Collaboration Tools in Hubble

One of the key concepts and advantages of Hubble is the ability to connect people to each other and to connect them to information and processes.

The Hubble components that further collaboration within your organization include:

Recently Followed/Following - Follow people and views so that you can quickly connect to who/what is most relevant to you
Discussions - Connect conversations to the information, all in a single place
Messages - Communicate directly with others within the application
Groups - Share workspaces with a group of users and have discussions within a group
Tasks - Maintain user to user tasks as well as approval tasks
Distributions - Manage approval workflows within Hubble

Following

Follow people and views so that you can quickly connect to who/what interests you the most! When you follow a person, you know when they post discussions so you can see information that is relevant to you.

To follow a person, search for the person in your search screen and select the name of the person.

This will show you their profile page. The top right area has a follow button

Similarly, you can unfollow a view in the same manner.

Discussions

Users can have discussions around a certain view, linking the discussions and the information together in Hubble so everything is seen in one place. Discussions provide the ability for people to share their knowledge with other users in the organization, which is very powerful for adding rich value to the information.

You can add discussions to a view, comment on it, and search for words used in that discussion. Any user with access to this view can see this information. Everyone in the organization can benefit from access to the information and conversations around it.

Every view has its own discussion. Only those with permissions to the view can see the discussion.

Quickly see how many unread discussions you have in the Discussions Badge, and click on it to see the full discussions.

Another way to see your unread discussions is on the Home page or The Legacy Hub.

When you click on a discussion from the Discussions Card, you get to the Discussions Feed where you can see all of your discussions.

Personal Messages

Use Messages within Hubble to communicate directly with other Hubble users. Personal Messages are not searchable.

From any page within Hubble , you can quickly send a message by clicking on the drop-down from your picture in the upper right corner and selecting Message.

You can then send your message to another user.

Another way to message someone is to search for the person in the search screen and click on the person’s name, which brings you to their profile page. You can then click Send Message from there.

From The Hub, you can quickly see what unread messages you have and then drill down to them, if desired.

Drilling down brings you to the Discussion Feed, where you can see all your personal messages.

Groups

Use Groups within Hubble to bring together users with a common interest or function. This function is very beneficial because you can have discussions with the group, and members are always notified when a discussion takes place. You can also share workspaces with a group.

Note: Groups within the Hubble Web Application are not the same as the User Groups set up in the Hubble Administrator Tool.

Creating a Group

Follow these steps to create a group:

Go to Discussions and click Manage.
Click New to create a new group. From here you can also see other public groups.
Enter a name, type (public or private), and optional description.
1. Public - Any Hubble user can view the group
2. Private - You must be added to the group by the moderator and the group is not visible to all Hubble users
Add members and their roles.
1. Moderator - Can add/remove group members as well as read and post comments within discussions
2. Contributor - Can read and post comments
3. Viewer - Can read comments

Create a Discussion within a Group

Once a Group is set up, you can create a new discussion by going to that Group within Discussions and selecting New Topic:

Enter in the topic, comments, and optionally, any appropriate tags. Post when finished.

At any time you can go to the Discussion Feed and manage groups, create new discussions, comment within discussions, and leave a group.

Always click on a specific group first on the left side of the page, and once within a Group you can create a new discussion as well as comment within discussions.

Within a discussion, click on Participant or Comment Count to add a comment.

Messages within a discussion are searchable.

Sharing Workspaces

There are two methods that you can use to share workspaces with other users:

Send copies of workspaces to users and user groups using the Send a Copy option.
This option sends a snapshot or definition of the most recent saved version of a workspace to other users. They can work on these snapshots and make changes to them. These changes will not update the workspace a snapshot was shared from, or snapshots of the same workspaces shared with other users.
Share the workspaces themselves using the Share option.
This essentially makes a workspace (as currently saved) available for other users to view and, if given sufficient access rights, work on in real time.
Workspace can be shared using the Share option to both individuals and groups.

Using this option, workspaces can be shared with other users in the following ways, each of which grants different levels of access to a shared workspace:

Full Access - The recipient users have full control, as if they had created the workspace.
Read-Only - The users have the ability to share the workspace as Read-Only to other users and can change the workspace, but cannot save over the original.
Locked - The workspace cannot be changed and the users cannot share or save a copy of the workspace.

More detail is provided in the following paragraphs.

Share a Workspace using “Send a Copy”

To share a workspace in this way, follow these steps:

Open the workspace and go to Send > Send a Copy.
From here you can select individual users or user groups to share the workspace with.

Share a Workspace using the “Share” Option

Open the workspace and go to Send > Share.

The Share Workspace Window

The Share option opens the Share Workspace window.

This window is used to search for and select the users and user groups that the workspace is to be shared with. Use the search field at the top of the window to do this.

Once users and user groups have been selected you can then specify, for each individual user and group, whether the workspace is to be shared to them with Locked rights, Read-Only rights (the default), or with Full Access rights.

Note:

Users with whom a workspace is shared may themselves share that workspace. However, users that have been shared a workspace with Read-Only access can in turn only grant Read-Only access when sharing, and Locked rights do not allow for further sharing.
If a user has a workspace shared to them twice, i.e. both as a selected individual, and as part of a group, and the access rights assigned to each of these shares is different, then the highest level of access of these shares is granted, the highest being Full Access and the lowest being Locked. Therefore:
- If a user has them same workspace shared to them twice, one with Full Access and one with Read-Only rights than the user will be granted Full Access rights.
- If a user has them same workspace shared to them twice, one with Read-Only rights and one as Locked a than the user will be granted Read-Only rights.

The buttons with the minus signs on them are used to remove users and groups from the share. A user or group removed from a share will no longer be able to find the shared workspace e.g. by using Workspaces > Browse All.

The Message field at the bottom of the window is used to enter the message that the selected users will receive when they are notified that the workspace has been shared with them. For example:

Read-Only Restrictions

Read-only users can only change a workspace in certain ways. For example, they can make changes to filters, or to the positions of the elements of the workspace for their personal use. However, they may not save over the original shared workspace.

Changes made by Read-Only users cannot be saved to the shared workspace, and are not visible to anyone else. When a user with Full Access rights saves the workspace, the workspace that Read-Only users are viewing will change to the saved version unless they save a copy (they will receive a notification presenting this choice at the time, as explained below).

Read-only users can only save copies of a workspace. When they click on Manage > Save only the option to Save As will be available to them.

“Locked” Workspaces

When viewing a Locked workspace it will say “Locked” next to the workspace title to indicate this. For example.

The indicator is also displayed while browsing through the workspaces. Hovering the mouse over the indicator displays the following message: “This workspaces is locked to prevent changes or copies”:

You will not be able to make any changes to Locked workspaces, change their layout, or to save them; the Add menu options are disabled, along with Save, Layout and Pages > Add Page options in the Manage menu.

In addition:

Users may not close views in a Locked workspace, move views around the page, or move the views to different pages.
Users cannot send a copy of the Locked workspace to another user.
User cannot add a view by searching for it in a Locked workspace, and the option to add a view to the current workspace is not available.

The user can still:

Maximize, minimize, resize, and drill-down into views.
Apply custom filters to a locked workspace. These filters will be included in PDFs generated by the Send > Save PDF option.

Note also that:

When a Locked workspace user sends workflow approvals to other users, the user’s custom changes are also included.
When a Locked workspace user sends advanced distributions to other users, only the saved copy of workspace is distributed.

Another limitation of Locked workspaces is that users granted this access level to a workspace cannot share it with other users. The controls used to select users etc. are not available on the Share Workspace window.

The window does however display the other users and/or groups that the workspace is currently shared with, plus their respective access levels.

Handling Changes to a Shared Workspace by Different Users

As a workspace can be shared with multiple users, this may result in multiple users working on a workspace and trying to make and save changes to it at the same time. This section explains how such situations are handled.

Changes to a shared workspace are detected either when the current user saves, or if the workspace is refreshed when:

the workspace is opened, and
it is already open and the user refreshes the browser.

The refreshing of views that occurs in Present mode does not refresh the workspace.

As explained above, it is possible for two (or more) users to make changes to the workspace at the same time. For example, the following situation may arise:

Two users have a workspace open.
User 1 makes changes to the workspace but does not yet save them.
User 2 makes and changes to that workspace and saves them.
User 1 then tries to save their changes, or refreshes the workspace.

If both users have added/removed views on the same page, this results in a conflict that cannot be automatically resolved.

If User 1 is Read-Only, they will be presented with the choice of either:

Accept Changes to the Workspace (Recommended), which will result in their own changes being lost, or
Save a new non-shared copy of this workspace, which will save their change and update the original to include the changes from the owner.

If User 1 has Full Access rights, they will additionally have the option of to continue working on the current version. When User 1 saves then the User 1 changes will saved as the new layout. For example:

The following changes will not cause a conflict:

User 1 and User 2 save changes to separate pages.
User 1 has changed the content of a page and User2 has re-ordered the pages or edited titles/ descriptions (or vice versa).

After resolving conflicts, or when there are no conflicts, the last Full Access user to save will always have their changes saved.

Note: Notes

Shared workspaces can be found using Workspaces > Browse All without having to have first opened them via a notification message.

If a recipient of a workspace does not have permissions to see a report in it, they will see the following message instead: “Insufficient permissions to open this view”. Exporting to PDF will fail if the user does not have permissions to a view.

Tasks

Within Hubble, there are user to user tasks as well as tasks from approval workflows.

From the Hub, you can quickly see any task assigned to you and see if any are past due by looking at the Task Card.

Alternatively, you can click on the Tasks Badge to see your open tasks:

Creating a User to User Task

Follow these steps to create a task for another user.

From any page within Hubble , click on the drop-down from your picture in the upper right corner and select Message.
Create the task.

The other type of task is an approval, where you have the ability to take any workspace and create an approval system including who needs to participate and when. Then that information is sent around in a shared PDF.

In a shared PDF, you can see the detailed approval information: comments, images, text, metrics, charts and list views that are all part of the approval process. The PDF can be used for history and auditing purposes. After looking at a PDF, you can look at the live view and approve or reject.

The approval is completely searchable, and people in the approval process always have access to the PDF.

Example of a PDF created for an approval:

Distributions

Distributions, also known as approval workflows, are created by following these steps.

Note: You do not need to save a workspace before creating distribution for it. However, Workspace Approval distributions will not include any unsaved changes.

Highlight the view for which you want to set up a distribution.
Under Interact on the right side, click Distributions.
Click New on the Distributions sub-menu, and then select the Workflow Approval option.
Enter in the requested information, viewers, approval participants, schedule and PDF options. (Use the scroll bar to view all sections.)
In the Participants section, set up the levels of approval. Once you have identified the participants, select whether each one is a reviewer or approver. At any given approval level, set whether any of the participants can review or if all of them need to review, as well as the due date. Both reviewers and approvers are assigned tasks.
Then set the schedule as well as the PDF Options. Scheduling is optional and can be set to repeat (e.g. daily or weekly) or can be for specific dates. We recommend not setting this up for more than 6 months at a time.
Once you click Save, you are given the choice to start the Distribution immediately or not.
Once you have started a distribution, an Activity tab is created, and from here you can see the status and view the PDF.

When you click View PDF, the PDF automatically downloads and you can open it as soon as it finishes.

Approvals trigger a workflow. Reviewers will receive a notification and must acknowledge it. Approvers will receive a notification and must approve it. Approvals provide verification if users have really opened the PDF.

Once a task is started, it creates a task. If there is an asterisk (*) by a user’s name, it means that it has not yet been reviewed.

Advanced Distributions

The Advanced Distributions functionality is distinct from the basic “Workflow Approval” distribution functionality. It includes advanced features such as the ability to distribute to groups and to filter the distributed data. It consists of the following features:

Advanced Distributions are created from the Web.
One workspace can have many distributions.
One distribution user can have many distributions.
A distribution user can receive an email for each distribution.
A distribution can be created for one or many email addresses.
Filters are selectable for the distribution.
Distributions can be scheduled or triggered manually.

Differences between Standard and Advanced Distributions

The main differences between Standard and Advanced Distributions are as follows.

Standard Distributions:

Recipient requires Hubble ERP License
Recipient must log into Hubble
PDF
Do not include unsaved changes

Advanced Distributions:

Recipient does not require ERP license
Recipient does not need to log into Hubble
Dashboard HTML (Static)
Include unsaved changes

Prerequisites

Advanced Distributions is a chargeable feature activated by applying the DIS license key to the repository. The key is global and does not need to be assigned to individual users.

Creating Advanced Distributions

The Distributions feature is on the MANAGE menu of the Web interface. Note that a workspace must be saved before it can be accessed.

Note: You do not need to save a workspace before creating distribution for it. Advanced distributions will include all unsaved changes.

To create a new advanced distribution, click New on the Distributions sub-menu, and then select the Distribution option.

The Create Distribution window is then displayed.

Give the new distribution a Name and a Description that will enable you to easily identify it in a list of available distributions.

Scroll down to the Schedule section of the Create Distribution window. Here you can either leave the default option set, which is to schedule the distribution manually, or you can set up a schedule of dates, days and times when the distribution will happen. See the Triggering and Scheduling section.

Scroll down to view the Settings section.

A password may optionally be set. If a password is set, the recipients of the distribution will need to enter it in order to access it. It must be distributed to them manually.

You can select either HTML format, PDF format, or both. If you select neither format, you will not be able to save the distribution. If both HTML and PDF formats are selected, HTML formated distributions will take precedence and will be presented first. If both HTML and PDF formats are chosen, there will also be a download button for the PDF version available from the HTML version.

The list of previous distributions will be displayed in the lower left of the workspace of HTML format distributions, and as a directory listing of PDFs for PDF-only format distributions.

The HTML format provides many of the features of a normal workspace. See HTML Format for further details.

Scroll down further to see the Filters, Distribution Groups and PDF Options sections, and the edit, cancel and save buttons.

Optionally add filters so that specific groups of users can receive distributions that are tailored to their specific requirements. See Managing Filters.

You must create at least one group of users who will receive the distribution. See Managing Groups.

PDF Options

If required, you can change the PDF Options by clicking the edit button.

Click reset to restore the previous settings.

Saving a Distribution

Once the new distribution has been set up, click ok to save it. If it is scheduled be triggered manually, you will be given the option to start it straight away.

The new distribution is added to the list of distributions set up for the workspace:

You can add further distributions by clicking +new distribution and then DISTRIBUTION again.

To edit or to manually trigger an existing distribution, click on its name on this list. See Triggering and Scheduling.

Triggering and Scheduling

There are several ways to trigger or schedule a distribution. As described above, you can start it when you save the distribution if you set it to be started manually.

To manually trigger a distribution at any time, open the distribution and go to the Activity tab (this tab is added to the Create Distribution window once the distribution is saved). Click the start distribution button.

The Activity tab displays details of past issues of the distribution and those in progress. The number next to the tab’s name is the total of these distribution activities.

When you trigger a distribution or it starts automatically, the Activity count will increment and the state of the distribution will appear on the tab (you will need to close and re-open the Create Distribution window to see this change).

If the distribution is shown as “In Progress” you can attempt to stop it using the stop button (it may be too far advanced in the process to stop, however).

If the distribution is successful, links to the output in the format(s) selected for the distribution are displayed:

The users selected for the distribution (see Managing Groups) will receive notification of the distribution (see Notifications).

Scheduling Distributions

To schedule a distribution, go to the distribution and change the Schedule setting from Manually to Specific Dates or Repeating Schedule.

The options for the Specific Dates setting are:

The options for the Repeating Schedule are:

Frequency can be daily or weekly.

By checking the Pause Schedule checkbox in the two above cases, you can prevent the distribution from occurring according to its schedule until the checkbox is unchecked.

Distribution Permissions

Here are the distribution permissions:

Disabled users: Cannot send distributions.
Expired users: Can send distributions if today is before the Expired Date.
Expired users: Cannot send distributions if today is on or after the Expired Date.
Future expiry: Will not apply until a change is made in the administration tool.

Managing Filters

Filters may optionally be selected for a distribution, i.e. only data that meets the filter criteria will be included in the distribution. Click on the select filters button in the Filters section of the Create Distribution window.

From the list that is then displayed, you can then select the required attributes that the filter will use.

Note that this list may take some time to load as every filter from the workspace needs to be retrieved.

The filter values for the attributes selected are set via the Distribution Groups section. See Selecting Filter Values.

Managing Groups

Each distribution must have at least one group of recipients set up for it.

To add a new group to a distribution, click the +add group button in the Distribution Groups section of the Create Distribution window.

In the New Group window that is then displayed, give the group a meaningful name and add one or more recipients.

Start typing a user name to see a list of Hubble users that have names beginning with the letters entered so far:

The users selected for the distribution will receive notification of the distribution (see Notifications).

You can also type an email address or upload a list of email addresses from a Excel CSV or txt format file via the +upload button. Hubble will automatically parse the email addresses from uploaded files.

Selecting Filter Values

If one or more filters have been selected (see Managing Filters), they will be listed below the Filters heading.

To select values for these filters, start typing in a field. A list of available values will then be displayed:

Select one or more available values and click done.

Then click the add group button to add the group to the distribution. The group is then added to the Distribution Groups section of the Create Distribution window.

Click the +add group button again to add more groups. These should each have different filters for different groups of recipients.

To edit or remove a group, click on the three dots to the right of the group name and pick the required option:

Notifications

The users selected to receive a distribution will receive an email when it is triggered. If they are Hubble Web users, they will also receive a notification in their 'in-tray'.

Clicking on view all will bring up the list of the user’s Notifications, which can be searched by Name, Status and Date.

By clicking on the highlighted text, the user can view details of the distribution and access links to the content of the distribution, whether it is a PDF, an HTML snapshot, or a live view of a workspace. Clicking on the name a second time reverts to the single line format.

Email Notification

Both Hubble users recipients and email recipients will receive an email with a link to the distribution. For example:

HTML Format

The HTML format provides many of the features of a normal workspace:

Pages: A table of contents and a page navigator allow quick and easy access to all distribution content.
Grids: All data from the original report is saved and available to be scrolled in its entirety.
Views: Pages containing multiple views allow each view to be resized or made full screen to help you focus on what's most important.
Legend manipulation: Chart legends can have a segment disabled to show impacts on a chart.

In addition to viewing the current snapshot state, if you check Allow recipients to view previous snapshots, users will be able to view the snapshot states of any previous distributions as well (if there have been any).

Users that have a Hubble Viewer license will be able to click the go to live view button in the top right of the page to launch Hubble.

Note that the HTML format does not allow filters to be changed, data to be exported, or for the user to drill down to more detail.