BPM: Responding to external stimuli

[Mike Pokraka]

Hi Andy,

With my non-SAP BPM(*) hat on this is still a straightforward message flow
to your process engine. In other words your 'wait' step would kick into
action whenever the relevant message is received - in practice this would
be a service call to the BPM Engine by whatever app is raising the event.
I don't know the exact capabilities of the latest NetWeaver BPM, but if
fully BPMN compliant then it should handle this without too much fuss.

For a nice example of how this works in a BPMN model, have a look at:
http://tynerblain.com/blog/2006/09/04/bpmn-intermediate-cancel/
Hmm, I notice this doesn't render images at my current location since
they're linked off the main site, so you may need to look at this at home
or on your smartphone if it doesn't load for you.

As an aside, the new BPMN 2.0 standard (not yet implemented by
NWBPM)introduces the concept of non-interrupting events which is really
useful and closer to the wait fork constructs we're used to building in
our workflows.

Cheers,
Mike
(*) Don't you hate a product that's called the same as the practice?
Devious marketing by SAP no doubt to make it painful to distinguish
whether talking about NetWeaver BPM the product or proper "business" BPM
as an activity.


On Mon, February 28, 2011 2:57 pm, andy.m.catherall at kraftfoods.com wrote:
> Thanks, Mike
>
> I am pleased that the basic principles continue to remain valid. Still
> keeping non-SAP for moment, but starting to explore a theoretical
> practical SOA example for a moment:
>
>
> We build a workflow with two parallel paths.... one representing the 'main
> activity', one representing the 'wait-for-event' so that the main flow
> responds appropriately to something the process cares about  (a
> disturbance in the force, for example).
>
> One of our systems - separate to that running the BPM workflow - notices
> that disturbance.
>
> How do we get that event into the process at runtime? I am struggling to
> work out where services would be necessary; what calls what; what
> unique-keys the listener would use etc.?
>
> I take it we would have to get our Jedi to call a service on our Portal?
> Or on the BPM? I would hope that this was a standard (ie existing) service
> to handle events. This service will then create the event that our
> workflow will respond to using a key of some sort?
>
> If anyone has any experience or documentation links on this, I would be
> very grateful]
>
> Thanks
> Andy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf
> Of Mike Pokraka
> Sent: Monday 28 February 2011 11:32
> To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
> Subject: Re: BPM: Responding to external stimuli
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> I am surprised at the reactions you got, as this is certainly not a novel
> construct. As we all know it's been around in SAP Workflow from way back
> when.
>
> In fact, this type of event-driven nature is one of the strengths of the
> BPMN standard upon which NetWeaver BPM is based; this is one area where
> UML falls short (and possibly why your colleagues are not familiar with
> it?). I haven't delved deep enough into NWBPM to know on a practical
> level, but if we step back from anything SAP for a moment then modelling
> an exception such as you describe using BPMN is simply a message from a
> party external to the process that is caught and handled as appropriate.
> You could either have a parallel branch or you could make the entire
> process segment which depends on the event a subprocess with an exception.
> Exact details depend on the modelling software you use.
>
> A slight twist to the story is that the message sender could be a party
> that also participates in the process and thus fulfils multiple roles both
> internal and external to the process. i.e. in BPMN terms they would appear
> as a lane and a pool.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Mike
>
>
> On Fri, February 25, 2011 6:33 pm, andy.m.catherall at kraftfoods.com wrote:
>> Hi guys
>>
>> Final question (for today, I promise!)
>>
>>
>> We are developing a process that cuts across a number of ECC systems and
>> also SAP MDM. We are using NW CE 7.2.
>>
>> I note that the process designs (pools/swim lanes) describe the core
>> processes well. But in my humble opinion, the ones I have seen are
>> lacking
>> a vital feature.
>>
>> They do not model any responses to external stimuli. For example, what
>> should the workflow do if the data [equivalent of Business Object] is
>> changed or deleted by a non-workflow entity?
>>
>> I have challenged my colleagues and some consultants on this, and was
>> surprised to discover that
>>
>> a)      This was a new concept to them. The idea of putting an
>> event-handler in parallel with the main process flow was an entirely
>> novel
>> construct. (Does this indicate that it should be done at the header, as
>> in
>> ECC style workflows?)
>>
>> b)      The technical practicality of preparing the workflow to respond
>> to
>> events appears to actually be quite complicated. In CE 7.2, we appear to
>> be able to make use of "Intermediate Messages", but there are
>> challenges... A colleague is adamant that we have to make development
>> changes to PI to get some data back to BPM...
>>
>> In my experience, having workflows that do not respond to the
>> fluctuations
>> in the systems in which they operate causes all sorts of problems. At
>> best, we 'just' have orphaned work items or confused users; at worst, we
>> might be causing subtle data-inaccuracy as we over-write details that
>> were
>> changed by someone else already.
>>
>> So, my question is:
>>
>> How have are BPM workflows supposed to be designed to ensure that they
>> are
>> responsive to the environments in which they operate?
>>
>> Many thanks
>> Andy
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