Risk Think

BETA10 and BETA11 are now available.  BETA10 will work with the DB version in the standard V6.2.5.6 installer (DB Version 6.2.5), but you will need to apply at least a change to the SEARCH_RISKS view in the DB.   A script is available to apply the upgrade.

With BETA11 we have finally decided to commit to the new data structure that has been waiting in the wings for about 8 months.  We continued with the BETA stream on the old 6.2.5 DB structure as long as we could, but now it is hampering our ability to move to the next generation of the RM system.

BETA11 actually uses Release 1. of the new V6.2.6 DB structure and will NOT work with the V6.2.5 Database entirely.  The client and server have been designed to accept the V6.2.5 data structure and apply some intelligent field and table selections based on the differences between the data structures but the client will generate several “non-critical” error warning messages on start up as it attempts to access tables that do not exist in the V6.2.5 data structure.   Obviously, this is not appropriate for production installs. 

The BETA11 structure includes a number of revisions to the data layouts to remove some organisational unnecessary restrictions that in some cases date back over 10 years and surface a raft of new insurance, claims, incident and compliance capabilities.  We are currently working closely with a number of clients feeding requirements for their real-world compliance, claims and OHS operational needs and the V6.2.6 DB structure is intended to meet the architectural requirements of these clients. 

This has been a large project commencing over 12 months ago with just a couple of clients, and over the intervening period has expanded substantially as many more of you have joined the BETA team to provide your own version of these related needs.

BETA11 is a production stable release BUT, for production your DB must be upgraded to the V6.2.6 structure.  We have not built an auto-installer for BETA11 (see below for the reason for this decision), and so if you wish to use it in production you should email me and we will make it available for direct download on your client login page.  In each case we will build a custom upgrade script against our copy of your reference database, or (preferably) we will hand upgrade your database, but you will need to make a backup of your current production database for the  purpose.   For a custom upgrade script against a reference database there will be a small fee.  For a upgrade performed by us against a backup of your production database forwarded to us there will be NO fee.  (The custom script takes a lot longer  to make and is more error prone than if you provide us with a backup of your production database and we run a delta analysis between it and our master reference databases using our tools on our hardware and then provide the upgraded DB back to you – so we are clearly trying to encourage you to do the latter).

The issues are that:

•  the 6.2.6 DB involves some fairly tricky table structure changes to foreign key and version table structures that are very hard to automate outside of the installer package and the installers take about 5 hours to build.  
• the 6.2.6 DB structure is being changed in 3 steps (Release 1 is available now) because we are adding some features that are being designed on-the-fly with a number of clients who want to be able to try some ideas and then enhance and expand the ideas so there are more parts coming over the next two to three weeks.
• there are significant developments occurring on multiple fronts at once which should complete over the next month, so the significant cost in building the installers with automated DB version upgrades is better delayed until there is more stability in the DB structure

Having said that, a conversion to the 6.2.6 structure NOW is safe to do because future changes will be minor enhancements rather than the fundamental re-organisation of a number of tables that the 6.2.5 to 6.2.6 change represents. 

So what should you do?  If you really want to be part of the compliance-insurance-claims-OHS BETA stream – do the change.  If you are happy to use the facilities as we design and build them, then wait until the stable build with the automated installer is released.

What is in BETA11 ?

• Insurance has been moved from being a relatively hidden feature of strategy – control and type-of-control design to front and centre of a new Insurance panel.
• Claims management has been added
• Incidents have been moved from being only a slave table of Risk to being handled independent of risks and able to be linked back to multiple risks (and claims and insurance, etc).
• Legal management has been added to allow for the tracking of legal resources associated with a claim.
• Fixes to screen handling in documents to ensure the document and section master lists are refreshed when documents and sections are added
•  New default inherent likelihood rating level can be set for new unrated topics
• The bubble chart now allows the minimum bubble size to be set so they can be stopped from shrinking to a single pixel when most risks/compliance items are in a single bubble.
• “My Responsibility” summary now accounts for delegated responsibilities.  (Under the cover the responsibility summariser has been hugely expanded to cover all responsibilities in the database so you will soon see a substantially expanded responsibility tracking screen in “My RiskManager” that covers everything for which you have any responsibility).
• A large number of new rules capabilities have been added to the surveymanager engine and enhancements to the JavaScript library.   There is more happening on this front as we progressively expand the direct SurveyManager to RiskManager cross table access.  Our aim on this front is to eliminate the need for the intervening results table to interface the survey engine screens with the RiskManager tables.

Beta 12 will be released this week – look to Friday.  It will mainly be a refinement of the things in Beta11 and expansion (hopefully completion) of the claims management capabilities.  Beta11 is not available as a browser plug-in-client (only in desktop download).