BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT-BPM

INTRODUCTION
 A Business Process Manager is a software tool mainly used for managing, modelling,
automating and optimizing the business processes and activities.

 Business process management (BPM) is an organizational discipline where a company takes

a step back and looks at all of these processes in total and individually. It analyzes the current
state and identifies areas of improvement to create a more efficient and effective
organization.

 Applying business process management, organizations can improve their processes and keep
all aspects of operations running optimally.

Creating a process
A process in web Process Designer contains the activities of a business process. At run time, a
business user works with tasks that are created for the activities.

We can create a process from the Processes category in the library.

1) Select Processes from the library. Click +. In the Processes menu, select Process.
2) In the New Process dialog, enter a name for the process.
3) Click Finish. The editor opens in the Overview page. The process that you created is
added in the Processes category.
4) Assign teams whose members can start a process, or instance owner teams whose
members can work with tasks in Process Portal.
5) Create the variables for the information that you want to share across activities.
6) In the Definition page, add activities that define the business tasks and wire them
according to the workflow.
There are various task types:-
1. User Task
2. In-line User Task
3. System Task
4. Script
5. Decision Task
Coaches(User interface)

 The coach inside a process corresponds to data that is being supplied and the variables
that hold the data where the data will be flown from one place to another.

 The structure of data is represented inside the coach view and through coach we can
identify the number of elements.

Variables

 Usually variables are used for holding the data so that process to process transfer can be
easily managed.
 We can declare the variables in either input or output category, but if we want the
required data to flow out of the process then we should declare them in output category
only.
 We can also store variables in private category as well so that the visibility of the variable
can be global i.e. through out the process flow.

Business object(BO)

 Business objects are the data elements where we can be able to store and represent a
group of variables together at one place.

 These objects can be accessed and used multiple times inside a process and can avoid the
user in creating similar variables.

Service flow

 Basically a service flow is used to create a service and depending on the service provided
the necessary action can be taken in the process application.

 And the service flow consists of various modes of implementations and by which we can
implement any of the service as required by the user.
  The service flow can be from predefined libraries of BPM as well as we can create one
explicitly to perform the task.
Teams

 In BPM, we use teams in order to assign our work/task to another person whose is
authorized to access the work.

 specify using their instance, and through this the work can be work can be shared
among the team.

 And with teams facility the work can be shared to another person only when they are the
authorized to access the process.

 Using teams we can provide the authority to the users to view the performance data in
dashboard of process portal.

Team filters

 The team filter service is used to dynamically filter/select the team to perform the task
based on their eligibility.

 We can use the team filter service to eliminate particular members from performing
activities dynamically.

 This service mainly improves the performance of the processes significantly.

 The team filter service can either be service flow or a heritage integration service

Team retrieval service

 Within this service you can do anything that it is possible to do with a BPM
integration service. You can call out to other systems, process the results, whatever
you need to do.

 The only requirement is that the service meet the input and output signature of a
Team Retrieval Service.
  This means the team activities and processes will be a bit complicated as the service
will only get accessed by only known members which are authorized by us.

Database Integration
 With Database integration we can easily integrate SQL with external databases.
 SQL Integration services support common database interactions like inserting
elements as well as retrieving them using SELECT query.
The following are the ways for integrating our database with BPM:-
1. Open the desktop Process Designer.
2. Open a process application in the Designer view.
3. Click the indicator next to the Toolkits category to see a list of toolkit
dependencies for the current process application.
4. Click the indicator next to the System Data toolkit to see its contents.
5. Click the Implementation category and we can get the following options,
 The SQL Execute Statement service
 The SQL Execute Statement (SQLResult) service

6. In the service diagram, click the Java Integration component to select it.

8. Switch from the diagram view of the service by clicking the Variables tab.

9. Click an Input or Output variable to see its details, such as its type and default value

ECM Integration
 ECM systems manage documents of different types, such as records, images, and web
pages.
 We can access and update such documents from a business process inside IBM BPM by
using special ECM operations in services such as an integration service or a human
service.
The following are the ways to integrate ECM with the BPM:-
  Create a service where we have to select that service in content integration mode.
 In process designer click services and create a service flow
 Add a user interface for that service
 In the next step select a library that supports content integration
 Then within the properties click on implementation and select the desired ECM
server.
 Under data mapping, auto map the necessary data, we can map data by manually as
well.
 Then under Content Integration Operation, select the desired operation to perform by
the ECM server where there will be multiple set of operations.
 Finally Perform the Data mapping outside for that service as well as outside of that
service flow as well.

Web services(SOAP process)

 SOAP means Simple Object Access Protocol used mainly for communication activities.

 It internally uses Web services definition language (WSDL) for processing web services.

To design a web service, the following steps are to be followed:-

1. In Process Designer, create an integration service for the process application.

2. Drag and drop a Web Service Integration component and open properties.
3. Specify the location and properties of the web service WSDL file by clicking the
Implementation properties option.
4. Then we have two options from which we have to select web services field and if there is
no available web service then we will add a web sevice from WSDL server and configure
it to perform various operations.
5. Select SOAP version for our web service.
6. Define the input and output variables from the WSDL file that are needed for our web
service.
 7. Now we perform input-output data mapping under data mapping section by clicking on
auto map options.
8. Configure the input and output mappings for the parameters in the WSDL file by clicking
the Data Mapping properties.

Java Integration

 Using BPM we can integrate a java service for performing various programming
requirements and to add more functionality to the process.

 To implement a process which contains java based activity, we perform the following
steps.

1. Open the process designer and create a process, for the process attach a UI.

2. Then create a service flow for the process and go for implementation.

3. Go to service and create an external service for the process where the required
server will be selected either web file or java file.

4. Within the External service select the java server and provide a name to the
external service also select the desired java class file(jar).

5. Then inside the service activity provide the implementation for it by selecting the
external service created by us and proceed to next step.

6. Click on operation type button to select the type of operation to be performed and
under data mapping section auto map the variables.

7. Make sure to perform data mapping outside the service task as well.

Events

 Events in BPM provide the changing behavior of the data entities where we provide the
logic for the event to work as we require it to do.
  These Events are available in different forms and show different responses on clicking at
Different levels and provide multiple options.

Service call
 The service call functionality in BPM simplifies the task of creating user defined service
flows.
 It replaces the older way of creating service flow by directly calling the service and
proceed for its implementation based on the operation.
 We can create a service call from the building blocks of BPM and by dragging from the
set of blocks inside the coach , we can implement the desired task.
 Then we add required variables wherever needed and depending on requirement.
 Perform the data binding to our service call through mapping option. And we can
automatically map the variables as well.

Progress Bar

 The progress bar is mainly used for indicating the progress of a particular activity or
process so that we can keep track of the process application.
 This can achieved by defining events in the implementation section of the progress bar
where we include the logic for progressing of our process activity.
 In the events section of progress bar we write the event in "on change" area.

 With progress bar of the BPM Toolkit the user can easily understand the flow of
processes within a process application.

Under cover agents(UCA)

The Under cover agent(UCA) is part of the under building blocks and is mainly used for process
related activities , i.e. at the time of running the processes these are employed to add a new
functionality for the processes.

 An undercover agent is started by an event, an undercover agent is needed to start the

required service in response to the message.
 The UCA is included and attached at the start of a process BPD and it calls a service
which handles the process.

Decision table

Using Decision table concept, we can define different kinds of decisions depending upon the
condition applied. The decision will be taken based on the condition defined and will display the
result accordingly.

The decision table concept can be useful in depicting the output of the process designed as we
can apply more than one decision externally by defining the condition.

Using the following steps, we can implement Decision table in our process:-

 First up we need to create a service flow and add a decision task to it before adding
decision table.
 Now Click the Decisions tab to open the decision editor.
 Select the required decision task as per the condition.
 Click on add a decision table and add the table accordingly.
 Then we have two columns opened namely condition column(C0) and action column
(A0), and Change the labels of both the columns.
 We can implement any task/requirement in the decision table where we can accomplish
Decision making process with the condition specified in C0 as well as the required fields
defined in action column.
 Define the rules for the decision table and by which a set of decisions will be taken as per
the condition.
 Now all the necessary decisions are added in the task and we need to call that from our
process application.