Ideate makes the management of research as compelling as the pursuit of discovery!

· 100% browser-based with one unified interface for managing the system, design and run-time environments, with support for all mainstream browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer; Mozilla FireFox; Apple Safari; etc.).

· Service Oriented Architecture that supports customer interoperability requirements and the development of plug-ins and widgets for custom functionality.

· True multi-tenancy with on-demand load balancing across logically distributed clusters for supporting securely partitioned instances to enable a Software-as-a-Service business model as well as cloned environments for testing and training.

· RDBMS integration for a comprehensive solution that includes an extensible data mart for persisting Entities across all instances of a process and even disparate processes. The embedded data mart facilitates synchronization of organization Line of Business structures in a dynamic environment where change is part of the domain. The approach addresses the significant limitations of managing process data solely as value pairs.

· Authentication of end-user logins by 3rd party institutional systems supported through APIs.

· Fine-grain object-level security and Wiki-style history for all system objects (e.g. process instance, process design, document, project wiki, rule, XForm, etc.) versioned with each session for audit and roll-back support.

· Organizational Hierarchy and User Positions support automated task assignments and default object security access based on relative associations rationalizing workflow and security management for large organizations.

· Dynamic adaptable workflow engine with run-time design changes for managing instances with exceptions or live change to all running processes, and on-the-fly process binding for supporting complex interwoven processes typical of research arena.

· Case management functionality where one or more processes can be associated in Project Folders for ease of administration. Case-level functionality with the ability to link/chain related processes and enable interactive updates between them.

· XForm Designer tightly integrated with the Data Mart for dynamic representation of Entities in processes ensuring meaningful linkages between instances of process and Entity records. xForms can be created through a UI form building tool or developed/edited in XML directly within the interface (alternatively xForms can be developed outside the system and uploaded).

· Enterprise Content Management with Version Control utilizing WebDav to create a virtual file system with read/write access – an uploaded document can be re-visited, edited and saved back to the system storing a new copy.

· Outputs to PDF, Word, RTF, Excel, and CSV, and can import data from Excel spreadsheets.

· Data transformation for converting system data into required or preferred formats for communications or reports using organization configurable templates.

· Configurable interface with CSS support for organization specific ‘skins’ (i.e. fonts, logos, color schemes, etc.).

· Guest User Access so research collaborators, peer reviewers and other partners can support joint management of projects with direct inputs, facilitating group coordination, reducing loose email communications, and eliminating the need for re-keying.

Ideate takes a holistic approach to service orientation. Instead of modelling a research process as a single monolithic flowchart, Ideate has thoughtfully deconstructed complex research lifecycles into loosely-coupled Services. A Service Oriented Process, or process fragment, represents a single step or series of related steps that collectively fulfil an abstracted business need (e.g. form completion; error checking; internal review; account establishment; project startup; etc.).

Ideate’s approach gives it unprecedented support for long-running human-centric processes that involve frequent ‘wait’ periods, extensive conditional branching, complicated decision trees, and interrelated processes. Importantly, the architecture manages all these variables in a consistent and structured way that provides for governance and change management.

The universal componentization of all system resources into loosely-coupled services is the necessary foundation for the dynamic composition that makes Ideate system interactions so responsive. In Ideate, discrete services that come together like tiles in a mosaic to deliver a , every interaction is made-to-order.

Ideate’s exploitation of pervasive loose-coupling to achieve dynamic composition based on context, puts the solution at the pinnacle of any SOA maturity model. 

Personalized portals summarize all tasks in one convenient location, and feature interactive dashboards with graphs and charts that provide real-time insights into research activity. Users can view statuses, trends, and projections at a glance, and flexibly filter, sort, and drill into reports.

Importantly, with change being a constant in the research arena, Ideate was built from the ground up with thoughtful consideration of the Information Architecture challenges. As a result, the Service Oriented Framework provides for unprecedented governance and change management, and includes an elegant data repository.

Ideate maintains copies of all versions of a process to ensure a complete audit history and supports process-level roll-back. Administrative modifications to a research process can be submitted through an internal review before any changes are implemented. Data captured in older versions of a process remains available for reporting and can be optionally viewed in their original page layouts.

“The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change
without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.”

—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859

The Ideate Framework is purpose-built to accommodate the dynamics of the research enterprise. The light-weight Framework is based on a Service Oriented architectural style.

Instead of hard-coding a solution to a generalized business specification, Ideate deconstructs business requirements into discrete functional components called services, which act as flexible building blocks for assembling applications to suit varied needs. This service paradigm supports far greater customization and adaptability than traditional monolithic development methodologies.

Benefits of Service Orientation

·   The elimination of hard-coded business logic and integration;

·   Repository of re-usable service components;

·   Capacity for dynamic composition enables mass customisation;

·   Allows business to compose process from a palette of infinitely reconfigurable functions;

·   Decomposition of Line-of-Business (LOB) applications facilitates sharing of cross-functional services for composite applications;

·   Extreme loose-coupling for ubiquitous separation of concerns;

·   Ability to evolve services independently allowing non-disruptive incremental improvements.

In Ideate, the only hardcode is the framework itself that enables the filing and execution of processes. Instead of tens of thousands of lines of hopelessly entangled code, Ideate offers the harmony of a well organized library of system resources.

The architecture is straightforward and elegant. System resources – services, rules, process maps, data mart entities, etc – are stored in a virtual file system. Each resource is a discrete component that can be configured individually. The virtual file system provides version control, and features audit history and roll back capabilities. The resources can be readily retrieved by name, type, author, date, etc.  In addition, each application gets a file folder with hotlinks to all of its constituent resources. Individual resources can be shared across multiple applications. An entire application folder can be copied to jump start a new version or a new application.

Ideate’s architecture is optimized for performance as user interactions never invoke more than a handful of small files at any given moment. If a process gets ‘stuck’, the resources involved for that transaction can be isolated quickly, reviewed and repaired, while all other processes continue to run in the background.

This model allows for rapid assembly of highly customized applications from existing ideate resources, while maintaining product support for the underlying Ideate services. Ideate’s componentization of processes and disciplined separation of concerns allows for incremental, non-disruptive change for continuous process improvement.

“…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859