Good morning and welcome to Maximo Bite Size, a podcast on the functionality of Maximo Manage. Today is the first episode in a series that explores new functionality that existing Maximo clients will find when they upgrade from Maximo 7.6.1.3. These are the new features which you’ll find on a MAS 9.0 system, although the functionality may have appeared first in MAS 8.x. Today we will take a look at the Operational Dashboard and Work Queues.

Operational Dashboard

The Operational Dashboard is the modernized version of a Start Center. There are differences as we will find out. Operational Dashboards were first released in MAS 8.9 and have been enhanced in each following release. 

You can create multiple dashboards which appear as tabs along the top. Each dashboard has a name, description, whether it is marked as your default, which will mean that it appears as the first tab, you can also create public dashboards. Public dashboards have the word displayed next to the description with a green background, private dashboards have a pink background.

In the Security Groups application there is an Operational Dashboard tab where you associate a public dashboard with a security group. In the Applications tab for the Operational Dashboard there are a set of signature options which control whether a user can see the Operational Dashboard application, whether they can create private or public dashboards, and options to hide or delete public dashboards. When testing this as different users you might receive the error BMXAA0024E, for example “The action READ is not allowed on object VIEWMANAGER. Verify the business rules for the object and define the appropriate action for the object.” This error indicates that an Object Structure permission has not been granted, in this case for MXAPIVIEWMANAGER. For the Operational Dashboard you need at least read access to the object structures MXAPIVIEWMANAGER, MXAPIWORKQUEUE, MXAPIWFASSIGNMENT and MXAPIPERSON. 

In addition to the Create Dashboard action there is a Manage Dashboards action which allows you to modify the settings for an existing dashboard, for example, to change it from private to public. The Manage Dashboards dialog also has buttons to hide/view the dashboard, and another to delete the dashboard.

There are two default Operational Dashboards, one called Maintenance Manager, and another called Emission Management which you will see if you have the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) add-on installed. When rendered some cards have options which appear in a drop down in the top right corner of the card. The KPI Comparison card will provide details of the KPI when you hover over the bar, and an option View Table which shows the key KPI values in a table which you can download. The KPI Trend card gives you the option to download the data points for each KPI.

When you edit a dashboard, you will see the Card Gallery in the panel on the right. For each card there is a common Basic tab where you define the name, description, select a card size, and optionally provide a subtitle. For some cards the card size is fixed. The Advanced tab is different for each card.

• The Value card shows a single value from a data source, which you will need to configure. It can show a secondary smaller data value taken from the same data source. This is really for showing numeric values, an alphanumeric value may be truncated on the fixed size of the card.
• The Table card shows a set of values from a data source. In the Advanced tab you can choose the attributes from the data source. Like the Value card you need to define your own data sources which will define the records to display as there is no query field in the Advanced tab.
• The Favorites card allows you to create a card with the applications which you need access on a regular basis.
• The Quick Actions card allows you to create a card with the applications which you wish to launch in insert mode. For role-based applications it currently only opens the application and not, for example, the screen where a new work order is created. The ability to launch a ticket-based application and apply the ticket template is not yet available.
• The Work Queue card allows you to define the work queues that you wish to display. The fields for the work queue table are fixed as Queue Name, Description, Count and Priority. Count is the number of records that would be retrieved by the work queue when you launch it full screen. The available actions field allows the work queues to be refreshed.
• The KPI Value card is similar to the Value card and is a fixed size, it shows a single KPI value and colours it depending on which KPI zone it belongs, it also provides the absolute value and an indication of the trend. When rendered you can launch the KPI Manager or KPI Viewer applications or refresh the KPI.
• The KPI Trend card allows one or more KPIs to be displayed over a period that you select. One KPI is selected and up to eight other KPIs can be compared to it, they will need to have a similar y-axis, either all values or all percentages. This produces a line graph with time in the x-axis.
• The KPI Comparison card compares up to 20 KPIs with chart types of bar, line, pie or donut, the default is bar. When rendered it allows export as CSV, PNG or JPG file types, you can also see the KPI values in a table.
• The External Content card has one field in the Advanced tab for you to provide the URL of the website or page you wish to launch. When rendered the External Content card can be opened full page, and it allows you to interact with the launched website.
• The Threshold Tile appeared in MAS 9.0.2, but it currently has the same content as the Value card, for this reason I wouldn’t use it currently.

The Workflow card doesn’t exist in the card gallery, it is a special one designed to show your workflow assignments and interact with them, including launching the application in which the workflow is set. When you route the workflow assignment you can enter a comment, when you reassign the workflow, you can select a person to reassign to and enter a comment. A word of caution, if you delete the card titled Workflow assignments due soon, then you cannot get it back as there is no ability to add the workflow card from the card gallery.

You can duplicate a dashboard, there is either a blue Save As button, or when you are editing a dashboard there is a drop down on the Save button, it took me a while to find this.

Differences with Start Centers

There are differences between the Operational Dashboard and the Start Centers, one is not a direct replacement of the other, and in a few releases, I expect the Operational Dashboard to go much further than the Start Centers. The Work Queue card which we will discuss shortly replaces the Result Set portlet.

As mentioned earlier the Quick Insert card does not allow a service request or other type of ticket to be created while applying a ticket template. The Work Queues only supports a table of records, a List view, and not the Graph view which the Result Set portlet supports. Currently with the Work Queue you can only see attributes of the main object and not attributes of child objects in the object structure, the Result Set portlet allows an attribute to be defined with a relationship. These are the three big gaps which are currently missing before you can call the Operational Dashboard a replacement of the Start Centers.

On the other hand, the Operational Dashboard has the KPI Comparison, KPI Trend and the External Content cards. The KPI Comparison card can also produce a table list like the KPI List portlet of the Start Center, but you need to use the card action View Table.

Work Queues

Work Queues were introduced in MAS 8.11 (September 2023) and they were enhanced in MAS 9.0 (June 2024), I expect it to be enhanced again in MAS 9.1 in 2025.

The best way to describe a Work Queue is that it is a query that will produce a result set against which one or more actions can be applied. The Work Queue Manager application will be found in the Administration module, it is where you create, edit and delete work queues. When the Work Queue Manager application opens you will see a table with the list of existing work queues, and you need to hover over a record to see the Edit Work Queue button.

On the Operational Dashboard the Work Queue card allows you to select the work queues which you wish to display. When rendered there are columns for the Queue Name, Description, a Count of records, and the Priority of the work queue relative to others. When you click on the Queue Name the work queue opens full size.

The work queue is a table of attributes and the records which are the result of a query. Down the left-hand side there is a selection box and when records are selected one or more actions appear with a blue background above the table. These are some of the actions that will be found in the Actions application for the main object on which the work queue is based. For example, for a work queue based on a Service Request, these might be particular status changes, Apply SLA, or the Create Work Order action.

There are several buttons above the table including search, download, manage columns, filter and reset. The Manage Columns button allows you to change the order of the attributes, you can also add and remove attributes, this goes further than what you can do with a Result Set portlet on the Start Center. The Filter button opens a filter record beneath the column headings, you can also change the sort order. Filtering and sorting are remembered the next time you log in. The personalisation doesn’t go as far as it has done in the Work Orders role-based application, but this is still only the second release, and not without some teething issues that have been reported to IBM Support. For example, you can launch from the work queue to a Maximo application, however, when there is personalisation, it doesn’t find the record, it just performs a query. There is no button yet that will launch the application with the same result set as seen in the work queue.

When creating a new work queue there is a three-step wizard. Step 1 is to define the work queue with a name, description and priority and optionally associate it with one or more person groups which will mean the work queue is no longer public and is restricted to members of the specified person groups. The priority field has values 1 to 4 where 1 is Urgent and 4 is Low. 

Step 2 is Define Query, you start with selecting an object structure, then you select a query which has been previously defined for the object structure or an application and query that uses the main object of the object structure, these are in the form application name + colon (:) + query name. The third mandatory field is to select the application to launch. A work queue starts at active state and below this you select the fields from the main object which you wish to display and the order in which they should be displayed. You will need to know the field names to select the correct fields, and currently you cannot select fields from a child object.

Step 3 is optional and allows you to select the actions to associate with the work queue. Step 3 also has the blue Create button. If you have modified the work queue, perhaps to adjust the Person Groups you currently must navigate to step 3 of the wizard to find a blue Update button.

You can delete a work queue, but you need to make it inactive first before the delete button appears.

It may seem obvious, but I’ll mention it anyway, a work queue is only used with the Operational Dashboard, if you are not planning to use one then you wouldn’t use the other. Work Queues do not yet have equivalent functionality as the Result Set portlet on the Start Center but when they are enhanced to do so, they would be used to replace multiple portlets with one Work Queue card, and hence there should be a performance gain. The penalty is one extra click which I think most clients could live with.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode, and I look forward to seeing you back on the next one when we will spend time on the new Work Orders application. 

The music is called xxx from the talented group called TrackTribe, please check them out on TrackTribe.Com, all one word.

Until another time, goodbye.