Business process — is a set of related activities or tasks, performed to produce a product or service.
In ELMA BPM, a business process is a certain sequence of tasks that produce a specific outcome. You can create a process model in ELMA Designer, in other words, define the sequence of tasks, specify settings, executors and so on. Once the model is created, the process is ready for execution (start).
A business process started in ELMA Web Application is called a business process instance. It is a set of tasks that are currently being executed by users. Consider a "Leave Request" process. It may have such instances, as "Leave Request of 03.04.2018", "Leave Request, July 15 to 30, 2018".
Access permissions to business processes are assigned in Administration - Business processes - Access to the "Business Processes" module. For more information on assigning access permissions, see the respective Help section.
All the created, configured and published processes are executed in ELMA Web Application.
For each process there is a defined set of users, who have various permissions and responsibilities:
Initiator - is the user, who starts the business process (creates a new instance). Initiator has additional permissions.
Owner - is the user responsible for the execution of the process at all stages. In other words, it is the person responsible for the outcome. A process owner can (but is not obliged to) execute process tasks. The following organizational structure elements can be selected as a process owner: job position or a group of employees. Each process has only one owner. By default, the process owner and initiator are the same person. But you can change it in the Designer, Responsibility Matrix tab when editing the process.
Supervisor - is the user, who is not responsible for the process execution, but has permissions to view its details. Usually, the top managers of the company have the supervisor permissions. When editing the process in Designer, you can define the list of supervisors on the Responsibility Matrix tab. Each process can have more than one supervisor.
Responsible - is the user responsible for achieving the intended result. By default, the initiator is responsible for the result. There can be only one person responsible for a process instance. You can change the person responsible for the process (to do this you need access permissions).
Participant - this user can view the process in My Processes section. You can edit the list of participants on the Participants tab of the process instance page. Access permissions to manage the list of participants can be defined in My Processessection, when configuring access to the process instance. By default, the process owner and the responsible user are defined as the process participants.
Informed - is the employee, informed about the process progress. This employee does not take part in the process, but the information about them will be added to the business process documentation and business process policies.
The Processes section of ELMA Web Application consists of the following subsections (Fig. 1):
My Processes – this subsection shows the processes created by the current user, the ones the user participates in and the ones the user is responsible for.
Process Monitor – this subsection shows the processes in which the current user is defined as the owner, supervisor or informed. The user can also view particular processes if they have permissions to monitor the process.
Improvements – this subsection allows users to view all the improvements of the processes, if they are defined as owners or supervisors of these processes.
Documentation – if a user has either owner or supervisor status, they can view the list of published versions of the processes and all related documentation in this subsection. If the user has full access to the Documentation subsection, they can also view the list of published versions and all the documentation related to a particular process.
Execution Queue – this subsection allows monitoring processes, which are currently handled by the process execution service, as well as execution errors. If an error occurs during the execution of a process activity, the information about this incident is displayed in this section, along with the error message. This subsection is available for the users, who has access to managing the process execution queue.
Change Version – this subsection allows tracking the processes, that are involved in bulk change of process instance version.
Fig. 1. "Processes" section.
There are various portlets that can help you work with business processes in ELMA Web Application. You can add the following portlets to your main page:
