Tim Bauer’s Running Thoughts

watched this webcast

Priority One: Measure Everything - Strategic Value of Healthcare Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing` Presented by Scott Wanless

today by WI’s Scott Wanless. Not a bad overview of the healthcare space with the last 15 minutes talking about Fujitus’s offering there. Some keys:

1. If M$FT likes it … Talks are underway with MSFT to have this be a solution Fujitsu might jointly push nationally.
2. Another angle for workflow … As you listen to Wanless talk about the drivers for the solution you can easily expand to other solution alternatives versus what he is offering (PIR).  One that came to mind for me is efforts to extend workflow adjustments / definitions in the the laymans hands. Many of the errors are in the workflow I suspect. There is too much data to act on effectively in the trenches (daily). How does the data (from things like PIR) get into a micro discussion … when it should … and stay in the background … when it shouldn’t. Workflow and rules engines my friends.
3. Doc / Nurse consulting … Watching these slides makes me think i need to change professions. What a shortage projected. 46% of GDP in healthcare by 2050 (god i hope not, we will be bankrupt for my kids).

Here are my detail notes.

• Scott Wanless
• 2:30 - Intro
…………..○ The problems
…………..○ The prescription
…………..○ The possibilities
…………..○ The payoff
• [bauer comment - note his style of ppt]
• 3:00 - The problem:
…………..○ 30% Waste in Healthcare
…………..○ Accurate? Matter? Quoted 8 times a day
…………..○ 45k to 100k deaths due to error
…………..○ Uninsured - 45k
…………..○ Prescriptions - 44% of people
…………..○ Annual cost increase (8%)
…………..○ HER adoption - 13-28%
…………..○ Doc Shortage - 200k
…………..○ US pop 65 or > - 20% by 2020
…………..○ Annual Growth in medical info (800 years)
…………..○ 9:00 - 17% of GDP tied to Healthcare
……………………….§ 2050 (he says) 46% of GDP … hrm … sensationalism?
• 10:15 - Prescription
…………..○ Its Info Tech
…………..○ 100’s of ways to invest ….
……………………….§ HER
……………………….§ EMR
……………………….§ BI / DW
…………..○ John Melski (measure everything - inside for protection)
……………………….§ Scott’s - Use the data you have,
• 15:07 - Where Do We Begin?
…………..○ Formula - Bridge (relative to BI)
……………………….§ Drivers
……………………………………□ Problems, plans, priorities, issues, trends, goals, ideas, requests
……………………….§ Products
……………………………………□ Applications, Processes, DW, Marts, Reporting
……………………….§ Uses
……………………………………□ Answers, support, share info / best practices, collaboration, support, put evidence in evidence based machine
……………………….§ Benefits
……………………………………□ Clinical, Business, Research, Mission, Strategic, Ops, Tech (Chasm Book mention)
• 22:45 - BI Value Bridge
…………..○ Restate above in 1 slide
• 24:00 - Patient Intelligence Registry (PIR)
…………..○ 1940’s started
…………..○ DPUB for PIR
……………………….§
……………………….§ [see jpg]
……………………….§ Persistance need (view activity of person)
……………………….§ Disease mgmt (serve populations appropriately)
……………………….§ Trends: Answer question of how to best serve demographic xyz
……………………….§ Capabilities: CMS measures. HHS rules. Better performance data for employee groups and payers. How to staff and mix.
……………………….§ Value: See it and market value our staff can / is driving
• 31:30 - Begin Using the Bridge
…………..○ Look for the bridge in conversations
…………..○ Look for the bridge on your plan
…………..○ Talk to it in strategic value discussion enablers.
• 33:00 - Q&A
…………..○ Other industries / countries that are effective? Number of industries do this. Telco, MFG, etc. Socialized health plans (Norway) is a solid example.
…………..○ Best of breed? Start w/ stack @ clients
…………..○ Cost health care? How does BI control. #1 cost is people. A lot of the cost in infrastructure as well. Also cost in right application of medicine / treatment.
…………..○ Point of diminishing returns due to silos? Yes. However 1st steps are key with assessment of cost/bene by step.
• 41:00 - Closure
…………..○ Probably ~15 beeps … (# of attendees @ end)

Watched this webcast this morning.

Advanced Search in MOSS 2007 — Bill English MVP, MSCE, MCT MindShare

I was just looking for background noise but this one turned out to be quite intriguing. Here are some key thoughts.

1. Value in Knowledge Aggregation I wouldn’t have put together the value of a singular aggregator embedded in the framework for collaboration till I watched this. Consider our Communities of practice. Would love to be able to embed into a give team site (say Project Services) an aggregated search index for ALL sources known to the big guy (intranet, extranet, web, ERP, etc). One stop shop for knowledge. Definite value message to clients … stop surfing the web for tidbits … have it be crawled for you.

2. No MOSS on this Stone. Sharepoint 2003 search was weak … due to indexes by site w/ no cross index relevance. Listening to the improvements this guy rattled off (including one index for all — so relevance will work) made me raise my eyebrow. I think they have really improved thier product here (still has gaps … but doesn’t everyone?)

3. Clarity of Why Help is Needing Setting Up MOSS? It was an interesting point by the speaker. If you deploy a search solution and it doesn’t work well to start … users will stop using it. MOSS can work well if you THINK about it awhile (model how your users will be searching, etc). Clients risk spending a ton of money rolling out content aggregators but not having a solid search design on top of it … and getting no ROI from the investment. We need to help them understand the complexity of setting up search CORRECTLY and play from there.

As always, here are my detail notes. I actually didn’t get to the end of this one (doh!) I suspect he kept going to around 1:20. I included a screen shot of search differences (2003 to MOSS).

Watched this webcast today

Intro to WWF

Not so much as it was new material but I was curious on if the message had matured since earlier (intro to WWF webcasts). It had a bit. The keys I took away were

1. Good Overview Slides. Had two good overview slides that I captured for you (see below). One on Biztalk vs WWF. The other on base execution view.

2. Domain Specific Activities. Its interesting that the Domain Specific Activities might be a way to seperate ourselves from the pack. For example, our investment in Patient Intelligence Registry (BI Play) will have Domain specific workflows (or could). Nice way to extend that play (as we are right now trying to build a Sharepoint front end based on Business Data Catalogue).

3. State. It’s interesting that this time around I began to think our messaging should be around state. Sequential is in there (granted). But state can be the forest business layer that triggers sequential flows when appropriate.

Detail notes are below:

Watched this webcast

Preparing for Web Content Management w/ Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

today based on (1) the set of our annuity accounts that are currently on CMS 2002 and (2) the rumor that certain clients are migrating from tier1 ECM products (like Documentum) to the o2007 Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) suite.

So here is what i took away:

1. Solid Marketing vs ECM Space. Good slides and discussion (at a high level) on how the pieces of MOSS can provide not just WCM (focus of this presentation) but the macro view of ECM in ways. For example records management.
2. WSS / WWF Based … AGAIN. Another product that is basing off the core of Windows Sharepoint Services and Windows Workflow foundation. It is clear that MSFT is standardizing on this infrastructure. If you aren’t grappling with what these features can do for you in an application framework — get on it.
3. Sizzle No Steak? Interesting how they didn’t show the product (this was captured in March however). So at that time it was probably too unstable for demo. Has anyone looked at it (Ruska? Baldwin?) since then?

Anyway, here is my detail list:

• Preparing for Web Content Management w/ Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

• Manish Sharma - Sr. Product Mgr
• Arpan Shah - Group Product Mgr

• 1:44 Agenda
…………….○ Evolution of WCM (cms2001, moss 2007)
…………….○ Features in MOSS
…………….○ New capabilities
…………….○ Migration cms 2002 to MOSS
• 2:00 Evolution
…………….○ CMS 2001
…………….○ CMS 2002
…………….○ MOSS 2007
• 3:30 Overview of MOSS 2007
…………….○ Collab
…………….○ Portal
…………….○ Search
…………….○ Content Management
…………….○ Business Processes
…………….○ Business Intelligence
• 7:00 ECM
…………….○ User Intfc : office, Web, 3rd party
…………….○ ECM: Doc Mgmt, WCM, Records Management, Forms Mgmt
…………….○ Svcs: Workflow, Meta, Policies, Library Svcs, Search, security, IRM, Collab
…………….○ Unified Storage: WSS + SQL Server
…………….○ [bauer comment - 1st time I have seen a ECM vision slide from MSFT, similar to Documentum and Stellent angles (at least in marketing points)]
• 10:00 - Author web content
…………….○ Talks to RM impacting (being available)
…………….○ WSIWYG editor (new)
• 11:45 - In Place Authoring Editing
…………….○ Author content with WSIWYG editor
…………….○ Spell check /tables
…………….○ Server side conversions (word to web page leveraging master page of site)
• 13:00 - Publish
…………….○ Templates - separate content and presentation
• 17:00 - Deploy and Manage
• 18:00 - Present content to Web Users
…………….○ High scale / performance
• 20:00 - Benefits
…………….○ Lower mgmt costs multi site / multi lang
…………….○ Business Driven content
• 20:30 - Liscensing Models
…………….○ Server / Cal (intranet models)
…………….○ Per Server (internet sites)
• 22:30 - Q&A
…………….○ Migration
…………….○ Availability - End 2006
…………….○ Public Beta - End of 6/30
…………….○ SQL Server 2005 Supported
• 23:30 - Key Arch Points (CMS and MOSS)
…………….○ No client footprint this time
…………….○ Editing - Users can add webparts and content (applications)
…………….○ Sharepoint Designer = Next Version of FrontPage
…………….○ Page Layouts = Templates
…………….○ WSS based = for example web content in WSS lists so you get page lock down, recycle bin, RSS feeds on page, workflow on pages, etc … all via WSS .. Also auth provider model works (could write a app provider in asp .net 2.0).
…………….○ Built on WWF. O2007 features. Configurable workflow templates. Serial, parallel, events, create workflows (via designer, or vs2005).
• 30:00 - Coexistance
…………….○ Can run in parallel (CMS and SP 2007)
…………….○ CMS - content, cms files (templates, etc), config
…………………………..§ Will have tools to move content
…………………………..§ Incremental or big bang content movements
…………………………..§ Templates - Get a blank template for every CMS templates (will generate). Won’t move code behinds. Manual apply code, styles (css files could port).
…………….○ Custom Code
…………………………..§ Search (Out of Box - OOB)
…………………………..§ Nav - OOB (plus Whidbey provider)
…………………………..§ Summary Roll Up - OOB (listings, TOC, rollup)
…………………………..§ Deploy Scripts - OOB
…………………………..§ Form Login - OOB
…………………………..§ Workflow - Better OOB
…………………………..§ Console Customizations - OOB
…………………………..§ Custom Placeholder Server Controls - Rewrite as WSS field control
• 42:00 - Application Code Migration
…………….○ Key point not 100% migration of customization on CMS
• 43:00 - Best Practices
…………….○ Get on SP2
…………….○ Minimize Templates (less than 30 per site)
…………….○ Get rid of going directly to the DB (use API’s and workarounds)
…………….○ Don’t put login in pages
…………….○ Leverage Whidbey provider models for navigation and forms (via SP2)
…………………………..§ Enables cool OOB Whidbey Nav
…………………………..§ Makes Nav and Form Login Simple
• 48:00 - Migration Resources
…………….○ Migration Whitepapers
…………….○ Public Beta is avail on 7/5
…………….○ Assessment Tool
…………………………..§ Application that you run on a dev machine and it looks at CMS2002 … tells you what you need to look at (in a way)
…………….○ Arch Guidance
…………….○ Review Reusability and ECM Whitepaper
…………………………..§ ECM - www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ecmwhitepaper.mspx
…………………………..§ BETA - get that
• 51:00 - QA
…………….○ What is Whidbey? ASP .NET 2.0
…………….○ Browser support better than CMS2002 (subscribers supports all models)
…………….○ WSS v2 to v3 is an upgrade … beta2 will address. Reuse on WSS will also be addressed.
…………….○ Blogs.msdn.com/arpans
…………….○ Highly distributed? Can publish to multiple farms
…………….○ Multi Lingual? O2007 on wss.v3 … can have different areas (called sites now) can have different languages. Page level translation is workflow. Control to switch to lang (in template)
…………….○ CM2001 migration. Write ASP code to asp.net.
…………….○ Offline. Take any stuff offline (groove, wss features, etc)

Watched this webcast this morning (working off the fat of vacation)

Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (Whats New)

John Daniels presented. He is the lead relative to FCIS around SP 2007 and is probably the broadest SP resource I have seen in all divisions to date. Overall had the following keys for me.

1. Great Attendance / Q&A. Looks like 80 some people attended and the reservations was around 150. So GREAT involvement (first one was 160 people online). More telling was the interaction during Q&A. 20 minutes of that. Most I have seen in a webcat by FAR (which says something).
2. Workflow is it my friends. ~50% of attendees said they wanted to understand workflow. Validates my belief that the biggest value around Sharepoint is FIRST focusing on business process re-engineering (optimization) and then how to enable that in workflow (SP or 3rd party or Manual). Need to keep digging into WWF (or WF i hear) and BizTalk. I suspect this ‘workflow’ focus is quite pervasive at this time.
3. Good Brand / Marketing Deck. This deck was more on establishing our grasp of the topic. Didn’t come up w/ any notable ah - ha’s from it. Probably focused more on high level consumers. To drive that I believe followup webinars are being formulated.

Here are the rough notes from the presentation:

Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (Whats New)
John Daniels (associate director, collaboration and portals)

………….○ 1:00 - Bad music
………….○ 3:00 - Agenda
……………………..§ About Fujitsu
……………………..§ Background on Sharepoint
……………………..§ Why Start Now?
……………………..§ Top Ten Features
………….○ 4:18 - Presenter
……………………..§ Nice overview of John
………….○ 5:00 - Pool on roles (to guide depth of discussion)
……………………..§ Around 70 people responding
………….○ 5:45 - Fujitsu Overview
………….○ 7:00 - Sharepoint Background (2003 v2)
……………………..§ Released in 2003
……………………..§ Fastest adopted in MSFT history
………….○ 9:00 - Why start now?
……………………..§ 6 to 8 months on MSFT 2007 start implementations
………….○ 10:00 - Context for Webinar
………….○ 10:40 - Top Ten Features
……………………..i. Master Pages
…………………………………1) Ability to push look to multiple sites
……………………..ii. Item Level Security
…………………………………1) Manage permissions at parent or item
…………………………………2) Global breadcrumb at top (site nav @ left)
……………………..iii. Security Trimmed UI
…………………………………1) Menu dynamic
…………………………………2) Much better site admin path via menue (1 click) versus the 2-3 of old
……………………..iv. Workflow
……………………..v. Recycle Bin
……………………..vi. Site / Library Templates
……………………..vii. Content Policies & Expiration
……………………..viii. My Site
……………………..ix. Mobile Enabled Sites/Lists
……………………..x. Total integration w/ Content Management Server
………….○ 17:00 - Demo
……………………..§ Covering the above (1-3)
………….○ 20:30 - Workflow
……………………..§ Every doc lib, list has 2 workflows embedded
…………………………………□ Collect feedback
…………………………………□
……………………..§ Use Sharepoint Designer or VS 2005
……………………..§ Workflow in o12 2007
……………………..§ Sharepoint Designer
…………………………………□ Show properties and css by region / page
………….○ 24:00 - Site Templates
……………………..§ New in Collab (wiki, blog)
……………………..§ Internet Presence Website
……………………..§ Personalization
……………………..§ Report Center
……………………..§ Search Center
……………………..§ etc
………….○ 25:00 - List Templates
……………………..§ Wiki library
……………………..§ Picture / Report Library
……………………..§ Translation Management Library
……………………..§ Data Collection Library - Key Part of Business Data Catalogue
………….○ 27:30 - Project Mgmt Lite Site
……………………..§ Easy Gantt
……………………..§ Simple tasks / dependancies
……………………..§ Promote project to professional
………….○ 28:30 - Mobile Enable Sites
……………………..§ One click
……………………..§ Domestic and International phone. Reduce images and size appropriately
………….○ 29:30 - Document Management
……………………..§ Research content types
……………………..§ Workflow and approval
……………………..§ Minor/major versions
……………………..§ Security and tracking
………….○ 31:00 - Centrally Admined Policy Templates
……………………..§ Archival workflow
………….○ 32:00 - Record Repository
……………………..§ Capture rich meta data
……………………..§ Content types can kick off workflow
……………………..§ Major/minor versioning (see published version - highlighted)
………….○ 34:00 - Slide Library
……………………..§ Ability to pull from one screen the thumbnails of slides that you need to include.
……………………..§ Will notify when those ‘master’ slides change. Keep them in synch
………….○ 36:10 - Forced checkout
……………………..§ Comments, version type, etc
………….○ 37:00 - Integration to Outlook
……………………..§ Can push site tasks to outlook tasks
……………………..§ Same for calendar
……………………..§ Can take docs from site offline (synch). Briefcase like.
………….○ 39:00 - RSS Feeds
……………………..§ Every list, every doc lib can be an rss feed
………….○ 42:00 - Mysite
……………………..§ User profile
……………………..§ Org Structure (what you have in common). Helps the social network.
……………………..§ Social network add on (degree’s of separation)
………….○ 44:00 - Content Management
……………………..§ Web content Management
……………………..§ Staging (setup scheduled tasks)
………….○ Poll - Greatest Challenge
……………………..Workflow was 47% of the problem. Workflow. 30 people.
……………………..○ Nice example of how to do a pool (talking points to each bullet)
………….○ 49:00 - Call to action
……………………..○ Readiness Assessment
…………………………………□ Analyze your environment
…………………………………□ Complexity matrix
…………………………………□ Understand the migration path and business impact
……………………..○ Beta2. 5/23. 1.4M downloads. 14,000 ftp servers
……………………..○ RTM for volume liscenses in Oct.
……………………..○ Full 2007 in 01/07 w/ Vista.
………….○ 50:00 - Q&A
……………………..§ Prior 2007 version integration?
…………………………………□ Document forthcoming. Good, better, best.
……………………..§ Sharepoint Designer add-on?
…………………………………□ Comes w/ Office Pro (or buy as add on)
……………………..§ Webpart search across libraries?
…………………………………□ Yes. One index in 2007 (better relevance / rankings)
…………………………………□ Search is full open API
…………………………………□ Need server to search across sites.
…………………………………□ Can use meta tags
…………………………………□ Storage limitations (2000 docs in folder or in list is a perf limit). Tree view comes out of box.
……………………..§ Taking docs offline doesn’t checkout? True.
……………………..§ 2003 integration / disconnection of portal and sharepoint.
…………………………………□ Sharepoint server on WSS. Sites look the same.
…………………………………□ WSS will be free still. WSS v3. Get certain features w/ pricing.
……………………..§ Printer friendly pages? Yes has been extended.
……………………..§ Save from office directly w/o drive? Yes use URL
……………………..§ 2003 to 2007 migrations how easy? Wait?
…………………………………□ Non blocking strategy. 2003 and CMS 2002.
…………………………………□ Different levels of migration complexity. For example Front page is fine.
…………………………………□ Custom site definitions need additional work.
…………………………………□ Look at non-blocking strategies. Readiness assessments.
…………………………………□ Tools MSFT will release to ease migration.
……………………..§ Features in WSS?
…………………………………□ All shown minus Internet site w/ CM.
……………………..§ O2003 for view? Yes.
……………………..§ Sharepoint 2007 how compare versus other CMS systems?
…………………………………□ Top right on Gartner per John.
…………………………………□ Especially w/ policy and content solid.
…………………………………□ Scalability is key.
……………………..§ How bundled? Separate SKU. Groove allows you to have extranet capability (share SPS site outside of intranet or content).
……………………..§ Migration SP 2001 to 2007? Ideally 2001 -> 2003 -> 2007? What you really want is the content not the arch. So its more about a content port.
……………………..§ Mobile Access Devices Supported? Security settings to make avail on www?
…………………………………□ All devices w/ windows mobile.
…………………………………□ Render to mobile device based on international sites.
…………………………………□ Enabled security (same as extranet model)
……………………..§ Integration w/ Small Business Server?
……………………..§ Infopath required? No. Forms Server go over? Works w/ all browsers (zero client footprint). Does require different liscensing.
……………………..§ Index capabilities? 2007 can be pointed to content source. Will index it. Basically Index server. Still have capabilities to hit 2003 SPS, Notes, Shared Drives, etc.

I watched this webcast (just for fun) today .. a quicky … with just 40 minutes in duration … 10 slides, 20 demo, 10 q&a.

Sneak Preview of WWF from an Early Adopters Perspective

It was definitely for the developers out there … 10 minutes of slides the rest of the time on code … and Q&A. From that here is my thoughts.

1. Stable or not Stable … unclear The more I look at more trench level information on WCF it seems unstable at this time. The code examples they were providing seemed to be more rigid than flexible. Perhaps its just thier focus … definitely not synching w/ earlier demonstrations.
2. I would grab thier code samples however … I would grab thier code samples … first time I have seen a different focus on the demo’s (versus building extensions off the same code base). They started from scratch … so could be a good baseline to review.

Here are my detail notes for those amused. Don’t go into withdrawls while I am on vacation (no posts from me next week on this stuff). [wink]

So I watched this webcast this morning.

Agile Project Management - Reliable Innovation

Recently (last 4 to 5 qtrs) we have been approached by clients that are trying to apply agile in thier environments. With that in mind I am beginning to be more curious on what the ‘pioneers’ in this space are doing.

At a high level I took this away:

1. Agile Doesn’t Mean Agile All the Time It was interesting how the speaker had a variety of points where he made sure to clarify Agile isn’t agile all the time. Its about being flexible in how you deliver primarily around the uncertainty in the project. More uncertainty more agile. Less uncertainty more classical (still pieces of agile). Good message.

2. They still avoid that budget thing The metrics quoted by this guy were about match to business goals … not about cost to achieve them. The unanswered question is … did we achieve 100% match but spend 80% of the budget (w/ overrung) to achieve the last 20%? Does that last 20% really drive the 80% of the value? Our estimating model does a better job (could be applied in agile structures) of showing the cost associated with various features. From which clients could assess lining out specific areas (lacking payback).

3. Liked Thier Parking Lot Status They showed an example of a parking lot status. If some watches snapshot it. Basically it was a 10,000 foot view of all the subject areas, activities in those, sub activites (metrics on stories that are ‘done done’) with stoplighting at the activity level. Could do that with process views as well.

Here are my detail notes for those inclined.

How many E’s, via ackroynms, can I get in a subject? Looks like three.

EMC = EMC
EDM = Enterprise Doc Mgmt
ECM = Enterprise Content Management

Anyway I watched this ‘quick’ (25 min) Sales Training: EDM [15545] webcast on the myLearn site of Documentum. If you need a login for that search the forums another post discusses it. I watched it because we continue to see ECM pipeline in WI and Documentum continues to be in the mix at all times. Specifically the pipeline is around EDM (Enterprise Document Management) so I was curiuos on Documentum’s angle in this space.

Turned out that this was a very overview webcast but, as always, there are tidbits:

• 1. Bundle Strategy They talked about how Documentum has a bundled strategy on pricing. They offer the whole enchilada. Not pieces. That is great if you are a hungry customer. But if you want more of a Weight Watchers fare … you are going to overpay (or put alot of food in the freezer). Kidding aside this is a serious point. We need to understand if the client needs all those bundled extensions and, if not, are there other options that are similar for the extensions they do want for less cost.
  3. One repository (Beats Stellent) I get the sense from this discussion that EMC has build a one repository model for the EDM line. This is relevant because other products (like Stellent) actually have one repository optimized for images … and another, lighter weight one, optimized for electronic documents from a knowledge worker. This is a benefit in my mind. I believe Stellent intends on consolidating but it is vaporware right now.
  3. Nice Overview Slides My favorite was the list of document types (~200 by EMC’s count) in a typical org. So when you talk about the value of ECM products … think about what is going on around those document types. I have attached the images at the bottom of this post

Here are my detail notes for those amused by such things:

Ah, now here was an example of a webcast where the summary and title sounded great but the horse flagged early in the race:

Integrating BizTalk Server 2006 and Windows Workflow Foundation

This guy was a MVP for MSFT on the BizTalk line and pointed to how they had built a $3M global system that had a plug and play forms model that business users did (basically where workflows or parts can be edited/added on the fly by the business). Unfortunately he didn’t show that too much … but did clearly have a deep DEEP grasp of BTS and WWF. He wandered around like a mad hatter at times.

Still there were keys:

1. BTS Can’t Do the Hosted Rules Model? He didn’t talk to it but one of his slides alluded to it. In short WWF can allow rules to be done in a variety of places (and managed in there). This enables the business to use a tool of thier choice versus a howitzer tool like the BTS Rules Composer. A good reason to weave together BTS and WWF if true.

2. WWF Can Scale Hosted By ASP.NET. Made an interesting point here that if the WWF process is loaded under ASP.NET it would inherit (as any webservice) alot of the scaling. He still feels if you are doing serious applications that BTS should step in for that role.

3. WWF is not the silver bullet. He talked about how alot of shops are getting all warm and fuzzy over WWF and basing apps just on that. He thinks it is too early to say if what the SLA and performance of a WWF solution can be (still in beta). For now BTS should be leveraged and, if it helps, a plan to weave it out if WWF if POC’d at some point to handle the load well alone for a give app.

In short, an intersting deck … but not as cool as the name implies … here are my raw notes.

Watched this webcast today (still gearing on a specific estimate for a client that heavily involves workflow)

Getting Up To Speed with Windows Workflow Foundation (Level 200)

Interesting point I only watched it because it wanted to watch something while I ran. Turns out that a ton of insights came out of it (seems MSFT is gearing up on this topic as well - getting more robust examples each week).

1. Visual Designer (can be hosted outside of VS). Bingo. This is what I have been looking for. The ability for end users to not have to go into VS to edit workflows. They showed a sample application that can allow a user to edit specific areas of workflows defined in VS. Take that and add some G&R/FC special sauce and you have something pretty cool (think similar to ECM templates and global regions couples w/ user definable areas on a website - now think process flow). Huzzah!

2. Sneaky MSFT or shall I say Brillant. It also became evident on what thier angle is on bundling / offering all this power on workflow/rules for free (in effect) to developers. Get the applications hooked on this style of construct and then let the applications dictate when the BizTalk server is needed to support applications that flounder hosting the workflow services on thier own. Brillant.

3. Free Workflow Monitor. They showed a sample application that allows a workflow manager to (1) select a workflow (2) see the history of threads that have gone through it or active ones and (3) drill into one historical thread and see why it pathed the way it did. Huzzah again. More special sauce and you have a nice workflow manager dashboard + a customer service troubleshooting tool (why did transaction xyz process the way it did).

Man … talk about lucking out. I assume that there will be subsequent webcasts that drill into the examples above (typical MSFT style) but this one is definitely worth watching … for the technical and business sides.

Here are my detail notes: