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Re: [epf-dev] Re: EPF Rapid data entry

Hi Kristian,

that sounds great. From my point of view, the more import wizards the better. We are somewhat in the thick of the project right now, so we will learn a few more lessons before I can say more, but it looks like we might be able to open source the Excel import when we're done.

Import wizards are great mainly because the things you work on (your word documents, Excel) can be e-mailed around and modified by people who do not have EPF. On the other hand, some rapid entry screens inside the GUI wouldn't go amiss either, perhaps in a tabular format to at least set up several method elements with names and descriptions in one go.

To be continued!

Christian


Kristian Mandrup wrote:

Hi Christian,

I have also needed a similar feature and have developed a "tool" in Java, that can take a directory structure containing documents saved as Word .html files and convert them all to a single EPF XML document ready for import, where Word metadata, filename or containg foldername is used for specifying how to treat the data (using conventions for headers names etc.) and which EPF element type to convert each Word document into (also resolves internal references to sub-documents).

An other idea for rapid data entry would be to design a custom DSL for EPF, perhaps using the Xtext project of Open ArchitectureWare, see:http://wiki.eclipse.org/Xtext and http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/oaw/doc/4.3/html/contents/xtext_reference.html

This would enable one to quickly describe the main model structure from within an Eclipse editor, something like:

activity "myAct1":"My first activity" {
        author: "K.Mandrup"
        mainDesc: "ddfdsg sdg dg gsd"
        tasks {
                ...
        }
}

deliveryProcess "myProcess":"My Process" {
        author: "K.Mandrup"
        mainDesc: "ddfdsg sdg dg gsd"
        ...
        activities {
                myAct1
                myAct2
        }
}
The model would be saved as XMI and can be converted to some other format for easy EPF import using an OAW workflow designed for this purpose with model transformations (generators) defined using the Xtend and Xpand2 languages, see: http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/oaw/doc/4.3/html/contents/core_reference.html.

A book is on the way (early next year?) describing how to use OAW 4.3 for real enterprise solutions.

--

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:11:57 +0000
From: Christian Nentwich <christian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [epf-dev] epf composer and content entry
To: epf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Message-ID: <492545FD.7010808@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

All,

Here's some feedback for you on EPF Composer, and some questions.

The tool seems very much oriented towards maintenance and maintaining
structural/model integrity, and it is good at that. However, to be
frank, it's not very useful for new content creation at the moment,
because a) it's not oriented towards data entry and b) the structural
overhead would put process analysts off.

In the project at hand, we are documenting existing processes and trying
to capture them in EPF. There are _hundreds_ of work products, roles and
tasks. Right click -> New, with a persistence call every time leading to
a three second delay is just not feasible, never mind asking process
managers unfamiliar with the tool to choose readable as well as internal
names. They want to be able to set up their roles, tasks, etc., fast -
maintaining process information is already a burden, making it harder is
not a good idea from our point of view.

Our users now maintain the method content in a spreadsheet, which we
have written an importer for. Does the EPF project have any plans to
facilitate rapid data entry? Am I describing a use case that is just not
what the project is intended for (i.e. is it intended for browsing and
tweaking standard processes like OpenUP)?

thanks,

Christian
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