Anyone planning to use BAI on ICP4BA on containers - please read this before making any decisions.

1. Earlier IBM offerred BAI4Server and other versions where Kibana (used for dashboard) was included. Now that is a deprecated product. 
2. Next IBM is advising to use container version of BAI which doesn't come with Kibana. 
3. IBM stated you can use external Kibana with BAI (where Elasticsearch resides).
4. Fun is - latest version of Kibana is 8.6.2 but Elasticsearch delivered from ICP4BA 22.0.2 has very old version, so external Kibana will not work. So yoyu ar eforced to use old compatible version, whiich lacks too many capabilities. 
5. And .. I am not getting answer yet as why ICP4BA is not delivering latest version (or option to upgrade) of Elasticsearch.
6. I'm leaning toward this whole BAI offering as of now is useless. 
7. I was looking this (ES+Kibana) as an option for my reporting, but them too much limitations. 
8. Overall ICP4BA lacks any reporting capbilities. Should we pursue this product?

-Nitin

Thanks for the insight Nitin; that is truly disappointing and maybe an IBM product person (unsure who owns this part) can help shed some insight.  I would have thought being contained, you "could simply swap out one version for another".  Obviously not that super simple, but still, if follow micro-architecture and container-based development, the concept is very much viable.

As many of us know, reporting and FileNet have been an issue for years and at least I was, counting on this product to be something that would be continually supported and expanded upon.  So it seems we are back to doing our own thing around reporting.

Since you are knee-deep in the weeds, Nitin, let me ask you this.  Do you know if the emitters can be used as-is in other EKS environments?  Getting the data out of FileNet, workflow, audits, etc. is always a custom job, but if we can still use the emitters and configure them to go to our own (current) environment, that would be something at least.  Again assuming those are updated for newer versions of CP4BA.

I think there is a bigger miss in that the corpus of data in the reporting tool is THE source for AI\ML on the Case\BPM\Document actions.  A big miss of product potential.

Hi Nitin,

BAI supports the use of external Kibana provided it is compatible with the version of elastic that is shipped with the product.
We are exploring options of re-enabling customers to bring their own elastic, a feature which was supported with the earlier versions of BAI.
This will help customers use a version that supports their business needs.

Thanks,

Poornima.

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Poornima Sekhar
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Hello Poornima,

Thanks for reply but some questions are still open. 

1. Current ES version with ICP4BA 22.0.2 IF002 is ES 7.17.0 which is old. Why we have a product with old version where as latest version is ES 8.6.2?
2. We were advised to use container version of BAI but we still do se limitations in use as we cannot even use full-blown Kibana-)SS with ES 7.17.0 as few features of Kibana are dependent on ES and those are turned off due to version ES is delivered?
3. And more important - how long we need to wait to have unrestricted use of BAI?
4. Why product is not offering any built-in reporting/dash-boarding capabilities like other products do offer?

-Nitin

Hi Nitin,

Elastic v7 is a supported technology till v9 is GA'ed.
With Elastic v8, we as IBM have limited option to redistribute Elastic due to the changes in the elastic license.
As mentioned earlier - For customers who want to use a more recent version of elastic the approach being explored is to let customers bring their own Elastic. 

For points 3 and 4 - We would like to connect with you over a call to discuss and understand your ask in detail. We will get that scheduled.

Thanks

Hi Poornima.

In your response we can use our own EKS stack; where is that in the product development?  The biggest part of that is the use of the emitters and how to configure them to put the data into our own stack.  I think the confusion also comes with capabilities being added, then removed, then added again.  Creating a strategy around business solutions makes it impossible.  Business reporting has long been missing in this space and the addition of BAI was to be a great addition.

Creating reports and gathering data from CP4BA takes some planning, and adding custom data fields into BAI takes some additional effort.  That is understood, but if the base product is significantly out of date or changes integrations with each version, all the planning changes and does not reflect well to the customer(s).

Just some additional feedback, but I am also very curious on the emitters part.