1. Workflows and business process modelling for CERN's Electronic Document Handling system Rostislav Titov, European Organization for Nuclear Research

2. CERN e – Business Business processes - Collection of activities that produce a service or product - Can be represented by a graph (WF-net)

3. CERN e – Business EDH Electronic Document Handling @ CERN

4. CERN e – Business The Need for EDH Over 100 official procedures Used by all CERN personnel Over 250000 documents per year Examples: –Purchase orders –Training Request –Holiday Request

5. CERN e – Business Paper Purchase Order

6. CERN e – Business Almost any Procedure

7. CERN e – Business e-business Annual Appraisal (MAPS) Automatic Small Order (< 500CHF) Contract Request End of probation period authorization End-of contract authorization Export Formalities request External Training Request Fire Permit Illness declaration Import Formalities declaration Inter-departmental funds transfer Internal Purchase Requisition Invoice authorization Leave Request Official Travel Claim Official Trip On-site Training Request Opening of Post Request Overtime request Part-time working schedule request Payment to Third Party Pro-forma invoice request Request for an Advance Request to Access Computer Centre Request to Access Restricted Areas Request to Drive CERN vehicle Request to Enable/Disable Alarm Request to Import merchandise (EU or Switzerland) Request to Perform Maintenance Work Request to Purchase from Stores Request to transit the French/Swiss Tunnel Request to use Forklift Truck/Tractor/Crane School fees Reimbursement Skills Inventory Subsistence Claim Sundry Expenses Claim Telephone Subscription Request Temporary Labour request Travel To Home Station “CERN’s EDH enables staff to focus on CORE activities by to focus on CORE activities by minimizing the overhead of minimizing the overhead of business processes” business processes”

8. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

9. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

10. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

11. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action ********

12. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action Already Approved

13. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action XML Order

14. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

15. CERN e – Business Workflow Management System Workflow engine Notification management Visual process designer Process visualization Debugging Error handling and exception management Software for designing and executing workflows

16. CERN e – Business Workflow Standards 2000/05 XLang (Microsoft) 2001/03 BPML (Intallio et al) 2001/05 WSFL (IBM) 2001/06 BPSS (ebXML) 2002/03 BPEL4WS 1.0 (IBM, Microsoft) BPEL4WS 1.1 (OASIS) 2002/062003/01 WS-Choreography (W3C) 2003/04 WSCI (Sun et al) WSCL (HP) 2002/082007/05 WS-BPEL 2.0 BPEL and BPMN are Industry Standards –Standards based approach ensure longevity of the workflow engine –Supported by the big players in the industry (Microsoft, IBM, SUN, Oracle…) 2004/05 BPMN 1.0 (BPMI) 2009/01 BPMN 1.2 (OMG) 2010? BPMN 2.0

17. CERN e – Business BPEL Web Services Business Process Execution Language Developed by IBM, Microsoft and SAP in 2003 WS-BPEL 2.0 - 2004 BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask - 2007

18. CERN e – Business BPEL XML language for defining behaviour of a process –that provides web-service(s) –that uses web-services –everything it sees is a web-service no other external interactions Definition: OASIS

19. CERN e – Business BPEL Process Example

20. CERN e – Business BPEL Process Example ns15:docId cern:getExpression('S', '10000M', $budget/ns14:budgetCode, $doctype) ns15:expression 3 ns15:signatureDelay ns15:exclusionList 'STD_FIN_UNLIMITED_SIGN_ENG_MSG' ns15:engMessage 'STD_FIN_UNLIMITED_SIGN_FRE_MSG' ns15:freMessage

21. CERN e – Business BPEL Design IDE

22. CERN e – Business BPEL Activities Structured activities – can contain other activities one after the other in parallel choose by inbound message choose by expression evaluation iteration nest, with declarations and handlers, synchronize Communication send msg to partner; possibly receive response accept msg from partner send msg to partner as response to Other manipulate variables for duration / until time end the process run compensation handler of inner scope exit with fault to outer scope do nothing

23. CERN e – Business BPEL Engines Evaluation DesignerLinks in designer XPATH tools Open source Java basedHalt on fault and retry DebuggingProcess versioning Web based tools Active BPEL Oracle BPEL IBM WebSphere PXE Cape Clear Parasoft BPEL Maestro Vergil VCAB Twister / Agila BPEL IT Pearl BEA Weblogic workshop SupportedPartly supportedNot supported

24. CERN e – Business Our Choice: ActiveVOS Robust server with a good track record –One of the first BPEL vendors on the market The core engine is open source –Widely used / well tested –Fully supports the standards ActiveVOS Enterprise builds on the OS Engine and adds: –Process versioning –Halt on fault/retry –Clustering Persistent data is clear XML

25. CERN e – Business Integration with applications Two ways to interface with other applications –Through a Web Service Invocation Native to BPEL Creates “noise” in the process More complex to implement Can interface to any language In EDH used for read/write functions –Custom XPath functions Not completely standard (part of JAXEN) Lightweight mechanism in Java BPEL engines Can be called in assigns or in the condition statements In EDH used for read only functions

26. CERN e – Business BPEL Strong Points BPEL is a standard! –Supported on different platforms –Interfaces to various languages Web Service interface Good integration with Java Easy to integrate in development/deployment environment

27. CERN e – Business BPEL weak points Verbose and heavy language (WSDL interface, technical activities e.g. assign) Loops have to be explicitly declared (links back to already executed steps are not allowed) Rigid process model (even when debugging) Transaction management (currently)

28. CERN e – Business BPMN Business Process Modelling Notation Maintained by the OMG consortium (who maintain also UML specs)

29. CERN e – Business BPMN Graphical representation of a business process –can be used both by developers and business analysts –no standard executable translation –can be translated to BPEL

30. CERN e – Business BPMN Elements Events – something that happens in the system Activities – some work to be done Gateways – split or merge paths depending on conditions Connections – connect elements Swimlanes – used to define roles

31. CERN e – Business BPMN Process Example Source: Wikipedia

32. CERN e – Business BPMN Events Plain events – usually indicate beginning or end of a process Message events – indicate sending or receving a message Timer events – regularly happening events, time periods and timeouts Error events – error generation and handling Cancel events – cancel a transaction or react to a cancellation Compensation events – start a compensation process or compensate Conditional events – integrate business rules in the process Signal events – exchange signals between processes Complex events – choose from multiple events Link events – link processes (for example, on multiple pages) Terminate events – immediately stop all business processes without any error handling or compensation

33. CERN e – Business BPMN Activities Multiple instance – this task has to be done multiple times for each object Task Multiple instance ||| Loop Task – a task to be done Loop activity – do task until the loop condition is met Subprocess – a complex task (a process within process)

34. CERN e – Business BPMN Gateways X Exclusive OR (data-based) – Choose one outbound path. Synchronization: process continues once any inbound path has been completed O + Exclusive OR (event-based) – Choose a path where an event happens. The next element should be an event or an event-handling activity Parallel gateway – split a process into parallel branches, all of which run at the same time. Synchronization: wait for all processes to finish and then continue Inclusive gateway – Choose one or multiple outbound paths. Synchronization: process continues once any inbound path has been completed Complex gateway – split or merge the process based on a complex rule

35. CERN e – Business BPMN Connections Simple Conditional Default Sequence Flow – shows the order in which activities are executed Message Flow – shows exchange of messages Associations – logical associations between elements

36. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Sequence - First A, then B, then C

37. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Parallel Split - B and C start together once A finishes

38. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Synchronization (AND-Join) - C starts once A and B finish

39. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Choice - If Condition1 then B, if Condition2 then C,...

40. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Merge - D starts when B ends or when C ends

41. CERN e – Business BPMN Strong Points Intuitive Can be used both by developers and business analysts –Bridging the gap between process design and implementation

42. CERN e – Business BPMN weak points Converting to executable environments is a problem –Informal and partial mapping from BPMN to BPEL

43. CERN e – Business Handling Signatures

44. CERN e – Business Signature Event Signature event is a task for interacting with people, who are asked to approve or reject an electronic document BPEL4People: “WS-HumanTask” ( definition of human tasks and notifications) 

45. CERN e – Business Typical signature functions Find who can sign Assign signature to a person Notify chosen person Interact with signature processing service Choose another person in case of absence / inactivity Skip signature if person already signed Handle forward / postpone Return a result

46. CERN e – Business Signature Targets Specific person - John Doe Group of people - leave-admins Role/Right - Department Head

47. CERN e – Business Signature Roles Could be hierarchical (e.g. Group Leader) or nominated (e.g. Safety Officer) Have target(s) - DepartmentHead(IT) - SafetyOfficer(NICA) - CollaborationLeader(CMS, JINR) Valid during a period of time Have a priority

48. CERN e – Business Rights Hierarchy At CERN, one role can give many rights…  Group leaders are responsible for signing financial documents, signing leave requests of people they supervise, signing personnel action forms etc… To reduce their workload managers may delegate part of their rights to other persons  For example, a group leader may want that purchase requests were signed by his deputy A hierarchy of rights is needed to support such partial delegation of rights May not be a problem for smaller organizations

49. CERN e – Business Signature: Rights hierarchy Role (Group Leader) Right to sign purchase requests Right to sign official travels Right to sign leave requests Right to sign overtime claims Financial rights Personnel rights

50. CERN e – Business Rights Management by EDH 01.01.2009GS-AIS-EBSLDerek MATHIESON (AS-IDS)0 Validity date(s)TargetTypeHolderPriority Roles held by Derek MATHIESON (GS-AIS-EB) GS-AIS-EBSHIPS(SL)Derek MATHIESON (GS-AIS-EB)4500 01.01.2009GS-AIS-EBSLSADMIN(SL)Derek MATHIESON (GS-AIS-EB) 700 01.01.200971101LFC(SL)Derek MATHIESON (GS-AIS-EB)4500 Validity date(s)TargetTypeHolderPriority Profiles held by Derek MATHIESON (GS-AIS-EB)

51. CERN e – Business Signature Replacements Who can sign if the main responsible is away or does not respond? Same role, lower priority Deputy Supervisor Nobody:  Assign back to the first person  Stop workflow, notify responsible persons  Skip signature (in certain cases)

52. CERN e – Business Signature Time-out Time-out is a maximum delay which a document can wait until escalating the signature At CERN: Typically 3 days, but could be shorter or longer depending on the nature of the document Sometimes time-out is not applicable (examples: requestor’s signature, DG’s signature,...)

53. CERN e – Business Approval time @ CERN (2010)

54. CERN e – Business Thank You E-mail: Rostislav.Titov@cern.ch For More Information