Creating New Features for Infor Document Management

ORGANIZATION Infor Global Solutions
MY ROLE Business Analyst, Product Owner, Interface Designer
TIMELINE July 2017-January 2019

My first position out of college was as a Business Analyst at Infor Global Solutions, where I was hired to act as the liaison between product management/pre-sales and development. Over time, my position evolved from traditional BA duties to leading interaction design and product ownership for the document management service for Infor OS (Infor Document Management, or IDM).

Below are three features that best exemplify my process. For each of these features, I worked with a product manager and a team of developers in Linköping, Sweden. The enhancements of this product were intended to make sorting and searching for documents much easier, as well as integrate relevant documents with the rest of Infor OS’s vast functionality.

Problem

To search for a document in IDM, a user had to search using a keyword or use filters to narrow down their search. These search functions could not easily be used at the same time, and each method on its own did not yield an exhaustive search

Solution

We designed a single search bar with an optional dropdown for filters, which improved the search experience in the following ways:

  • Allowed for keyword and filter search to be used simultaneously

  • Emphasized document search as a potential first step when accessing IDM, giving the user a clear call to action

  • Created space for shortcuts where the filter bar was, giving the user a third search method

 Iteration 1: Single Search Bar

Iteration 2: Shortcuts

Iteration 3: Elevated Fidelity

Iteration 4: The developed product

Document Bundling

Problem

IDM had no way of aggregating documents automatically, which posed a problem for users who would have to do separate searches to find all of the relevant document for a task (e.g. order number, SKU, etc.)

Solution

Create a rule builder to allow document aggregation based on user-defined or system-generated metadata. In addition:

  • A user could manually add documents to each bundle without metadata binding. This was helpful when adding static documents (e.g. Terms and Conditions)

  • These bundled documents would display when one document in the bundle was opened, using one of Infor OS’s many contextual information panels

  • This feature cut down on the time a user took to find all of the documents they needed

 Iteration 1: Rule builder modal window

Iteration 2: Rule builder in the configuration interface

Iteration 3: The developed product

Retention Policies Redesign

Problem

IDM allowed users to create retention policies, or rules for archiving and deleting documents automatically. However, this functionality required creators of these rules to be familiar with the query language that IDM used to categorized documents. This heavily restricted the number of customers who would use this feature.

Solution

Create an interface that generated the appropriate query when options were selected. This improved the retention policies experience by:

  • Removing the requirement that users know the query language, thus making the tool reflect natural language more closely

  • Adding appropriate restrictions to the queries that could be built and reducing the chance for error

  • Simultaneously building the query in the system’s language, allowing power users to check their work and add to the query if they know how

  • Showing users warnings and allowing them to be notified when a document is deleted or archived so that essential documents are not lost

 Iteration 1: Retention Policies form

Iteration 2: Added reminders and warnings

Iteration 3: Elevated fidelity and changed layout

Iteration 4: The developed product

Reflection

These three features were a few of the many improvements I was a part of in my 18 months of working with IDM. While the finished product was often wildly different from what I had first envisioned, I was lucky to have the expertise of the product management and development teams to help me realize the vision of each of these enhancements. Over 3 years later, Infor Document Management remains one of the most-used parts of Infor OS, and the team’s emphasis on constant improvement and iterative design is reflected in its user experience.