We have spent the last couple of weeks putting together a tool for editing Workflow scripts used with Application Lifecycle Management 11 (ALM).  This is the latest release of the Quality Center product line.  Test Design Studio has long had the ability to open and edit workflow scripts, but this process involved exploiting a security hole that was plugged by default.  In the past, there was simply no supported way to download and upload the workflow script files.

That has finally changed with ALM 11!

Beginning with ALM 11 Patch 1, a feature was added to ALM 11 that enables an FTP server which can be used to browse files in the repository of a project.  Using standard FTP protocol, users with the right permissions can upload and download files… including workflow scripts!  Now that there is a supported way to handle these files, we can finally bring a product to the community that will improve the experience of editing those scripts.

Introducing Workflow Editor…

If the interface looks familiar, it should.  Workflow Editor is being built on the same engine as Test Design Studio 3.  We have taken a “pluggable” approach to how we are developing our next version of Test Design Studio, and that has allowed us to utilize the same code base to bring up a new tool with a specific focus.  The best news is that any improvements we make to Test Design Studio will be available in Workflow Editor without additional effort, and the opposite will be true as well.  In fact, we are using Workflow Editor to advance our development of Test Design Studio 3.  This provides us with a less-complex tool to refine the VBScript parsing engine and IntelliSense as well as other common UI design challenges.

Best of all, we plan to make this tool FREE TO THE COMMUNITY!! 

The screen shot above is an early preview that is likely to change (especially the Ribbon interface), but we hope to start making Workflow Editor available soon.  Stay tuned to this blog or follow us on Twitter (@PattConsulting) to keep informed about availability.  We look forward to sharing this tool and hearing your feedback.