The corporate world, as much as it would cringe at the thought, is often akin to government. Decision making and approval often have to go through a long and tedious chain of command. Percussion’s PowerFlow 5.0 is out to ease that pain.
The software is designed to allow users to visually model and define any process that will be put into a Lotus Domino-based application. This includes such operations as workflow, database actions, any security that a company wants to automate, or decisions about who gets to do what to which document at what time.
According to Vernon Imrich, director of product strategy with Percussion, this is typically done by putting scripts directly into the applications.
“What our product lets you do is pull all of that stuff out into a separate engine, so your application then is defined as just what constitutes the document,” he said. This allows designers to automate Domino applications without affecting their original design and build PowerFlow applications without any obligatory template or design elements, according to the company.
The product is essentially a two-piece system. The developer’s kit is used for creating automated applications while the server piece is designed to deploy those applications. It is the event-based design that is unique to Percussion, according to Imrich.
“The engine part is what is important – it allows a wider flexibility for the application designer [which] translates to a wide array of end users because the designers can now build very simple Web users vs. Notes client users,” he said. He added that with other products, designers are forced to use certain design elements, forms and buttons, which tends to be limiting.