Harvest Administrator Assistant Product perspective May 2006

Product opportunity Computer Associates AllFusion Harvest Change Manager is one of the leading CM solutions on the market. While satisfying all needs of developers, CM administrator tasks are somewhat neglected, which impacts productivity and ease of maintenance of the whole system. Harvest Administrator Assistant purposes to improve and enhance Harvest administrator user experience.

Environment management scale In typical Harvest mid- to large-sized environments there are hundreds of projects, each having tens of states and tens of processes within each state. To estimate number of entities managed: 100 projects 100x10 = 1,000 states (10 in each project) 1,000x10 = 10,000 processes (10 in each state) And we are considering lower-bound estimates without even taking linked processes into account!

Environment management problem Processes are the smallest building blocks of business logic enforced in Harvest environment. As we have shown, even middle sized installation leaves the administrator with 10,000 processes to manage! And enterprise business logic is dynamic, making change of process definitions everyday task for CM administrator.

Current means of process management To change process definitions, CM administrator users may use Harvest Administrator application. While well-suited to handling changes for a single process, the task of changing access permissions for 20 processes in different states of different projects will require significant time, effort and is quite error-prone (for example, it takes 11 mouse clicks to perform access modification for a single process )

Current means of process management To decrease time and effort needed to modify process definitions, CM administrator users often resort to low-level methods such as direct database modification using SQL. While fast, the method is prone to critical errors and requires steep learning curve.

The solution To illustrate how Harvest Administrator Assistant increases productivity and eliminates errors, let’s have a look at example mentioned before. To change access definitions of 20 processes the following steps are required: 1) Select processes to modify by specifying custom filter on project, state, process properties 2) View and modify selected processes access list And that’s instead of 200+ mouse-clicks required in Harvest Administrator, saying naught of complicated SQL queries!

The features – Change processes Harvest Administrator Assistant tool allows CM administrators conveniently change process definitions. User may change process properties in batches according to her selection, including: * Common properties (name, note) * Access list (execute grant/revoke) * Process-type specific properties For User-Defined Processes (UDP) and Notify processes extended user-interface is available.

Process change Search and select processes to changeChange common propertiesChange access propertiesChange process type specific properties… and more for UDP/Notify/linked processes

The features – Change processes for linked processes It is possible to change linked processes common properties both by searching parent processes or by searching for specific linked processes. User may change linked process properties in batches according to her selection, including: * Common properties (name, note) * Process-type specific properties Extended user-interface for User-Defined Processes (UDP) and Notify process types makes changing linked process properties effortless and convenient.

Linked process change Search and select linked processes to changeChange process type specific properties

The features – Create processes Harvest Administrator Assistant tool allows CM administrators to create new processes from definitions of already existing processes. Create processes from existing process, duplicating process properties including: * Process properties * Process access list * Linked processes Users may create both ordinary and linked processes. It is also possible to create linked processes from ordinary ones and vs. (for UDP and Notify processes only)

Select project, state and process to duplicate fromSelect project and state to duplicate process toSet duplication advanced parameters Process definitions duplicated! Process duplication

The technology Harvest Administrator Assistant was developed using C#. on Microsoft.NET platform for Windows. The data are retrieved and modified by direct database access using proprietary data access components, that support range of databases (currently Oracle only is supported, Microsoft SQL Server and Ingres are planned in future releases). Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the application is consistent with Windows XP look and feel.

Supported versions The Harvest Administration Assistant was originally developed for Harvest version 5.0. At the time of release, the product supports Harvest versions r7 and r7.1 on Oracle database 10g.