Business Process Flows

Business process flows (BPFs) guide you through a sequence of tasks within a defined business process.

Depending on your role, the activities available to you can involve completing actions as an activity performer or reviewing actions submitted by other users as an activity reviewer.

Features

A process instance, or simply a process, is an iteration of a process template that is in active use. For example, an authorized administrative user creates a process template called “Monthly Reporting” to coordinate the monthly reporting activities of various personnel. Then that user or another authorized user can create a process for a specific period such as November 2009 based on the “Monthly Reporting” template.

As a business user, you can utilize the following features related to business processes:

  • Activities

    Activities list the processes that you as the currently logged on user can access to perform or review actions.

    For more information, see My Activities.

  • Process Monitor

    Process monitor displays a complete list of the processes that you as the process owner of corresponding process templates can access. If meanwhile you are the owner of the process instances, you can also finalize them once they have been completed.

    For more information, see Process Monitor.

  • E-mail notifications

    The system automatically generates e-mail notifications to the people who are involved in a process or activity to keep them informed of its progress and of tasks that need to be performed. The e-mail notifications automatically sent to users contain a link to bring them directly to the activity or process monitor, or to navigate to external applications to perform further actions.

    E-mail notifications occur in the following situations:

    • Process monitors are the users who can monitor all the instances created from a process template. Process monitors receive an e-mail notification when a new process instance is:

      • Created

      • Suspended

      • Resumed

      • Reset

      • Ready to be finalized

    • The owner of an activity receives an e-mail notification when the activity is:

      • Opened to be performed

      • Approved or rejected by a reviewer

      • Reopened

      • When a deadline is changed

    • The responsible reviewer of an activity receives an e-mail notification when an activity is ready for review or when a deadline is changed.

For information on how system administrators configure e-mail notifications, see Setup of E-mail Notifications.