Modeling business processes

There are two aspects to business process modeling: what the business analyst creates, and what the technology architect does with it. The business analyst understands business processes—what processes are in place, who is involved in them, and what the results are. Modeling the processes provides an overview of how they interact to support—or impede—business success and helps management understand existing processes and where improvements might be made. The technologist understands the systems that are in place, but without the input of the business analyst, may not understand the impact those systems have on the business.

Customizing user-defined properties

Users often want to model additional information that is not part of the standard definitions provided by either BPMN or BPEL. For example, a business analyst may want to model revenue and cost information using activity-based costing (ABC) to charge back each activity. You can define additional metadata by customizing user defined properties.

Creating a model

When you start up ActiveVOS Designer for Business Analysts, the editor displays a blank diagram. You can create a model from a blank diagram or by importing a diagram from an existing BPEL source or Visio diagram. Using ActiveVOS Designer, you can also import Rational Rose, UML2, and XPDL.

To add elements to the diagram, select the element in the Palette, then click the location on the diagram where you want to insert the element. You can also select the element, then drag it to the location where you want place it.

To add a sub-process to the diagram, insert one activity inside another. A plus sign on the lower line of the activity indicates the existence of the sub-process. Clicking the plus sign expands the sub-process so that its elements are visible.

Cutting and pasting

You can copy (or cut) and paste elements within a diagram or between diagrams.

Select the item to be copied.
Select Edit->Copy (or Cut), or use Ctrl+C to copy (Ctrl+X to cut).
If pasting to a different diagram, select the editor tab for that diagram.
Select Edit->Paste, or use Ctrl+V.
Alternatively, to copy elements within a diagram, select the item(s) and hold the Ctrl key while you drag the selected element to a new location.

Additional elements

The diagram is only part of the model. Additional information can be included with the diagram—documentation, KPIs, business goals, additional properties, imported web services, etc.—that increase the model’s value to the organization. Some of that information can be added by a business analyst; more technical information may have to be provided by the technologist.

Commands that affect the visual representation of the diagram or add additional information are accessed through context menus (available by clicking the right mouse button) when the element to which they apply is selected in the diagram or in Outline view. The elements and applicable context commands are:

Diagram element	Available context menu command
Event	Add Assignment Add Trigger Remove All Triggers
Activity	Add Assignment Add KPI Add Correlation Set Add Loop
Gateway	Gateway Control
Text	Text Mode (text highlighted or cursor in Tex Annotation box) gives you the following options. These are included as part of the Eclipse model, but they are not used in ActiveVOS: § Right to left reading order § Show Unicode control characters § Insert Unicode control character There are no context menu commands specifically for Text Annotations.

See also:

Editing a process model diagram

Publishing process models

Managing changes

Printing