BPM approvals

Tue Jun 8 19:41:16 EDT 2010

Hi Sandy,

1.        No there are 3 options as I listed below.  A web service or Enterprise Service (delivered or custom) is the most powerful particularly if you need to access the organizational structure sitting in a backend system.

2.       Again the factory calendar sits in the backend system so this would need an Enterprise Service.  Or if you just want to knock out weekends there are Java utilities that can help with that that could be called use BRM or using an EJB module.

3.       Use an enterprise service.

4.       Not sure what you are looking for here. Forwarding is called "Delegate" in BPM and there is a button for this in the task header when you launch a BPM task.

5.       Task Profile was never a very effective concept in SAP Business Workflow as it tends to be counter productive as soon as you want to create substitutes for combinations of tasks.

Regards,
Jocelyn

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy
Sent: Tuesday, 8 June 2010 10:26 AM
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: Re: BPM approvals

Hi Jocelyn.
Hopefully this thread is not outdated yet.

1. Does this mean BRM is the only solution to determine work item recipient? Does this mean agent determination in BPM has less flexibility and less SAP template on determining agent i.e. SAP Workflow has built in to determine initiator's manager?

2. If BRM is the only option to determine agent, does BRM can be used in escalation management where factory calendar need to be take into account?

3. If there is no direct connection with organisation structure/ enterprise structure, does this mean BPM can not utilise HR evaluation path?

4. Can you elaborate forwarding/ substitution a little harder for long-running scenarios?

5. Does BPM has configuration such Task Profile where we can put some restriction on forward and and substitution process?

My mindset still full with SAP Workflow concept, still trying to understand what we can sell on BPM

Cheers.
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Dart, Jocelyn <jocelyn.dart at sap.com<mailto:jocelyn.dart at sap.com>> wrote:
Hi Karl,
At the moment these are the major approaches for agent assignment in BPM:

a)      Use UME/Portal user groups/roles/user ids directly (actually groups are really useful for identifying teams of people)

b)      Calculate the agents using a BRM rule (e.g. using a decision table) and return as a (list of ) UME/Portal user group/role/user id(s)

c)       Call a web service to calculate the agents and return as a (list of) UME/Portal user group/role/user id(s)

There are mapping functions pre-provided to e.g. convert a regular unique user id to a UME/Portal user id equivalent.

There's no direction connection to the backend org chart... not a big deal for finding the original agents, but means you need to think about forwarding/substitution a little harder for long-running scenarios.

Hope that helps.
Regards,
Jocelyn

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu> [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu>] On Behalf Of Karl Nietz
Sent: Friday, 7 May 2010 4:49 PM

To: sap-wug at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug at mit.edu>
Subject: BPM approvals

Hi,

Further to Jocelyn's response below, is there any documentation or a blog that explains how BPM actually supplants workflow for simple processess such as PO approval, as indicated?  I've checked the ES simple sample applications and the purchase requisition approval example seems to gloss over the issue, or at least appears to be using an underlying workflow template for steps such as agent assignment.  Or is this the whole thrust of the BPM/workflow relationship?  A chap called Kenichi has a 1hour podcast on SDN but the screens are unreadable.  Anything to get me started would be helpful.

 Karl

----- Forwarded by Karl Nietz/AUS/CSC on 06/05/2010 01:49 PM -----
From:

"Dart, Jocelyn" <jocelyn.dart at sap.com<mailto:jocelyn.dart at sap.com>>

To:

"SAP Workflow Users' Group" <sap-wug at mit.edu<mailto:sap-wug at mit.edu>>

Date:

06/05/2010 01:18 PM

Subject:

RE: This Group

________________________________

Hi Mike,
Just adding the SAP employee perspective... and by the way I'm Product Lead for NW BPM in ANZ Field Services this year.

I agree currently NW BPM and Workflow should be considered as complementary.  Mainly due to existing business content and solution maturity issues.   Also yes Workflow will not be going away anytime soon.
It is however possible to use NW BPM instead of Workflow for a new site that does not use workflow at all for scenarios that we would previously have done in workflow (e.g. purchase order approval) - provided current limitations/restrictions are understood and this is happening at some sites.

A lot of the concepts and issues around process handling are the same.
We currently have a BPM forum in SDN, so the question for this forum is: as BPM usage grows do you want to start covering that area as well or just stick with traditional workflow?

I can't give any official details on future releases yet but I can confirm generally that we are expecting some better integration options between workflow and NW BPM when we get to 7.3 on both the backend and NW BPM platforms most likely around business event management and calling of ABAP-based applications.   We also expect some sort of import for 7.3 although I don't expect we will be translating from workflow to BPM or vice versa - more likely import of a model from business process modelling applications.  I don't expect workflow to be further developed - although I agree BPMN is easier to work with and enables better cross communication between business and IT.

If anyone has any specific questions I'm happy to provide what information I can.  There are trial versions available on SDN if you want to have a play with NW BPM, or try out the pre-built Simple Sample Applications on the ESWorkplace site.

Regards,
Jocelyn

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