=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3618/pe_paper_1
|storemode=property
|title=Process factory: Ready-to-use business processes templates for a fast setup (short paper)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3618/pe_paper_1.pdf
|volume=Vol-3618
|authors=Miguel Agostinho,Carolina Marques,Filipe Correia,Pedro Sousa,Sergio Guerreiro
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/er/AgostinhoMCSG23
}}
==Process factory: Ready-to-use business processes templates for a fast setup (short paper)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3618/pe_paper_1.pdf
Process factory: Ready-to-use business processes
templates for a fast setup
Miguel Agostinho1, Carolina Marques1, Filipe Correia1, Pedro Sousa1,2,3 and
Sérgio Guerreiro1,2,3,*
1
Link Consulting SA, Av. Duque de Ávila 23, 1000-138 Lisbon, Portugal
2
INESC-ID, R. Alves Redol 9, 1000-029 Lisbon, Portugal
3
Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
The purpose of this project is to develop an approach to facilitate the modelling phase of complex business
processes, in particular the ones which are a priori known as being similar with previous ones, and
therefore could be partially reused. To achieve this purpose, the concept of business process template is
defined as the full description of a BPMN business process that is enriched with annotations concerning
its variability points. The Process Factory allows the creation of business processes templates using
BPMN. Then, the templates are reified customizing each variability point, e.g., gateway decisions, pools,
etc., accordingly with the reality of each application domain. To smooth the usability, the Process Factory
uses a rich UX where the final product is delivered as a BPMN process that can be deployed in any BPMN
compliant engine. The achieved results show that deploying ready-to-use business processes patterns
using a rich UX aids the non-BPMN experienced users to model their business process, while at the same
time saves their time, resources and minimizes errors.
Keywords
Atlas tool, BPMN, Business process, Fast setup, Process Factory, Ready-to-use, Template
1. Introduction
Ready-to-use business processes templates for a fast setup is located in a broader project, named
eProcess, which is currently under development. The ready-to-use is already deployed and
being used in consultancy services. The project’s motivation is inspired by the fact that recent
progresses and the apparent ease with which the numerous process automation solutions allow
the specification and automation of processes, there are still significant obstacles and limitations
both in the standards that allow the specification of processes, e.g., the notation Business Process
Model and Notation - BPMN1 , as well as in the subsequent automation of the same processes, in
ER2023: Companion Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Conceptual Modeling: ER Forum, 7th SCME,
Project Exhibitions, Posters and Demos, and Doctoral Consortium, November 06-09, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal
*
Corresponding author
$ miguel.agostinho@linkconsulting.com (M. Agostinho); carolina.marques@linkconsulting.com (C. Marques);
filipe.correia@linkconsulting.com (F. Correia); pedro.manuel.sousa@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (P. Sousa);
sergio.guerreiro@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (S. Guerreiro)
0000-0001-7453-5778 (P. Sousa); 0000-0002-8627-3338 (S. Guerreiro)
© 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
Workshop
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
Proceedings
http://ceur-ws.org
ISSN 1613-0073
1
BPMN is the de facto standard used by industry and researchers for business process modeling and execution. It is
also available under the standard ISO/IEC 19510:2013, https://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
which each business process execution engines demand compliance with their own proprietary
BPMN extensions, e.g., an extensive use of XML extension elements. Furthermore, the need for
investment in R&D applied to BPM [1] platforms can be clearly identified in the Gartner’s magic
quadrant when referring to Intelligent BPM solutions2 . This classification is often referred by
companies to make their investment decisions. Today, the challenges of BPM, as listed in [2],
go well beyond the simple definition of the business process. In reality, none of these platforms
present in the Gartner’s magic quadrant solves all the previously mentioned problems.
This paper defines a business process as a collection of events, activities, and decisions that
brings value to the customers of an organization [3][4] [5]. In fact, this definition reveals the
huge variability [6] that is posed when a new business process is being modelled. A solution
to overcome this variability, as noticed by Fellman et al. [7], is to use predefined BPMN model
templates that can facilitate no-expert users to model business processes. With this goal in mind,
the creation of new BPMN models are streamlined, allowing end users to save time, resources
and minimizing errors. By leveraging the power of templates, customers can reuse the structure
and logic of a previously designed BPMN, eliminating the need to start from scratch. This not
only accelerates the BPMN creation process but also ensures consistency and adherence to best
practices.
Save
Save as BPMN Model
Template Save
BPMN model Fast-Setup BPMN model
Save as Template Reified
Save as Template
Template
Figure 1: Work packages and their relationships. A BPMN model can be promoted to a Template, that
can be reified by specific configuration. After that, it could be stored as a "normal" BPMN or re-promoted
to a Template.
Figure 1 depicts the work packages of our project. All the development were executed in a
software tool named ATLAS3 , in specific, the process factory [8].
The document is organized as following. Firstly, Section 2 explains the methodology and
the technologies used. Afterwards, Section 3 describes the work packages and the expected
outcomes. Then, Section 4 details the relevance of this project for the Process Factory and for
the end users. After that, Section 5 describes the results achieved. Section 6 concludes the
document and refers to future work.
2
https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3899484
3
https://atlas.linkconsulting.com/
2. Methodology and Technologies
2.1. Goals
The goal of this project is to allow ATLAS users to use BPMN processes as templates so that
creating a new BPMN process is a matter of customization. In specific, users reuse the structure
of a process to create a new one, customizing the previous defined variability points. This
solution is useful in projects of the same domain of application, e.g., public procurement in
which there are general rules that must always be respected regardless of whether it is a local
administration, central administration, an institution, or another type of public organization.
Furthermore, the Fast setup functionality empowers customers to make modifications to the
saved template with ease. They can customize the workflow, adjust tasks and activities, define
business rules, and incorporate any necessary changes to align the BPMN with their evolving
business needs.
2.2. Technologies and Tools
The list of tools used to develop this project are the following: Visual Studio Code4 IDE for
coding the project; BPMN as the business process modeling language; Atlas as the cloud-based
software platform to offer the process factory; Typescript5 as the most used programming
language; Javascript an essential programming language for Atlas; Vue.js6 for some of the
interfaces; Kendo UI7 for all the buttons and text boxes.
3. Work Packages
The project project is organized by the following work packages.
3.1. Save a Process as a Template
The creation of a process as a template consists in allowing the user to annotate which are
the BPMN process elements that are enforced with variability. The list of allowed BPMN
elements with variability are: Gateways, Gateway conditions, Pools, Lanes and Tasks. Later,
the annotations are used to distinguish between the manually editable BPMN elements that
implement the specific aspects of a given domain application from the static elements that are
immutable. When all the annotation are ready, the business process is stored in Atlas with a
special indication of a Template business process, cf. Figure 2.
Figure 2 illustrates the process of saving a BPMN process as a template in the Atlas. This action
involves adding an extensionElement with the value "isTemplate" set to true to all elements
that allow variability. By doing so, users gain access to the Fast-Setup tool, which facilitates
editing of the created template.
4
https://code.visualstudio.com/
5
https://www.typescriptlang.org/
6
https://vuejs.org/
7
https://www.telerik.com/kendo-ui/
Figure 2: The user interaction to save a BPMN process as a template.
3.2. Editing the Process as a Template
To adapt the process template to new posed requirements, the user is always able to change, add,
or delete the annotations of the BPMN elements. The solution is to edit the process template
and save it, again, as a template.
3.3. Fast-setup of a Process Template
Reification is the act of instantiating a business process template in a specific application domain.
The core idea is to reuse a previously created template process and customize it as desired. To
achieve this, the user can decide what is the exact configuration for each variability point. A
predefined element order is suggested, but the user can opt to change the order. As depicted in
Figure 3, the screen is splitted into 2 parts. On the left part the BPMN process is shown and in
the right part the configuration of a specific element is presented. During the editing process,
the user can modify the names of the elements, and in the case of gateways, they can also edit
their conditions. By making these changes to the elements, the user see them in run-time in the
BPMN process. The user can also model the process while editing the template, meaning they
can add new elements to the process, and these will automatically appear in the editing tool.
3.4. Expected Outcomes of the Project
The expected outcome of this project is a software functionality ready for production
environment in the Atlas cloud-based tool. It must be able to (i) import, and export, any
BPMN 2.0 business process XML file, (ii) save the process as template in the internal Atlas
repository keeping the annotations along with its process definition, (iii) reify a process template,
(iv) offer a UI interaction for customizing the process template variability points and (v) store
the newly created business process in any Atlas repository accordingly with user’ request.
Figure 3: Example of a BPMN gateway configuration editing. Navigation between the variability points
can be done using the "Next" and "Back" buttons.
4. Project Relevance
4.1. Creation of a Process Template
The ability to create a template process has two benefits. Firstly, lies in the user’s ability to reify
the elements of a BPMN process template. By reifying these elements, the user can customize
them later and, with that the user can reuse the same process template in different application
domains. Secondly, when a process template is created it is incorporated in the repository of
ready-to-use business processes template. Consequently, any application domain requesting a
business process governed by, e.g., a known public regulation that is covered by those already
available ready-to-use business processes templates, allows the leverage of re usage and the
drastic reduction of the deployment time.
4.2. Process Template Editing
Process template editing is a crucial and highly valuable feature as it empowers users to modify
already existing BPMN processes in order to adapt to their specific needs. This capability
significantly enhances the flexibility and efficiency of business processes’ management. By
leveraging template editing, users can build upon the foundation of an existing BPMN process
and make customized modifications without starting from scratch. This saves valuable time
and resources that would otherwise be spent on recreating an entire process. Instead, users can
focus on fine-tuning and tailoring the process to align with their unique requirements.
5. Results
5.1. Creation of a Process Template
The development of creation of a process template involved the ability to store a BPMN process
as a template. For this purpose, a button was added that, when activated, adds a variable with
the value "true" to the BPMN, cf. depicted in Figure 4. When storing the BPMN as a template,
by default, all elements are considered as variability points. The user can manually deactivate
each element as desired, causing it not to appear during the editing of the process template.
To achieve this, each element needs to store the value of whether it is editable or not. For
this, a custom BPMN extension (the XML tag "") was used to store each
element configuration. When storing the process as a template, the system checks if the process
is a template and automatically marks all elements as editable unless the user has explicitly
marked them as non-editable. Subsequently, the user is granted access to utilize the "Fast-Setup"
functionality to edit the template.
5.2. Fast-setup of a Process Template
Figure 4: User interaction to trigger the Fast-Setup of a process Template.
Upon clicking the Fast-Setup button (Figure 4), the system will search for all editable elements
and create an editing window pointing for the first element, allowing the user to initiate the
template editing process. Additionally, the system will highlight the element being edited,
making it easier for the user to identify the element being modified.
The editing window shown in Figure 5 corresponds to the edition of the name of a BPMN
Pool. In this window, we can observe a mini-map centered on the element being edited. This
allows the user to navigate the BPMN diagram and view other elements while editing one. This
feature is particularly useful when editing a gateway, as the user may want to see its outgoing
flows while modifying the conditions. The mini-map provides run-time updates, allowing the
user to visualize changes as they are made.
When typing in the text box, the user can modify the name of the Pool and see the changes
reflected in run-time both in the process and in the mini-map. The user also has the option
to clear the current fields in case of errors or if they wish to revert to the previous values.
Figure 5: The Fast-Setup editing window.
Additionally, there are navigation buttons available, such as "Back" to go to the immediately
preceding element or "Next" to move to the next element.
When editing a gateway, in addition to the previously mentioned functionalities, we can
also customize its outgoing conditions. Any changes made to these conditions will be reflected
in real-time. During the template editing process, the user has the flexibility to choose which
element they want to edit. While there is a predefined order to edit pools first, followed by
lanes, gateways and their conditions, and finally tasks, the user may still want to edit a specific
element out of order. This functionality is particularly useful when editing gateways. After
modifying a gateway and its conditions, the user may wish to edit its outgoing flows to maintain
the context. However, this capability is available for all types of elements.
To select the element to edit, the user simply needs to be in "Fast-Setup" mode (with the
editing window open) and click on the element they wish to edit. This allows to focus on a
specific element and make the necessary modifications. When the user finishes editing all the
elements, a message will appear to inform them that they have reached the end of the elements
and that they have been successfully edited (cf. depicted in Figure 6).
The last functionality of the developed system is a new option to save the edited process in
another repository within ATLAS. Once the user has finished editing all the desired elements,
upon opening the save window to save their new process, the process name in the window
will be cleared, and the user will have an option to save their process in another repository. By
selecting this option, the user can choose a different repository within ATLAS where they want
to save the edited process. This provides flexibility in organizing and storing processes based
on the user’s preferences or project requirements.
Figure 6: Finished template editing
6. Conclusions and Future Work
The frequent and rapid changes imposed by the requirements demand an agile response, totally
different from the classical approach of eliciting requirements [9], modelling the descriptive part
of the process [10], adding the executable configuration to the process, and finally, deploying it
and testing in a target engine [11]. A process factory aims at streamlining the production of
business process from its inception idea until the deployment phase in any business process
engine. Reusing the design of a business process from a template’ catalogue, where the variable
points are customized is the key concept of our developed solution. Today, the ready-to-
use business processes solution is being used in large consultancy projects. End users were
informally surveyed regarding their subjective perceptions’ towards the solution, and the
observations pointed to a positive perception of time saving when compared with a classical
business process modelling process.
As future work the following actions are identified: (i) evaluate the exact benefit of this
approach in terms of time saved, resources reduction and minimization of errors, (ii) allow to
specify gateways using DMN, (iii) automate the design process’ optimization, (iv) extend the
approach to include BPMN sub-process, and (v) deploy the process in any BPMN compliant
engine.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by a pre-registered project, named as eProcess, which is under
national funds with reference C669314338-00003137 (LINK CONSULTING – TECNOLOGIAS
DE INFORMAÇÃO S.A.).
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