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to identify, design, execute, document, monitor, control, and measure both automated and non-automated business processes to achieve consistent, targeted results consistent with an organization's strategic goals.
BPM involves the deliberate, collaborative and increasingly
technology-aided definition, improvement, and management of end-to-end business processes that drive business results, create value, and enable an organization to meet its business objectives with more agility.
Variables
What is Variable
A variable is used to store data in TotalAgility. A variable display name can have upper and lower case letters
performed, e.g. to complete the Loan Approval activity we could add Customer Name, Loan Amount and Credit Score variables as inputs to the activity.
Output Variables Data that is output from a specific activity within the process,
Variable Groups
There are four groups of variables available within the Process
Designer:
1. Process Variables 2. Server Variables 3. Case Variables 4. SYSTEM Variables
Process and Server variables can be further broken down into: Simple variables (1 value) Complex variables (multiple values / types, e.g. an array)
Server Variables
Server variables are global; they can be used by any business
process or case fragment. Also server variables can only have one value at any given time.
Once the value of a server variable is changed, all process maps
using this variable get updated with this information, therefore it only has to be modified once.
System Variables
SYSTEM variables are simple non-editable process variables
which are provided by the system in Kofax TotalAgility. They give you access to information which is maintained within the designer itself, such as who created the job, the job ID and others.
This is information which you typically cannot know at design
time, such as SPP_JOBID. The job ID will only be assigned when creating the job.
Each SYSTEM variable holds a value for a specific TotalAgility
task, for example, SPP_RES_JOB_Creator holds the User ID of the creator of a job.
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Work Types
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typically display on a work queue window and consists of standard fields for a job/task
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type
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defined fields.
Definitions are stored at the server level and can be associated
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Activities
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Activity
An activity is an individual step (service) that forms part of the
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Supported Activities
Kofax TotalAgility supports the following activities:
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Ordinary Activity
Each activity requiring interaction with a worker resource of any
activity. This group may be used for testing purposes to get the initial flow of steps in the right order, but once this has been achieved and released as a new version, this group must be removed from the activity and the intended resource for this task should immediately be created, whether it is:
A fixed or floating role A resource group A system-driven process actor (i.e. the user who created the
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Expression Activity
An Expression activity helps you set the value of one or more
want to display the initials, that is, AX, the rule can be: Left(FirstName,1) + Left(Surname,1)
The value from this rule will then be held in an output (target)
variable.
An Expression node can use String, Date and Math functions the
following functions:
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variable to hold the database connection string(A database connection string helps you connect with the required relational database; it contains details of how to connect to the selected database, such as a data source, the user ID and the login password) .
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The generated query appears in the Query box and a list of result
.NET Activity
Enables interaction with software components developed for the
Microsoft .NET Framework. .NET objects can be run automatically by the Workflow engine, but may also display a user interface.
From a .NET activity, you can call any .NET object with a public
class and public methods. Each public method has a list of required parameters. You must assign variables to each of the parameters listed.
Note .NET activity types can only be used if the Microsoft .NET
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CreateNewJob Activity
A Create New Job (CNJ) is an automatic activity that starts a new
instance of a business process, however, the main business process carries on independently of the new process that it instantiated.
You can create a new job based on process, case or case
fragment maps. A CNJ activity links a main process map with an existing process map. Initialization parameters can be passed from the main map to the second (if required), but output parameters cannot be passed from the second process map back to the main map.
Note: You must ensure that any required initialization parameters
have been added to the map which is being used to create a new job.
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You can create a new job in case based on either case reference
or case ID
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Embedded Process
There are times when you need to break a large process map into
maps.
You have a process that is carried out by another department
or company.
You can embed smaller process maps into the main map (parent
map).
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Email Activity
The Email activity is an automatic activity that is used to send
BCC list, attachments, importance, and format using the TotalAgility process/server variables.
A server variable, SPP_SMTP_SERVER with a value of
localhost is available in TotalAgility. You may change this value depending on the SMTP server you are using. The value of this server variable can be either SMTP server name or IP address of SMTP server.
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used to create different document types within a process map. Using this activity you can create a Word 2007 document or an HTML file (a web page). You can specify which template to be used, what placeholders to be populated to create a document.
In Microsoft Word, fields are used as placeholders for data that
might change in a document and for creating form letters and labels in mail-merge documents. You use merge fields to customize the content of individual documents.
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Synchronization Activity
The Synchronization (Sync) node is an automatic activity used to
bring together many parallel paths, where only one of the parallel activities must be completed, for example Email Forms or Fax Forms as shown in the example below.
The Sync node thus permits a map designer (typically a Business
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Decision Node
A decision is a point in a process map where a choice has to be
made about which path the business process must follow. The path selected is based on the evaluation of one or more conditions (decision rules).
By default, a Decision node consists of one condition, a path
below the condition, which represents the path of execution followed when the decision evaluates to true, and a path to the right of the condition, which represents the path of execution followed when the condition evaluates to false (the default path).
A decision is based on the value of the decision variable passed
into the process map at run time. Variables are passed into a decision as operands (>, =, <) and may be evaluated against another variable or value.
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Branching Rule
Branching rules help you model more complex business logic
(data dependencies), and are a lot simpler and neater than using numerous decision nodes.
Unlike decisions, a branching rule is not limited to a maximum of
or more alternative paths, this allows you to model a multiple choice decision pattern.
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to stop a process map from failing if none of the specified conditions are met
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rule and enables you to use all of the back-end integration capabilities of TotalAgility to retrieve data from external sources.
A business rule also enables you to use the decision and multi-
branching rules logic of a process to create a rule and determine the output values.
A Business Rule helps you automate your business logic without
programming.
You define a business rule once, maintain it centrally and use it
everywhere.
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business process.
Note: the release of an updated rule will immediately affect all processes that use it.
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without major reworking to the process itself and, of course, reuse of the business rule.
For example, if it is a corporate policy that any purchase over 10,000 be routed to a Supervisor, then this rule must be replicated in every process model involving purchase requests, perhaps in multiple steps in each one. If the policy were revised up to amounts of 15,000 then this would have to be changed in every single instance of the conditional statement in all affected process maps. If instead it were represented as a rule in a Business Rule system, it could be defined once and maintained at one point, but used everywhere.
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directly from the Business Rule activity. When the map is released, any changes to the rule are automatically applied to the process.
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variables
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Resources
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Assigning Resources
Assign static resources when you know in advance who the
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Dynamic Resources
You can assign resources to an activity or job while the job is
activity. Allocating resources manually gives you the flexibility to assign more efficient resources to activities of high importance, and better balance the work.
Dynamically allocating resources at run time, depending on
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you to easily manage multiple business processes and all the information relevant to a particular case or project, e.g. legal cases or social welfare type cases.
Case is suited to projects where you do not know the lifecycle
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Benefits of Case
To facilitate case based projects, you can create Case Definition
and Case Fragment processes. A Case Definition is in essence a base map and can have many case fragments associated with it.
Case fragments can access variables, roles, and milestones
defined at the Case Definition level so case specific data only needs to be defined once but can be used by several case fragments.
A case fragment can be tied to the latest version or a specific
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(related processes), and the need to allow for dynamic attachment of new processes to a case at run-time.
The possibility that external events and intervention can change
case worker.
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overall case.
Knowledge workers or external events may drive the ad hoc
definition using the Compatible With All Case Def Versions property.
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completing the relevant activity that has been in the Awaiting Events state and has had its precondition met.
Events can be raised by any process or 3rd party software. An activity that has a precondition will not appear in the
workqueue until its precondition is met, i.e. the event(s) has been raised.
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Raise Event
Internal Events - fires within the same process or between
different processes.
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Setting up a Precondition
Setting up a Precondition
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or when completed
Select the required activity
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States
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inception to completion.
For example, an order can go through a series of definable states
are two system variables that can be used to determine what state a job is in, and what percentage of the job has been completed:
SPP_JOB_STATE SPP_JOB_STATE_PERCENTAGE A job state can also be viewed in the workspace in job properties
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as a series of state changes. States give customers a high level overview of a jobs progress, i.e. you can see whether a trade is in its SETTLED or CONFIRMED state.
States are an alternative / complimentary way of viewing a jobs
progress, and can be used in conjunction / instead of viewing what activities are complete or pending (via the map control).
Helps you to manage the end-to-end life cycle of jobs, e.g. you
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Creating States
In the Name box, enter a name for the state In the Percentage Complete box, enter or select the percentage
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State History
Displays the history of state changes that have occurred for the
selected job.
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For further information, please contact: Phong Chu Principal Enablement Manager Phone: 949 783 1296 Email: phong.chu@Kofax.com