Process Modeling
Purpose
Guided Procedures (GP) makes it easy for you to model business processes in which you connect various back-end applications and services into a single workflow. In addition, multiple contributors may be involved in completing the process.
The ability to set up and modify such processes quickly and flexibly is a requirement imposed by a dynamic business environment. GP responds to the needs of many employees who handle cross-functional collaborative processes on a daily basis.
Prerequisites
Process modeling with GP does not require specific development skills. It is targeted at business experts who are familiar with business processes, and can use GP to model them according to specific requirements in the enterprise.
Process Flow
Process Modeling Tasks
Process modeling with GP comprises the following general activities:
● Defining the components that build the process
● Defining the order for executing these components
● Defining the roles for the contributors in the process
● Creating the process template itself
Process Building Elements
The individual steps in a process in GP are implemented as actions. They contain one or two callable objects, which enable you to use external services and applications in processes modeled with GP. Actions also contain additional metadata to define the behavior of the callable objects within the process itself.
Callable object design requires a good understanding of the services and applications that are exposed. Typically, it is a task for users with a technical background and is covered in section Exposing Applications as Callable Objects.
Blocks are the main building elements in a process template. You can embed other blocks and actions in a block. The items in the block can be executed sequentially or in parallel, and you can also define ad-hoc items and loops, which are executed in the event of certain conditions occurring. The top-level blocks in the process template form process phases. They are always executed in sequence.
Process Building Elements
Approaches
With GP you have the flexibility to complete the process modeling tasks using one of the approaches illustrated in the figure below.
Approaches to Process Modeling
The two approaches have the following characteristics:
● Top-down modeling
When modeling a process from the top-down, you typically start from the overall process model and break it down into its individual elements, which you create using the GP design time tools. This implies that you design most of the components or all of them according to the requirements of the particular business case. You can extend the process template when you identify a need to add another step, and you can define items that are executed when certain conditions occur.
With this approach, process modeling includes the following steps:
...
a. Create a process template.
b. Create block(s).
c. Create action(s).
d. Create callable object(s).
● Bottom-up modeling
When you have already defined certain functions and you need to combine them into a single process, you use the bottom-up modeling approach. The main focus when using bottom-up modeling should be the definition of the process phases themselves, and not on the fine-grained components, such as callable objects and actions.
With the bottom-up approach, process modeling goes in the following order:
...
a. Create callable object(s).
b. Create action(s) and insert the callable object(s).
c. Create block(s) and insert the action(s).
d. Create a process template and insert the block(s).
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