SoftProject Releases New Version of X4 BiPRO Server

The SoftProject GmbH provides now the version 5.0 of the X4 BiPRO Server to insurers, agents and brokers. The server is based on the new digitization platform X4 Suite 6.0 and includes numerous new features. Further developments in monitoring, managing and testing BiPRO services accelerate performance and make work easier. The X4 BiPRO Server relies on pre-configured process templates that enable companies to integrate BiPRO compliant services into their processes.

“The innovations are based on customer and project experience and are therefore really relevant for users in practice,” explains Georg Kiehne, Product Owner of the X4 BiPRO Server at SoftProject GmbH. “While the employee works on a user-friendly graphical interface, automated, high-performance processes run unnoticed in the background.”

Besides comprehensive improvements of the core functionalities of the X4 BiPRO Server, the focus of the release is on web applications. The graphical, intuitive user interfaces make it easy to provide BiPRO services even without programming knowledge and support users from development to integration and productive operation of BiPRO services. This includes the X4 BiPRO TestClient, the X4 BiPRO Monitor and the X4 BiPRO Manager.

With the X4 BiPRO TestClient, developers and quality assurance can test the BiPRO services during the development phase and thus ensure service quality at all times. Another new feature of Version 5.0 is that specialist departments can also take on other tasks that previously had to be performed by a software developer. Even employees without programming or XML knowledge can define requirements for a BiPRO standard on the graphical user interface using call templates, start the modeled process and analyze it with diagrams. The results and their quality can thus be easily evaluated. The test process is transparent at all times and the design, the symbols provided and the presentation of the test results are optimized for user-friendliness and easy to understand.

The X4 BiPRO Monitor monitors the operation of the BiPRO services on the server, displays the status of the installed services on a dashboard and evaluates them. Key figures can be represented by ready-made evaluation modules. “Our approach is: modeling instead of programming,” summarizes Kiehne. In this way, BiPRO standards could be implemented without complex programming languages and there would be no need to constantly adapt web services to the requirements of new BiPRO releases. “Just a few clicks in the ready-made template are enough, for example, to adapt a new standard to a pricing service as required by BiPRO e. V.” The customer can immediately access the updated service and be sure that he always uses the latest features according to the latest definitions of the standard. In addition, response times in the new X4 BiPRO Monitor have been accelerated. Service monitoring is now much easier to control and the X4 BiPRO Monitor contains an overview of the business transactions stored in the system.

The user administration in X4 BiPRO Manager has been completely revised and made more intuitive. In X4 BiPRO Manager, user accounts, logins and services are managed centrally. Administrators have the possibility to create, edit and flexibly divide the consumers authorized to call services into organizational units. It is now much easier to create users for services and assign them login data such as password, certificate or an external user name. Different validation rules ensure that the credentials comply with BiPRO standards. The activation and blocking of individual BiPRO services is more intuitive and clearer and the system reacts better to calls of blocked services. With appropriate rights, BiPRO tokens can now also be generated in X4 BiPRO Manager for user identification and authentication, for test and development purposes with a mouse click, or issued tokens can be cancelled manually. The X4 BiPRO Manager supports all components and procedures required by BiPRO e. V., e.g. registration by certificate, by VDG ticket (Versicherungswirtschaftlicher Datendienst) or by SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language)

The X4 BiPRO Server 5.0 already supports with the components of the X4 Suite, in addition to all classic BiPRO releases, the business and technical concepts of the new BiPRO release generation RNext. These include domain driven design, ReST architecture and an agile approach. Switching from RClassic to RNext or parallel operation is possible immediately. “In contrast to most solutions, no programming languages such as Java have to be used for adaptions and extensions. SoftProject uses BiPRO adapters, i.e. templates in which programming options are already included, so that the service is available immediately after installation and can be easily updated at any time,” says Kiehne. This makes it easier to switch to RNext, but also to use services such as pricing requests.

The X4 BiPRO Server also offers numerous features to consumers, i.e. brokers and end customers who wish to communicate with insurance companies in a BiPRO-compliant manner: Based on predefined processes, the fully automated data and document retrieval via BiPRO standard 430, for example, is directly implemented. For integration into existing CRM or ERP systems, a large number of corresponding adapters are is also available.