Practical BPM: Administrator Governs Business Processes

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By Rashid N. Khan

The BPM administrator is an application used to manage and administer a BPM server. It is optimized for speed and does not have (or has only a limited) user interface. The BPM administrator is the user interface for the BPM server, performing a number of tasks for management and administration that typically include the following:

1. Installing new business processes on the server
2. Installing new versions of existing processes with version control
3. Uninstalling business processes that are no longer used
4. Disabling processes temporarily for maintenance or some other reason
5. Facilitating migration of processes from one environment to another
6. Monitoring the status of process incidents
7. Administering user tasks, and provide the ability to reassign tasks from one user to another in case of absence
8. Handling exceptions and special conditions
9. Controlling user access rights and privileges
10. Managing configuration settings of the BPM server

Installation and Version Control

An automated business process has to be installed on different platforms during its life cycle. The preferred methodology for business process automation is to design and develop an automated process in a design environment. Once the design is completed, the process is installed in a test environment where it can be tested. After testing, the automated process is installed on the production system and is available for the participants to use. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1: BPM Servers for Different Environments

The BPM administrator is used to install an automated business process in an environment. Since each environment may have different resources, the installation process must include integrity checks to verify that the resources available in the environment match those required by the process. A business process uses resources such as databases, third-party applications, organization charts and entities in the charts, external scripts and DLLs, etc. For the business process to function successfully, these resources must be available in all the platforms it is to be installed upon, or suitable alternatives must be identified.

In addition to integrity checking, the BPM administrator should allow upgrading incidents of older versions to be upgraded to the new version. However, the process designer must exercise this option with great caution after carefully analyzing the changes in the new version and their impact on the incidents that are in progress.

Process Migration

A BPM administrator must also support process migration. This capability facilitates the transfer of a business process from one platform to another. When an automated business process is installed to a new target platform, the BPM administrator determines the external resources needed by the process and matches it to the resources in the target platform. If the resources do not match, the BPM administrator must identify a list of one or more mismatched resources and allow the process designer either to redesign the business process, or identify substitute resources that are available in the target platform. It can also save the list of reassigned resources so that if the process is installed again, the system already knows the alternate resources.

Status Monitoring and Managing Exceptions

A BPM administrator provides means of monitoring the status of any process incident from a centralized location. Advanced systems provide a graphical as well as a tabular view of the status of any incident. This capability enables a workflow manager (an individual who monitors the BPM administrator) to check the status of a specific incident to see if there are any abnormalities, exceptions or emergency situations.

For large BPM installations the number of incidents that are live and in-process at any particular instant may run into the thousands. For these installations it is impractical for a workflow manager to select a specific incident from such a large list. To make this selection easier, high-end systems provide a method for defining filters. A filter is, essentially, a database query that that can be used to narrow down the list of incidents to search through. The query may use parameters such as the name of the process, the date the incident was started or completed, the person who initiated the incident, the priority of the incident, incident summary or the name of the individual who initiated the incident. Once the workflow manager has defined one or more filters, they can be used to narrow down a large list of in-process incidents to a manageable number that can be used to select the incident to be monitored.

Workload Management

Incident status monitoring allows a workflow manager to monitor the status of a specific incident. This provides visibility not only about the status of each incident, but also the participants who have completed the various steps of the incident or have active task – from the perspective of an incident. Workload management capabilities in a BPM administrator allow the workflow manager to select a specific user and observe three different categories of tasks that the user has to perform:

1. Active tasks: These are tasks that the user has to perform and are currently active in the user’s inbox.
2. Active tasks assigned to others: These are active tasks that are "owned" by the user, but have been assigned to others. The user continues to be the owner and responsible for the tasks.
3. Future tasks: These are all the tasks the user may be called upon to perform in the future – the process steps of all installed processes for which the user has been named a recipient.

The BPM administrator empowers workflow managers to select one or more tasks for a specific user and reassign these tasks to some other user indefinitely or for specific time duration. These capabilities are necessary for handling exceptions and absence.

Managing Stalled Incidents

Workflow incidents sometimes come to a standstill or stall – they cannot progress forward because of some design inconsistencies or changes in the system that prevents the BPM server from determining how to proceed.

A BPM administrator must provide a mechanism of specifying three things in order to handle stalled incidents:

1. A "system user" account should be created that is assigned all tasks that are causing incident to stall. Whenever a task cannot be assigned to a specific user, job function or recipient, it is assigned to the "system user."
2. The BPM administrator should be configured to notify the workflow manager when an incident stalls.
3. A housekeeping interval and service should be enabled that periodically checks for stalled incidents.

Access Rights and Customized Views

Many users participate in business processes. These include a large number of people who only participate as recipients of workflow tasks. Others use BPM reports to determine the status of processes or capture metric information to measure the performance of the organization or their specific departments. Some are involved in designing and testing business processes. And yet others may be involved in maintaining the organization chart or using the BPM administrator to manage the BPM server. Therefore, it is essential for a BPM system to provide a mechanism for controlling access rights of all participants. Without tight control of access rights, inadvertent or malicious access to the BPM system could produce severe repercussions.

The BPM administrator provides a centralized location from where access rights of all participants may be established, reviewed, saved or changed. Access rights may be assigned to an individual or a group. In addition to access rights, it may be necessary to control the "view" for each user in the Workflow client (the module that provides the user interface for people participating in automated business processes). Each user needs different user interfaces and capabilities in the Workflow client they use to participate in business processes. Powerful BPM systems allow a workflow manager to create customized views for each user or group. This allows the workflow manager to specify the folders the user can view, the content of each folder, the look and feel of the client and a number of other configuration settings that allow the client to be tailored to the skills of the intended use or the needs of the organization.

System Configuration

A BPM server may also have a number of parameters that need to be changed based on the requirements of the specific target platform, related systems, or for optimization. These parameters may include security settings, pointers to data sources, directories, supporting external applications or scripts, and more. The workflow manager provides the user interface for viewing and changing these parameters.

Summary

The ability of the organization’s business processes is dictated by the quality of the administrator that governs these processes. Be ensuring that the administrator is established correctly from installation to system configuration, a BPM server is positioned for success.

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

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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