[Article] An Introduction to the Functionalities of WSO2 Process Center

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Creating high level processes
• Creating an abstract textual process
• Deleting a process
• Associate a flowchart for a process
• Advanced search option for processes
• View activity logs
• Process level permission support
• Associate a BPMN model to a process
• Associate documents to a process
• Associating processes (subprocess, predecessor and successor)
• Managing process lifecycle
• Business process monitoring metrics/dashboard
• Import and export process artifacts
• Conclusion

Introduction

WSO2 Process Center provides a complete, end-to-end solution for business process management. It forms the central component of WSO2’s business process management platform by providing centralized storage, governance, process monitoring/analytics, and process improvement support. It enables users to discover relevant processes and initiate automated processes; domain experts to design processes using different formats (e.g. define processes in text, PDF, document, etc.); and process owners to monitor existing processes, analyze process history, and identify the possibility of optimizing their use of WSO2 Data Analytics Server. WSO2 Process Center offers a process center publisher app as well as a process center store app to add/create, edit, and store new processes.

Applies to

Creating high level processes

Users can create a new process by logging into the process center publisher application via https://{hostname:https_port}/publisher/ URL. The user would need to fill all the required fields before saving the process. All the fields related to the process creation are described in the table below. After completing the relevant fields as shown here, you can either save it by clicking on the Save button or redirect to the detail page of that process by clicking on the Details button.

Figure 1

Creating an abstract textual process

Processes are created as an extension to the asset types present in the Enterprise Store. The processes have their own set of defined attributes, contents, and layouts. This feature can be used to describe a process through plain text, which means it gives the textual definitions for the business processes.

Figure 2

Deleting a process

Deleting a process via publisher is based on the respective user's permissions and the defined deletable lifecycle states. However, if there is no lifecycle attached to the process, the authorized users are allowed to delete the process. When deleting a process, all the resources associated with it (except subprocesses, successors, and predecessors) are removed from the registry (like documents, BPMN model, process text, flowchart, etc.).

Figure 3

Associate a flowchart for a process

A user can graphically represent a process by drawing a flowchart diagram to the given process. WSO2 Process Center enables the user to design a flowchart inline and edit it later according to the additional requirements. Flowcharts allow the user to break down any process into small-sized sections and display them in shorthand form. That way, the audience can easily see the logical flow and the relationship between the steps of a process.

Figure 4

Advanced search option for processes

The user can perform a search operation for the processes through the advanced search functionality by providing one or more fields in the search box. The search can be performed in both publisher and the store. The search bar is located on the top right corner of the screen. All the fields that belong to the advanced search operation are described in the table below.

Figure 5

View activity logs

There are two ways of getting activity logs in WSO2 Process Center. The user can either get logs for a specific process or can obtain activity logs for all processes in the process center. These audit logs contain log information for all activities performed with process assets inside the publisher. Some of the activities that are recorded in the audit log are as follows:

• Adding a process
• Editing of process text
• Add/update/delete process artifacts
• Process lifecycle change

Figure 6

Process level permission support

The user can restrict access permission to the processes based on roles. The creator of the particular process has permission to edit that process and can be assigned different permission levels to other users. By default, when creating a process by a user, he/she has to read, write, authorize and delete permission to that process. If a user logs in using different user credentials, then only that particular user will have permission to view the process. The process creator can assign roles to different users. There are four roles that currently exist - all tenant users, publisher, reviewer, and store.

Figure 7

Associate a BPMN model to a process

This feature is used to upload a standard BPMN 2.0 model created using a standard-compliant BPMN tool and view a BPMN model for a particular process. The BPMN model for a process provides the capability to understand their internal business procedures with the process in a graphical notation and will give organizations the ability to communicate these procedures in a standard manner.

Figure 8

Associate documents to a process

In this feature, the user can add, view, download and delete multiple documents including Microsoft documents, PDFs, and Google documents to/from the process. The creator of the particular process has the permission to do these all operations to the documents and can be assigned different permission levels to other users as well. By default, when creating a process by a user, he/she can add, view, download, and delete permission to the documents.

Figure 9

Associating processes (subprocess, predecessor, and successor)

This is where the user can associate subprocess, predecessor and successor processes to a particular process. There are three sections in the process center publisher to add/edit/delete processes that belong to these categories. Successor is the process that executes after the process execution, predecessor process executes before the process execution, and subprocess is the part of the process that represents a collection of activities (and gateways and flows) being represented collectively as a single activity.

Figure 10

Managing process lifecycle

WSO2 Process Center comes with a lifecycle management support that allows a user to take processes from the initial state to creating, in-reviewing, publishing and unpublishing states. The diagram below illustrates the default state transition for any process version.

Figure 11

Permission transition will take place when a process passes from one state to another. Thereby, not all users will have the required permission to promote or demote a process asset from its current state. Furthermore, if the user wishes to remove a process from the process store, he/she will need to unpublish the process by demoting it. The user can click on Promote or Demote to move the process from its current state to the next and the action will be recorded under history as shown below.

Figure 12

Business process monitoring metrics/dashboard

WSO2 Process Center publisher allows a user to generate analytics metrics/graphs from process-related events. These are divided into three categories, namely process level monitoring, task level monitoring, and user monitoring. The user can filter the data to be visualized in graphs by using a mandatory primary filter (if available) and optional secondary filters.

As illustrated in the architecture diagram below, execution data on process instances are captured for analyzing the behavior of processes. In order to facilitate this, execution data of BPMN process instances are published to WSO2 Data Analytics Server through BPMN data publisher in WSO2 Business Process Server. Once published, such data can be summarized into three tables namely PROCESS _ USAGE _ SUMMARY, TASK _ USAGE _ SUMMARY and USER _ INVOLVE _ SUMMARY by executing a spark-script periodically and presented from WSO2 Data Analytics Server.

Figure 13

Once the data has been summarized, WSO2 Process Center publisher can request a particular analyzing operation to the WSO2 Data Analytics Server to retrieve the relevant results and visualize them via bar charts.

Import and export process artifacts

The user can export a process model with all the artifacts (documents, flowcharts, subprocesses, predecessors, successors, etc.) from the process center publisher as a zip archive so the exported model can be edited from WSO2 Developer Studio to add execution level details. Once the model has been converted to an executable one, it can be imported back to the process center with the relevant metadata.

Conclusion

WSO2 Process Center forms the central component of WSO2’s business process management platform by providing centralized storage, governance, process monitoring/analytics, and process improvement support. The objective of this article is to provide you a brief introduction about the features of the WSO2 Process Center. Moreover, this article described the sample scenarios/use-cases to what extent they will help to the end-users.