February 12, 2011 - Bentley Systems released eB Insight software. eB Insight maintains the network of information relationships needed to combine operations effectiveness and efficiency with safety and compliance. It enables users to define unique information relationships in addition to those provided out of the box. Information classifications and behaviors can be configured to enforce predefined business rules that must be met during the lifecycle of the information. For example, eB Insight can ensure relationships are established between a project, physical items, responsible people, standard operating procedures, tag numbers, and records management file plans before a package of information can be approved and delivered for use on a work order.
Information scoping enables multi-asset control and segmentation of information. This feature is extremely useful for fleets of operating plants where overlapping fleet-wide and asset-specific configurations, information models, and operations must be managed independently. Secure user roles determine access, and selected scopes determine visible information. This provides an asset-specific user experience while supporting the consolidation and reporting of fleet-wide information and key performance indicators (KPIs). The new release also expands role identification and information access to include hierarchical roles based on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard on Role-Based Access Control.
Another innovative feature enables the creation of an information “snapshot” that documents the current network of relationships for any information at any point in time. A snapshot is a static record that can be rendered in different formats (e.g., XML, PDF, etc.), making it available for a compliance audit or to package information to be transferred to other systems.
A Change Package snapshot, for example, could include all impacted physical assets, documents, responsible people, and approval workflows. Enhanced auditing and traceability features include a complete historical view of the asset information, from creation to deletion, which improves governance and compliance controls. New eB Insight handover services are based on its ability to publish independent information packages that contain comprehensive asset information (engineering, configuration, procedural, and operational) for archiving and reuse. Handover packages can be defined using a combination of explicit references and/or searches and can be published at lifecycle milestones or on demand.
The packaged information can be navigated via web pages and includes content from the eB Insight repository and any federated information source. This information is used to provide evidence for regulatory compliance audits or to transfer information to other enterprise systems. Moreover, operations personnel can now enter knowledge items through intuitive forms as part of normal business processes. The captured knowledge items are then linked to all other relevant interrelated data so they are visible when information is being accessed or changed, making the knowledge actionable when and where it is relevant. eB Insight also provides greater support for the management and control of federated information.
Its networks of relationships can encompass information in third-party content management systems (including EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, and Microsoft SharePoint) and can create relationships that enable control, access, and change management as if the information were stored in the eB repository. Accordingly, KPI dashboards can be configured to uniquely present a system-wide view. Finally, recognizing the broad acceptance of Microsoft SharePoint for content management, the new release of eB Insight provides a rich set of services for seamless integration with SharePoint. The new software can automatically provision a SharePoint site and populate it with controlled information that maintains the interrelationships with the information network being managed by eB Insight.
It also supplies SharePoint “web parts” that provide seamless user access to information controlled by eB Insight.