Released in November 2024, Prolaborate 5.4 introduces new features:
- Integration Map: new chart to visualize information flows or connections between repository elements.
- Example: application data flows.
- Dashboards widget to render several dashboards within a "master" dashboard.
- Benefits:
- Integrate the content from multiple dashboards within a single page, preventing from navigating between different dashboards.
- Publish selected dashboards on a single dashboard for a dedicated group of users.
- Benefits:
- Access to Enterprise Architect discussions from Prolaborate.
- Identification of external sources with a specific link, visible on diagrams via a specific visual.
- Improved search with new criteria: attributes, operations, custom properties (tagged values).
- New Prolaborate API.
Main improvements:
- Sharing links for custom reports.
- Roadmap Chart enhancements: display of the current date, handling of phases without an end date (indefinitely extended).
- Modify connectors names and descriptions within Prolaborate.
- Management of complex tagged values from installed MDG technologies (e.g., ArchiMate customization with stereotypes via a meta-model).
This article presents a selection of Prolaborate 5.4 improvements.
Integration Map Chart to Display Links Between Model Elements
Integration map is a new type of chart that allows visualizing direct links between elements of the same type: applications (Application Components ArchiMate), interfaces, business processes, etc.
Here is an example of application data flows in Enterprise Architect:
Creating an Integration Map chart involves selecting the type and stereotype of the elements to compare (e.g., ApplicationComponent) and the type and stereotype of connectors (e.g., ArchiMate Flow).
Result in Prolaborate when selecting APP2:
- Incoming flow from APP1 (provides)
- Outgoing flow to APP2.1, APP2.2, APP3.2 (consumes)
- Bidirectional flow with APP3.1 (both)
This chart is dynamic; clicking on an application opens its properties.
This representation is very useful for enterprise architecture models as illustrated above, but also for system interfaces (SysML MBSE repository), etc.
Show Multiple Dashboards with the "Dashboards" Widget
Dashboards in Prolaborate allow creating pages composed of "widgets": links to diagrams, diagram thumbnail previews, reports, charts, text (HTML), images, etc.
Prolaborate already allows centralizing widgets with the Widget Library to reuse them across dashboards.
A new type of widget (Dashboard) enables publishing an entire dashboard to combine and reuse content from multiple dashboards. In the following example, the default dashboard is displayed alongside the chart dashboard:
Search
The Prolaborate search module integrates new criteria: attributes, operations, tagged values (custom properties).
In the following example, a search for the attribute "deliveryInstructions" is executed. Several classes containing this attribute (cf. Sparx EA Example project) are displayed in the results:
Opening the properties of the Order class confirms this attribute is there:
The custom values search on VendorA retrieves an ArchiMate application:
The APP1 application indeed has a tagged value (Vendor) with the value VendorA:
Prolaborate API
Prolaborate provides a REST API to automate the following tasks in this first version:
- Manage Prolaborate users (creation, update, deletion)
- Generate share links based on an element, package, or diagram GUID
- Create repositories in Prolaborate
The API requires prior configuration to generate a security token to allow third-party applications to authenticate before invoking API methods.
Note that this API only handles Prolaborate-related functions, whilst EA data management is handled by Sparx Pro Cloud Server (PCS) API. PCS could, for example, be interfaced with a PowerShell script to extract ArchiMate EA repository applications to Excel on a nightly basis.