Introduction Diagrams & Objects Architecture User-Interface Technical Requirements What's New in V3?
OrgDesigner is a tool to design, maintain and publish the structure and processes of any business. When your business is changing, you will experience the gap between Organization (Business Processes) and Information (Systems). Efficient, Human Communication is vital in this situation. OrgDesigner is a perfect tool to enable this.
See also OrgDesigner Compared to other tools!
OrgDesigner supports communication. A very good way to communicate complex situations are Diagrams. There is supports for a number of diagrams:
| Organization Diagram | Diagram to display the organization of interest with the details and structure you want. You can choose for any number of levels and several layout options. You can display of OrgUnit-name only, or combine it with Positions, or even display persons. |
| Activity Diagram | (Flowchart) Diagram to display the relations between Activities and Decisions by means of flows. Flows can be connected to Products (containing information or something physical). |
| Activity Hierarchy Diagram | Diagram to display a Hierarchy or Decomposition of Activities. |
| Communication Diagram | Diagram to display the flows between Organizational Units. |
| Matrix | A graphical overview of two OrgDesigner objects and their relations. You can choose any combination of two objecttypes, as long as there is a possible relation. |
You can create different diagrams of the same objects. Because all diagrams use the same collection of objects, these diagrams are automatically related: If there is a diagram for an activity on a top-level diagram, you can 'Zoom In'!
Other Objects available: Document References, Information Systems, Sites (for publishing).
All Objects of OrgDesigner are stored in the dictionary. OrgDesigner offers several ways to enter these Objects: Manual (via the Diagram Editor, the TreeView or the PropertyView) or Automatic: ASCII (file-import), ODBC (import from any database with an ODBC-driver available) or Custom (Import data from other software packages like SDW is currently available as a service).
| On the publication or output-side, there is support for: | |
| 1. | Advanced printing |
| 2. | Serveral drawingstandards: ISO, QPL, IDEF. You can define your own standards. |
| 3. | OLE: copy and paste diagrams into you documents. Also OLE-Automation is available for generation of Diagrams. |
| 4. | ASCII and ODBC (data), GIF (diagrams), XPDL (workflow). |
| 5. | XML-generation |
| 6. | HMTL-generation. This is the most advanced output-option. You can generate the content of your 'Organization-Handbook'-web-site by pressing a button. Diagrams and Objects are 'hyperlinked'. You also have the possiblity to generate index-trees (a compact menu) and popup-menus for Diagrams in a browser. |
| 7. | HMTL-editing. A HTML-Editor is available to allow you to create any form of publication. Easy integration with OrgDesigner-Diagrams and -Data. Userfrienly interface. Automatic check (and update) of links is available. |
The Dictionary can be extended with your own Attributes, which are made available everywhere (Diagrams, Import, Export).
OrgDesigner is designed for Windows. It complies with the guidelines for Windows95, where this is meaningful.
OrgDesigner offers you several Viewpoints to your data: TreeView for a Treelike representation of Objects and Relations, ListView for a selected list of objects, the Diagram Editor for a graphical View, the PropertyView for checking out all properties of objects and relations, and the Matrix for the overview of relations between two types of objects.
For an easy overview of your published and generated data, an Explorer-like SiteView is available. From here, you can start the HTML-Editor.
On-line Help is available via a Browser.
Before you can use OrgDesigner, make sure your installation meets the following requirements:
| Hardware | |
| 1. | Processor: the minimum is a 80486, Pentium 75Mhz or faster. |
| 2. | Internal memory: you need at least 8 MB of free memory plus the memory required for the browser (for on-line help / HTML Editing). |
| 3. |
Disk space: you need at least 8 MB of free disk space. |
| 4. |
Preferably an 800x600 resolution display with 256 colors or greater. |
| 5. |
A Mouse. |
| Software | |
| 1. | Windows 95 / 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP |
| 2. | Windows Installer V2.0. For XP, this is standard. For
the others: first install the Windows installer. For Windows 95, 98 and Me you need the ANSI-version: InstMsiA.exe. Download the installer from Microsoft or the OrgDesigner site. For Windows NT (4, SP6) and 2000 you need the Unicode-version: InstMsiW.exe. Download the installer from Microsoft or the OrgDesigner site. Download instructions: click on the link of your choice, and select "Run this program from its current location" to start the installer immediately, OR select "Save this program to disk" to copy the download to your machine for installation at a later time. |
| 3. | For the on-line help: an Internet browser supporting Java (Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and up, Netscape Navigator 4.0 and up are OK, others might work). If you haven't any, download one from Microsoft or Netscape. |
| 4. | OrgDesigner uses Windows common controls version 5.80.2614.3600
or above. This is the same as the version of the comctl32.dll in your windows-system-directory.
If you need to upgrade (only necessary if you have Windows 95 or NT), visit
Microsoft
to download setup-file 50comupd.exe (x86), or download it from the OrgDesigner
site. (OrgDesigner checks this requirement at startup!). |
| 5. |
To use the OrgDesigner HTML-Editor, you need to have Shdocvw.dll version 5.50 or above installed on your system. This file is installed when you install the Internet Explorer 5.5 from Microsoft. Visit Microsoft to download a copy of IE 5.5 or above! |
OrgDesigner can be used in a Network. You can put the data on a central Server. OrgDesigner is multi-user: several users can open a Project. But only one can make modifications!
In version 3 of OrgDesigner the following features are available:
| 1. | A user can define its own attributes for all objects. These attributes can also be placed on diagrams by defining new Layout Templates, imported, exported, etc. |
| 2. | Import of data and the generation of diagrams can be done via OLE-Automation. If you have all the structured data of your organization in a database (Org.Units, Positions, etc.), then you can automatically generate all the Organization Diagrams you want! |
| 3. |
A HTML-editor is added. Now you can create documents in any layout,
ready for your intranet. OrgDesigner allows you to drag and drop diagrams
directly into your documents. It also keeps track of all the relations
between objects: invalid links can be reported, and (of course) the relations
with OrgDesigner-objects can be updated automatically! |
| 4. | A new example is available for the automatic generation of Organization Diagrams via OLE Automation. |
| 5. | For Diagrams you can choose a Drawing Technique. Available are: OrgDesigner, ISO, QPL, IDEF. |
| 6. | An export can be generated in XPDL-format, the standard XML-format for Workflow-data. |
| 7. | Multi-user: Projects can be opened by several users. One can make modifications. |
| 8. | OrgDesigner can be used with Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. |
| 9. | XP-style is now supported |
| 10. | Setup is converted to the Microsoft Installer 2.0 |
| 11. | You can create an OLE-link to an OrgDesigner HTML-document. This enables you to publish these documents (in e.g. Word) without extra maintainance: the update can be performed automatically. |
| 12. | Support for creating new HTML-documents is improved: you can create templates per objecttype (e.a. Activities, Persons) and per description type (long description, remarks, ...). |
| 13. | Function 'Import from other open project' is added. You can get a complete detailed overview of the impact of synchronizing 2 projects for a certain scope. And of course do the synchonize. |