Accware Business Solutions

WorkflowMax by Bluerock

18-08-2023

For anybody who didn’t know, Xero decided to pull the plug on WorkflowMax by Xero on the 22^nd March 2023. Users were notified by email that WorkflowMax by Xero would be retired on 26^th June 2024.

Xero purchased WorkflowMax back in 2012 when the then owner Gavin George decided to sell out – this coincided with the last major update to the product. At that time, we supported a small number of clients using the product and had great hopes and expectations that a forward-thinking business such as Xero would now get to grips with WorkflowMax and improve the user interface in the way they had originally done with Xero.

Unfortunately, this was not to be. The user interface and functionality has remained largely unchanged under Xero’s ownership, perhaps testament to the original work done by Gavin and his team (and possibly down to the complexity of modifying the underlying code), nevertheless, still a little disappointing for those of us who saw the potential in the product.

Xero introduced a certification program for Advisors shortly after acquisition, to give potential users the confidence that they could contact Certified Advisors who knew and understood the product, for help. Hence, we became Certified WorkflowMax Advisors in the summer of 2014, to add to our Xero Certification some years earlier. You will not find us under WorkflowMax Advisors on the WorkflowMax website; we were originally included and then ‘disappeared’ when they re-engineered their site! However, we have continued to work with clients over the years who found us through Google searches.

Fortunately, Xero found a willing buyer in Bluerock, a multi-disciplined consultancy based in Australia and experienced WorkflowMax users and Certified Advisors who knew the potential in the product and wanted to safeguard its future.

Bluerock immediately sent out an email announcing their arrival and highlighting key areas they were working on following their acquisition of the WorkflowMax brand. Shortly afterwards they held their first Webinar to introduce themselves and their Vision and Roadmap for the future fo WorkflowMax.

WorkflowMax by Bluerock will have the same features and functions as WorkflowMax by Xero, revealing an improved design and experience, improved reporting capabilities, improved API functionality, some new features and enhancements and all initially, for the same price.

So, there you have it. After years of little progress, we are now excited for the future of WorkflowMax once again.

WorkflowMax – August 2023 update

The latest update from Bluerock brings good news for existing users of WorkflowMax with a subtle hint to users of other similar products.

The good news is that the development is on track to be available for its beta release by the end of November this year. There’s still tons of work to complete, however the snippets of information and screen shots we have so far seen look great. Bluerock have taken the opportunity to introduce some additional features that users have been asking for over the last few years, although they have limited the addition of new features to make sure they deliver the beta release on-time and not risk missing their February 2024 Go-live date.

Committed features for WorkflowMax by Bluerock by the Go-live date

Bluerock are very much focused on the Migration of WorkflowMax by Xero to WorkflowMax by Bluerock because it is in their interests to keep as many existing customers as possible. Once they are satisfied with the working of the WorkflowMax by Xero migration process, they will open this up for users of other similar workflow products to use the migration tool as well.

The Migration tool appears to be quite sophisticated in attempting to migrate the vast majority of WorkflowMax by Xero data. However, there are some areas that will require manual intervention, these are; re-connecting any integrations, rebuilding Custom Reports, Re-inviting users and reviewing permissions and possibly the importing of document templates.

Bluerock are discussing the possibility of migrating document templates with Xero, so this may yet appear in the migration tool.

Re-connecting integrations is due to the fact Bluerock have effectively built some middleware i.e. users will have to connect to the Bluerock API to talk to the Bluerock database, which has been built to replicate the Xero API, so that third party applications do not need to be modified to talk to WorkflowMax by Bluerock.

We understand a new report writer is being added to WorkflowMax, so any Custom Reports will have to be re-built. This is an area we will be able to help users with once we have access to the beta version.