Analytics meets automation in a new edition of OpenSpan’s process management development platform, which lets developers service-enable desktop applications.
Yesterday, OpenSpan 4.5 became generally available. It builds upon the company’s process automation technology with the capacity to identify process bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
Instrumentation enables developers to know what applications are most in use, which screens are being used the most, how much time a user is spending on a screen, and how often users are moving between screens.
“Users often submit requests for application changes; now, developers can validate if they are good requests or not,” explained OpenSpan’s CEO Eric Musser. It also provides organizations with analytics that give a process flow perspective for process improvement, he added.
OpenSpan’s runtime module intercepts message calls between desktop applications and the Windows operating system, and then interacts with objects in the application. It can also inject Web services into desktop applications.
An event engine collects desktop events, and a virtual broker manages service requests across multiple instances of integrations. Both Java and Win32 applications are supported.
OpenSpan 4.5 broadens UI integration support for Oracle and SAP applications, and includes an updated tool to provide visual integration with Salesforce.com’s Force.com API.
That technology enables OpenSpan to collect the properties, methods and events from a user’s clickstream, Musser said. “It’s instrumenting what’s going on.” Developers use a graphical tool to highlight the areas of the user interface that they would like to monitor.
OpenSpan also now plugs into Microsoft Visual Studio, enabling developers to create automations using the language of their choice, Musser said. “The developer has the capability to interact with different environments that may be written in many languages.”
A standalone IDE is available for developers that do not which to use Visual Studio. “It’s a simpler interface and a more contained environment,” Musser said. The development tools are available free of cost; customers pay a US$1 per day ($365 per year) subscription license for each active runtime.
