Processes

In its simplest form a process consists of something that needs to be done, where zero or more conditions need to be met before the process can be started. For example, the following analogy describes the process of making a cup of coffee:

  1. Fill kettle

  2. Boil kettle

  3. Get a mug

  4. Add coffee

  5. Add sugar

  6. Add hot water

  7. Add milk

  8. Stir coffee

  9. Drink coffee

The process follows a logical sequence of tasks, but the process could involve a level of complexity (see below) in that some cannot be completed until certain conditions are met. I cannot boil the kettle until I've filled it and I cannot add coffee, sugar, milk, or water until I've got a mug. Similarly I cannot realistically stir the coffee before doing the previous processes either. That said, I could choose to do process 2.4 before process 2.2—they don't necessarily need to be run in a particular order.

  1. Fill kettle

1.1. Boil kettle

  1. Get a mug

2.1. Add coffee

2.2. Add sugar

2.3. Add hot water

2.4. Add milk

  1. Stir coffee

  2. Drink coffee

We can see above that there are conditions on whether a process can be started. In this example these conditions are fairly simple; in a real world system these conditions might be much more complex.

For example, you could model the purchase of a property in much the same way. It still fits the same model; processes that need to be done, an order in which they need to be done (either parallel or sequential) and conditions on those processes being available to do. The Purchase process could be broken down into the following stages and each one would be an individual process. When the workflow activities required to complete a stage are completed, the next is started. If a process contains sub-processes, then these must be completed in order to proceed.

  1. Purchase

  2. Take Instructions

  3. Searches

  4. Pre-exchange

4.1. Draft Contract Received

4.2. Raise Enquiries

4.3. Check Mortgage Offer

4.4. Report On Title To Client

4.5. Pre-exchange Checks

4.6. Completion Statement And Bill

  1. Exchange

  2. Pre-completion

For each of the process states it is also possible to execute a workflow when the state changes. This allows you to assign an action to any part of the process life cycle. For example, it might be desirable to post the amount of time spent producing a letter to a house buyer when their purchase has completed. These workflows are independent of the process workflow, and run purely on state changes. See Attach workflow to a process.

So, to sum up, processes can be used to define long running business flows. They allow you to break down everything that needs to be done and map out all the stages involved, however complex. A process can contain any number of sub-processes, conditions, and at each level a workflow can be executed. In Designer Studio you create processes in Process Designer.

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