Bonita is an open-source business process and workflow management platform created by the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. It is available as a free community edition or as a commercial subscription product.
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Kissflow
Score 6.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
KiSSFLOW is a cloud-based business process management and workflow management software designed to enable users to create an unlimited number of automated business applications with a through a simple user interface.
Well suited for low code/no code applications centered around approval flows. It has built-in task management for users to see their pending actions, comments, statuses, etc. It has a very nice design for process flows. Less appropriate may be for generic type applications with complex screens and logic within those screens that need a lot of data to process.
Workflow. I would absolutely, 100% recommend it for a school, in Admissions, and I would recommend it to any small company who has an issue with workflow. The best thing about the program is that it knows what it is, and knows what it wants to be. You aren't going to sit down to work with KiSSFLOW and end up being sold an HR program. To make it work just right, find the person who truly understands how your business works. Have them build a workflow which takes care of the tedious tasks, and then let them train others on the process. You will find that your productivity increases, and that your paper costs decrease.
Bonita seems particularly suited for processes requiring a great deal of human interaction. Its user model allows you to control access to business processes in a fine-grained way. This allows for business processes to move smoothly between users and services as the process advances.
The definition and usage of custom forms from the latest version of Bonita seems particularly powerful. It allows for a thorough customization of the look-and-feel and does not require complex developments.
The web interface and administration section have greatly improved in the latest versions. Installation and configuration of processes has become more flexible and more structured. The administration section gives a good view on failed processes, allowing to analyse problems in an efficient way.
Ease of Use: It's easier to use and see workflow tasks that are assigned to you, workflows that you've participated in, or workflows that are pending other peoples approvals. From a development side, it's easy to pick up and begin creating processes if you know Excel formulation, which is easily researched as well.
Ease of Access: Since KiSSFLOW is hosted in the cloud, you can access the site from any internet connected device. All you have to do is sign in with your account, as opposed to needing to be on the network to access like our previous system.
The App: This is a feature we really hope to get a lot of use out of. With the way our business is structured, there are a lot of Regional positions that are always on the go. Because our current system requires a user to be on the network to access, this makes it hard for these roles to respond to tasks, causing bottlenecks. With an app available, along with push notifications, we can keep these tasks responses on pace with the associates required in that task.
There is a learning curve beyond the boot camps that needs to be addressed with more structured curriculum.
The full stack technologies are industry standard, but these [are] challenging to learn and could use a learning path and orientation. There's probably opportunity for third-parties here to help with learning and adoption.
The reporting could use some improvement. The actual reports are OK, it is access to the reports that is the problem. This is related to the permission schema. It really just has user, admin, and nothing in-between. There really needs to be something like report admin or something. Excel exports for data are needed as well.
The user workflow selection UI is not the best. There is a big red + sign in the lower right of the browser window that is not labeled. That is not clear. Also the selection list is just a pop-up window, it really should be a full page.
The mobile app does not have all the features that the browser version has, especially admin tools.
Bonita Platform has allowed us to develop GUI relatively fast using its UI Designer while being able to seamlessly integrate our business logic in Java in a BPMN2 process diagram. It gives a nice productivity boost but still requires programming know-how to be able to deliver the final solution to your business problems.
Engine itself is efficient enough for most cases I dealt with. It can also be extended by clustering. I have done performance tests with JMeter and only managed to induce the crash of... JMeter. If there are efficiency issues they usually concern bad design/implementation of created apps or bottlenecks in integrated systems. Although I have met two cases with efficiency loss.
1. Java 7 related PermGen saturation caused by big number of installed apps (there is no jar dependency reusal between apps option).
2. Big number of waiting event handlers in processes stresses the database.
I haven't encountered a need for support with KiSSFLOW. It's not a perfect platform, but it's functional, dependable, and reasonably intuitive. I can't fault a support team just because their product works!
KiSSFLOW is much easier to set up, less coding and easier to explain to those that are being trained. The company already had SharePoint, but it is a very difficult system to set up. A class had to be taken, along with getting books in order to understand the process of the workflow. With KiSSFLOW, it is simple to understand, the helpdesk is quick with their response, help topics are laid out simply and you can even talk with someone on that side to ask your questions. Overall, KiSSFLOW is a much easier workflow and system to use.
Respect of BPMN standard over the long term. Good enhancements by Bonitasoft for new use cases, for example the introduction of a real form editor even if it has been technically difficult to manage. Once done though, we have far greater possibility of human interaction.
