SAPERION Blog

Within human-centric processes one of the most practiced use cases is that of the 4-eyes-principle for approving e.g. a credit application, a technical paper for a medical device, or an updated instruction of a quality management handbook.

approval process using 4-eyes-principle

Often the two persons are members of the same group. So the first user task can be adressed to a organisational unit. But how can I model the the receiving mechanismen for the second user task?

Here are some possibilities how to set a receiver for the second task being not the same user who have done the first one:

1st Solution

The first task is placed in the lane for the organisational unit. The user can take the task from the intray of his unit. After finishing his work he can reject or approve the case. Afterwards the following business rule task place in the same lane determines a user of the next task and forwards to it.

Risk: what if the user (more…)

Here comes our eighth wish, because som workflow experiences show that there are further attributs missing in the BPMN 2.0 specification. Here is the general use case:

After Task A has been finished the fowolling Task B should be finished itself after a defined period of time otherwise the flow should go to Task C.

This feature is trivial and may fit in many cases, but it is not flexible enough especially in Case Management situation. Let´s have a look to the special use cases.

Escalation after a period of time

1. use case – user defines on the fly

Here the user must be able to define the period of time on the fly when he finishes Task A. On the workflow user interface a dialog (more…)

Sandy Kemsley process differentiation

Since two years there are some discussions about the types of processes and how to manage them best with what type of three-letter-acronyms like BPM, ACM, DCM, ECM, RMS, DLM, ERP, CRM, BOP, BPO, BRM or what ever you may imagine. Know the BPM Specialist Sandy Kemsley has posted her new article It’s Not About BPM vs. ACM, It’s About A Spectrum Of Process Functionality saying that it makes no sense to take different tools for different types of processes. Its better to to work the process types together in a cohesive environment. The comments to her post are quite interesting, have a look to them.

I do fully agree with Sandy! I posted the like in (more…)

The new version of the iSAPERION app was recently released in the App Store. Version 2.0 incorporates experiences gained during countless discussions with our customers. For example, we have reaffirmed our dedication to standards without abandoning our vintage style. The “real” paper files have been very well received by current and potential customers. The appeal of this style may be one reason why executive managers, in particular, have been so enthused about invoice approvals on iPad or iPhone.
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You can find the released specification of BPMN 2.0 on OMG´s web site. The date of the documents is the 3rd of January 2011. I had exepcted to see the release in 2010, but so what.

SAPERION is supporting BPMN 2.0 because of one really important enhancement: the XML-based serialisation which allows the interoperability between different tools.  Therefore we wrote a web service which allows to deploy a BPMN 2.0 model which is transformed on the fly into the technical respresentation of our Workflow Engine for execution. Since SAPERION Version 7 we are supporting the BPMN look & feel and some more elements as well, e.g. (more…)

I wrote some posts about the necessity and possibility to let every children become an expert (sorry, thses posts were only written in German). And I told you about a book written bei Prof. Gunther Dueck speaking about why and how to go for an excellence culture in the future. And here is a summary needing only 11 minutes:

Thanx to Tobias Meixner who sent me the hint to this video!

The recent turmoil surrounding the release of 250,000 confidential documents stolen from the US State Department is having repercussions far beyond government circles. If nothing else, Wikileaks has shown us how easy it can be to obtain confidential information. Next to be strapped into the pillory are two large banks (for example see the article in The Times:  No one’s secrets are safe from the website Wikileaks).

Let’s set aside for a moment the ethical question of whether Wikileaks serves some useful purpose or only causes problems in the global community. Any managing director or IT manager who prefers to be on the safe side now has a strong reason to take the issue of data security more seriously than ever before.

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Jim Sinur, Research VP, Gartner discusses the role case processing (see as well Adaptive Case Management) plays in addressing todays business drivers for unstructured and dynamic processes. Listen to his short video where he speaks about the greatest opportunity for case processing is, and what technologies are available to develop case-based solutions faster. When you are listening think about what Enterprise Management Systems did support for years ;-)

You see, customers using Enterprise Content Management are very well (more…)

This is is a simple one but just helpful. Last week I followed a discussion  about how to model in BPMN if there are more than one tasks to be done by the user who started with. The recommandation was to not use one human activity and write “do this and that and …”. Just take so many tasks as necessary to not use “and”. But: from the perspective of a workflow environment in the most cases these task are done within one say it application or form not committing each task to the workflow engine and getting back to the task list and starting tehn the next task, because the logic using these tasks is covered by the application. The users will tap their forehead, they want not to click too much! Acceptance  away.

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OK, this wish is a bit more for discussing how to model human-centric workflow features which are mostly needed in the context of forwarding an process from on human task to the next one.

I choosed an example where some receivers ot the human task named “approve Credit Enquiry” should parallely check and forward “manually” (see wish two) selecting from the context menu “reject” or “approve”.  Judgements will be written into workflow comments before. The receivers may be determined using a Rules Engine or by the forwarding user of activity “Enter Credit Enquiry Data”.

Decision after parallel selections - View of SAPERION ProcessDesigner of Version 7

But, if there are for example 10 receivers, when should be decided to go for a rejection or an approval? (more…)