Practical BPM: Application Steps

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By Rashid N. Khan

Application steps represent tasks in business process management (BPM) that are performed by third-party applications without human intervention. That's the topic of this month's column.

Some analysts refer to such steps as straight through processing (STP) since they don't require any human involvement. A business process that is composed entirely of application steps is sometimes called an STP process. Enterprise application integration (EAI) business processes are composed almost entirely of application steps with only a few steps dealing with exception handling that are user steps. Since application steps don't involve people, a company can realize maximum return on investment by using application steps for as many tasks as practical.

When an application step is invoked, process information is transferred to the third-party application along with specific instructions. The application then performs the tasks it is instructed to perform and returns information to the business process. These steps therefore provide a means of using business applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, email, accounting, ERP and databases in business processes.

Properties of Application Steps

Application steps have properties designed to make them more useful and flexible for automating business processes. These include the following:

Recipient

A BPM solution may offer agents or connectors for different desktop or enterprise applications. This property would specify the application agent or connector that will be invoked at a step in the process.

Location

A business process may need to invoke a third-party application at different locations. For example, in an e-commerce fulfillment process, the shipping order for a particular item has to be printed at a different location depending on the warehouse the part is located in. The "location" property is used to specify this location.

Time Limits

Like user steps, it's often necessary to allow process designers to define time limits for each application step in the process. This is useful in order to avoid stalling a process because of the failure of a third-party system. The BPM solution ensures that if the time limit is exceeded, appropriate notifications are sent to the process manager.

Time limits can be either relative or absolute as discussed for user steps.

Delay Time

In many cases it's necessary to delay a step by a specific time interval or hold it until an absolute time. This is typically when the activity has to be synchronized with delays that are external to the process. A BPM solution provides a "delay time" interval that can be used to specify an absolute or relative time that the step is to be delayed.

Useful Links

This article is an excerpt from Rashid Khan's Business Process Management: A Practical Guide. Order your copy here:
http://www.bpmenterprise.com/yDQ

Ultimus
http://www.ultimus.com

Rashid's article on user steps:
http://www.bpmenterprise.com/content/c061113a.asp

About the Author:

Rashid N. Khan is the founder and Chief Technical and Strategy Officer of Ultimus Inc., a pioneer in business process management and workflow automation. Prior to establishing Ultimus, founded Sintech Inc., a leader in advanced software for mechanical testing. Rashid sold Sintech to MTS Systems in 1989, where he worked for a five years as a vice president and general manager. During this period he took the company through ISO 9000 certification. This experience made him aware of the need for business process management and workflow automation. Rashid obtained two undergraduate degrees from MIT in computer science and political science. Khan is the author of Business Process Management: A Practical Guide, has published numerous articles and spoken at a number of events. Contact Rashid N. Khan at info (at) ultimus.com or visit http://www.ultimus.com.

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