Hi Christian,
I have also needed a similar feature and have developed a "tool" in Java,
that can take a directory structure containing documents saved as Word
.html files and convert them all to a single EPF XML document ready for
import, where Word metadata, filename or containg foldername is used for
specifying how to treat the data (using conventions for headers names
etc.) and which EPF element type to convert each Word document into (also
resolves internal references to sub-documents).
An other idea for rapid data entry would be to design a custom DSL for
EPF, perhaps using the Xtext project of Open ArchitectureWare, see:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Xtext and
http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/oaw/doc/4.3/html/contents/xtext_reference.html
This would enable one to quickly describe the main model structure from
within an Eclipse editor, something like:
activity "myAct1":"My first activity" {
author: "K.Mandrup"
mainDesc: "ddfdsg sdg dg gsd"
tasks {
...
}
}
deliveryProcess "myProcess":"My Process" {
author: "K.Mandrup"
mainDesc: "ddfdsg sdg dg gsd"
...
activities {
myAct1
myAct2
}
}
The model would be saved as XMI and can be converted to some other format
for easy EPF import using an OAW workflow designed for this purpose with
model transformations (generators) defined using the Xtend and Xpand2
languages, see:
http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/oaw/doc/4.3/html/contents/core_reference.html.
A book is on the way (early next year?) describing how to use OAW 4.3 for
real enterprise solutions.
--
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:11:57 +0000
From: Christian Nentwich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [epf-dev] epf composer and content entry
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
All,
Here's some feedback for you on EPF Composer, and some questions.
The tool seems very much oriented towards maintenance and maintaining
structural/model integrity, and it is good at that. However, to be
frank, it's not very useful for new content creation at the moment,
because a) it's not oriented towards data entry and b) the structural
overhead would put process analysts off.
In the project at hand, we are documenting existing processes and trying
to capture them in EPF. There are _hundreds_ of work products, roles and
tasks. Right click -> New, with a persistence call every time leading to
a three second delay is just not feasible, never mind asking process
managers unfamiliar with the tool to choose readable as well as internal
names. They want to be able to set up their roles, tasks, etc., fast -
maintaining process information is already a burden, making it harder is
not a good idea from our point of view.
Our users now maintain the method content in a spreadsheet, which we
have written an importer for. Does the EPF project have any plans to
facilitate rapid data entry? Am I describing a use case that is just not
what the project is intended for (i.e. is it intended for browsing and
tweaking standard processes like OpenUP)?
thanks,
Christian_______________________________________________
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