The technical Core components listed here enable and support the different business Verne Products and Registry Operations that make up a Verne register. You should recognise much of the terminology and concepts here as they directly relate to their business functions.
Core is the engine that powers Verne – Catalyst Cloud. The Core is written in Java and runs typically as a Spring Boot application. It consists of many components that work together to expose HTTP endpoints to provide the functionality of Verne.
Once deployed the Spring Boot application listens on an HTTP port and Verne handles most requests. By design Verne is multi-tenanted and every URL is expected to be for the form /{app-code}/CONTROLLER.
This documentation is not for the faint hearted and is aimed at Verne configurators/developers interested in how the engine works under the hood.
The Verne Engine provides a suite of ready to use components that can be leveraged through configuration.
What components are used will be dictated by the requirements. A high-level description of each of these components is provided below.
Business Service Form Engine
This is the central concept in the Verne product as all transactions and functions in the register are defined as business services. The engine provides the ability to read, write and render these business service forms. To do that, it reads configuration definitions specifying the various components of a business service (UI components, business rules, workflows, etc. ) and then, at runtime, it can:
- dynamically generate user interface screens or API endpoints
- accept, validate and transform a variety of user input
- execute configured rules at different times during a service transaction life cycle
- read and write to a persistent data store
The Business Service Form engine relies on and works in conjunction with several other secondary engines and modules.
Rules Engine
The rules engine executes rules for the Business Service Form Engine (above). These rules are part of the configuration and can be platform tags, Rulescript (Verne specific), Groovy or JavaScript as outlined in the rules documentation.
Business Intelligence Engine
Verne dynamically writes registry data to a specific and dedicated business intelligence platform such as star schema RDBMS. This component leverages configuration to specify what and how registry data should be mapped to the business intelligence (BI) platform.
Workflow Engine
Service transaction workflow manages the lifecycle of a service transaction from the moment that the user clicks on the save or submit buttons on the form which will start a new workflow instance until the service transaction is activated after being approved by an internal user. A common scenario that the lifecycle will go through would be payment, task creation and actions (approve/reject/return), and resubmission process.
Communications
During an Entities life cycle many notifications can be sent to users with various attachments. This module reads applicable configuration and sends such notifications.
Search
This component integrates with Elastic Search to provide the full text and richer searching capability. It is responsible for indexing and searching the Elastic indexes.
Configuration Management
Cheetah is our configuration management layer that provides abstractions, management, merging and caching at the configuration layer. This component is used by virtually every other component in the system to manifest a registry solution.
Schedules
All large registry systems have background, day end jobs that need scheduling. This component is responsible for scheduling these and supporting such activities as Compliance.
Analytics/Statistics
Verne exposes many analytics/statistics to clients and subsystems, this component aggregates and disseminates them
Localisation
Registry systems must support multiple languages and this component leverages configuration to provide decouple text keys for different locales.
Case Management
Case Management is a module within Verne that provides for the management of a case. It is best suited for reviews or investigations that lend themselves to ad-hoc or discretionary workflows, rather than prescribed review steps in a set order. Cases provide flexibility for collaboration and decisions at any stage of the review, about what the next steps should be and who should be involved in them.
Documents
Digital documents/Paper are still a crucial part of modern registers as jurisdictions migrate to fully online registries. Example documents can include Company officer consent forms, application forms and Company Constitutions. This out of the box component provides storage of these digital documents. This is often replaced with a different implementation such as Documentum, SharePoint, RDBMS, Hadoop, or File System.
Compliance
An essential part of managing Entities in a Registry solution is ensuring they comply with the legislation. Typically this will be in the form of Annual returns, Striking off. Notifications are sent to interested parties, and this component ensures the configured compliance rules are met.
Document Receipting
While most jurisdictions intend that their customers lodge their regulatory forms online, the practical reality is that a large percentage of lodgements will continue to be made via offline channels, for example, mailed in or presented at a front counter. This could be for a number of different reasons. For example:
- Low level of access/take-up with respect to internet capability and services.
- Customer preferences.
For some Verne implementations, the volume of offline lodgements is anticipated to be relatively high – whether because a high proportion of customers go through offline channels, or where high overall volumes mean that even a small percentage of offline lodgements will create significant workload.
Document Receipting is a solution that enables internal registry staff to meet these customer expectations and needs and to minimise the workload on registry staff tasked with processing offline lodgements by separating Document Receipting, scanning of documents and data entry.
From a customer perspective, Document Receipting can significantly minimise the waiting time for walk-in customers at front counters. Customers lodge their paper applications, pay any associated fees and then receive a receipt as proof of lodgement and payment. More importantly, customers do not have to wait around at busy counters for their application to be processed in its entirety.
Tasks/Workflow
A crucial part of a registry solution is the back-office processing of applications. This component uses configuration to provide team management, task allocation, task management, queues, approval and standard application workflow. This component can be replaced by larger, more sophisticated workflow systems if required.
Business Calendars
Registry applications are always related to business days, and this component provides registry administrators ability to manage those working hours and holidays, so that valid business days are reflected on all applications.
Security
Verne Security provides the Authentication and Authorisation data source to Verne Registers. It provides:
- Business services to maintain users, organisations, groups and teams, and the roles and permissions associated with each.
- Registration services for users and organisations.
- Integration with external authentication providers (for example SAML Identity Providers).
Alerts
Alerts are an internal component that allows other components to be called back at certain times such as reminders and compliance.
Reminders
Within Verne, a reminder is a notification that will appear on a user’s Reminders widget on their dashboard. This widget is generally only available to external users. The reminder is intended to alert the user to their obligation to submit a particular Business Service that is due to be filed.
Reminders are only available to logged-in users, and there is no unique security role required to see reminders. A reminder can be ‘assigned’ to one or more individuals, organisation or organisation user. A logged-in user will see all Active reminders assigned to them or their organisation and can action the reminder by clicking on the reminder link in their reminders widget.
Fees/Payments
The Verne Payments module provides internal registry staff and external registered customers a way to manage payments and fees.
Verne Payments allows the configuration at runtime of the fees, taxes and extras associated with Business Services in Verne. It also provides integration with payment providers such as Payment Express out of the box and the option to add in custom payment providers as needed.
It allows internal and external users to search payment history and review pending payments. Verne Payments supports a wide range of payment options, and the options available to a user are configured using RBAC (role-based access controls).
