Getting started

ActiveVOS Designer includes plugins for creating a simulation models that are based on an existing BPEL processes. Simulation models provide business users the ability to test "what-if" type scenarios to estimate the impact of modifying business process logic or resource availability.

Business users can add project releated goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), deliverables, dependencies, and other information. After defining resources and assigning them to process activities, the process can be simulated to run for a set duration driven by either generated or actual historical data.

Components

The ActiveVOS Simulation Model interface includes four main working areas, called views.

§     The Editor view is the area in which you create and modify diagrams (flow charts), referred to as models. It includes a Palette of drawing objects that represent business processes and decision points. Those objects can include additional data that identify their purpose within the process.

§     The Properties view is the area where you can add information to enrich the diagram. Some of the information will not be visible in the diagram; for example, descriptions, goals, KPIs, etc. Some of the information will be visible in the diagram; for example, names, gateway exclusivity, etc.

§     The Outline view provides a “tree” view, with icons that represent different types of elements.

§     The Artifacts view allows you to import and integrate into your model pre-existing elements from other BPMN-compliant software.

Whether those views appear and how they are organized is further determined by Perspectives.

Using the information in the model, ActiveVOS can also simulate how changes to the business process would affect process bottlenecks, staffing, productivity rates, or other indicators described by the model.

Benefits

You can continue modeling and documenting business processes much as you may have in the past, but doing so within the framework of ActiveVOS provides far-reaching benefits to your organization. You can import models created in Visio or other tools that can export as XPDL format. AciveVOS also supports exporting existing BPEL models into XPDL so they can be imported into other modeling tools you may already use within your organization.

ActiveVOS provides a completely standards-based approach to both documenting and implementing business processes.  The simulation model editor supports creating and editing models using the BPMN 1.2 standard, and models can then be transformed directly to WS-BPEL 2.0 for execution.

To experience ActiveVOS business process modeling features, follow the tutorial; Creating a Simulation model from a BPEL artifact.