The wait is over and K2 4.7 is yours to experience now. Head over to the K2 customer portal and get your hands on it. It is worth the wait.

This release includes enhancements on end-user experience including K2 Mobile, Universal Windows App, SmartStarters, and deeper DocuSign integration. It also includes capabilities that empower technical teams with a new REST broker with Swagger compatibility, K2 Management, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and more.

K2 now supports SharePoint 2016 and adds key enhancements to performance, forms rules and registering web applications, which simplifies application registration and activation management for the K2 for SharePoint app.

For more information on the supported third-party product versions, please see http://help.k2.com/blackpearl/support-matrix.

Check out our tips on upgrading to K2 4.7.

jEyLaBs has been working with the early versions of K2 4.7 and The next PowerToolz for K2 update, Version 4.7, will be released shortly. We will support and enhance K2 4.7’s impressive array of new and enhanced capabilities with a deep focus on Test Automation.

We are excited to be releasing a number of New Themes for K2 SmartForms. These are made available for FREE via the Theme Installer tool in PowerToolz for K2.

We have released the first of these Themes – jEyLaBs Orange – now. You can get hold of this exciting new Theme by downloading the Latest PowerToolz (version 4.1) from the PowerToolz website.

Please Fill out the PowerToolz evaluation form and get this theme.

http://powertoolz.com.au/eval

Run PowerToolz on the server where SmartForms is installed. Go to Theme Installer node, select jEyLaBs Orange and click install. A quick IIS reset will be prompted and you are good to go.

Two additional themes, jEyLaBs Apple and jEyLaBs Mango are in the making and will be instantly available once they are released. You will be able to install them with a single click from within PowerToolz.

Please let us know what you think of jEyLaBs Orange. You can email us at powertoolz@jeylabs.com.au

The Buy vs Build argument has been around ever since we had reusable code. We face this every time we propose a solution to a customer problem. This question somes times surfaces as Cloud vs On-Prem. This also affects businesses that have invested in a legacy platform such as Lotus Notes or a homegrown system that is clearly outdated.

Do you buy a product and customise it to your needs or build a solution from the ground up to meet your requirements? Nobody writes a database or an operating system anymore. We license them and build solutions on top of them or buy products that uses these as prerequisites.

These days we are used to platforms and we have our preferred choice of toolkit.

Which way we go depends on whether we have a clear case presented. If we can meet 80% of our requirements by using a solution or product then customising the rest should be an obvious option. But what if that 20% of the requirements could cost you a whole lot more to customise or impossible to achieve? What if 10% is the most critical of requirements?

What happens if the company that produces the product or solution you are going to use as the base goes out of business or get bought out by your competitor?

What happens if you decide to build it yourself and the key people of your team go missing? What if your team couldn’t solve a critical Scalability, Performance or Security related issue with your code or integration or customisation?

What if you invest in a product and suddenly there are much cheaper and better options become available in the next 8 months?

What if you couldn’t be sure of your entire requirement set? What if your business requirements completely change in 6 months?

There are many aspects that affect which way you decide to move. 

What is more important is that you consider all avenues and make an informed choice. Once you make it stick to your guns and see through it.

jEyLaBs specialised in Application platform migrations and modernisation of legacy systems. Reach out to us, if you need any help with your Buy or Build decisions.

PowerToolz V4.0 has been released.

This release includes the following new features and enhancements:

1. Multi Tab control support for SmartForms is now included. You can script SmartForms with multiple tab controls.

2. Configurable Control activation delay is added into PowerScript. This allows you to add delays into the test script such that real end user behaviour can now be mimicked very closely.

This delay configuration allows for SmartForm controls to be activated and PowerScript will wait for longer period of time before activating the next control as required by the test scenario.

3. You can now customise the SmartForm control assertion failure messages as you wish.

4. You can now setup unlimited assertions against any Smartform control.

5. We have added More Random data generation functions to PowerToolz. You also have test data templates for generating randomised input that looks more realistic.

6. You can now Send Log files and a screenshot to PowerToolz support team with a single click of a button.

7. We have added more Filtering options in the  UI allowing you to narrow down the information you see quickly.

8. Process management feature performance is improved and UI is enhanced to handle thousands of instances.

9. SmartForm scripting UI is now improved to list controls under specific views and it groups them by views. You can also move Views and controls as you wish.

Now, Head over to and download the latest version.

More information on PowerToolz is available at http://PowerToolz.com.au/FAQ

Are you that person who looks at tables and rows of data and performs data manipulation all day long to create charts and reports?

How many times in the past few months, you wished you could see relations between different data trends in more than one way?

Are you still waiting on your development team to create that dashboard you asked for last month? Did you ever wonder getting your dashboards onto business executives’ phones could be a lot easier?

Well, your wishes have finally come true. Welcome to the new way of converting your data into business insights in no time with Microsoft Power BI.

Step 1 : Gather your Data

Go and collect data. You can do this in excel or using CSV files. You can even make temporary databases to collect this data.

Step 2: Model your Data

Flat table structure is key here. Organise the data into large, flat but meaningful tables. Ensure you give proper names to your columns that makes sense to your business data and business users.

Step 3: Visualize your Data

Use PowerBI Desktop to import this data. Perform any remapping required. Visualize the data into charts and graphs you need.

Step 4: Publish the Reports

You can publish the reports and create dashboards with them. You can create a variety of dashboards to target specific user needs.

Step 5: Ask Questions

This is where the power of this exercise becomes evident. You can use PowerBI web to ask questions in natural language. Do you Remember that in step 2 we created business names for our columns? That is to help PowerBI engine to help us with these queries.

PowerBI will even dynamically render graphs based on your queries.

Power BI can bring data from a variety of data sources including your social media, SAP, Office 365, SharePoint, Excel and your in-house SQL databases. This allows you to create visual representations of data that can be used to setup meaningful dashboards. You can deliver these to your business users with no additonal effort.

Anyone with access to these dashboards can ask questions in your business lingo to find insights hidden in that data. Power BI uses a Natural language syntax to query the backend to get better insights and visual correlations instantly for you.

The exciting thing is, all your dashboards and reports are now readily available on mobile devices via the Power BI mobile app. You do not need to purchase an app or spend time and money on app development.

Speak to one of our Consultants to discover how Power BI can change the way you perceive your business.

We were at the Melbourne #Office365 Saturday presenting our Accounts Payable solution using  #K2 #Abby and #PowerBI. Check out this short video we made covering that presentation.

Highlights:

1. The Australian economy, although not huge compared to many western nations, is made up of complex supply chains.

2. SMB sector is a core part of This supply chain and does not have proper systems put in place to optimise their Accounts payable processes.

3. Many organisations are surprisingly still dealing with invoices that are paper based or in image/PDF format.

4. Validation and approvals usually take a long time and impacts the flow of cash within the entire supply chain.

5. Using PowerBI we were able to visualise this and provide insights into this supply chain.

6. jEyLaBs has a solution that uses K2 and Abby, integrated with Office365 to provide an effective solution to Automate your Accounts Payable processes.

Read more at https://jEyLaBs.com/AP

Productivity Apps that are available to business users will increase in number as your organisation grow.

The creation and maintenance rate of effective documentation for each app is a stark contrast to this.

Actually, It is very time consuming to document business processes to a high standard.

It is inevitable that development activities will become the focal point of a project, rather than documentation to meet the business demands.

Ask any software developer, They don’t think about documentation much perhaps until the last day.

At times, token user documentation will be hurriedly put together. It is often difficult for users to consume, but from the project perspective it will tick the user documentation check box.

But is this really a big deal? If a helpdesk Read More

“Integration” is an overloaded and overused word in Tech. It is easy to ignore its potential when we use it in conversations as a throwaway term.

Integration of people, process and tools are the core of any business. IT aids by implementing this Integration.

In the spectrum of the possibilities of System Integration that is available to businesses, most people tend to sit on the different ends of it and call their implementation as the holy grail.

I have seen people with 27 cloud-based systems, all integrated through APIs and using a variety of hacks. I have seen monolithic ERP systems that do most of everything a business need. I have even spoken to business owners where their EAs do all the “Integration work” manually every day. I have worked with organizations that run on dynamic business application platforms.

While I have my preferences, lucky for you, I have chosen not to preach my practice of Integration in this post. Rather, I want to explore the Secret Powers an effective business integration can bring out so that you can dominate your market. At a high level, I see three sets of Secret Powers.

Secret Power 1 : The All Knowing 

Integration of two seemingly disparate business activities can provide unseen insights when they are put together in a way that makes sense for your business. Read More

We added a new “favourites” feature to PowerToolz in this update. As a user you can add your favourite K2 objects to the favourite dropdown and access them vey quickly.
PowerToolz email notifications can now use our sendgrid service. This allows for a fall back when your own SMTP service is not available.