Digital "twinification" on Solution Designer

Product Feedback
1

I don’t want to use Miro/FigJam/Mural etc.

I want to use solution designer

V1 improvements

  • email icon with To/From/CC meta-data
  • person icon with email/position meta-data

V2 improvements

  • Be able to drag an email into Foundry for reference

All these businesses run on Email / Excel

Imo the digital twin tool should be better suited to capture these workflows

Thanks!

4

Hi @9aebee43292b35f5ac9a,

What type of diagrams are you planning to build with solution designer which consist of email resources?

We can certainly look at adding these type of resources, just trying to understand your use case bit more. Please keep in mind you can also use “Custom Node” to represent any resources which are not currently present.

Thanks,
Lukasz

5

I am in the “discovery phase” of finding potential workflows.

AKA

I have like 15 emails / 20 excels (and growing) from people all across the company.

Emails

  • Problem
    • I want to be able to track the information flow and the gaps between departments.
    • I am getting a lot of “I don’t know who that person is who sent me the email” “I just kind of trust it to do my job”
    • Or when I talk to bosses I get a lot of “Who is that person? Why are they sending that email? Why is that what gets sent”
    • I have lots of emails in my inbox, and I am trying to make sense of them on Mural/Excalidraw and I’d rather do it on Solution Designer (which will one day be the best app in Foundry)
  • Potential V1 solutions
    • I’d love to drag and drop a .eml/.msg file and have meta data pulled out (i.e. To / From / CC / time sent / department etc)
    • I’d love for these emails to “visually flow” on an “Outlook org explorer” type chart
    • emails should be “first class" (that is the way all of these business actually communicate)
    • Almost Vertex / Gotham-esk (i.e. searching / discovering connections within an organization)

Excels

  • Problem
    • I have lots of excels embedded in these emails
    • The excels are humans transforming the data in their special way as it goes from System of record to system of record
    • I want to better visualized / keep track of these transformations
    • I am trying to draw on Mural/Excalidraw how one primary key / column is transformed
    • Between departments Primary keys change, columns are renamed, etc
  • Potential V1 Solutions
    • be able to upload / view an excel onto Solution designer (huge for coordination with the team / managers about a path forward)
    • be able to upload a second excel
    • be able to connected excell_1_column_20 with excell_2_column_2 with a line (just so I can track where all these primary keys are going)

Emails / Excels must die so we can Foundry

6

I don’t know if I have the same exact need here for emails and excels… But it would be nice to have some improvements that help detail the “current state” workflow. I also use a diagram tool for this (LucidChart). I end up using it for both documenting current state and the future/Foundry state and skipping Solution Designer. When the solution is built, or partially built in Foundry, we then go back and make a Solution Designer.

It would be nice to have a way to toggle between current/non-Foundry workflow and future/Foundry state. I do this with Layers in LucidChart.

This might be getting beyond the scope of the intent behind Solution Designer, but it could be worth it.

7

as in

Future state = what I want to build = Solution Designer??

&

Current state = what I have built = Data Lineage??

I 100% agree that I have to go back and build the solution designer (although importing a prior data lineage graph does help)

8

Yes for the Future State.

For “Current State” I was referring more to “how the client system/processes currently operates”. Often times, people know there is a problem with their current systems and processes. Sometimes, they haven’t even drawn the current state diagram themselves. When we do discovery, and draw out their current state, sometimes they are shocked (because the complexity and problems are so clear to see when the maze is laid out step by step).

Showing that side-by-side with Future-Foundry-State makes the “improvement” visible.

Again, I don’t think that is necessarily the full intent of the Solution Designer (detailing email chains, excel updates, and push/pulls from databases under a desk). BUT! Having the Solution Designer representing the final state is valuable regardless!