I'm excited about two new features that we have started R&D on for Designer 2.0.

Two weeks ago we started active R&D on snapshotting and staging. Both are enterprise-class features that will greatly help everyone working with Novell Identity Manager.

Snapshotting will allow the user to take snapshots from a Designer project, either locally or, if working in a project team, on a snapshot server. This will provide two main benefits: it will team-enable designer, and it will provide sophisticated backup and restore capabilities. I know that many users have begged for this, and now I can say, "We?re working on it!"

Staging will support the user or a whole project team to take a solution from one stage to the next. All projects operate at least on two stages: test environment and production. Some even take a three-stage approach and divide development and test into two environments. The challenge has always been how to manage to get a finished and tested solution from the development and/or test servers into production, without forgetting a switch here and a flag there, and how to do it quickly and efficiently. Staging will address this issue.

If you feel strongly about either of these two features, join the discussion at:

http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=454