Business Process Documentation

Business Process Documentation is an HTML page with information about the process.

When you create documentation of one process, you can modify the HTML document and exclude the following information, if necessary: Responsibility Matrix, Context, Sub-Processes, Connectors, Notifications, Tasks (Tasks include information about Swimlanes, Events, the Tasks themselves, Gateways), and Metrics and KPIs of the process.

When you create documentation for several processes at once, ELMA will generate a web page for each of them. This web page will contain complete information about the process. ELMA will also prepare a documentation page with a link to documentation for each process. When you prepare documentation for multiple processes, you cannot modify the contents.

If a process has internal sub-processes, documentation includes them as well. The sub-processes inherit all the settings of the parent process documentation.

Documentation can be prepared for all the processes displayed in the process list.

The process documentation may contain information on the following features:

Process graphic model
Responsibility matrix as set up in ELMA Designer
Swimlanes and their settings
Metrics and KPIs
Process context variables
Process tasks – events, activities and gateways included in the process model
Connectors between activities, notifications for process participants
Process scripts

Process documentation contains information about the process, but not the process instances in Web Application. Process documentation is prepared for the current process draft.

Process documentation can be prepared as a separate HTML file used to examine, publish and reproduce process information; or it can be published with the process in ELMA Web Application.

Preparing separate process documentation

You can prepare process documentation in ELMA Designer as a separate HTML file for one selected process or for several processes. When no process is selected, the "Generate Process Documentation" operation is unavailable.

To launch the documentation generation wizard, click Export - Documentation in the toolbar of the process list or process page.

Step 1. Documentation Generation Type

The first step is to select the documentation generation type: decide if you want to prepare documentation for the current process or for a group of processes. If no process is selected, the "Generating documentation for the current business process" type is unavailable. The settings in the next step of the wizard depend on the documentation generation type you select.

At this point, you can select the directory, where you want the files to be saved (Fig. 1). By default, the files are saved to "_Designer_Documentation" in the installation directory of ELMA BPM Platform.

Click Next to go to the next step of the wizard.

Fig. 1. First step of building process documentation.

Step 2. Documentation for the current business process.

If you selected the "Generating documentation for the current business process" type, at this point you can adjust the contents of your document by excluding information on any of the following features: Responsibility Matrix, Context, Sub-Processes, Connectors, Notifications, Tasks (Tasks include information about Swimlanes, Events, the Tasks themselves, Gateways), and Metrics and KPIs of a process.

In the "Selecting sub-processes" section you can select the internal sub-processes of the current process, if you want ELMA to generate documentation on them too (Fig. 2). The sub-processes inherit all the settings of the parent process documentation.

Fig. 2. Second step of building process documentation.

Click Next to generate process documentation. Once the documentation specified at the first step is generated, the files will be saved to the specified folder. It will automatically open in Windows file explorer (Fig. 3). To read the documentation, open the index.html file in any browser. To move the documentation, copy the index.html file and all the folders stored in the same directory as the index.html file.

Fig. 3. Windows file explorer. Directory with process documentation.

Step 2. Documentation for a business process group.

If you selected the "Generating documentation for a business process group" type, at this point you have to select the processes, for which you want the documentation to be generated (Fig. 4). You cannot select internal sub-processes separately. They are by default included in the documentation of their parent processes.

Fig. 4. Second step of building process documentation for a process group.

Click Next to generate process documentation for the selected processes. Once generated, the files will be stored in the directory, which you specified at the previous step. It will automatically open in Windows file explorer (Fig. 5). To read the documentation, open the index.html file in any browser. This file contains links to pages with documentation for each of the selected processes. To move the documentation, copy the index.html file and all the folders stored in the same directory as the index.html file.

Names of the folders are the same as the names of the business processes in ELMA.

Fig. 5. Windows file explorer. Directory with process documentation on a group of processes.

Publishing business process documentation in Web Application

To publish process documentation in Web Application, you need to enable the Generate documentation option (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Process publishing window.

After publishing, the process documentation appears in the Processes – Documentation section. Only the system administrator, owners and supervisors of the processes can access it.