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Built from the ground up using Internet technologies, such as ActiveX, Common Gateway Interface (CGI), HTML, Java, JavaScript and SMTP, the Metro suite offers a Web-based environment for delivering collaborative workflow process management to the enterprise. For instance, its Process Builder lets you design workflows and incorporate them into the system for structured processes. Its Action Manager interfaces with SQL Server to provide database support for version control, reporting, tracking and archiving of workflows. Metro uses Netscape Enterprise Server 3.0 and an y HTML-compliant browser without limitations. SMTP and MAPI are used for exchanging e-mail.

Process Builder is the heart of Metro. It provides a comprehensive graphing palette for workflow design. Metro provides more integrated capabilities, such as multiple phases and sending mail, that let workflow designs be simpler and involve fewer steps. You can use the more than 20 ready-to-run workflows right out of the box, or you can modify them or create new ones to suit your organization's needs.

Metro's dynamic consistency check monitors all workflow ingredients, immediately reporting errors and issuing warnings for items that need to be addressed before the workflow is ready to run. Keyfile's Keyflow, with its Dynamic Workflow Adviser, was the only other product that offered this capability. With other products we had to verify the workflow using a separate process and try to remember which steps needed modifying, and in which way.

Critical Design Feature s Metro runs as a Windows NT service, a nd we found that it delivered better performance when running on the same machine as SQL Server. The Web application component is CGI-based, and executed our forms without problems. Metro includes a quick and clever wizard that created our SQL database, devices and tables, and automatically generated the directory mappings in Enterprise Server. By comparison, with Open Text's Livelink, this is a manual process.

Like Metro, OnTrack also has a high degree of integration with Exchange and provides ad hoc workflow capabilities for Lotus Notes. When sorting our inbox, it separated the items into several categories, including New Work, Ongoing Work, Closed Work, Closing Work and Standard Mail. This was the only product that differentiated a workflow item from general e-mail with more than just an icon. OnTrack creates a Work Pending folder in Exchange so that you can see at a glance work that is due by or to you, work that is closed and instances when you are copied on a work item.

To start a workflow process , you select New Conversation from the Compose menu in Exchange. From there, the Request, To Do, Inform, Question, Offer and Project workflow processes are available. From each of these processes, you can see who has the item, what response or action has been taken and if the step was taken late or on time.

Metro uses its own role mapping for recipients, unlike Keyflow, which uses the ones in Microsoft Exchange. The only problem with this approach is that changes made in the Exchange organization area are not replicated to Metro, increasing the administrative load.

With Metro, participants are customers, performers and observers. Roles are managed in the Application Center and associated with departments, geography and functions, for example, rather than names, because of the high incidence of turnover within corporations. You can add users manually or import them from existing NT accounts, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) service, Exchange or comma-de limited files. OnTrack is native to the Notes or Exchange environment and works with the native directories without the need for importing.

The Metro Web client sports WorkBox, the focal point of the application. Within WorkBox you can see new work items, drill down using hot links to get more detail, select a response and send the item on its way to the next recipient. The WorkBox presents hot links to ongoing work and the workflows that are available in the application. The WorkBox is a far more elegant, intuitive and workable Web user interface than that of Livelink.