for those fields.
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Edit Documents
Add new documents, delete existing documents and view the document contents.
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Edit Rules
Add or modify notification rules.
Rules may be applied to Application or activities and/or specific activities.
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Custom Messages
Applications send email nofications for many events that occur within ActiveWIT.
A standard message format is defined and sent for all Applications by default.
If this format must be modifed, do so at this location.
Important – HTML skills are required to adequately modify custom messages.
If a mistake is made on any message, select that message – Get Message - and then select “Overwrite
Message Window With Default”.
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Export
Any Application that's defined within ActiveWIT may be exported to file, which provides the following
features:
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- Develop Applications and then promote to quality assurance or production
- Save Application to source control
- Any Application that's exported may be imported into ActiveWIT.
This allows people to use similar Applications as importe accelerators to create other Applications.
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Simply type the directory location for the export and select export.
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