HumanEdj FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Questions

General

What is HumanEdj for?

First tell HumanEdj who you're working with and what you're all doing, then HumanEdj will help you do it.

After a beta trial lasting over 2 years that included hundreds of organizations of all types, sizes and locations, the HumanEdj beta trial is over. The concept of a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS) is proven, and HumanEdj is now a commercial product.

Since every organization has different integration needs, we supply HumanEdj as a component, to organizations interested in building products or custom applications with next-generation collaboration functionality.

HumanEdj itself is a set of Java libraries that can be used to create Web, desktop or mobile applications.
The desktop application shown in the Web site video is an example provided to demonstrate HumanEdj capabilities.
The HumanEdj component is provided with an industrial-strength template Web application that can be customized to suit your needs.

2 forms of HumanEdj license must be purchased:

Per server installation, for creation of collaborative applications that integrate HumanEdj functionality with other enterprise IT infrastructure - priced similarly to enterprise middleware such as Oracle database
Per seat, for each person who uses such an application - priced similarly to mainstream office software such as Microsoft Outlook

Varying levels of discount on list prices are available to organizations who purchase in quantity, for example in order to resell HumanEdj.

If your organization is interested in pursuing HIMS capabilities further, then please join the HumanEdj Web forum, supplying full contact details including direct telephone number and information about the projects, initiatives, ventures, products, etc that you have in mind. We will then send you a link to download the demonstration desktop application, and contact you to discuss your use of HumanEdj.

An enterprise-strength template Web application that can be used as a basis for construction of your own Web application based on HumanEdj is available from Role Modellers on purchase of HumanEdj.

I've installed HumanEdj. But I don't understand what it does, or how to use it!

Well, the underpinning concepts are new to most people. However, HumanEdj makes it as simple as possible to get started! The software requires no configuration in most cases, and if you simply want to improve the way you handle email and access documents, you can start using HumanEdj with no training at all.

Having said this, you will get the best from HumanEdj if you make an effort to understand some new ideas about what work is, as well as about how to work better. Steps in self-directed learning about HumanEdj are given below.

Why should people have to make such a mental effort? Would it not be possible to deliver all the productivity and management benefits of a Human Interaction Management System via software that has no initial learning curve?
Unfortunately, any genuine improvement in working practice requires some preparation in order to be effective. HumanEdj is software that implements the principles and patterns of Human Interaction Management (HIM). It is these principles and patterns that deliver the business advantages, and in order to apply principles and patterns you need first to understand them. In the case of HumanEdj, you will not get the best from it until you appreciate what a Role is, what an Interaction is, and so on.

So if you seek productivity and management benefits from HumanEdj, and are trying to learn it single-handed, you need to put aside some time.

[STEPS RECOMMENDED TO EVERYONE - DURATION LESS THAN 1 DAY]

First watch the official Role Modellers demo video of HumanEdj (6 minutes).
Work through the tutorials below (or choose Tutorial from the Help menu in HumanEdj itself)
Read the User Guide chapter "Introduction to HumanEdj" in full.

[STEPS RECOMMENDED FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION]
Watch the narrated screencast introducing Human Interaction Management (15 minutes).
Follow the more advanced tutorials - see links below.
At your leisure, read more of the User Guide. In particular, it is worth reading the chapter "Going further with HumanEdj".
If you then have specific questions that are not answered in the above learning materials, scan through the rest of this FAQ, and consult it when encountering difficulties. It answers common questions that you are also likely to have.
Visit the HIM Web site to gain more understanding of what HIM is all about.
Read the book on Human Interaction Management (HIM):

    Human Interactions: The Heart and Soul of Business Process Management (Harrison-Broninski, Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2005)
        Buy from amazon.com
        Buy from amazon.co.uk

Of course, some people do not have the time or inclination for self-directed learning. So many organizations adopting HumanEdj will need training. There have been various studies, for instance on ERP adoption in Communications of the ACM, showing that return on investment in business software is directly linked to pre-release training:

"The focus for many organizations on implementing and upgrading ERP systems has been the resources required to construct the system (such as money, people, and technology), and the anticipated business value the system will provide to the firm. Equally important, however, is that users are able to utilize the new system to perform their job functions. Staff training is, therefore, a critical component for success. Yet proper investment [in] training is often overlooked and at times critically underfunded. The true benefits of upgrading an ERP system cannot be realized if users are not using the system properly."
"ERP II: Best Practices For Successfully Implementing An ERP Upgrade", Robert C. Beatty and Craig D. Williams, Communications of the ACM, March 2006 (Vol. 49, Number 3), p.105-109

Like ERP in the 1990s, or Windowed operating systems in the 1980s, HumanEdj is a step change in working practice, and while most people are enthusiastic about gaining personal productivity improvements, and most organizations seek increased management efficiency, it may not be fair to ask people to adopt such a step change without help. Experience to date shows that:

A 5-day workshop is generally enough for a core team to become familiar in detail both with the underpinning ideas and the software itself. The workshop should include no more than 10 people. Attendees will then become internal evangelists for HumanEdj use - following the workshop, they will be responsible for creating and maintaining a "community of practice" inside the organization.
A 1-day workshop is then enough for other people in the organization, since they can rely on the core team to act as coaches and mentors afterwards. The 1-day workshop can possibly be given by members of the core team, depending on availability. Again, each workshop should include no more than 10 people.

See below for information about training.

Full-scale usage of HumanEdj is no different to adopting any other fundamental IT innovation, and if the adoption is handled sensibly, it will bring the same dramatic improvement to organizational operations. But like any business improvement initiative, training is helpful for people used to a previous way of working.

Eventually, more people will be familiar with the principles of HIM, and the effort required to adopt HumanEdj will be reduced, or even vanish. HIM is now taught in management schools and Universities worldwide, so the next generation of "interaction workers" will be ready for HumanEdj. But for now, the benefits to be gained from HumanEdj are linked to an initial investment in facilitating the transition.

What tutorials are available for HumanEdj?

There are different tutorials, dealing with different aspects of HumanEdj.

HumanEdj is a type of software known as a Human Interaction Management System (HIMS). The concept of a HIMS is new to many people. In the same way that an operating system provides you with access to low-level computing resources (programs, files, networks, ...), a HIMS provides you with access to high-level work resources (colleagues, messages, systems, ...). A HIMS is like an operating system for your work.

In particular, a HIMS help you collaborate better with colleagues, by letting you structure the work you do together. Using a HIMS, you can agree how you will go about a piece of collaborative work - carry out a project, start a venture, resolve an issue, do joint research, merge companies, or any other interactive human work. Further, you can revise this agreement as often as necessary during the course of the work, to alter how it is currently being carried out and decide on next steps.

Hence, using a HIMS to collaborate allows you and your colleagues to:

Share the same understanding of each party's goals, responsibilities and commitments;
Work together to adapt to changing circumstances and find innovative solutions.

Not everyone in a particular collaboration needs to use a HIMS. For instance, messages sent by one person via a HIMS can be read, and responses sent, by other people using a normal email program.

However, most people find it worthwhile to use a HIMS, since as well as helping structure collaboration it also supports you during the work itself. In particular, messaging via email and management of attached files are handled much better by a HIMS than by a standard email program. For instance:

Large volumes of messages can be handled effectively;
Messages are naturally grouped and prioritized;
Discussions are prevented from fizzling out, fragmenting among different colleagues, or losing their purpose;
Documents are stored in their natural home, rather than scattered all over your file system;
You can return to a previous version of a document, and know what versions your colleagues are using;
Progress can be tracked of responsibility assignment and action execution;
There is a means to assess the value of all work carried out; and
Audit trails can be automatically recorded and distributed.

To illustrate the different ways in which you can use HumanEdj, there are 2 separate tutorials.

The Basic Tutorial explains how to use HumanEdj for messaging, and how to put some initial structure into Stories.

The Advanced Tutorial explains how to put more structure into Stories, along with many of the features of HumanEdj that help make collaborative work more efficient and effective:

Making voice calls;
Instant messaging;
Data entry forms;
Business rules to enable and validate work;
Scripting;
Communicating intentions;
Defining specific responsibilities;
Recording personal characteristics;
Levels of management control;
Structuring work assignment;
Using templates of various kinds;
Making a new case from a template or templates;
Sharing workspaces;
Managing data inside a Role;
Using the clipboard;
Generating business intelligence;
Automatic status reporting;
Examining audit trails;
Customizing message transfer;
Automating work;
Calling Web services;
Using HumanEdj functions from other applications.

You should complete the Basic Tutorial before starting the Advanced Tutorial.

Download the HumanEdj Tutorials from the HumanEdj Web forum.

See below for information about training.

Does Role Modellers provide training?

Role Modellers provides a standard Human Interaction Management Starter Package.

We are also able to help organizations draw up and implement customized training programmes, and has a network of partners around the world in order to deliver local support.

What are the features of HumanEdj?

To download the HumanEdj feature list, right-click on the link below and choose "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As...":

HumanEdj feature list

Why is HumanEdj a client program, not a Web application used via a browser?

A version of HumanEdj that can be used via a Web browser is in development. This provides limited functionality compared to the desktop version - for instance, with respect to diagramming.

Hence, for full functionality the desktop version of HumanEdj is necessary. Further, there are a number of reasons why people may choose to continue using the desktop version of HumanEdj:

It is not sensible to try and provide the same level of user interface functionality in a browser application that you can in a desktop application. Browser programming technology is too lightweight to support truly sophisticated client applications - Javascript, for example, was never intended for use in creating powerful diagramming tools such as the HumanEdj Overview viewer. Any attempt to provide enterprise-class user interfaces solely via a browser will ultimately founder, due not only to problems of download and processing time but also because it is building a house on sand.
The kind of collaborative human processes supported by HumanEdj typically involve people from more than one organization. Hence all participants may not have access to the same servers, or applications running on those servers - and even if this could be provided, there are many situations in which no one organization has the right to "own the process". Hence it is necessary for all concerned to work in peer-to-peer fashion, rather than interacting via a centralized server application. The Web version of HumanEdj allows users to store their Books locally (i.e., on their hard disk rather than on a server), but even centralizing the process engine creates a form of bottleneck.
Any system intended for use by all kinds of people in all kinds of situation must be very easy to use, doing most of the work for you invisibly. This is not true of "Rich Internet Applications" - they present a different user interface in different browsers, impose different authentication and authorisation constraints on different servers, and do not interoperate in any consistent fashion. The desktop version of HumanEdj wraps all this complexity into a single user interface, which looks the same on all platforms and intelligently manages complexity on your behalf.
Any Web-based application is available only when you are connected to the Internet. But in many working situations no such connection is available - when you are in transit, for example. The desktop version of HumanEdj, however, can be used at any time, even on any device. Put the program and your Book on a USB memory stick, for instance, and you can work wherever you are, using any computer to which you happen to have access, whether or not an Internet connection is available.
Most organizations are drowning in complex middleware systems, each of which carries a very high total cost of ownership. No-one wants more such systems. HumanEdj is lightweight - the existence of a desktop version means there is no barrier to adoption, whether for one person or for the entire organization, since there is no need to involve the IT department at all.

Further, our vision for HumanEdj goes beyond current computing platforms, to The Future Of Personal Devices.

How can I find out what's new in this version of HumanEdj?

Choose "Release Notes" from the Help menu.

To see what is new in the very latest version available online, click on "what has changed" on the download page.

Is there a version of HumanEdj for other platforms than Microsoft?

HumanEdj is a platform-independent Java application - it can be deployed to any modern operating system with native look-and-feel. However, for now we are releasing Windows versions only in order to concentrate our development resources.

Java is not permitted in our enterprise. Is there a non-Java version of HumanEdj?

HumanEdj requires Java. But HumanEdj is a pure desktop application. Is is really Java that is forbidden, or just server-side Java? All you need to do in order to use HumanEdj is download it and run the setup wizard, which includes a Java runtime. No server software is required, and if you use Microsoft Outlook, no configuration either. It is that simple.

How does HumanEdj interact with Outlook and the rest of my IT environment?

With regard to email:

HumanEdj makes copies of emails that people have sent you, either by retrieving them from Microsoft Outlook (the default on Windows) or by downloading them from an email server of your choice using POP3/IMAP and optionally SSL/TLS.

In the case of Outlook, received emails are moved from the specified Outlook inbox to another Outlook folder (by default called HumanEdj) once they have been copied into HumanEdj, so they are still available in Outlook itself.

In the case of an email server, received emails are copied also to a local MBOX file as a backup separate from HumanEdj itself, then deleted from the server.
Subsequent manipulation of the email copies made by HumanEdj is done entirely within HumanEdj itself.
HumanEdj sends emails on your behalf on request, either by copying them from HumanEdj into a Microsoft Outlook outbox (the default on Windows) or via an SMTP server of your choice.

In the case of Outlook, emails sent from HumanEdj are subsequently available in Outlook itself from the appropriate Sent Items folder.
To facilitate access to Outlook by HumanEdj during email transfer, HumanEdj includes a component that makes it unnecessary for the user to manually give their permission for HumanEdj to access Outlook.

Note that this component is part of HumanEdj - i.e., it is not an Outlook plug-in. Note also that the component does not expose Outlook to unsupervised access by any other program than HumanEdj.

More generally, HumanEdj is a powerful work management tool that can be configured to carry out many kinds of task on the user's behalf, as specified by the work process designer. These tasks can be on the desktop (for instance, creating and editing documents) or on a server (for instance, by calling Web services). There are controls built into HumanEdj that can be used to configure, enable or disable the more powerful features - scripting, for example.

Finally, HumanEdj allows auditing of actions carried out using it in various ways and at levels ranging from coarse- to fine-grained. HumanEdj auditing is naturally integrated into work management, in that customizable audit reports are automatically delivered to the appropriate managers from within HumanEdj itself.

How many organizations are using HumanEdj?

In general, it is early days for the Human Interaction Management System, of which HumanEdj is the reference implementation.

HumanEdj 2 was made available for public download at the end of February 2007, with only a limited user interface. Over 100 organizations of many sizes, types and locations volunteered to beta test the software, and feedback from testers was used as input into the design of HumanEdj 3, the first version to include a full-service user interface. HumanEdj 3 was released for beta testing during November 2007.

With regard to the exact size of the current user base, HumanEdj has been offered free from various download sites since its initial release, so accurate figures are not available. Further, the principles of Human Interaction Management are available for all to use via books and online material. However:

Major projects are based on the ideas and the software, some internal to global corporations and several sponsored by governments.
The ideas and software are the basis for University and Business School courses in several countries now, both at undergraduate and at post-graduate level.
In 2006 there were in excess of 50,000 unique visitors to the Human Interaction Management family of Web sites.

Installation

When I tried to upgrade HumanEdj, I got an message saying there was an "Error opening file for writing"

This occurs when you have first uninstalled HumanEdj and then tried to reinstall (possibly a later version of) HumanEdj, without rebooting in between. Here is the sort of dialog that typically pops up:

If you see a dialog similar to this while installing HumanEdj, just click on Ignore. The install will then proceed correctly.

However, if you start getting security alerts from Outlook on using a new install of HumanEdj, see here.

The file "secman.dll" is the HumanEdj component that prevents Outlook security alerts. This file is "registered" with the operating system on install, which means it cannot simply be deleted on uninstall - rather, the uninstall process "de-registers" the file and marks it for deletion on the next system reboot. Until then it cannot be over-written - hence the error dialog during re-install. Note that this component is part of HumanEdj - i.e., it is not an Outlook plug-in. Note also that the component does not expose Outlook to access by any other program than HumanEdj.

In general, there is no need to uninstall a previous version of HumanEdj before installing a new version. Just download and run the installation file for the new version and it will over-write the previous version.

Note that upgrading to a new version of HumanEdj is much easier for users with an Organizational license, since they can use the Help menu option "Update HumanEdj automatically". Not only does this download only those parts of HumanEdj that have changed, rather than the whole program, but also there is no need to go through a re-install process at all - the software will update itself without you having to do anything.

HumanEdj hangs when trying to create a Book

This is probably a firewall/antivirus issue. In particular, some old versions of Norton AntiVirus (such as 10.0.13.3) prevent HumanEdj from running if "Script Blocking" is enabled.

This is a bug in the old versions of Norton, since:

HumanEdj does not use any scripting languages to set up a Book - there is Groovy support as a means of scripting HumanEdj itself, but this has to be configured as part of Story design.
Recent versions of Norton (such as Norton 360) do not affect HumanEdj even with all controls enabled.

The solution is either to upgrade Norton to a more recent version, or disable "Script Blocking" in Norton.

Also see below regarding firewall configuration generally.

My firewall includes a feature designed to stop unauthorised software from sending mail. So I need to add the relevant *.exe for HumanEdj to the approved list. What is required is the process name. Can you tell me what this is?

To allow email access to HumanEdj, configure your firewall to include C:\Program Files\HumanEdj\jre\bin\javaw.exe as an allowed process.

If this does not work for you, try C:\Program Files\HumanEdj\humanedj.exe, which is the parent process.

The above instructions assume you have installed HumanEdj in the default location. If not, adjust the filenames accordingly.

A dialog pops up asking for my CD key for Microsoft Office

If you have a version of Microsoft Office installed for which the trial or license period has expired, the attempts that HumanEdj makes to communicate with Microsoft Outlook will be halted by a dialog prompting you to enter a license key. This will disrupt the normal operation of HumanEdj. Further, HumanEdj is unable to detect that this is going on, so cannot work around it.

The solution is either to license Microsoft Office properly, or to uninstall it completely from Windows using Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs.

A dialog pops up saying "Outlook 2007 Startup"

If you have Microsoft Outlook 2007 installed but have not yet used it, a dialog may pop up titled "Outlook 2007 Startup", saying "Welcome to the Outlook 2007 Startup Wizard …".

This may happen several times in a row, as HumanEdj tries to connect to Outlook first to find out your name, then to load your system address book, and so on.

To avoid this problem, before starting to use HumanEdj either configure Microsoft Outlook 2007 or uninstall it.

How big is HumanEdj?

With regard to disk space:

The setup file for HumanEdj is about 95MB.
On disk HumanEdj occupies about 160MB.

With regard to memory:

HumanEdj typically uses between 10 and 20MB of memory when running.
HumanEdj will never use more than 512MB of memory when running.

Configuration

How do I create a new Book?

Firstly, do you really want to? A Book is a workspace, and most people need only one to contain all their Stories and Identities.

The main time when more than one Book is useful is when running HumanEdj on a new computer - for instance, you can carry around your Book (possibly along with the HumanEdj installation program) on a memory stick in order to run HumanEdj from any computer at all. In this case, you will need to point the current HumanEdj installation at a folder containing your existing Book. To do this:

Choose "Preferences" from the Book menu
On the Book page, click "New..." and choose the folder containing the Book and its associated files and sub-folders.
Click OK and log in to the Book as usual.

Another case in which it is useful to create a new Book is for testing purposes, if you are trying a process out on your own. In this case, you can create a new Book for each dummy participant. Each Book will contain an Identity with a email address set up specifically for testing purposes. To do this, repeat the following procedure for each dummy participant:

Choose "Preferences" from the Book menu
On the Book page, click "New..."
Choose the folder that is to contain all test Books, and click "Make New Folder"
Right-click on the new folder, choose "Rename" and specify a name for the new Book
Click on the folder that is to contain all test Books, and then click on the new folder you just created (this is necessary on Windows to ensure that the new folder is returned from the dialog)
Click OK in the folder selection dialog and then OK in the Book Preferences page
You will be prompted to enter and then to confirm a password for the new Book
When you are logged in to the new Book, choose "Configure Email" from the Book menu and click "Next"
In the "Configure Email Account" dialog, uncheck "Use Microsoft Outlook?" (if necessary) and enter server details of a test email address for this Book.
Click "Finish".

Instructions on testing HumanEdj alone.

My HumanEdj installation has got into a mess - how do I make a clean reinstall?

First, you shouldn't need to reinstall HumanEdj. If your Book has become a mess, just create a new Book in a different folder and switch to that one by choosing "Preferences" from the Book menu. You can do this even if you can't log in to your current Book.

However, if for some reason you really do want to start completely from scratch, you need to do the following:

Uninstall HumanEdj.
On Windows, choose Start menu -> HumanEdj -> Uninstall HumanEdj
Delete the folder where the program keeps its own, non-Book specific memory of what has been going on. Without doing this, uninstall on its own followed by reinstall will simply put you back where you were.
On Windows, this folder is
C:\Documents and Settings\<your Windows account name>\Local Settings\Application Data\HumanEdj
Reinstall HumanEdj.
Use the original HumanEdj_x_y_z_setup.exe file

Note that there are various ways to backup Books in order to prevent loss of your workspace.

I am trying to make a Basic Collaboration but am confused. Do I need to create a new Identity? Can I select email addresses from a list?

The following concepts are all related, but it is vital to understand the difference between them:

A Role represents a particular responsibility in a Story (e.g., Engine Designer, Auditor).
Roles can be types or instances - e.g., in a particular Story there may be one Auditor type, along with several Auditor instances (one for each actual Auditor in the Story).
A User represents a person collaborating in a Story.
Users can also be types or instances. A User type is a kind of person (e.g., Chartered Engineer, Accountant). A User instance is an actual person (e.g., Fred Smith, Jane Green). Each User instance in a Story may be assigned to one or more Role instances in that Story. There can also be relationships between User types and Role types. A User has a receive address to which HumanEdj sends all messages intended for the Role instances assigned to that User.

Note that it is not necessary to use User/Role types at all if you do not wish to - many Stories, such as Basic Collaborations, have only User/Role instances.
An Identity represents the person running the HumanEdj program.
An Identity is part of a Book not a Story. It tells HumanEdj how to send/receive messages on your behalf. An Identity may be assigned to any number of User instances in various Stories - this is how HumanEdj identifies the work that you personally are responsible for.

For example, a Basic Collaboration is a Story involving many Role instances (make such a Story by choosing "New Collaboration..." from the Book menu). Each of the Roles in this Story has an associated User instance - in Explore mode, choose "Show Colleagues" from the Show menu to see these User instances. One of the User instances will be assigned to your own Identity - look at the Story in the Overview viewer to see this.

When creating the Basic Collaboration, you will be able to select from the email addresses of all Users already in the Book, if there are any, along with any other addresses in the Book's Address Book. If not, you will have to type or paste in the email addresses you want to collaborate with. Each email address you enter, along with the email address of the first Identity in the Book, will become the receive address for a User instance in the Story (and will be added to the Book's Address Book for future use).

If you are trying to test HumanEdj alone, do not make several Identities in a Book. Rather, make several Books, each containing one Identity. In one of these Books, create a Basic Collaboration including the email addresses of each Identity, then press F9 to distribute this new Story to the other Books. Instructions on creating the Books.

User Interface

The Properties view has vanished

If you either close or minimize the Properties view in Explore mode before switching to Achieve mode, on return to Explore mode the view will no longer be available. The solution is to choose "Default Window Layout" from the Show menu when in Explore mode, and the Properties view will re-appear as normal.

Sometimes values in the Properties viewer do not seem to have updated correctly

Occasionally when using the Overview, you may edit a value in the Properties viewer and see that the new value appears in the diagram (and in the Details viewer) but the old value is still shown in the Properties viewer for the Overview. If you then try and edit the value in the Properties viewer again, you are presented with the new value as a starting point - although the old value is still shown in the Properties viewer following such subsequent edits.

This is a bug in the current version of the diagramming framework used to implement HumanEdj. The bug is benign, since no data is ever lost (new values are always stored correctly in your Book). Further, the behaviour only occurs after editing particular properties in the diagram itself (the live property of a Story, the instance property of a User/Role, the REACT type of an Activity, or the send property of a Part Interaction) and even then only does so occasionally.

If the behaviour annoys you, the workaround is first to close the Properties viewer (left-click on the X in its top right-hand corner) and then to re-open it (right-click anywhere on the diagram and choose Show Properties View). You will find that the strange behaviour is gone.

Backup

How do I backup my Book?

There are various approaches, which can be used separately or in tandem. Some require effort on the user's part; some do not.

The approaches that require user effort are provided via menu options within HumanEdj. In order of increasing usefulness for backup:

Book -> "Export Book" exports the Book to an XML file. This file is plain text but passwords and any other sensitive data within it are encrypted.

Note that other files associated with the Book, such as BOOK External Entities, are not exported by this means. In the licensed version of HumanEdj, exporting or leaving a Story also creates an archive of all files associated with the Story, including any previous versions of each file.
In the licensed version of HumanEdj, it is possible to right-click on most objects and choose "Export Data to File". This generates and opens a "comma-separated variable" (CSV) file containing all data in the chosen object, organized in detail according to its use in the process as a whole. This feature is not strictly a backup technique, but is intended for use in generating business intelligence from HumanEdj. The CSV file will typically open in a spreadsheet application, and can then be used to create reports, charts, pivot tables and other forms of business intelligence. However, the data items in the file include both current and historical values of data, with current values shown on the line preceding the lines containing historical values, so significant audit trail information is included.
Book -> "Copy Book..." copies the encrypted Book file along with any other files in its folder tree to another location. This can be used both as a convenient and powerful backup technique and also to transfer your work to a removable storage device for use with HumanEdj on another machine. Note that since the copied Book file is encrypted it is necessary to keep a copy of the Book password separately.

The approaches that require no user effort utilize existing organizational infrastructure. Again in order of increasing usefulness for backup:

The records all organizations must keep of their email can be used to preserve a history of correspondence via HumanEdj. Such records are now accepted in a court of law.
In the licensed version of HumanEdj, the "Update Managers" feature automatically updates the manager of each Identity with a copy of each live Story in which it has a User playing a Role instance. This is done on exit or on closing a Book. The update can also be invoked from the Book menu. This feature is not strictly a backup technique, but is intended both to preserve an audit trail of current work and also as part of the management reporting implementation in HumanEdj.
Each time a Book is closed, a backup copy of the Book file is made automatically in a temporary folder on the file system, in order to protect against data loss or corruption due to a system crash during the following session. If a session is aborted without giving HumanEdj a chance to close the Book normally, the backup is made next time the Book is opened, prior to carrying out any other operations. Choose "Restore Book" from the Book menu to restore the Book file from a selected automatic backup. The number of such backup files is limited, and after this number is reached the oldest will be deleted automatically (the limit can be customized if desired). It is necessary to keep a copy of all Book passwords separately, since some backed up Book files will be encrypted (those made at the close of a session). Only the Book file is backed up in this way, not any of the associated files or folders in the Book folder. More information on automatic backup in HumanEdj
HumanEdj workspaces can be located not on your personal machine, but on a file server, or even in an Enterprise Content Management system that provides a virtual file system interface (such as the commercial Oracle Content Management or the open source Alfresco). In all these cases, archive and backup of HumanEdj Books will be handled automatically as part of standard enterprise IT practice. It is necessary to keep a copy of all Book passwords separately, since the backed up Book files will be encrypted.

Messaging

Configuring POP/IMAP/SMTP

Here are some troubleshooting tips for configuring access to email servers in HumanEdj:

Sometimes you have to turn POP access on for the email account (as with Gmail, for example). Your IT support department may need to do this, or you may be able to do it yourself via the email provider's Web site.
If the email service provides secure transmission of messages, and this is turned on (as it is by default with Gmail POP, for example), you also need to configure the HumanEdj Email Account to use SSL/TLS.
To retrieve email from Microsoft Exchange or IBM Notes/Domino, you may wish to use IMAP rather than POP. However, in the case of Exchange it is generally simpler and more efficient to use Microsoft Outlook as an intermediary.
If you use IMAP to collect email from a Gmail account, do not use SSL/TLS in HumanEdj.

MBOX configuration

If you prefer direct email server access via SMTP/POP/IMAP to using Microsoft Outlook, you may decide to use a new email account with HumanEdj, since then there is no risk of any other email program intercepting messages meant for HumanEdj. However, if you wish to use your regular email account with HumanEdj, that's fine.

Note though that if you intend also to use a standard email program with this account, you should specify in your HumanEdj Email Account the MBOX file in which your other email program puts HumanEdj messages.

This may be your default inbox folder, or another folder to which you filter all messages with [HUMANEDJ] in the subject line. Then, any messages intended for HumanEdj that are grabbed by your standard email program will be picked up later by HumanEdj from this MBOX file (and deleted from the MBOX file once read by HumanEdj).

MBOX configuration is unnecessary with email services where messages are never downloaded locally but stored only on the server. Many people use Gmail like this, for example.

Is there any alternative to POP/SMTP for messaging? We use MS Exchange and our IT manager is, understandably, resistant to installing/modifying production servers.

HumanEdj is able to send/receive email via Microsoft Outlook, and hence via Microsoft Exchange if your installation of Outlook does so. In fact, if you are running HumanEdj on Windows, Outlook will be the default means of email send/receipt, configured automatically on creation of a new Book (workspace).

If you use Outlook for email send/receipt in HumanEdj, note that you may need to configure Outlook security for HumanEdj.

Can I send messages to people who don't use HumanEdj?

If your colleagues do not wish to use HumanEdj like you, messages that you send them will be picked up by their standard email program. Replies that they send will go to all parties in the corresponding Interaction (even if they use Reply rather than Reply All) and will be processed normally by HumanEdj.

However, HumanEdj will not be able to detect when attached files sent from a standard email program are actually new versions of existing data items in your Role. If you want full structured control over document creation/sharing/versioning, all parties need to use HumanEdj.

How can I create "dummy colleagues" for testing?

You can simulate colleagues by setting up multiple Books and switching between them. In this way you can test a complete collaborative work process all on your own.

Note that each Book will require its own separate email account.

Instructions on creating the Books.

What versions of Outlook does HumanEdj support?

HumanEdj is compatible with Microsoft Outlook versions 2000, 2002, 2003, XP and 2007.

If you do not use one of these Outlook versions, or you use Outlook Express, you can tell HumanEdj to send/receive email via a server using POP/IMAP/SMTP by choosing Configure Email from the Book menu.

Does HumanEdj work with Lotus Notes?

Yes - just set your email account to retrieve email via IMAP and send it via SMTP. Ask your Domino administrator for the server account details.

My standard email client has picked up some messages that I want to deal with via HumanEdj

You can transfer such messages into HumanEdj, so as to keep together all items related to a collaboration.

If the messages have turned up in your Microsoft Outlook inbox, HumanEdj will load them automatically next time it runs.

Otherwise, if the messages have been downloaded by a different email program to Outlook, you need to include in your HumanEdj Email Account configuration the location of an MBOX file on your hard disk in which they are stored. Then HumanEdj will download messages from this MBOX file as well as from the email server. More information on use of MBOX files is available below.

Collection of email from a server fails with error message "java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: com.rolemodellers.util.messaging.ConnectionException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target"

This error occurs when trying to collect email over a secure SSL connection, and the email server authenticates itself to you using a test certificate rather than a certificate from a well known commercial Certification Authority (such as Verisign or Thawte). By default, HumanEdj rejects such a test certificate.

To enable secure email collection by HumanEdj from a server with a test certificate, do as follows:

Exit HumanEdj (if necessary)
Download this program to <HumanEdj install folder>/jre/bin
Open a command prompt in <HumanEdj install folder>/jre/bin
Type java -jar InstallCertificate.jar hostname_of_your_email_server
When prompted, type 1 and press RETURN
A file jssecacerts will have been generated in <HumanEdj install folder>/jre/bin - move this file to <HumanEdj install folder>/jre/lib/security.

Next time you run HumanEdj the email connection will work.

HumanEdj seems to be causing error messages from Microsoft Outlook

Versions of Microsoft Outlook later than Outlook 2000 Service Pack 2 may issue security alerts when HumanEdj uses it to send email. These alerts may prevent some emails sent by HumanEdj from being processed properly. HumanEdj tries to prevent the alerts, but there are some cases in which you may still receive them:

If you receive an alert immediately after installing HumanEdj for the first time, reboot your computer.

If Outlook (or a part of Outlook) is in memory, the HumanEdj component that prevents Outlook alerts may not operate properly until after a reboot. Note that this component is part of HumanEdj - i.e., it is not an Outlook plug-in. Note also that the component does not expose Outlook to access by any other program than HumanEdj.
If you receive an alert after uninstalling then immediately re-installing HumanEdj, reboot, then install HumanEdj once more (there is no need to uninstall again).

Some versions of Windows do not delete the component referred to above from the old installation until after a reboot, at which point it is done automatically, and until then the old component cannot be over-written by a new one from a subsequent installation. Usually this doesn't matter, since a new installation before the reboot takes place just makes use of the old component, "registering" it with the operating system during installation, which prevents it from being deleted on reboot. However, if either the old component or its replacement is still deleted automatically on reboot, a new HumanEdj installation that immediately follows an uninstall will not be able to prevent Outlook alerts.
Another common case in which alerts occur is when you have closed HumanEdj then opened it again within a short space of time. In this case, simply click on Yes when asked whether or not to allow access to Outlook.
If none of the above solutions work, your system may have been configured in such a way that HumanEdj cannot prevent Outlook alerts from being disabled. If so, there are 2 options:
1. If you use Microsoft Exchange, its administrator will be able to turn the alerts off for your local copy of Java, which is typically a file with name of the form C:\Program Files\HumanEdj\jre\bin\javaw.exe.
2. If you don't use Exchange, or its administrator is not able to do this for you, the solution is to download and install the free Advanced Security for Outlook add-in from MAPIlab. Then open Outlook, and while Outlook is running use the Email Configuration dialog in HumanEdj to send a test email from HumanEdj. An Outlook dialog box will pop up - click Allow access, then click Always perform this action for this file, then finally click OK.

A message I sent from HumanEdj had the *.kqml.txt attachment removed by the receiver's email system

An email sent from HumanEdj not only has the usual body text and file attachments, but also a KQML attachment of form *.kqml.txt (in early versions of HumanEdj, the attachment was of form *.kqml). This is an XML file that provides added context information about the message. It is intended for use only if the recipient is also a HumanEdj user - if the recipient receives HumanEdj messages via a standard email program, they don't need the KQML at all.

Even a HumanEdj user can live without KQML attachments, if such attachments are blocked by their email system. The main impact is that new versions of existing documents/data received from another HumanEdj user will not always be associated with previous versions.

If you regularly receive messages automatically generated by the email systems of colleagues to say that a *.kqml.txt attachment has been blocked at their end, you could configure your own mail system to treat such notification messages as junk - filter them automatically to a junk folder, for instance. Alternatively, you could ask your system administrator to specify that such notification messages should have a keyword such as SPAM added to the subject line - you can then set your HumanEdj Email Account to automatically delete any such messages, by specifying this keyword as its "Junk Marker" (note that all messages processed, deleted or sent by HumanEdj are automatically archived for later reference, either in a special Outlook folder or in an MBOX file located in the Book folder).

As an aside, KQML is in fact the standard communication language for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). HumanEdj is itself a MAS, since it can be configured to operate without human involvement - to run Tasks automatically, triggered and validated by business rules.

Moreover, HumanEdj is a general-purpose MAS. To date, MAS applications are generally custom-built for each situation. In the medium-term, autonomous computing will reach out from the server room to operational business, at which point HumanEdj could be used to automate typical agent-based applications such as metropolitan traffic light control and bus fleet operation.

How can I append a signature to email messages that I send from HumanEdj

Switch to Explore mode, right-click on your Identity, choose Set Details... from the popup menu, and enter text in the Signature field.

This text will then be appended to the body text of all messages sent by HumanEdj for the Identity.

Can I use my HotMail account with HumanEdj?

HumanEdj will only work with HotMail if you use Outlook (the full version, not Outlook Express). There is an explanation here.

If you use Outlook, you don't need to configure HumanEdj messaging at all, except possibly on some systems to give HumanEdj permission to talk to Outlook.

We use email "security tags": a security classification appended to the end of the email subject, such as [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] or [SEC=IN-CONFIDENCE]. Classified messages will not be sent to an organisation with a lower classification. How can I configure HumanEdj to use security tags?

You can classify either entire Stories or specific Interactions within a Story. To do this, edit the name of a Story or Interaction to append the tag you want.

Does HumanEdj intercept emails sent by Chandler Desktop?

By default, HumanEdj picks up emails that have been sent by Chandler Desktop.

If you use Chandler Desktop yourself, and would like to pick up such emails in Chandler Desktop rather than HumanEdj:

Choose Preferences from the Book menu
In the Servers section, check the option "Ignore messages sent from Chandler Desktop".

Will HumanEdj ever lose my emails?

No.

If you use Microsoft Outlook for email in HumanEdj, every email message received or sent via HumanEdj will still be available via Outlook itself.

By default, HumanEdj moves messages received via Outlook out of your inbox after processing them, to a special Outlook folder named "HumanEdj" at the same level as your default inbox. If you wish to use a differently-named folder, choose "Configure Email" from the Book menu and set the value of the processed folder in the Email Account. Either way, there is no need for you to create the processed messages folder in Outlook since HumanEdj will do it automatically (if necessary). If you delete the name of the processed folder, HumanEdj will delete messages after processing them, which means that they end up in your Outlook Deleted Items folder (or whatever your locale-specific version of this folder is called).

Messages that HumanEdj sends via Outlook are always stored in your Outlook Sent Items folder (or whatever your locale-specific version of this folder is called).

If you use servers for email in HumanEdj, every email received or sent is archived by HumanEdj to an MBOX file in the current Book folder. This file can be used in a variety of ways.

The simplest way to use the MBOX file is to install the free, open source mail client Mozilla Thunderbird, then copy the HumanEdj MBOX file into a folder underneath one of its "Local Directories". You will then be able to open and reply to any of the emails in the file using Thunderbird.

Otherwise, there are various free programs that can open an MBOX file and export its contents into mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook.

How can I see all the emails HumanEdj has sent or received?

See above.

How can I import old emails into HumanEdj?

First put the old emails somewhere that HumanEdj will see them.

If you use Microsoft Outlook for email in HumanEdj, just copy the old emails into your inbox (or whichever Outlook folder you have designated for email collection by HumanEdj).

If you use servers for email in HumanEdj, export the old emails to an MBOX file, then point HumanEdj at this file:

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird as a standard email program, just copy the old emails to a new folder in Thunderbird.
This folder is stored on disk as an MBOX file with exactly the same name (and no extension) - to find it using Windows Explorer, look under the folder specified in Thunderbird as the "Local Directory" for the email account.
If you do not use Mozilla Thunderbird as a standard email program, use a menu option in your email program to export the emails to an MBOX file.

In HumanEdj, choose Configure Email from the Book menu and specify the MBOX file created above.
If another MBOX file is already specified, make a note of it and reset the value after doing the step below.

Then choose Send and Receive Interaction Messages from the Book menu in HumanEdj to process the old emails.

Sending email takes a very long time

This is not a problem with HumanEdj, but with the time taken to connect to certain SMTP servers using Java.

For example, connecting to smtp.gmail.com (the SMTP server for Google's Gmail service) is effectively instantaneous, but connecting to auth.smtp.1and1.co.uk (the SMTP server for email accounts hosted by 1&1 Internet, the "World's #1 Web Host") always takes exactly 3 minutes and 10 seconds.

If you experience unacceptable delays of this kind, consider changing your email provider.

Functionality

How does HumanEdj compare to Web 2.0 collaboration tools?

HumanEdj is a complementary product to Web 2.0 collaboration tools. HumanEdj adds the process layer that is necessary in order to make Web 2.0 collaboration tools useful.

There is no true process understanding in Web 2.0 collaboration tools, only shared workspaces and to-do lists. Hence Web 2.0 collaboration tools, used in isolation:

Do not allow people to commit to, or opt-out of, work. This is essential for the success of any collaborative activity.
Include only the superficial aspects of work. Mental effort, for example, cannot be given the recognition it deserves.
Provide no hooks for managing work. The solution does not scale.
Rely on data that must be entered retrospectively, after you have finished the work itself - a continual and tedious task for which there is no incentive. Personal profiles, for example, must be regularly updated if they are to be useful. People hated this with CRM, and even with a Web 2.0 wrapper, they still hate it.

People who try to use Web 2.0 tools to support collaborative processes find not only that processes break down, but also that it is hard even to know when this has happened.

HumanEdj works very differently, since it is based directly on sophisticated process understanding. Both supporting human work and managing it are integral to HumanEdj.

HumanEdj provides a lightweight layer on top both of Web 2.0 and of everything else. It is a new form of desktop, an interface to your computer that lets you work by connecting to any network resources applicable to the process in question.

How will HumanEdj compare to the combination of Microsoft Office, Sharepoint services, and Livemeeting. The capabilities in this release make it seem like HumanEdj is low functionality. I know the Story concept is a contextual interaction space, but it seems like it needs more or to be integrated with something like the Microsoft tools.

Humaned is about joining things up; establishing a common context for the diffferent aspects of collaborative work: document preparation and review (Office), file sharing (Sharepoint), messaging (Outlook/Exchange), conversation (LiveMeeting), etc.

And such a context can only be the work process itself. In other words, you need a way to define, share, agree and execute a collaborative work process (what HumanEdj calls a "Story") - then revise and renegotiate this Story throughout its life, as part of the work itself, since much collaboration is about discussing "what shall we do next".

HumanEdj does not set out to replace Office, Sharepoint, LiveMeeting or even Outlook (though if you adopt HumanEdj you probably won't send/receive much email directly via Outlook anymore, preferring to let HumanEdj do it more efficiently on your behalf). Rather, HumanEdj gives you a way to integrate the various things you do with such tools. For instance, you can open Office documents in HumanEdj, whether they are stored directly on the network filesystem or in Sharepoint. You can use documents shared via Web 2.0 technologies. You can invoke such applications as LiveMeeting or Skype. You can access contact details from address books and directories. And so on.

Further, HumanEdj provides facilities that cannot be provided by any individual application - facilities that can only be provided by taking a process view of the user's activities.

For example, HumanEdj does automatic configuration management of all documents on your network filesystem that are accessed via a Story. Every time you open such a document for editing via HumanEdj, it automatically creates a new version of the document, recording a "Modification" that notes when, why, how and by whom the change was made. Such Modifications permit you to return to any previous version of the document as and when you wish.

Storage space is no longer an issue for most of us - but with the increase in regulatory monitoring of business, tracking changes to documents is becoming more and more important. So HumanEdj makes new copies of documents whenever it thinks you have made a change to them. If you want to free up space, any old versions you will never wish to return to, and do not need to keep for other reasons, can be deleted without impact to the operation of HumanEdj.

Note also that it is possible for documents managed in this way to be stored inside a content management system (CMS), rather than directly on the network filesystem. Leading CMS products offer a filesystem interface, so documents they contain can be accessed as if they were stored on the network filesystem, and thus managed via HumanEdj.

This is just one example of how HumanEdj complements existing software tools - integrating their usage, and supplying the missing functionality required for effective process management.

Anyone that does a lot of collaborative work knows that it tends to get out of control very easily: individuals have no way to assess the effectiveness of each task they carry out in relation to overall aims, and organizations have no means of tracking/controlling/supporting all the different activities carried out by their staff. And the new Internet tools have made the situation worse, not better! Everyone is busy emailing, attaching, Skyping away, ... with no means of managing the work (supposedly) being carried out, so much of the time their efforts are not particularly effective - they may even be counter-productive. And since time is the one commodity we should all be conserving, and the marketplace is now totally unforgiving, this is a dangerous situation both for individuals and for their employers.

You can find references to more extended discussion of these issues elsewhere, for instance on h umanedj.com.

How does HumanEdj compare to a Personal Information Manager such as the Chandler Project?

Personal Information Management (PIM) tools are complementary to HumanEdj. They address different aspects of the same problem, namely, how to work more effectively:

PIM tools focus on effective time management, via separating information items into categories
HumanEdj focuses on effective collaboration, via separating work items into collaborative business processes.

Consider the Chandler Project, for instance. This software is based largely on David Allen's GTD. Human Interaction Management (HIM), on which HumanEdj is based, is complementary to GTD:

HIM provides the process context in which work takes place, allowing:
- Humans to understand their work in terms of goals, responsibilities, commitments, and so on
- The organization to manage human work properly
GTD provides the worker with a means of:
- Organizing their personal information and tasks (of all kinds, from walking the dog to bidding on a billion-dollar project)
- Thereby prioritizing their daily activities

A PIM is a powerful tool for task prioritization. However, without something like HumanEdj, both humans and their organizations lack the means to manage collaborative work effectively. For example, the Chandler Project's approach to collaboration is based simply on the notion of updating shared information:

Collaboration in Chandler is anchored in personal information management workflows.

Collaborators can view and edit collections without having to download Chandler Desktop via Chandler Hub on the web. Collaborators don't even have to sign up for a Hub account, all they need is a sharing URL to access the share.

You can send Chandler items out via email. Recipients won't be able to participate in the Chandler workflows outlined above, but they can see the contents of what you send as text.

Collaborators using other calendar applications can subscribe to your Chandler Hub shares. Similarly, you can subscribe to Google, Apple iCal and any other iCalendar share.

In other words, Chandler's support for collaborative processes effectively consists of an interface to shared document editing - either via the Web (as in a wiki or Microsoft Groove) or via email (as in Microsoft Office) - plus meeting management (as in Microsoft Exchange). The use of the term workflow in the Chandler Project documentation above does not correspond to what most process analysts would understand by the term. To provide true process support for human-driven work something like HumanEdj is required.

For instructions on making HumanEdj Tasks visible in Chandler Desktop, see below.

How can I make HumanEdj Tasks visible in Chandler Desktop?

HumanEdj is able to expose the user's current Tasks for display in Chandler Desktop.

In general, it is not necessary to configure HumanEdj at all - by default, HumanEdj maintains an iCalendar format file to which Chandler Desktop can "subscribe".

Hence, all you usually need to do is configure Chandler Desktop to subscribe to this file. Assuming you are running HumanEdj on Windows, and have Internet Information Services (aka IIS, formerly known as Internet Information Server) running on your computer from its standard root document folder (as it is by default on recent versions of Windows), do as follows in Chandler Desktop:

Right-click on "Dashboard"
Choose "Subscribe" from the popup menu
Enter http://localhost/humanedj/humanedj.ics

Your current HumanEdj Tasks will then be visible in Chandler Desktop, in a category "HumanEdj". You can then assign each Task to a particular calendar date, and so on.

The Task file to which Chandler Desktop subscribes is updated automatically by HumanEdj without your needing to do anything. Chandler Desktop will update its own Task list from this file whenever it "synchronizes", either automatically or on your request.

If your machine is running a different Web server to IIS, or if your Web server uses a different root document folder to the default:

Choose Preferences from the Book menu in HumanEdj
Go to the Servers page
Update the value of "Root document folder of Web server on this machine".

HumanEdj will then publish its iCalendar file as humanedj.ics in a folder humanedj beneath the specified folder. In other words, if you set "Root document folder of Web server on this machine" to "E:\webroot", HumanEdj will maintain an iCal file "E:\webroot\humanedj\humanedj.ics". The latter value is the file to which you should subscribe with Chandler Desktop.

If you delete the value of "Root document folder of Web server on this machine", HumanEdj will not maintain an iCalendar file at all.

I can see that HumanEdj is a general framework going beyond human collaboration. How does it fit into an enterprise computing scenario?

Here are some links to explanatory background material:

Does HumanEdj offer support for Riva as well as for Human Interaction Management?

When discussing Martyn Ould's Riva method in conjunction with Human Interaction Management, it's important to distinguish 3 things:

The process architecture aspects of Riva
A Riva process architecture diagram provides a systemic view of what an organization does - how the organization operates at the very highest level. Such a diagram is a useful starting point for enterprise-wide HIM implementation.

Riva process architecture diagrams are not intended for direct translation to process execution, so (at least for now) HumanEdj does not allow Riva architecture diagrams to be drawn. If you wish to draw Riva architecture diagrams, you may like to use Martyn Ould's Visio template for Riva symbols, which is a free download.
The process diagramming aspects of Riva
Riva process diagramming notation offers no real value-add to current BPM notational practices. Martyn Ould himself, originator of the Riva method, does not claim that the process diagramming technique used in Riva offers anything different to BPMN, UML Activity Diagrams or other flowchart-based notations for the depiction of "mechanistic" business processes - those that repeat ad infinitum with little change, and in which human involvement is limited to key data entry and decision points. Since Riva process diagramming has no realistic chance of becoming a standard or acquiring mainstream tool support, it is not recommended. To model mechanistic processes, use BPMN.

Find out about BPMN here.
The process modelling aspects of HIM
Like Riva, HIM uses a form of Role Activity Diagramming (RAD) for process notation. However, in HIM the RAD notation is radically modified to deal with "human-driven" (rather than "mechanistic") processes - innovative, adaptive, collaborative human-centred work. Although some symbols look similar to those used in Riva, RADs in HIM are effectively a different notation - and a much simpler one. HIM process diagramming, like other HIM principles and patterns, constitutes a step change from conventional BPM practices. HIM offers new solutions, for problems that are not addressed by conventional BPM techniques and tools.

Find out about HIM here.

Find out about software tools for HIM here.

If you would like to read more on the use of Riva and HIM in conjunction:

An overview of Riva as compared to Human Interaction Management was published by bptrends.com in 2005, in their review of the 2 seminal books on these topics.
There is also a more detailed discussion of the notational differences between Riva and HIM process diagramming in this FAQ.

Process Modelling

I created a collaboration and now cannot delete it

A live Story cannot simply be deleted - you must explicitly choose to stop taking part in the collaboration. Here are the simplest ways to do so:

In Achieve mode, focus on the Story and click the Leave button
In Explore mode, right-click on the Story in the Explore viewer and choose "Stop Using Story"

In both cases, the Story will be archived and purged from your Book automatically.

I created a Story in the Overview viewer but now cannot see it in either viewer

By default, Stories that are not live are not shown in Explore mode. This is for convenience, since a Book may contain a great number of Stories.

If you want to see non-live Stories in Explore mode, choose "Show Story Library" from the Show menu (or click on the corresponding toolbar button).

There are similar "Show" options in Explore mode for Colleagues, Interactions, and Rules/Conditions.

I was unsure as to the nature of the Overview of a Story. This looked like some kind of use case map, but it wasn't obvious to me that I had made the connections that I wanted to make between Identities.

See the explanation of Users, Roles and Identities above.

You don't connect Identities to one another. Rather, you connect an Identity in a Book to User instances in Stories.

Does HumanEdj allow import and export?

Yes, all HumanEdj objects have a standard XML format, to which you can export most HumanEdj objects. To do this, right-click on the object and select "Export Object".

Choose "XML Schema" from the Help menu to see the schema for this XML format, which conforms to the OMG standard XML Metadata Interchange (XMI). Since the XMI format is understood by many leading modelling tools, this means that you can import HumanEdj objects into other software products (such as, for example, IBM Rational Rose or Borland Together) if you wish.

You can also use any XML editor to create Stories based on this schema. The root element of the XML file should be <Story>, and there is no need to create any header or namespace information apart from a standard first line:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ASCII"?>

Then you can import such Stories into HumanEdj, via one of the following means:

To import a new Story into a Book, choose "Import Story" from the Book menu (or right-click on the Book in Explore mode and choose "Import Story"). Then select the XMI file you have created.
To import all objects in a Story into another Story, right-click on the destination Story in Explore mode and choose "Import Story". Then select the XMI file you have created.

You may wish to export a Story from one Book for import into another. For instance, exporting Stories to file is a useful way of sending them to colleagues (typically as an attachment to a HumanEdj message). If you do this, the root element of the generated XML file will be of the form <com.rolemodellers.rim:Story> and there will be various additional namespace information generated. Exported Stories will import normally back into HumanEdj, just like manually created Story files in which the first element is simply <Story>.

Finally, note that there are various ways to backup Books in order to prevent loss of your workspace.

We wish to use HumanEdj to support a legal case - how can we prevent the other sides being able to see details of our own work?

You need to ensure that the Roles played by people from the other sides do not participate in any Next Steps Interactions. In particular, if you start Story description (i.e., process modelling) with a Basic Collaboration, you should either:

Delete the Next Steps Activities from any Roles played by people from the other side

or
Include only people from your own side in the Basic Collaboration, then add people from the other sides by right-clicking on the Story in Explore mode and choosing "Add Colleagues..." from the popup menu, to add new Roles that only participate in selected Interactions (which should not include Next Steps).

Then:

All participants will be able to exchange messages, documents and other data
Your side will have visibility of and control over:
- All work done on your side
- All Interactions that involve anyone from your own side
The only knowledge possessed by the other sides will be of the Story name and Interactions in which they are involved.

Note that if another side is also using HumanEdj, they are at liberty to create their own Story definition for the work. To ensure that everyone gets the best from their use of HumanEdj, all sides should:

Follow the practice described above regarding Next Steps Interactions, i.e., not attempt to exchange Story definitions between sides
Use the same names both for the Story itself and (as far as possible) for any common Interactions - new Interactions may well be created during use of the Story, but the Story name at least should be agreed on at the start.

A Rule is not evaluating properly

First check that the Rule actually has one or more Conditions assigned. If not, it will by default always evaluate to true.

If the Rule has one or more Conditions assigned, right-click on the Role containing it and choose "Update Rules". Look in the Messages viewer for an Error message of the form:

Failed to add Rule Rule_name to Role Role_name

If such a message appears, one of the Conditions defining the Rule has a syntax error. For instance, there may be an invalid character, such as single-quote marks where you need double-quote marks, or even "slanted" double-quote marks that are not actually true double-quotes (typically created by pasting in text from a word processor).

If you do not see such an Error message then check that both the Book and the Story containing the Rule have Script Execution Allowed set to true. If either is false, Rules will not be evaluated.

If the Rule has Conditions, is valid and is being evaluated, the problem is that the results are not what you expect. A common cause is that an Entity referenced in a Condition does not actually exist in the Role - for example, either the path to the Entity or the Entity name may contain a typing error. However, the cause could be any form of bug, since HumanEdj Conditions are a completely generic programming mechanism. If the Conditions are defined in the default language Groovy, consider from a programmer's point of view what the result of each expression is likely to be, and bear in mind that a Rule is the conjunction of all its Conditions (i.e., a Rule evaluates to true if and only if all its Conditions evaluate to true).

Process Execution

I want to include a new person in a live Story - how can I ensure that their Role is up-to-date with everything that has happened so far?

There are 2 ways to provide a new joiner with an "induction pack", including standard materials they will need to get started and/or material created so far during the Story:

If the new joiner is taking over from someone else, use Explore mode to create a new User for them and re-assign ownership of their intended Role to this User. Then do "Take Part in Next Steps", and the entire Story, including the new Role, will be sent to everyone including the new joiner. All the new joiner has then to do is join the Story, and they will be able to start using their new Role, including the current information resources of that Role.
If the new joiner is an addition to the Story (rather than replacing someone else), choose an existing Role on which to base the new joiner's Role, select it in Explore mode, and do "Make New Instance". This makes a copy of the existing Role, which you can then adjust as desired. Once you have made the necessary adjustments, make a new User for the Role as above.

Note, however, that the only data and documents that will be available to the new User are those stored internally to the Role, or on a shared network drive, or in some other kind of shared workspace (such as a Web-based group). In particular, any documents referenced by the original Role but stored externally on the local file system of the original User will not be available to the new User. A primary concern of HumanEdj is to ensure that participants in a collaboration can maintain private information, having the right to choose when to share documents, and who to share them with.

Diagramming

Is there any good RAD modeling tool available somewhere? Ould's Visio template is all I've found.

HumanEdj is a RAD modelling (and execution) tool.

In the Overview viewer, you can:

Draw Stories (processes) containing Roles, Interactions, and Activities
Create links between Activities to show which ones should precede others
Connect the Interactions to PartInteractions in Activities (typically this is done automatically on your behalf, when you add an Interaction to a Story)
Create Rules (logical expressions) and use them to enable and validate Activities.

The RAD notation in HumanEdj is simplified by comparison with Ould's RAD notation. In particular, there are some symbols in Ould's RAD notation that do not appear in HumanEdj - part/case refinements, for example. This is because:

Most non-technical people find it confusing to have lots of different symbol types in a diagram
The meaning of such symbols is complex, so they tend to be used wrongly
For the purposes of human collaboration, such symbols tend to restrict the process too much - you cannot easily revisit previous Activities, for example.

Further discussion of HumanEdj and Ould's Riva method

Also, not all elements of a Story are included in a HumanEdj diagram - for example, Tasks other than Part Interactions, and Entities in a Role, can only be created and manipulated using the Details viewer. This is to keep the diagram readable. There is always a trade-off between the amount of information shown on a diagram and the usefulness of that diagram.

Note that the Overview viewer, like the Explore and Details viewers, does not show most types of object by default. If you wish to see non-live Stories, Users, Interactions and Rules you have to say so using the corresponding "Show..." menu item or toolbar button. To illustrate this, suppose you (for instance) use the diagrammer to create a new Story when non-live Stories are not currently shown. You will not actually see the new shape you just created - you will be prompted for its name and then only see drag/drop handles indicating its border. Choosing the menu option or toolbar button "Show Story Library" will make the object visible in a more normal way. Hence, if you intend to start a diagramming session, it is sensible first to make all items visible that you intend creating and/or manipulating.

The HumanEdj diagrammer supports automatic layout. This means you do not have to spend time resizing/moving/aligning objects by hand. Simply right-click on the diagram background, a Story or a Role, and choose "Layout ..." from the popup menu - the selected object and everything it contains will be resized and positioned automatically. Frequent use of this feature is recommended - a process designer should be free to focus on content, not have to worry about layout.

Finally, the HumanEdj diagrammer includes many sophisticated features that provide you with intelligent support during process modelling. For details, see the section of the HumanEdj User Guide that describes the Overview viewer.

I started dragging and dropping icons into the Overview viewer whilst I was trying to draw a process, and it didn't seem obvious how some of the icons would/should connect together

Each connection tool in the palette includes a small icon representing the appropriate starting point:

So, you can connect:

An Identity to a User instance in any Story
A User to a Role in the same Story
An Activity to a Rule in the same Role, for pre-execution enablement - if the Rule fails, the Activity will only be available for use in the Role if it has a "preceding Activity" that has been saved/used (see below)
An Activity to a Rule in the same Role, for post-execution validation - if the Rule fails on trying to save the Activity, all effects of the Activity will be undone
Its previous state will be saved for investigation in the "last bad state" of the Role
One Activity to another in the same Role, where the other having being saved will enable the Activity in question to start
One Activity to another in the same Role, where the other simply having being used will enable the Activity in question to start (even if the other failed or was cancelled)
This is indicated via a dashed connection line
A Part Interaction to the Interaction in its Story to which it belongs.

Click on one of these tools, then click and drag from one object to another (just as in Visio, for example). In each case - except see below about Interaction lines - a connection line will be drawn on the diagram as you click and drag. For Stories/Roles/Activities, note that the start/end point of a connection is the top compartment of their box - starting/ending anywhere else in their box will not make a connection.

With regard to Interactions and PartInteractions, note that:

PartInteractions are created (and connected to an Interaction) automatically when an Interaction is created, and this is the best approach, since default message Entities are then also created automatically. Similarly, if you wish later to add new Roles into an Interaction, it is best to right-click the Interaction in the Details viewer and choose "Add Colleagues..." from the popup menu.
Neither Interactions nor the lines connecting them to Part Interactions are shown unless Show Interactions in Stories is turned on.

See above for more detail about diagramming in HumanEdj.

I've dragged some icons on to the Overview viewer and can't delete them (they're rings with heavy black lines - I think it was a collaboration icon).

They are Stories. Right-click on each one and choose "Layout Story" to see them laid out at a more sensible size.

You should be able to delete them either from the Details viewer or Overview viewer. The only time you can't delete a Story from the diagram is if it is "live". Instructions on deleting a live Story.

I renamed an object in the Overview viewer but when I switched to the Details viewer it hadn't changed.

This is an occasional problem caused by the Eclipse framework used to build HumanEdj. The solution is as follows: after renaming in the Overview, press Ctrl+S to save the Overview diagram to file before switching to the Details viewer.

The save is generally taken care of in the background by HumanEdj itself, but you may need to do it by hand from time to time.

My diagram won't open - the editor window just shows an error message

The diagram file is no longer valid - perhaps because you have upgraded HumanEdj, and in the new version, there have been enhancements that make your previous diagram out-of-date.

The solution is to delete the file ".rim_diagram" (".rmd" in version 2 of HumanEdj) from your Book folder. Then close the Overview viewer by clicking the X next to Overview on its tab, and re-open it by choosing "Default Window Layout" from the Show menu. Your diagram will be re-created and laid out automatically (if this doesn't work for some reason, close and re-open the Book).

How do I print diagrams?

The easiest way is to do right-click on the diagram background (or any object in the diagram) and choose File -> "Save As Image File...". You can export the entire diagram or anything in it to various formats.

Then you can print the image file(s) using any software you like - Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, for example.

Sometimes I update a property in the Properties viewer when diagramming and my change is not saved

In fact, your change has been saved. If you click somewhere else on the diagram, then again on the object you were editing, you will see the updated value you entered. The problem is that your update is not reflected until you leave the object and come back to it.

This error occurs only occasionally, and we cannot reproduce it consistently. We believe that it is a subtle timing bug in the interaction between the Eclipse EMF and GMF Properties viewers.

The bug is benign, since no data is lost. If it starts happening, close the Details viewer then choose Show -> "Default Window Layout" and behaviour will return to normal.

Integration

How can I create Stories from an external application?

The HumanEdj API provides simple methods that can be called for this purpose.

In particular, the Java class IntegrationUtil is intended for use by Java applications other than HumanEdj, for example a conventional workflow system or BPMS. When human collaborative work is required to deal with an issue, case or project, methods in this class can be called by such an external system to:

Create a new Story
Create a file containing the Story in XML form
Distribute the file to those involved as an email attachment.

Each recipient's copy of HumanEdj will then pick up the new Story and allow the recipient to take part in it.

Organizations wishing to make use of IntegrationUtil will need to purchase an Integration license to HumanEdj.

Here is example Java code:

IntegrationUtil iu = new IntegrationUtil("location of an Integration license file");

Story story;

// Option 1: Make a "Basic Collaboration"
List<String> emailAddresses = new ArrayList<String>();
// Place code here to populate list with addresses
story = iu.createStory("name of this software application", emailAddresses);

// Option 2: Make a new case of an existing Story
Map<String, String> receiveAddresses = new HashMap<String, String>();
// [OPTIONAL] Place code here to populate Map with Role names mapped to User receive EMAIL addresses
story = iu.newCase("location of a Story file", receiveAddresses);

// [OPTIONAL] Place code here to customize Story

File storyAttachment = iu.getAttachment(story);
if (storyAttachment != null && storyAttachment.exists()) {

    MessageAddress[] recipients = new MessageAddress[numberOfRecipients];
    // Place code here to populate array with names and addresses

    MessagingSession messagingSession = new MessagingSession();
    try {
        messagingSession.init();
        Email.send(server, useSsl, username, password, new MessageAddress(fromAddress, fromName), recipients, null, iu.getSubject(story), bodyText, new String[] { storyAttachment.getAbsolutePath() }, null);
    } catch (MessageException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        messagingSession.dispose();
    }

    // [OPTIONAL] Place code here to delete storyAttachment - it is created in a system temporary directory
}

To use code from IntegrationUtil and other classes in the HumanEdj API, it is necessary to include in the classpath of the external application all jars and other unpacked code under the plugins folder of HumanEdj.

Finally, communication between HumanEdj and a server-based system such as a BPMS can be 2-way. For example, HumanEdj can invoke Web services provided by such a system, using Tasks of either Run Script or Service Call type. Service Call Tasks are simpler to configure in most cases, since they permit service invocation without any programming or integration effort, but require an Organizational license to HumanEdj.

Customization

How can I brand HumanEdj, or translate it into a new language?

HumanEdj is a "Rich Client Application" built using the Eclipse platform - in other words, it is a set of Eclipse "plug-ins". The way to provide a branded or translated version of any such application is to provide your own text via plug-in fragments:

How and why to use fragments to provide the translatable information
A plug-in fragment is an ideal way to distribute Eclipse-translated information ... Delivering translations in a non-intrusive way, the Eclipse Platform translations are packaged in fragment JAR files and are added to existing Eclipse installations without changing or modifying any of the original runtime elements. This leads to the notion of a language pack.

The Eclipse Platform merges plug-in fragments in a way that the runtime elements in the fragment augment the original targeted plug-in. The target plug-in is not moved, removed, or modified in any way. Since the fragment's resources are located by the classloader, the plug-in developer has no need to know whether resources are loaded from the plug-in's JAR file or one of its fragments' JAR files.

How to Internationalize your Eclipse Plug-In

What does this mean? Simply that to change the text strings used in HumanEdj, you don't need to touch any of the original code. You only need to edit certain files from the plugins sub-folder of your HumanEdj install folder. Some of these files are inside *.jar archives - you can extract files from a *.jar archive using any zip tool, such as WinZip.

Here are the files that need to be translated:

com.rolemodellers.rim.edit_x_y_z.jar: plugin.properties
com.rolemodellers.rim.editor_x_y_z.jar: plugin.properties
com.rolemodellers.rim.diagram_x_y_z.jar: plugin.properties
com.rolemodellers.rim.diagram_x_y_z.jar: messages.properties
com.rolemodellers.rim.HumanEdj_x_y_z.jar: plugin.properties
com.rolemodellers.rim.HumanEdj.help_x_y_z: plugin.properties
com.rolemodellers.messages.rim.HumanEdj_x.y.z\com\rolemodellers\messages: all *.properties files in the folder and all its subfolders

Once you have branded or translated all these files, email the new versions to us (preferably in a single zip file) and we will email back a set of plug-in fragments for you to put in your HumanEdj install folder. Next time HumanEdj starts up, it will detect that new text is available, and you will see your own HumanEdj labels and messages.

You can change the icons and images used by HumanEdj in a similar fashion, if you wish.

Going further, you may wish to develop a custom "Perspective" for HumanEdj - your own set and/or arrangement of viewers, for example. If so:

Bundle the software code defining this Perspective into your own plugin for distribution with HumanEdj
Tell HumanEdj to start up in your Perspective by appending the following text to the command used to start HumanEdj:

-vmargs -Dhumanedj.ui=id_of_your_custom_perspective

This approach is adopted in HumanEdj since the standard Eclipse platform means of specifying a default perspective (org.eclipse.ui/DEFAULT_PERSPECTIVE_ID in plugin_customization.ini) is already utilized by the plugin com.rolemodellers.rim.humanedj.

If you are interested in OEM supply of HumanEdj, see the Resources section below for more information.

We need a product development partner for a HumanEdj customization - who would you recommend?

Role Modellers can work with you to customize, integrate and/or brand HumanEdj.

Troubleshooting

Help! I had a system crash and now HumanEdj says it can't open my Book.

This is unusual, since HumanEdj saves all changes immediately to file and rarely leaves files in an incomplete state. However, in case it happens for some reason, it is simple to recover your work.

After closing a Book file, HumanEdj always backs it up for safety, by making a time-stamped copy of it in your system temporary directory (if a session is aborted without giving HumanEdj a chance to close normally, a backup of the Book will be made next time it is opened, prior to carrying out any other operations). On Windows, this directory is typically C:\Documents and Settings\<your account name>\Local Settings\Temp. Look in this folder and you will see a number of such files of the form rimXXXXXX.sec or rimXXXXX.tmp - these are all backups of Books.

To restore a backup of the current Book, choose "Restore" from the Book menu. Select the latest file of the format described above and it will be restored. You will be prompted to login, and you should see your Book back. If it still won't open, keep trying the next latest file from the temporary directory until you find one that opens normally - if you tried more than once to open a corrupted Book file, more than one of the backups may actually be of the same corrupted file.

Note that restore does not delete your current Book file - rather, it renames it to a timestamped copy in the current Book folder.

Note also that using HumanEdj will never result in loss of your emails.

You should never lose data with HumanEdj. Further, you should never have to reinstall the application itself due to data corruption (though if you wish to reinstall for some other reason, see here for instructions).

Send and receive of messages seems to be getting slower and slower

The problem is receive, not send. When HumanEdj accesses an email account, either via Outlook or direct server access, it scans all messages to see which ones are intended for HumanEdj. By default, HumanEdj processes all messages, but depending on your HumanEdj configuration, HumanEdj may ignore any messages that:

Do not come from colleagues known to your Book
Do not contain the text [HUMANEDJ] in the subject line.

HumanEdj also does not delete any messages that appear to be Outlook meeting invitations, although such messages will be shown in HumanEdj.

Hence, HumanEdj may process and/or delete certain messages but leave the rest untouched. So, if over time more and more such untouched messages accumulate in the email account - either in Outlook or on the server - HumanEdj will gradually take longer and longer to scan them all. Many of these messages may well be junk. To deal with this:

If you use Outlook, every now and then you should check that the folder accessed by HumanEdj - by default, the inbox, but you can specify a different folder - is cleared of non-HumanEdj messages.
If you use an email server, every now and then, after running HumanEdj, use a standard email program to download all messages from the server.

Alternatively, set the values of properties "Filter Receipt Via Sender" and "Filter Receipt Via Subject" back to the default of "false" for your Email Account in HumanEdj. Then HumanEdj will load all messages, and you can use HumanEdj to delete them. In particular, pressing CTL+A in Achieve mode will clear all visible "Unexpected messages", so after dealing with your real messages, you can remove everything else with a few key presses.

If you find that there are a lot of junk messages, consider use of an automatic junk-mail-deletion service on the email account - your IT department or Internet Service Provider may be able to configure this for you.

HumanEdj reported that "Workspace restored, but some problems occurred" - what does this mean?

If you expand the error message, you will probably see a lower-level message entitled Could not read metadata for 'C.Documents and Settings.Windows_user_name.My Documents.book_name', with text:

org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.ResourceException: The project description file (.project) for 'C.Documents and Settings.Windows_user_name.My Documents.book_name' is missing. This file contains important information about the project. The project will not function properly until this file is restored.

If so, the error is harmless in itself. In each Book folder, HumanEdj automatically generates a configuration file called .project. If this file is removed from a Book folder for some reason, HumanEdj will report an error next time it starts up. However, the operation of HumanEdj is not affected by .project files. Further, HumanEdj will automatically re-generate a .project file if it is found to be missing.

Nevertheless, you should ask yourself why the .project file is missing. Its absence may signify that the Book folder has become corrupted in some way.

HumanEdj reported an "event loop exception" Error - what does this mean?

This message is occasionally reported by the Eclipse framework that underpins HumanEdj. It indicates that the user interface has failed to process your actions in time to keep the display synchronized. For example, the user interface may be trying to update the display of data in a viewer that now contains different information.

The error is harmless - no data will have been corrupted. You can ignore such messages if they are occasional. However, if you start to get a lot of them in one session, close and restart HumanEdj in order to return things to normal.

Problem opening - Cannot open input element

Some users have reported seeing a dialog of this form:

This error message seems to be caused by a timing problem in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows XP. Particularly if your antivirus program actively scans the disk on every change, the file system sometimes will not allow a HumanEdj diagram file to be opened until the scan is complete.

The error is harmless and you can ignore it - in particular, your diagram will still be intact.

Cannot open XML Schema from Help menu

When you choose "XML Schema" from the Help menu, HumanEdj opens the default program used to open XSD files on your system, passing it the filename of the HumanEdj XML Schema as a parameter.

The problem arises if the default program does not accept filename parameters. Mozilla Firefox, for example, can display XSD files but expects a URL as parameter - when passed a conventional filename (such as c:\whatever), it displays an error dialog such as:

The solution is to change the default program used to open XSD files on your system to one that accepts filename parameters.

For example, you could temporarily set Internet Explorer to be your default Web browser (which makes it the default program for opening XSD files), open the HumanEdj XML Schema, then change the default Web browser back again to whatever it was before. To change the default Web browser, run the browser you want to make default and open its options page - there will be a setting there to make it the default.

An internal error occurred during: "Synchronizing EMF resources"

This error message is occasionally thrown by the Eclipse framework used to build HumanEdj when editors have momentarily become out of step. The error is benign and can be ignored - no data will have been lost or corrupted.

How do I report a problem?

Send us your log file by email. Users with an Organizational license (see below) can do this by choosing Request Support from the Help menu. Others need to do as follows:

In the Messages viewer, click the left-hand toolbar button, "Export Log". This will create a text file containing all HumanEdj log messages, with name and location of your choice.
You can also view the log file in HumanEdj itself by clicking on "Open Log", for example if you just wish to copy parts of it.
Email this file to us as an attachment, with a message describing the problems you have experienced.

Note, however, that no guarantee can be made by Role Modellers of responding to HumanEdj users who have not purchased a license.

Does requesting HumanEdj support involve sharing sensitive information with Role Modellers?

Message contents are never included in HumanEdj log files.

However, the names, email addresses, subjects and times of messages sent/received via HumanEdj are included in HumanEdj log files. This level of detail is necessary since your HumanEdj log file provides an audit trail of your working activity (its existence is a key benefit of using HumanEdj to do your work). Hence it must be possible to use the log file to distinguish the many different events that take place.

If you prefer, log files can be edited manually before sending to Role Modellers for support. To do this, do not choose Request Support from the Help menu. Rather, export the log to a disk file (as above) and cut/paste the section concerning your issue into an email to us, taking care to remove any text that may be sensitive.

You can locate such a section by noting the day/time at which you experienced problems, and searching for this day/time in the log file. The exact format of the day/time may differ according to your location, but typically the format of the day/time will be something like "07-Nov-2007 10:39:43". Look at any message in the log file to see the exact format used by your own HumanEdj.

Licensing

Licensing HumanEdj for enterprise use

Some HumanEdj features are only available on purchase of a "Per Seat" license:

Direct invocation of Web services. This can also be done in the free edition via the Run Script Task type. However, in the licensed version the Service Call Task type simplifies the process of integrating HumanEdj with other enterprise systems, and makes it possible to call Web services without programming or other effort such as bundling code libraries with HumanEdj.
Folder Import. In the licensed version, the user can right-click on any Role and choose a folder on the file system - a copy of each document in that folder and its subfolders will then be added to the Role, for private use within the current process. This can be used to automatically set up standard template documents for a new case or project.
Story archival. In the licensed version, Story export carried out on request or on leaving a Story does more than archive the Story definition. If you have an Organizational license to HumanEdj, an archive will also be created containing all files associated with your Role instances in the Story, including any previous versions of these files that are still available on the file system. Reloading an archived Story will also extract files from the associated archive, if found in the same folder as the imported Story. The files will not be extracted to their original locations, but rather to new locations underneath the Book folder that are derived from the original locations. The imported Story automatically knows about these new locations. Extracting files from an archive will never overwrite existing files, but if necessary will rename existing files to include a timestamp, informing you that it has done so.
Case Management. In the licensed version, the user can create new Cases of any Story: make a copy of the Story in which the Role instances are assigned to people of their choice. This is a simple way to generate multiple instances of similar work processes.
Export of process data to spreadsheet format. In the licensed version, it is possible to right-click on most objects and choose "Export Data to File". This generates and opens a "comma-separated variable" (CSV) file containing all data in the chosen object, organized in detail according to its use in the process as a whole. This file will typically open in a spreadsheet application, and can then be used to create reports, charts, pivot tables and other forms of business intelligence. The data items in the file include both current and historical values of data, with current values shown on the line preceding the lines containing historical values.
Manager update. In the licensed version, HumanEdj will send to the nominated manager of each Identity a status report on shutdown (or close of a Book). A status report can also be generated at any time. A HumanEdj status report includes a copy of all live Stories in which the Identity has a User instance. If a manager has also got a licensed version of HumanEdj, they can receive such reports into their own copy of HumanEdj for review, from where they can examine progress, export data, and so on.

Note that the "Manager update" scheme supports the integration of human collaboration into management practice - for example, to cater naturally for "matrix management", in which a person may have both a line manager and several project/programme managers. The automated status report can be used to report to a line manager. The manual sending of Stories can be used to report to any number of project/programme managers. Anyone concerned can generate process-based business intelligence data using the spreadsheet tools with which just about every office worker is familiar.

Note also that the audit trails generated by HumanEdj can be safely archived via a number of means. Such audit trails provide a uniquely simple means of providing the records required to demonstrate compliance, both with enterprise strategy/policy and with industry standards/regulations.
Executive Control. In the free edition, you can exchange with colleagues new versions of the current Story, for negotiation and implementation of next steps. In the licensed version, you can send any Story to colleagues in this way. This is useful for implementation of what Human Interaction Management calls "Executive Control" - essentially, a request from a senior manager to a junior manager for implementation of the work specified by an outline Story, and the subsequent monitoring by the senior manager of the work carried out.
Support. In the licensed version, choosing "Request Support" from the Help menu will automatically email to Role Modellers a description of the issue you are encountering, along with your current HumanEdj log file. Such support requests will be given priority over any such requests received from unlicensed users. In fact, no guarantee can be made by Role Modellers of responding at all to HumanEdj users who have not purchased a license.
Automatic program update. In the licensed version, choosing "Update HumanEdj automatically" from the Help menu will automatically synchronize with the Role Modellers Web site and upgrade your version of HumanEdj to the latest available. The entire process takes place with a single click - you do not have to download and install a new copy of the program by hand. Further, only the changed parts of the program will be downloaded from the Web, so it is quicker as well as easier than using the manual approach.

HumanEdj also provides features to support the creation and distribution of Stories directly from an external software application that are only available on purchase of an "Integration" license.

Other Resources

HumanEdj home page