[Article] Applicability of WSO2 Process Center - Common Use Cases

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Scenarios
• Scenario 1 - Creating high-level processes
• Scenario 2 - Creating an abstract textual process
• Scenario 3 - Creating an abstract BPMN process
• Scenario 4 - Viewing/adding/editing/deleting associate processes
• Scenario 5 - Publishing a process
• Scenario 6 - Browsing/searching processes
• Scenario 7 - Versioning a process
• Scenario 8 - Managing process stages with lifecycles
• Scenario 9 - Executing a process
• Scenario 10 - Process monitoring
• Scenario 11 - Capturing an organizational structure
• Scenario 12 - Importing and exporting process artifacts
• Conclusion

Introduction

WSO2 Process Center user stories reflect a bigger picture perspective, describing the end user’s objectives and focusing on the ultimate goal or benefit that we are aiming to support. We continuously refer back to user stories throughout the WSO2 Process Center lifecycle and evolve them as new learnings or requirements. These user stories provide a valuable tool that enables us to express a shared product vision in a common language - one that’s understood across disciplines and ranging from subject matter experts to technical specialists.

Users:

• Process designers/modellers
• Process owners
• Process participants
• Process/business analysts

Scenarios

Scenario 1 - Creating high-level processes

A business analyst works with senior management to identify existing and planned processes of an organization. Once processes and their inter-relationships (i.e. choreographies) are identified, he/she logs into the process center publisher and creates process asset instances for each of them. He/she can assign process owner(s) to each process and decide who can view the value-added parts.

Figure 1

Scenario 2 - Creating an abstract textual process

A process owner selects a process owned by him/her and creates a detailed version of the process. However, at this stage, he/she doesn’t know detailed steps of the process, so he/she decided to make it a textual process description. Once he/she create the process, he/she gives necessary permissions to the stakeholders of that process. The process owner can enable notifications for the process so that he/she receives process-related events, such as view, edit, create new abstraction, etc.

Figure 2

Scenario 3 - Creating an abstract BPMN process

A process owner delegates the task of modeling a process to a process designer. The process designer logs into the process center publisher and accesses the authorized resources related to the given process. He/she finds the textual process description added by the process owner and models a basic process in BPMN. Thereafter, he/she grants read permissions to the process participants and asks for their feedback (which can be given as comments). Then he/she improves the process model by considering the feedback and iterates the modeling cycle.

Figure 3

Scenario 4 - Viewing/adding/editing/deleting associate processes

A manager of a warehouse wants to understand how their material procurement process is linked with the rest of the organization. He/she selects the material procurement process and navigates to associations view see the subprocesses, predecessors, and successors for the process. Then he/she selects which associations he/she needs to view, after which the process center displays all selected associations with the material procurement process. Only the artifacts with required authorizations are accessible in the association list.

Figure 4

Scenario 5 - Publishing a process

An owner of a procurement process publishes the process so required employees can access it.

Figure 5

Scenario 6 - Browsing/searching processes

An employee wants to procure a laptop for office use. He/she logs into the process center and searches for procurement processes. This search can be based on tags, associated descriptions, task labels, graph structure, etc. He/she browses the results and finds a procurement process for computers. He/she follows the steps mentioned in the process to order the laptop. If he/she experiences a deviation of the actual process than the modeled process, he/she mentions that as a comment or a change proposal so it can be incorporated to the process model.

Figure 6

Scenario 7 - Versioning a process

A process designer wants to edit an existing process model. However, the existing model also has to be kept in the repository. He/she creates a new version of the existing model and makes changes in the new version.

Figure 7

Scenario 8 - Managing process stages with lifecycles

A process owner creates a new process model and selects a suitable lifecycle from available lifecycles. If a suitable lifecycle is not available, he/she defines a new lifecycle. Then process designers and other users edit/review the process model and advance/demote its lifecycle stages.

Figure 8

Scenario 9 - Executing a process

An employee wants to procure a laptop and he/she finds out that an executable process model of this process is available in the process store. He/she selects the process model and executes it so that an instance of this process is created in an associated business process server.

Figure 9

Scenario 10 - Process monitoring

A process owner selects one of his process models and monitors its instance data. He/she can get information about successful instances, failed instances, average execution times, waiting times of user tasks, resource utilizations, deviations from the modeled behavior, etc.

Figure 10

Scenario 11 - Capturing an organizational structure

HR department creates a new organization chart diagram and models the organizational structure of their company. They capture role hierarchies and assign employees (i.e. users) to those roles. These roles and users can later be assigned to various activities in the process models. If a company already maintains an external directory (e.g. LDAP), its organizational entities can be accessed within the process store and can be used in process models.

Figure 11

Scenario 12 - Importing and exporting process artifacts

A process owner has decided that a payroll process can be automated. He/she exports the process model with its artifacts, such as documents, flowcharts, subprocesses, successors, predecessors, etc. as a zip archive from the process center, so that the exported model can be edited from the developer studio to add execution level details. Once the model is converted to an executable model, it can be imported back to the process center and with relevant metadata as a zip archive.

Figure 12

Conclusion

WSO2 Process Center provides a complete, end-to-end solution for business process management by combining process design, implementation, analysis, and optimization. It enables process users or participants to discover relevant processes and initiate automated processes, domain experts to design processes using different formats, and process owners to monitor existing processes, analyze process history, and identify possibilities of optimization. As illustrated in the above common scenarios and user stories, its capabilities can help an organization to meet all of its business management process requirements.