Reflecting on the ICM Case Manager 5.2 Release

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For IBM Case Manager’s design, development and offering teams, Friday, September 13th was a very good day. After a year of hard work by IBMers that span the globe, it was the day that the forth major release of the product, version 5.2, was available for worldwide download.

ICM 5.2 contains major enhancements requested by our partners and customers.

It starts with its support for the unified Content Platform Engine 5.2 that offers greater architectural simplicity in addition to performance. This platform release also included capabilities needed to support several new ICM 5.2 features.

A new ICM web based administrative client, modeled after the platform’s ACCE counterpart, makes tasks like configuration and import/export much easier and accessible right from your browser.

Case Builder also got its share of new features. From its integrated solution page designer, to a new data layout editor that lets you design rich form like views to display your case properties, to an integrated rules designer that has case property awareness, and finally to a completely rewritten task step editor that is significantly faster and easier to use. By being part of Case Builder, artifacts from these components are now included in the solution package and automatically deployed along with everything else, saving you time and many manual steps.

The final piece to the ICM 5.2 puzzle is the completely new Case Client. Now built on top of ECM’s popular Content Navigator framework, the client gains performance, visual consistency and behaviors with the other ECM apps like Content Navigator, and a bunch of new features such as Case Visualizer that gives case workers a complete view of what is happening with their cases. You can even combine other Navigator features into a single desktop along with the Case Client for those users who want quick access to each.

Customers and partners who were involved in the release’s design have praised its architectural streamlining, its enhanced customization and configuration, its alignment with a common, standards based UI framework, and its ability to empower end user to handle case style solutions faster and more efficiently.

For us on the design and development teams, we will enjoy the moment, catch a well deserved breath and then start the process all over again. For the rest of you, check out IBM.com and developerWorks for more details on IBM Case Manager 5.2. We think you will like what you see.