Solutions: BizPartner™ Product Overview

The major features of Triweb Solutions' BizPartnertm solution are:

• Available as licensed software and also as a hosted service
• Ability to automate/change existing processes
• Customizable user interface
• Data translation
• Real-time or batch environment
• Comprehensive reporting
• Fast, easy deployment & scalability

BizPartner™ is made up of several modules. Together, these modules provide a complete solution for the development of all your business process automation needs.

BizPartner™ Process Publisher
BizPartner™ Enterprise Server
BizPartner™ BPStation
BizPartner™ Control Center
BizPartner™ TrilloByte Client

BizPartner™ Process Publisher

BizPartner™ Process Publisher provides the business user with a tool to map, simulate,  evaluate and automate any business process. A user can drag and drop icons to create a process map and once finished, can publish the map to create a working prototype. This prototype can then be tested and evaluated to confirm validity of the map. This gives the user greater control over their business process and shortens the time needed to deploy a finished solution. Now the IT professionals and business users can truly work in a collaborative manner, bringing each party’s unique perspective and area of expertise to bear on any business process challenge.

Graphical Process Design

• Intuitive process validation and correction
• Single click process deployment
• Version control
• Central repository for maintaining process definitions.

Design and Simulation

• Business users can graphically represent their ideal process, including initial interface requirements for data gathering, the definition of roles and responsibilities and documentation or integration requirements.
• On the fly process creation and revision with the capability of publishing the process to the application server for testing, initial deployment or live process redefinition.
• The Publisher generates the necessary workflow application code based on the graphical map and deploys the XML output to the Web Service.
• The business user can simulate their design for performance and resource availability, and refine as necessary until satisfactory design is achieved.
• With the Publisher installed, map design can be done in both a connected or disconnected state. Thereby, giving the user the flexibility to work on process automation and improvement in virtually any environment.

Process Development and Application Integration

• Developers take the ideal model from the central repository and, using the Publisher, add the required application integration, enhanced interface designs and redefined role definitions.
• The central repository provides version control and process roll back capabilities. Using the Web Service, managers can also pull down any version of a published process from any machine with the Publisher installed.
• Developers can create forms with the editor of their choice and graphically link the forms to the Publisher.
• The Publisher helps to dramatically reduce development time with typical application development time ranging from a few days to a few weeks.

Process Deployment

• Processes are published to the BizPartner™ Server with a single click of the mouse.
• The Publisher also provides simple and intuitive map validation. Thereby making error detection and correction quick and easy, and ensuring the integrity of the map before deployment.
• Additional web interfaces are provided for extending processes that require more complicated interactions such as remote databases or data translation services.

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BizPartner™ Enterprise Server

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BizPartner™ Enterprise Server is the core component of the BizPartner™ product that handles all the transactions related to workflow, web services and data.

The Workflow Engine supports a comprehensive API and can effectively manage rule-based collaboration and reconciliation, exceptions, reminders, timed or escalated activities. The Server's n-tier design enables an easily maintainable and scaleable architecture based on the requirements of the business's volume.

• Rules-based collaboration and reconciliation
• Exceptions management
• Reminders and alerts including email notification
• Timed or auto escalation of activity
• Sub process support
• Scheduled action management

The Business Data Engine collects all data regarding processes, users, stages, actions and creates Intelligent Reporting, which allows monitoring, auditing and analysis of process activities in great detail in order to identify bottlenecks and improve overall system performance.

• Transaction reporting
• Process logging
• Business intelligence reports

The software industry has been trying to enable different platforms and different products to communicate with each other for a long time. Web Services is one of the ultimate results of these efforts. They enable different applications to meet on a common ground (the internet) and easily collaborate with one another. The BizPartner™ Web Service has been built with the notion of communicating with any web-service-enabled product on a secure environment. It supports a limited IP range, encryption, and transmission features along with the capabilities to communicate with a wide range of platforms and products like EDIFACT/X12, Microsoft BizTalk Server which makes the Web Service a robust orchestrated solution.

• Data transmission services using industry standard XML and SOAP.
• Data translation services. Includes support for XML, EDIFACT/X12, ASCII, and Microsoft's BizTalk Server
• Transmission to limited IP range
• Encrypted transmission
• Profile based authentication

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BizPartner™ BPStation

BPStation is the web interface to the BizPartner™ Enterprise Server. BPStation has four major components: Workflow, Application Center, and Administration.

Workflow

The Workflow component provides the interface to the workflow engine. The To-Do list exposes all the items that are currently assigned to the logged-in user. The Watch list allows the user to see items that are important to the user but not actively assigned. Blank Forms allows the user to initiate a new workflow process.

• To-Do list
• Watch list
• Status and history
• Blank forms

Application Center

The application center is a non workflow component that exposes a portal for custom applications. These applications can be created by purchasers of BizPartner™ or by using Triweb Solutions' consulting services. These applications can be anything that can reside in a web browser and also provides easy integration into workflow data. For example, one Triweb customer, Portland General Broadband, uses the Application Center to house a custom asset management system that Triweb Solutions, LLC created.

• Provides plug-in for custom applications
• Business process reporting
• Custom reporting

Administration

The administration section provides access for an admin to manage workflow related tasks. The admin can create/edit users, manage processes (add, delete, rollback, reassign, etc.), and view the BizPartner™ log for any errors or notifications that may have occurred.

• User manager
• Active process manager
• BizPartner™ log access

BizPartner™ Control Center

BizPartner™ Control Center is a secure web-based administrative tool to manage processes, partners, users, and roles over https connection. The Control Center allows administrators to make changes to processes, roles and associated users using a friendly web interface.

Administrative only access

BizPartner™ Control Center allows only users with administrative privileges to logon to the site. It verifies user login information over a secure connection with an SSL certificate.

• Administrative privileges
• Secure/Encrypted connection with SSL

Process manager

BizPartner™ administrators can manage and make necessary changes to their process definitions easily using the process manager. Process definitions include process name, type, process map, activation period, client IP address and implementation specific information for the TrilloByte client.

• Process manager stores the following information:
• Process name
• Activation through start and end date
• Process map in xml format
• Connection address (IP) and port
• Remote client type
• Remote component information

Partner manager

Partner manager provides the functionality to manage partner definition information. Administrators can add, change and delete partner information. Partner definitions include partner name, contact information, and activation.

Partner manager stores the following information:

• Partner name
• Contact information
• Activation

Role manager

Role manager provides add/edit/delete capabilities for associated roles of selected partners.

Role manager stores the following information:

• Role name
• Role Description

User manager

User manager provides a great user interface for administrators to manage users for partners. It allows add/edit/delete of users as well as role assignment.

User manager stores the following information:

• User first/middle/last name
• Email address
• Username
• Password
• Assigned role(s)

BizPartner™ TrilloByte Client

As discussed in the BizPartner™ Enterprise Server overview, communication to and from the BizPartner™ server is implemented using SOAP and BizPartner™'s Web Service. It is a relatively simple task for an experienced web service developer to create components that consume the Web Service. However, there are many companies looking to apply BPM to their business and don't have the available resources or technical expertise to implement access to the Web Service.

To compensate for this, BizPartner™ includes a thin client called TrilloByte that securely encapsulates all the necessary communication programming to make accessing the Web Service a breeze. TrilloByte is currently implemented as a Windows service (support for Java is in development). TrilloByte contains three major components: Web Service Integrator, Data Component Manager, and the File Integrator.

Web Service Integrator

The Web Service Integrator provides a secure connection to the BizPartner™ Web Service. Data is transfered between the server and client as encrypted XML over the SOAP protocol.

• Automates communication with the BizPartner™ Web Service
• Installs as a windows service with a very small footprint
• Supports encrypted transmission

Data Component Manager

The Data Component Manager allows for pluggable DACs (Data Access Components) to provide seamless access to local systems (in relation to the TrilloByte install). For example, connecting a workflow map from the BizPartner™ Enterprise Server to a QuickBooks database on your local network would involve three easy steps. First, install the TrilloByte client. Second, create a DAC component that accesses the QuickBooks API. Third, use the graphical TrilloByte interface and plug in the new component. It's that simple.

BizPartner™ includes pre-built DACs that can be purchased with your BizPartner™ order. Triweb Solutions, LLC also provides consulting and programming expertise to build custom DACs if your company doesn't have the necessary resources or technical expertise.

• Manages data access through programmable data access components
• Provides access to variety of databases including legacy systems
• Supports connections to multiple databases

File Integrator

The File Integrator is very similar to the Data Component Manager, but provides access to local files rather than a database. The File Integrator can pull and save data from the BizPartner™ Enterprise Server or open a local file and push data to the BizPartner™ Enterprise Server. The File Integrator also supports sending and receiving multiple files in a single transaction.

• Saves data from the server and into a file or directory
• Pulls data from a file or directory and send to the server
• Manages remote files