CUSTOMIZABLE WORKFLOWS, WORKFLOW NOTIFICATIONS, AND MORE 

CXO version 24.1 offers enhancement to the Workflow functionality for increased ease-of-use and uptake. Additionally, some smaller features from our innovations portal have been addressed.

Highlights of this release include:   

• More control with Customizable Workflow

• Increased ease of use through Workflow Notifications

• Improved User Group Management

• Productivity gain through Maintenance messages

More Control With Customizable Workflows

What are CXO Workflows?

Since version 22.3.0, CXO has offered Workflows; a feature which allows customers to manage their CXO financial closing process from within CXO. With workflows, you can indicate for reports and storyboards who is responsible for adding and validating data and commentary by which date. This way, you can be more efficient as there is no uncertainty about responsibilities and due dates. Because Workflows provide information about report/storyboard completion, they also enabled the implementation of Status Indicators (see screenshot below). On each report for which the customer has a Workflow, we now show an icon which indicates whether data and commentary are ready or not. This gives end users valuable information whether a report is ready for use or now. Workflows are accessible via the CXO web application in the same way as Reports and Storyboards.

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What are CXO Customizable Workflows?

One challenge with the original Workflows is that CXO predefined which five steps every workflow had to go through. Your closing processes may be slightly different than what is described in those steps. Customizable Workflows allow you to adjust the steps in each Workflow to reflect your closing process. The Status Indicator released in the first version of Workflows is compatible with this enhancement, and pre-existing Workflows will continue to work when upgrading to a new version of CXO.

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Increased ease of use through Workflow Notifications

When users are added to Workflows, they already received updates via their own Workflow screen. To avoid users having to browse to workflows to see if actions are available for them, we implemented two notifications which will increase users' awareness of their need to act. Via the already existing notifications menu, a user now gets a notification when they are added to a workflow template, as well as when they have to execute a step in a workflow instance. This way, users are better enabled to meet their deadlines.

Improved User Group Management

In version 24.1.0 we have added a functionality which shows the members of a user group when managing this user group in CXO Designer. This is accessible via the new ‘Users’ tab accessible per user group. As user groups can have many members, it is also possible to export the user list to a csv file for further analysis. Detailed information can be found here: User Groups - Documentation - insightsoftware Confluence (atlassian.net)

Productivity gain through Maintenance messages

It can happen that your EPM source system is down or undergoing maintenance. As a result, you may want your CXO users to not look at the data in CXO at that time. To address that need it is now possible to set a pop-up text under System Announcements. This text will display for 24 hours when users enter CXO. More details can be found here. Please note that this is an addition to existing functionality. If you want to prevent users to look at non-finalized data, we recommend using the Draft Period functionality. Alternatively, you can set up workflows as the status indicator will show whether or not data on a report are finalized or not.