I have been using the product on and off on trial it for a couple months but this article came about after a colleague needed to convert some Visio BPMN diagrams to something better in a hurry. There is nothing like a fast deadline to really put a product to the test.
Firstly, what was good; the collaboration features work very well. My colleague was in another city yet we were easily able to watch what was happening in almost real time. Despite being a web based application data entry is pretty straightforward, Lombardi has put a lot of thought into the interface. The automatic layout BPMN tools worked pretty well.
Unfortunately we fairly quickly we started running into issues with the layout. Blueprint only allows automatic layout, there is no way to manually override where it things an object should go on the timeline. It tends to add each item to the next position within each swimlane rather than the next position to the right from the previous item. Great for making spaghetti diagrams that with connections going backwards every time you send a message!
The solution is a little messy but works, if you add the activities you want parallel on the swimlanes to a milestone, the layout makes sure they are all in parallel. Not great, particularly as you are limited to displaying around 9 milestones on a flow. Lombardi will be improving this in a release in the near future.
The tool has the same problem as many other tools, it is impossible to disconnect from an activity and reconnect to a different activity. You have to redo your links, loosing labels. Annoying, but many BPMN tools have this problem.
The next hurdle came with exceptions, I believe in using exception on activities to indicate a business exception, it makes the ‘correct’ path very clear. Blueprint does not support exceptions (or message events) attached to activities, instead you need to model exception flows using decision boxes and message receive events using stand alone icons. Technically still correct but it adds verbiage to your models, many BPMN tools have this issue.
Finally export, this is severely limited. Currently there is PDF and Powerpoint exports, but they are only suitable for smaller documents. The export area needs to be significantly improved, or alternately some form of free view only account concept incorporated to share the models with all stockholders.
I should also mention the fantastic support from Lombardi. Whenever we came across these issues and posted to the support boards, Lombardi responded quickly with a work around or an explanation.
Overall not perfect, but we were able to get the models in very quickly, we liked the interface and we could easily see how it would used rapidly in a workshop environment. If Lombardi keep improving the product, and currently they release a new version every 3 months, it should mature into a very usable application.