Designing Efficient BPM Applications

Book description

Looking for efficiency gains in your business? If you’re a business analyst, this practical guide will show you how to design effective business process management (BPM) applications. Every business uses business processes—these everyday tasks help you gain and retain customers, stay profitable, and keep your operations infrastructure functioning.

BPM specialists Christine McKinty and Antoine Mottier show you step-by-step how to turn a simple business procedure into an automated, process-based application. Using hands-on examples, you’ll quickly learn how to create an online process that’s easy to use. Each chapter builds on earlier material.

You don’t have to have any programming experience to design business processes—and if you have skills in designing workflows and understanding human interactions with processes, you already have a headstart.

Through the course of this book, you will:

  • Build a prototype of an application page
  • Create the most frequent use flow in a process, and define the data model
  • Generate real process forms and produce the first version of the application
  • Connect your application to external information systems, and then build and test the complete application

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Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. Audience
    2. How to Use This Book
    3. Using Code Examples
    4. Conventions Used in This Book
    5. Acknowledgments
  2. 1. Recognizing Your Business Processes
    1. What Is a Business Process?
      1. What Is Not a Process?
    2. Examples of Process-Based Applications
      1. Vacation Management
      2. Recruitment and Onboarding
      3. Procure to Pay
      4. Build to Order
      5. Online Shopping
      6. Business Continuity
      7. Document Approval
      8. Travel Management
    3. Business Process Management
    4. Business Process Model and Notation
    5. Process Automation
    6. Process Efficiency
    7. Summary
  3. 2. Preparing Your System
    1. Example Application: Vacation Management
    2. Downloads
    3. Installing Bonita BPM Community Edition
    4. Starting Bonita BPM Studio
      1. Diagram Editor
      2. UI Designer
    5. Summary
  4. 3. Getting Started
    1. Create the Application Prototype
      1. Create the Page and Add the Introduction
      2. Add My Vacation Information
      3. Add Team Vacation Information
    2. Create Your First Process Diagram
      1. Run the Process
    3. Summary
  5. 4. Managing Starts and Stops
    1. User Experience Description
      1. Application Page with Vacation Statement
      2. Vacation Request Form
      3. Vacation Modification Option
      4. Vacation Cancellation Option
      5. Notification for Manager of Pending Request
      6. Vacation Request Review Form
      7. Team Vacation Statement for Manager
      8. Calendar Interaction
      9. HR Tracking of Refusals
    2. Component Definitions
      1. Home Page
      2. Vacation Request Process
    3. Updating the Process Diagram
      1. Updating the Human Tasks
      2. Adding Notification Tasks
    4. Summary
  6. 5. Assigning Tasks
    1. Actors
    2. Filtering
    3. Example
    4. Updating the Process Diagram
      1. Tips for Updating a Diagram
    5. Assigning Actors and Filters
    6. Summary
  7. 6. Using Data
    1. Data Use Patterns
    2. Defining the Business Data Model
      1. Data Model Design Choices
      2. Business Objects
      3. Queries
      4. Indexes
      5. Initialize VacationAvailable for Employees
    3. Define Variables
    4. Specify Information Needed by a Process
      1. Running the Process with Temporary Forms
    5. Setting Initial Values for Variables
    6. Updating VacationAvailable
    7. Organization Data
    8. Summary
  8. 7. Creating Process Forms
    1. Vacation Request Form
    2. Manager Review Form
    3. Summary
  9. 8. Managing Decisions
    1. Gateway Types
      1. Exclusive Gateway
      2. Inclusive Gateway
      3. Parallel Gateway
    2. Best Practice
    3. Update the Diagram
      1. Add Operations to Update the vacationRequest
      2. Add Flow Conditions
      3. Make the no Flow Parallel
      4. Close Flows from Request approved? 
      5. Updated Diagram
    4. Summary
  10. 9. Planning for Escalations and Exceptions
    1. Escalations
      1. Add a Reminder
      2. Add an Escalation
    2. Exceptions
    3. Summary
  11. 10. Building the Application
    1. Deploy and Run Processes
    2. Update the Vacation Statement
    3. Create the Application
    4. Test the Application
    5. Summary
  12. 11. Managing Interruptions
    1. Modify a Request
      1. Add Modify Option to the Application Page
      2. Create the Tahiti-ModifyPendingVacationRequest Process
    2. Cancel a Request
      1. Add a Cancel Option to the Application Page
      2. Define the Tahiti-CancelVacationRequest Process
      3. Update the Tahiti-NewVacationRequest Process
      4. Create Cancellation Process Forms
    3. Testing Modify and Cancel
    4. Summary
  13. 12. Connecting to Other Systems
    1. Email Connectors
      1. Email Connector Parameters
      2. Email Connectors in Tahiti-NewVacationRequest
      3. Email Connectors in Tahiti-CancelVacationRequest 
    2. Calendar Connectors
      1. Calendar Connector Parameters
      2. Date Formatter Groovy Script
      3. Update calendar request pending
      4. Update calendar request modified
      5. Update calendar approved
      6. Update calendar request refused
      7. Update calendar request cancelled
    3. Summary
  14. 13. Finishing the Application
    1. Updating Process Forms
    2. Update the Application
    3. Deploy the Processes
    4. Test the Application
    5. Summary
  15. 14. Deploying the Application
    1. Testing
      1. Unit Test
      2. Workflow Execution
      3. User Acceptance Testing
    2. Setting Up the Environment
    3. Future Enhancements
    4. Next Steps
  16. Index

Product information

  • Title: Designing Efficient BPM Applications
  • Author(s): Christine McKinty, Antoine Mottier
  • Release date: March 2016
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781491924662