Entscheidungsnavi v7.5

 

Entscheidungsnavi v7.5

With version 7.5, some long-awaited functions find their way into the Entscheidungsnavi. More extensive and complex projects can now be created as team projects in order to work on decision statements in groups of any size. In addition, we have introduced two more valuable functions for professionals: an extended robustness test and an Excel connection of the consequences table.

Users now have the possibility to convert their online projects into team projects in order to work on them in groups. They act as moderators, can invite people to join their project, and aggregate the work product of all group members. A whiteboard function allows team members to have a basic vote on the project, while they can comment directly on the work product and suggest changes in almost all explanation fields (small triangle in the upper right corner) in the various project files. Moderators also have the option of viewing evaluations of the progress of individual group members and their objective weights.

The robustness test now also analyzes the question of how various uncertainties in the modeled influence factors affect the relative advantageousness of the alternatives. For example, it is now possible to answer the important question of the probability with which the alternative with the highest expected utility value would actually be the best even in an ex-post analysis (i.e., after all uncertainties have been resolved), or in other words, the probability with which another alternative would have been better. For this purpose, all scenarios for possible environmental developments are run through in the Monte Carlo simulation and the resulting rankings are evaluated overall. The result also shows which scenarios are responsible for the different rankings of all alternatives.

In order to meet the frequently expressed wishes of some users, the Entscheidungsnavi now (finally) offers an Excel connection of the consequences table. The consequences table can be exported as a special Excel file and extended with your own calculations. Complex, individual calculations can even be included in additional spreadsheets. Likewise, new alternatives can be defined in the Excel sheet, which will be completely included in the Entscheidungsnavi decision model when the sheet is subsequently imported. All details on how to use the function can be found in the readme in the Excel file.

To better support the definition of the objectives, the function "Suggestion lists" has been replaced by an extended version "Example objectives". Users can now compare their own objective hierarchy with other objective hierarchies from the entire spectrum of all example projects in the Entscheidungsnavi and transfer any parts from matching objective hierarchies into their own model using drag & drop.

In addition to the usual bug fixes, we have also made various standardizations between the Educational and Professional variants to make the transition easier for experienced users. Finally, we would like to mention that the probability values can now be specified more precisely with decimal places instead of whole percentage points, so that our motivated students can now correctly model the estimation of whether they will fail the final exam below 1% when evaluating their learning strategies.