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Process Introduction

Modeling, validation, execution and monitoring of a process for request of time off

This tutorial gives you a quick start on using the tools and functions of the AristaFlow BPM-Suite by describing the development and implementation of a simple request for time off process step by step.

The complete tutorial is available as pdf-file, you can download it here.

Please note that this tutorial can not substitute comprehensive trainings which are necessary to use the power of the AristaFlow BPM-Suite seriously. Advanced features like escalation, ad-hoc deviations, error handling, etc. and the usage of the powerful API to create extensions or even your own process centric applications are not covered by the tutorial.

Introduction

In normal situations the first step in the automation of business processes is to identify and analyze existing business processes using questionnaires or already existing process descriptions in order to define requirements for the process implementation. This is usually done on a semantically high level and may look like the following description for our running example: Request for Time off Process.

Process steps and involved participants in more detail:

  1. Request for time off form is filled out by an employee.
  2. The employee sends the request for time off to his / her supervisor.
  3. The supervisor checks the request for time off and accepts or declines it.
  4. The supervisor informs the employee if the request for time off has been accepted or declined.
  5. If the request is declined the employee can withdraw his / her request or change it to submit it again.
  6. If the request is accepted the supervisor informs the human resources department (HR)
  7. The HR updates the employee’s time off account.

After this rough specification we are ready to go on with the implementation of the process.

Implementation of the Request for Time off Process

In this section you will learn how to design a process model, how to create the corresponding process data / information, how to assign manual activities and automatic services and how to map your organizational model so that it can be used to specify the executing staff for each process steps.

Hint:

The AristaFlow Process Server offers two possibilities for start-up.
Using …\server\bin\server.bat the server for productive operations is started.
Call …\aristaflow-server-transient\bin\server.bat to start a server without data persistence.
The difference is that the transient version deletes the deployed process templates and running instances after shutdown, whereas the productive version keeps them permanently.

If you have installed the server as a Windows service, start it using the Windows service tool.

Note:

For the following steps it is required that the AristaFlow Process Server is running!