Agent determination/maintenance best practice

[andy.m.catherall@kraftfoods.com]

Hi Gijs

As far as I am aware, not easily. Certainly, not as easily as in SAP WF. There may be some services exposed in our HR systems (yes, plural, given the scope of the BPM flow), but for the sake of this conversation, that detail is not really the main thrust of my question.

To a certain degree, I see the "Role" shown in the Swim-Lane as broadly being akin to the "Possible Agents" in a workflow step.
I note that the BPMN level doesn't really consider the logic required to get the run-time work item instance to the appropriate "Responsible Agents".
The combination of these too ought to result in the Recipients of the task.

In my dealings with our Business Analysts, and in the SAP documents & examples I have so far read, there is much less emphasis upon

*         How the agent determination logic is designed, documented and developed;

*         How it is subsequently maintained (ie the business processes that ensure the determined agents remain correct);

*         What happens if the agent is missing.
Than SAP WF design has learnt to give.

For example, whereas SAP WF promotes the concept of the Workflow Administrator heavily, I've not come across anything similar to this in BPM.

Perhaps that's just because I've been looking in the wrong place. Or perhaps I've missed the point of "Roles" in a portal/UME environment.

Cheers
Andy

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Gijs Houtzagers
Sent: Saturday 26 February 2011 06:53
To: 'SAP Workflow Users' Group'
Subject: RE: Agent determination/maintenance best practice

Andy,
Is it not possible to refer to the object structure in OM from BPM?

From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of andy.m.catherall at kraftfoods.com
Sent: vrijdag 25 februari 2011 19:15
To: sap-wug at mit.edu
Subject: BPM: Agent determination/maintenance best practice

All

In working with the BPX type individuals who are designing our BPM processes in their Pools & Swim-lanes, they of course define steps in the flow as being the responsibility of a "Role".

At the high level, this makes sense. To extend the classic "Leave request/approval" scenario, we would have


a)      The initiator - the employee

b)      The approver  - the manager

This works when describing the process to the business, but is insufficient when it comes to actually building the BPM workflow. We also need to include the logic to describe which specific manager it should go to, for the given initiating employee.

This means that, at development time, tying the step to the UME Role is inappropriate and insufficient. If we had one role for "Vacation approver", the work item would be delivered to the inbox of far too many managers in the firm.
It is clear that we need a more detailed level of granularity, but it is not one we can deliver at the security layer. We could not justify a different, unique, role for each manager. It would provide no security benefit and would be impossible to administer. How would you ensure that you had linked certain employees to the appropriate manager at run time, rather than at design time?


However in the BPM world, there seem to be limited alternatives.

a)      There's no Org Structure to refer to.

b)      We could tie the step to a custom service to find the right agent. However, this adds a degree of development overhead, especially if you also are keeping in mind the future maintenance of the agents & (perhaps) the logic.

c)       I had hoped we could use Business Rules Management (BRM), especially as CE 7.2 provides a web-edit facility for users. However apparently, BRM 7.2 will only permit a single result at the moment. Not until CE 7.3 can a result-set be returned. Whilst a single result is appropriate in my example above, it is insufficient in my real-world case...

Then , when it comes to the maintenance of the agent logic, we would want to ensure that it was easy to do, and in the most appropriate hands (usually, in my experience, that is not IT) so that the logic is kept promptly up-to-date with personnel changes. It seems that some maintenance screens are necessary here.

So, how have people addressed these requirements in BPM?
Any references or articles available?

Thanks
Andy
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