Developer Case Study. BlackBerry Streamlines IT Change Request Approval Process. Industry Healthcare

Transcription

1 Developer Case Study BlackBerry Streamlines IT Change Request Approval Process Situation In 2005, the Baylor IT department reviewed their change management policy and updated their web-based change control management system. They needed a solution to consolidate the pending change requests and allow IT directors to access and review these remotely to prevent delays in implementing system improvements. Technical Solution Custom BlackBerry Application for Change Control Management Using the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE), Baylor developed a custom mobile application in-house for BlackBerry wireless devices. This custom-built application alerts directors of pending change requests so they can review and act on the change requests wirelessly through their BlackBerry devices. Key Outcomes The ability for management to approve or reject Change Management requests wirelessly Freedom to work from remote locations Faster approval process and improved efficiencies Reduction in mismanaged changes Excellent user acceptance Industry Healthcare Company Baylor Health Care System is one of the nation s largest non-profit care facilities. Located in Dallas, Texas, Baylor employs more than 15,000 people in primary care centers and practices, rehabilitation clinics, senior health centers and affiliated ambulatory surgery centers. Region Americas Company Size Large Enterprise Environment Microsoft Exchange Type of Solution Change Management Application developed in-house The Challenge Keeping the information technology (IT) systems up-to-date in any organization requires constant upgrading and improvement. Stringent controls are needed to make sure changes do not harm system performance or cause failure, especially in a healthcare environment like Baylor Health Care System. As a result, Baylor maintains strict control over changes to its IT systems, requiring approval by all IT directors before any change is allowed. According to Germinal Ibarrola, Manager of Enterprise Architecture at Baylor Health Care System, keeping the IT systems problem-free and productive is vital at Baylor. For example, a clinical system update could have a negative impact on the quality of patient care, he explains. Our change management system requires that every change request is approved by all 30 IT directors before it can be implemented. When searching for the best solution, BlackBerry devices were considered because all IT directors already carry them. This provided a workable process to make approvals faster and more efficient. In 2005, the Baylor IT department reviewed their change management policy and updated their webbased change control management system. The previous notification system sent s to the directors, which sometimes were lost among the many other messages in their Inbox. What they needed was a solution to consolidate the pending change requests and allow the IT directors to access and review these remotely. To prevent delays in implementing system improvements, IT management sought a way to streamline the approval process through the use of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution.

2 Developing a Custom Wireless Solution Baylor recognized that providing wireless access to the change management system would have valuable business impact. They decided to develop a mobile application for BlackBerry to alert directors of pending change requests. This way, directors could review and act on the change requests remotely and quickly by using their BlackBerry devices. The IT team saw that developing a new BlackBerry application to compliment their existing change management system as an opportunity to learn about the JDE, the BlackBerry Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and how BlackBerry devices could be used to access existing corporate systems. The process would prepare Baylor IT for developing future BlackBerry applications tailored to their environment. The existing change management system is a web-based portal using a.net Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) with a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database cluster. Fast Facts Application Category Workflow and Approvals BlackBerry Application Name Change Management Application Baylor s Existing Server-Side Application MyBaylor.com Company Portal that hosts the Change Control Management Application BlackBerry Application Mode Users Rich Java ME BlackBerry Client 30 Developers to Build the Application Time to Build the Application 2 5 weeks Development Environment Primary Development Environment Microsoft.NET Existing Application Architecture ASP.NET Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) BlackBerry Software Version BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), BlackBerry Mobile Data Service v , BlackBerry Device Software 4.0 BlackBerry Client Programming Language Java ME Server-side Programming Language Microsoft Visual.NET, C# Database Management System Microsoft SQL Server 2000

3 Mobilizing the Change Request Process A change request originates when a staff member fills out a form from a laptop or desktop computer and submits it to the change management system. Once submitted, the request goes to the staff member s sponsoring director for approval. If the sponsoring director approves the change, it is then distributed to all the other directors. The application Baylor developed, which runs on the BlackBerry device operating system, was written using Java 2 Platform Micro Edition in the BlackBerry JDE. The BlackBerry JDE provides tools for developing and testing applications for BlackBerry devices. With it, Baylor s developers built a stand-alone custom client application that communicates with the company s.net servers using standard protocols. The User Interface (UI) of Baylor s Change Management Application for BlackBerry is primarily text-based and was designed to look like a standard BlackBerry application. Baylor s usability design experts helped with the information architecture to make the application easy to use (see Figure 1). The most pertinent information appears at the top, so directors can determine from the first eight to ten lines of text whether the proposed change affects their respective departments. If they need more information, they can access all the details about the change by scrolling down the page. The director can also forward the change request to someone else for review. On the directors devices, when the Change Management Application for BlackBerry starts up it makes a request to the existing Change Control Management Web Portal and pulls in the work queue. On the device display, the directors see a list of pending change requests Developing the System Along with the Change Management Application for BlackBerry, Baylor also needed to determine how the application would communicate with the existing.net SOA. The existing system served up web pages, but the developers determined that the BlackBerry application would use only certain data from any given page. Streamlining the information available to the user on the BlackBerry device improved the usability of the application by presenting only the relevant information for approving change requests. They developed communication protocols to provide data strings that could be communicated over standard HTTP, and created the logic that allowed both the client application and the existing change management system to use the data that was exchanged. Figure 1. Sample Screens for Change Control Management Application for BlackBerry

4 System Summary The Java ME BlackBerry client application communicates with the existing ASP.NET change control management Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) through a Java HTTP connection and Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Data resides on a Microsoft SQL Server Database Cluster. Desktop and laptop users access MyBaylor.com web pages using standard web browsers. Baylor defined a Network Protocol datagram structure to facilitate the data exchange between the Java ME client and the ASP.NET servers. This structure also validates/authenticates access to the public SOA. The C#.NET development done by Baylor enables mybaylor.com to output data strings instead of web pages when information is requested by the Java ME client. Both the custom encrypted datagrams, and web pages formatted as XHTML are sent over HTTPs. BlackBerry devices communicate over the wireless networks and the Internet through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). The BlackBerry Mobile Data Service, a compent of BES, communicates with the web servers. All communications between the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry devices are encrypted ensuring confidentiality of Baylor s IT management information. Integrating with the Existing System The existing change control management system, an ASP.NET web application, was already running on the mybaylor.com website with workflow and business rules for change control. The mybaylor.com site is a custom-built, component-based, N-tiered system. It was designed for optimal performance and reusability, and includes a security core, portal framework and data abstraction layer. Rather than reroute the workflow over two platforms, the developers leveraged the existing.net code. They used an open protocol to connect from the Java ME client application on the BlackBerry device communicating through HTTPs to obtain the data from the portal. A significant part of the development process was devising the necessary communication protocols. The developers mapped out the different URL calls and the data strings (encrypted datagrams) that were needed in return. They created a unique network diagram, as well as a method for passing the information back and forth, in order to keep network traffic to a minimum. The new, custom-built BlackBerry client (Change Management Application) polls the web portal for data, sending the.net server a request. Baylor used an HTTP header so the.net servers would recognize the difference between a request from the BlackBerry client and a request from a web browser. The.NET server then returns a string of data, rather than a web page. When the BlackBerry device receives the data string, the application interprets the information and displays it for the user. All data traffic is protected with 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption on top of the standard data encryption provided with the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution. Figure 2 shows the system architecture for the change control management web portal and the Change Management Application for BlackBerry.

5 MyBaylor.com Portal MyBaylor.com is an ASP.NET custom-built, in-house, multi-layered, component-based, N-tiered system. Access to MyBaylor.com via web browser on Desktops and Laptops Web pages formatted as xhtml sent over HTTPs ASP.NET Web Servers Microsoft SQL Server Database Cluster Custom datagrams sent over HTTPs BlackBerry Enterprise Server with MDS Firewall Internet Wireless Networks BlackBerry Devices with Change Management Application Baylor s Custom C#.NET development enables the output of data instead of web pages to respond to requests from the BlackBerry J2ME Change Management Client Application. Baylor defined a Network Protocol datagram structure to facilitate data exchange between the client application and the servers and to validate/authenticate access to the public SOA. J2ME Client Application, developed in-house using BlackBerry JDE, communicates to the existing ASP.NET Change Control Management SOA via Java Http Connection. Figure 2. System Architecture for the Change Control Management Web Portal Development Effort Two developers worked on the solution, one using.net on the server side, the other using Java ME for the custom Change Management Application for the BlackBerry devices. The Java coding for the BlackBerry client took approximately two weeks, which included time for Baylor s two developers working on the project to become familiar with the BlackBerry Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and APIs, to develop the architecture and to design the UI. An additional two weeks was needed for Baylor to create the communications protocol for data exchange between the server and the BlackBerry client. This involved modifying the existing.net web pages to program them to serve up structured data strings instead of web content when the URL request came in from the BlackBerry client. After testing the new solution with a limited number of directors on their BlackBerry devices, the developers spent another week revising and polishing the application before full deployment. Germinal Ibarrola, Manager of Enterprise Architecture explained that, at first, we thought the biggest challenge our developers would face was simply becoming familiar with the BlackBerry IDE and APIs. However, this turned out to be very straightforward. Support from Research In Motion (RIM ) and the available documentation helped facilitate the learning process.

6 Testing and Deployment The developers used the BlackBerry JDE to simulate the application on different models of the BlackBerry device. As a pilot project, the application was installed on four directors devices for two weeks. One week prior to launch, it was installed on a variety of different BlackBerry devices for six other directors to test. The final version of the Change Management Application was deployed on the BlackBerry devices of all 30 directors. This included three different BlackBerry devices: BlackBerry 7230 Wireless Handheld, BlackBerry 7290 Wireless Handheld and the BlackBerry 7100 Series. No changes to the application, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server or the Change Management System programming were required to support the variety of BlackBerry devices or different wireless networks. BlackBerry Desktop Manager was used to initially install the application, but wireless over-the-air deployment is planned for future upgrades to the application. Baylor intends to continue improving the Change Management Application by taking advantage of additional offline (out-of-coverage) capabilities and providing more functionality. In addition, they have begun planning for other BlackBerry usage, including wireless access to field service and customer relationship management applications. With hundreds of BlackBerry device users at Baylor, Ibarrola sees lots of opportunity for success with in-house development of additional BlackBerry applications. Results The Baylor IT directors responded very positively to the new application and started using it immediately. According to Robbie Perez, Director of Core Technology Development, I ve been using this Change Control Application for BlackBerry for only a short time and found it provides an efficient option for our change management process. There was definitely a demand for this, he explains. We listened to our directors need to have a solid BlackBerry solution in place. Adoption rates have been extremely high. Directors use the application to approve close to 90 percent of all change requests. Our change management system requires that every change request is approved by all 30 IT directors before it can be implemented. These approvals can cause delays. Fortunately, all the IT directors carry BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds, which provided the means to make the approval process faster and easier. Germinal Ibarrola, Manager of Enterprise Architecture Since implementation, the timeline for approvals has been reduced from an average of 5 days to approximately 16 hours for each change management request. Baylor gained a simplified change management solution that offers multiple benefits. Now directors can approve or reject changes wirelessly, with the freedom to work from remote locations. The solution saves valuable time with a faster approval process, which in turn facilitates efficiency and a reduction in mismanaged changes. Overall, this new BlackBerry application has successfully improved an integral process at Baylor Health Care System. For additional BlackBerry case studies, success stories and customer quotes, please visit Research In Motion Limited. All rights reserved. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. RIM, Research In Motion, Always On, Always Connected and BlackBerry are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be pending or registered in other countries. All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners. The specifications and features contained in this document are subject to change without notice. Printed in Canada.