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Executive Summary
Competitive business scenarios and increasing costs have given
rise to the need to rapidly and continuously adapt and streamline
business processes, evolve new business values and increase
operating efficiency. As organizational processes become
increasingly explicit, Business Process Management (BPM) has
emerged as a comprehensive solution to model, monitor, simulate and
redesign processes for competitive improvement. Business Process
Management (BPM) is a systemic approach to improving an
organization's business process through collaboration of management
and IT techniques.
In order to facilitate development of workflows in applications,
Microsoft has introduced Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).
Microsoft has also launched Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
(MOSS), which is built on top of WF to cater to the needs of
business users. While WF and MOSS offer elementary BPM workflow
capabilities, the requirements of enterprise users and developers
go beyond native functionality available in these technologies. In
this white paper, we examine how Skelta BPM leverages on MOSS and
WF to provide advanced BPM Workflow capabilities to developers and
enterprises.
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BPM : WF, MOSS and Skelta BPMBPM : WF, MOSS and Skelta BPM
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Introduction
Business Process Management (BPM) is a systemic approach to
improving an organization's business process through collaboration
of management and IT techniques. For a business user it means a
group of processes that can be defined, managed and optimized in an
organization. A technical person views BPM as group of technologies
focused on defining, executing, and monitoring process logic.
BPM tools focus on four aspects of BPM: process modeling, work
flow execution, business rules and business analysis and
monitoring. But from a developers perspective workflow becomes
important in terms of defining the process logic. Microsoft has
targeted to solve the problems of developers by introducing Windows
Workflow Foundation enabling elementary workflow capability and
built MOSS on top of WF to cater to the BPM needs of business users
to some extent.
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation provides a set of .NET classes and
services for highly skilled developers enabling elementary workflow
capability. It is targeted towards developers and does not cater to
the needs of a business analyst. WF is intended to be used for any
kind of workflow-based application. It provides a workflow engine,
a standard set of activities for defining workflows, and a
graphical designer to help developers create workflows and their
own custom activities. Windows Workflow Foundation comes with a set
of general purpose activities for defining workflows. This base
activity library provides the ability to define control flows using
familiar constructs such as IF/ELSE and WHILE loops. It also
includes a rules engine, support for communicating with other
softwares using web service, and more. Windows Workflow Foundation
also provides the functionality to create custom activities focused
on a particular problem space.
The workflows in the custom activities can be combined with
those in the base activity library to create workflows. The
creators of custom activities are also free to completely ignore
Windows Workflow Foundation's base activity librarythere's no
requirement to build on top of them. Windows Workflow Foundation
workflows can be written directly in code. Workflows can also be
defined graphically, with code added where required. To make this
possible, Windows Workflow Foundation provides the Workflow
Designer, a tool that allows developers to create and modify
workflows. The Workflow Designer can also be hosted in, and
customized for, other environments. An ISV that wishes to include
workflow within its own offering might host this tool directly
inside that product, giving it whatever look and feel is
appropriate. Similarly, an organization that wishes to provide a
way for information workers to create and modify workflows, could
host the Workflow Designer within a more business-friendly
environment than Visual Studio. ISVs are also free to create other
graphical design tools to work with Windows Workflow Foundation
workflowsusing the Workflow Designer isn't required.
What Windows Workflow Foundation does not provide
It is also important to analyze what WF does not provide: direct
support for human workflow, such as task lists or forms creation,
direct support for system workflow, such as adapters and data
transformation. Instead WF is solely focused on defining and
executing the workflow logic. It's also important to note that WF
provides no host process for workflows, leaving this up to the
application developer. WF offers no built-in support for fault
tolerance, management, deployment, or other useful aspects of an
enterprise application. As its name suggests, this technology is
focused on just one thing: workflow.
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WF does not provide direct support for human workflow, such as
task lists or forms creation, or direct support for system
workflow
WF offers no built-in support for fault tolerance, management,
deployment, or other useful aspects of an enterprise
application.
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Innovating Workflows inside SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint server offers collaboration and document
management functionality by means of web portals, and provides a
centralized repository for shared documents, as well as
browser-based management and administration of these. It allows
creation of Document libraries, which are collections of files that
can be shared for collaborative editing. SharePoint provides access
control and revision control for documents in a library. It also
includes a collection of web parts, which are web widgets that can
be embedded into web pages to provide a certain functionality.
SharePoint includes web parts such as workspaces and dashboards,
navigation tools, lists, alerts (including e-mail alerts), shared
calendar, contact lists and discussion boards. It can be configured
to return separate content for Intranet, Extranet and Internet
locations. It uses a similar permissions model to Microsoft
Windows, via groups of users. Active Directory groups can be added
to SharePoint groups to easily tie-in permissions. Alternatively,
other authentication providers can be added through HTML Forms
authentication
Managing Workflow with SharePoint Server
Office SharePoint is tightly integrated with email and web
browsers which simplify interaction between people with content
process and business data. It also has out-of-the-box workflows for
initiating, tracking and reviewing common business activities such
as document review ,tracking status, authorization ,signature
collection . Businesses can easily modify these out-of-the-box
workflows or design their own workflow process by using familiar
Microsoft tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (the
next generation Microsoft Office FrontPage) or Microsoft Visual
Studio development system.
MOSS out-of-the-box workflow includes:
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Approval: Routes a document for approval. Approvers can approve
or reject the document, reassign the approval task, or request
changes to the document.
Collect Feedback: Routes a document for review. Reviewers can
provide feedback, which is compiled and sent to the document owner
when the workflow has completed.
Collect Signatures: Gathers signatures needed to complete an
Office document. This workflow can be started only from within an
Office client.
Disposition Approval: Manages document expiration and retention
by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete
expired documents.
Group Approval: Similar to the Approval workflow, but uses a
designated document library and offers a personalized view of the
approval process(es) in which a user is participating. This
workflow provides a hierarchical organization chart from which to
select the approvers and allows the approvers to use a stamp
control instead of a signature. This solution was designed
specifically for East Asian Markets.
Translation Management: Manages document translation by creating
copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation
tasks to translators.
Issue Tracking: Manages the issue tracking process by creating
tasks for active issues assigned to users who own a given issue.
When the task related to an issue is complete hence resolving the
issue, the creator of the issue is assigned a review task so that
the issue can be closed.
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Do We Still Need Workflow solutions?
Has Office SharePoint wiped out the need of workflow
solutions?
The answer is No. Let's see why?
?Workflows created inside SharePoint Designer are not reusable
and bound to list?Conditional logic that can be applied to
workflows is limited ?Does not have the ability to debug?Escalation
of processes cannot be configured in the workflow. For example if
there is one manager who has to approve leave
and he is absent one cannot timestamp the process to move it to
the next level of senior manager for approval after the specified
period of time?Designing of multi-step workflows with visual studio
is difficult. Robust audit and metric data has to be
built-up?Integration with other platforms has to be built from
scratch
Skelta BPM & MOSS
Skelta BPM integrates seamlessly with the SharePoint platform.
The following figures illustrate how Skelta enhances the business
value of MOSS.
Fig. 1.0 Building Workflow Solutions in MOSS
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MOSS excels when it comes to helping business users build
workflows with low complexity. Examples of such workflows are
document approval and signature collection. Such workflows can be
designed using in built available templates, or by using Microsoft
SharePoint Designer.
Designing workflow applications with higher levels of complexity
requires more effort and technical skill. Examples of such
processes are leave management, expense declarations and other
employee self-service applications. Such implementations require
use of Microsoft Visual Studio, Workflow Foundation and SharePoint
for building these applications. The development and management of
such applications can be quite complex and take a lot of time.
Workflow-intensive enterprise applications are very complex in
nature and require similar tools as applications with medium
complexity. Then necessitate protracted implementation time lines
and complex coding requirements.
Skelta BPM drastically brings down the time and costs for
building workflows within the SharePoint environment.Even extremely
complex workflows can be designed and deployed in a fraction of the
time taken for developing similar functionality in MOSS. Besides,
advanced BPM features in Skelta such as the Enterprise Console and
BAM enableenterprises to rapidly roll out a powerful BPM
platform.
Skelta BPM: The Best of Both Worlds
Skelta BPM seamlessly integrates with SharePoint. The user can
configure the site where Skelta BPM needs to be used and can use it
both inside SharePoint as well as can work from Skelta BPM
Enterprise Console.
Fig. 2.0 Building Workflow Solutions in Skelta BPM
This diagram depicts how Skelta enhances Microsoft's workflow
capabilities tools and effort required for the solution
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Key Features
Process Modelling
Skelta allows web 2.0 technology based process designer right
inside SharePoint. This enables complete model driven process
development inside SharePoint platform. Skelta's Process designer
is a 100% web based Visio like tool. This can be used to create a
simple to a very complex process all within a browser window
without any client side installation. It is a complete drag and
drop based environment, which allows the complete process to be
modeled. Skelta follows industry standards like BPMN (Business
Process modeling notations) notations for modeling which means
models created inside SharePoint are easily interoperable and
understood.
For those who are comfortable with Visio, Skelta also offers the
capability of taking the Visio created models inside its own
Process Designer.
The Process can be created, maintained and modified throughout
the process life cycle using the Process modeler environment. Since
both complex and simple processes can be created in this
environment it offers a great platform for developers and knowledge
workers to collaborate for highly complex applications. Since
developers can enhance Skelta's capabilities by creating custom
activities, these can then be exposed to knowledge workers when
desired.
Human Workflow Capabilities
Skelta's modeling environment allows creation of very
interactive human workflows right out-of-the box. Skelta provides
comprehensive support for various human workflow requirements and
supports more than 40 patterns of work allocation and performing
tasks during the processes.Apart from assigning tasks directly to
user, one can even assign them to groups or roles existing in
SharePoint or elsewhere in Active Directory or some other custom
user storage location. One can also create a rule to identified
appropriate users during execution of the process for assigning of
tasks.
Skelta's Process designer is 100% web based Visio like tool.
This can be used to create simple to very complex process all
within browser window without any client side installations.
Skelta follows industry standard BPMN (Business Process modeling
notations) notations
Skelta provides comprehensive support for various human workflow
requirements and supports more than 40 patterns of work allocation
and performing tasks during the processes.
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Fig. 3.0 Process Designer
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There are several ways in which users can act on tasks, they can
work on them right inside SharePoint, or they can go to Microsoft
Office program such as Microsoft Outlook and work on the tasks even
when they are offline. Tasks can be completed even on Mobile
devices such as Blackberry and Windows Mobile.
Mail Channel - Responding from Outlook client
Skelta provides comprehensive support for team based task
allocation, where in there is whole team of people such as a
helpdesk or a sales team etc working on the task and the manager
needs to oversee the task allocation. Skelta also allows various
levels of automation of allocation logic in such environments so
that appropriate tasks get pushed to the task handling agent based
on the business rules defined.
Apart from basic task assignment one can use the platform to
assign dynamic escalations where not just tasks can be escalated to
the appropriate manager but also some procedures can be automated
such as assigning a task to someone else to honour a SLAs. One can
use Business hours rather than just elapsed hours to define how
SLAs work in case of specific tasks.
Skelta also allows various level of automation of allocation
logic in such environments so that appropriate task is pushed to
the task handling agent based on the business rules defined.
Apart from basic task assignments one can use the platform to
assign dynamic escalations where in not just things can be
escalated to appropriate manager
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Fig 4.0 Hierarchical Time bound Processes
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Queue Management
Skelta provides queue management which allow you to group users
identified as a common pool or grouped on role basis and allocate
tasks to the group. Skelta queue management has following
features
It supports Push-Pull patterns Role/ User can be specified as
Participants Access rights for Role/ User can be defined Queue
level escalations are possible Automated/ Manual Allocation of
tasks to actors can be done
Task allocations can be done on the following basis:Automatic -
allocation is done automatically using some algorithm. Assignment
is done using
Round Robin, Random or Least Used methods. This is the push
pattern, which is a default pattern.
Manual - task allocation is done manually. In this case, users
can be allowed to view and pick a task from the queue.
Alternatively, users are allowed to use a button in the Work Item
List to get the next available task in queue. In this case, users
cannot view the tasks in the queue but can click a button to get
the next available task in the queue. This is the pull pattern as
opposed to the push pattern where the queue assigns tasks.
Combination - task allocation is done using a combination of
automatic and manual methods.
Skelta Workflow Wizard
Skelta BPM provides the functionality to consume SharePoint
events and copy & delete items. The wizard also comes with a
single and multi level approval template making it easy to
implement.
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Business Analysis and Monitoring (BAM)
Skelta also has lot of Business Intelligence capability to
determine productivity of people working on various tasks. This
allows one to track the bottlenecks in processes, identify the star
performers, and identify and improve on resources that are becoming
real bottlenecks by proactively monitoring data around activities
performed in the system.
Dashboard : Skelta BAM dashboard has two views -Workflow Status
:This report gives details of workflows finished successfully
,workflows finished with errors and workflows in awaiting
mode.Workflow Instance: This report gives details of workflows
running concurrently.
Analyzer :Transaction : The transaction analysis report gives
details of activity ,work item and transaction type.Execution : The
execution analysis report gives details of execution status of
workflows in terms of workflows being executed , awaited ,completed
,failed ,aborted.
KPI : An organization can define their own KPI and generate a
report
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Skelta BAM also makes it possible to see the actual workflow
execution in three views - analyst view ,process view andexecution
view .
Integration Capabilities
Skelta provides deep integration with Microsoft BizTalk server.
This allows it to do highly scalable, transactional integration
with other systems existing in the enterprise.
Apart from this Skelta offers good web services capability, and
can consume any web service straight out-of-the-box in Skelta's
modeling environment. It allows rapid integration with services
provided by an enterprise thus allowing the SOA infrastructure to
be leveraged even by knowledge workers. Skelta also allows creation
of custom activities allows more complex tasks to be taken up by
developers and to provide them in a reusable fashion to people
modeling the processes, thus promoting reusability and
versatility.
.Adding Value to MOSS
Reusable Workflow: MOSS does not provide for reusable workflows.
The workflows created inside SharePoint Designer are not reusable
and bound to list.
The workflow created in Skelta BPM can be reused thus saving a
lot of rework. For example when one has to create a multistep
workflow and if different steps are already created as workflow in
Skelta BPM the only work that remains then is to associate these
workflows to create new ones. As the processes are dynamic they
change and evolve with time. To recreate them can be a pain. Skelta
helps not only to drive the process but also extends a helping hand
in reinventing and innovating them with least effort.
Workflow Interfaces and Interactions: MOSS out-of-the-box uses
InfoPath forms and provide rich features through Office. However if
an organization is neither using Office nor are they planning to
use then this becomes a limitation .The next option is to build the
workflow through SharePoint Designer which uses ASP.NET forms for
workflow building .The ability to host or customize ASP.NET forms
is limited. The remaining option is the use of workflow .
The decision then boils down to build vs. buy. Skelta BPM allows
developers to extend and customize the Skelta features. Custom
Activities can be built using the API's, provided by Skelta.
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Integration with Databases : MOSS does not provide for
integration with other databases. Substantial coding is required to
build host processes to integrate with databases if the data is not
stored in SharePoint.
Skelta BPM provides native integration with MS SQL as well as
Oracle servers.
Integration with External Systems: MOSS does not provide any
facility to interact with other enterprise system (ERP or
CRM)either through SharePoint Designer or out-of-the-box workflow.
Integration requires writing custom code in visual studio or look
at ISVs to provide extensive workflow solutions.
Skelta BPM comes with native integration with ERP systems like
SAP.
Complex Business Logic : The out-of-the-box workflows in MOSS do
not provide functionality to add any type of business logic
,converging or branching within the workflow. Such logic requires
the use of SharePoint Designer or VisualStudio to add business
logic.
Skelta BPM provides for out-of-the-box functionality for
different categories of processes viz. human activities,
integration activities ,scheduler activities, engine activities,
communication activities, SharePoint activities and custom
activities. For example when one has to create a multi-step
workflow and if different steps are already created as workflow in
Skelta BPM then all that is required is to associate these
workflows to create new ones.
Escalations inside Workflow: Escalations in MOSS is limited to
sending email reminders at a given point in time. MOSS does not
provide for advanced escalations such as automatically redirecting
the workflow to a different user or group of users, or taking some
kind of custom action.
Skelta BPM provides advanced escalations redirecting the
workflow to a different user or group of users ,or taking some kind
of custom action.
Queue Management In workflow : The tasks inside a process
workflow need to be managed in different queues when there are many
events and limited resources. One example of this is global
helpdesk operation of an organization where customer complaints are
to be routed region wise and then taken care of MOSS does not
provide for queue management inside a workflow.
Skelta BPM provides for queue management which allows grouping
of similar resources into queue and dispatch of tasks using various
algorithms.
Auditing and Reporting: MOSS provides for simple reports on
process status & participants. Advanced reports are not provide
even with SharePoint Designer.
Skelta BPM offers advanced BAM capabilities including Trend
Analysis, Resource Performance. BAM allows business users to
configure Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] to generate business
data related reports.
Workflows are Site Bound: MOSS does not provide workflow actions
that can cross site, application, and portal boundaries .This can
be done through visual studio only.
Skelta BPM provides for workflow actions which are not site
bound and can cross site, application, and portal boundaries.
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MOSS out-of-the-box Workflow: MOSS out-of-the-box workflow is
site bound, so actions such as creating task or copying documents
cannot take place outside the site that it is running on. These
workflows cannot be extended or modified since they are compiled
DLLS on the SharePoint server.
Skelta BPM workflows are not site bound and can be extended to
any site .The work flows are also modifiable and thus provide easy
customization as per needs of an organization.
Hierarchical Time bound Processes: Processes in an organization
need to be independent of people. Work needs to continue
irrespective of the presence intermediate people at nodal. Skelta
BPM effectively addresses such scenarios effectively through
functionality for alternate resources, escalations and
time-stamping processes.
Ease Of use: The business users find it difficult to use both
SharePoint designer as well as visual studio. Both these do not
provide drag and drop type of ready made process icon facility.
This makes the process tedious and time consuming.
Skelta BPM has ready made type process icon which can be dragged
and dropped. They can be interconnected simply by dragging the
icons the user wants and saves time.
Making the Workflow concept successful: The basic goal of any
organization is to employ IT solutions to improve processes and
increase productivity. Going back to basics of BPM, the aim is to
free business users from the shackles of IT. But the shackles are
back with business users designing the process in SharePoint
designer or visual studio. Ultimately the user loses interest and
become if not unproductive definitely unde rproductive. Skelta
adheres to these very basics of BPM and productivity, providing
ready made process icons which only need to be dragged and dropped
to create a new process. People make an organization and we make
work interesting for people getting the obvious end result of
improved process and productivity.
Invensys Skelta, Salarpuria Touchstone, Sarjapur Outer Ring
Road, Bangalore 560 087, India Tel: +91 (80) 4060 2600Email:
[email protected], Web: www.skelta.com
2014 Invensys Skelta. All rights reserved. All trademarks are
the property of their respective owners.
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