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[Closed] Next cycle of development

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(@david-stone)
Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 33
Topic starter  

We are very happy to have launched version 4 of Flowz at the beginning of February after many long hours by our development team. We have been spending February and March tidying up the bits that didn't quite make it into the big update and responding to initial feedback from users.

Our minds are now turning to what we should do next. If we had a magic wand, we would wave it and make everything happen at once, but sadly this isn't the case and we have to make choices about where to best focus our efforts. Given we want to do everything and can't, rather than us pick a priority 'out-of-a-hat', we thought it would be better to ask you (pre-COVID I would have done this at a Flowz User Group Meeting - but they're not going to be happening in the same way anytime soon). So, below I have outlined our thinking and opened a poll, which will remain open until the end of March. Please let us know what you want.

1. Data Protection Impact Assessment: In developing v4, we knowingly 'broke' the DPIA module. To now finish this work and launch into the live environment we need to re-plumb the integration with new style assets and flows. But more than that we want to inherit information from assets and flows, especially risk value, so that the risk assessment resulting from a DPIA reflects the totality of risk, separately displayed, for whatever you have chosen to sub-divide your risks into, but typically security risks, rights and freedoms, demonstrable accountability, etc. We also want to be cleverer at pre-populating screens, which would be the beginning of breaking the strict relationship between organisational parent and organisational child business units so that you can, for example, have a nominated person in a DPO, approver, IG or InfoSec role for that unit, that person appear pre-populated in the authoring team screen and you be able to allocate questionnaires to that person to answer. Additionally, this project will include conditional system messages to support workflows for reviewing and approving DPIAs, and new organisational roles that allow a wider range of people to have system access for only reading and/or creating DPIAs. The prototype DPIA module also featured the ability to save partially complete DPIAs, and add notes and attachments to every page. If you vote for this option, we will also add the facility to turn notes into tasks, allocate them to a person, set a due date, mark as complete and chase overdue tasks. Once complete, we would add the ability to save, add tasks, etc. back into assets and flows. We would also add a panel in the asset and flow records so that you can see which DPIAs they have been included in.

2. People: Having invested heavily in the development of assets and flows, the most obvious next area of the existing live system to develop is People. This is more than the User Interface, which would be updated with tables and filters, as we have done for other functions, but is most importantly about 'breaking' the rigid relationship between People, Organisational Structure and Assets + Flows. This would mean an asset could be linked to an organisational structure and separately to a person, without there having to be a relationship between the person and organisational structure. We know many of our larger customers have been frustrated by this, but it hasn't impacted on smaller organisations in the same way. This project would also include the ability to add external people and record contact details without them being linked to the internal organisational structure so that you can add external people, e.g., DPOs and UK/EEA Representatives, and their contact details against the external organisational structure. Doing this project creates the foundation for external messaging.

3. Reporting: Reporting has been a long desired change in the system and now that we have redesigned all of the database structures, we would like to focus on more complex reporting. The existing reporting of Assets and Flows has essentially been replaced by the new filter and export functions, and this project would include adding the facility to have all data collection points displayed in the MyAssets and My Flows tables and, on selecting 'Export' choose whether to only export what is displayed, or to export all fields. More than this a new Reporting function would flatten and normalise the data so that you can run your own reporting tools, or off-the-shelf solutions, such as Crystal and report on the linkages between assets and flows. This is another long wished for feature, and completing this project would be a major step towards producing graphical outputs. We would also be able to display inbound and outbound flows in the asset record.

Hopefully the above has given you a flavour of our dilemma and you too now want them all, but you still have to choose in the poll below.

As always, we are happy to discuss this and other options with you.

Thanks,

David


   
(@Paolino Buttaci)
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 1
 

People please


   
(@Sonya)
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 3
 

As one of the earliest people to start really using the system and from day one our preference has been to have a reporting tool that the institute can use properly my vote goes to REPORTING  REPORTING REPORTING please. 

 

Many thanks

 

Sonya 🙂


   
(@sonyar)
Active Member
Joined: 6 years ago
Posts: 12
 

Being one of the first institutes to really get to grips with Flowz and test it to the full I have and always will be asking for REPORTING to be one of the next priorities as it was promised way back when and still waiting. 

 

Sonya


   
(@Graham Trainor)
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 1
 

People please.

Nothing seemed to happen when clicking the vote now button above?

KR

Graham


   
(@david-stone)
Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 33
Topic starter  

I thought I'd set it up to end on 31st, but it displays to show it is available until 4th. I am looking in to it.

David


   
(@david-stone)
Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 33
Topic starter  

@sonyar It doesn't look like you managed to rally much support for your preference. We will release results after 12th as son many people are on holiday.

David


   
(@david-stone)
Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 33
Topic starter  

@graham In my view it shows you as guest rather than member. Are you sure you logged in?


   
(@Sonya)
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 3
 

@david-stone I always live in hope and love a good challenge so will not be giving up.....


   
(@Sonya)
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 3
 

@david-stone I never say never and always love a good challenge so I will wait patiently and live in hope. 


   
(@david-stone)
Member Admin
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 33
Topic starter  

Good - but it is only the sequence of the development, it will still be done 


   
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