Process Automation

Consider the Process Analyzer as your business application's brain as it contains all states and data of your business processes. To automate your business based on this data, you can act on events that you can define for stages, links, and alerts. And you can also directly access the internal process model through various components.

Acting on Events

All configured events arrive at this output:

The events are passed as messages with the following property set:

• _event

This property may contain the event types:

• alert

• stagecreated

• stagecheckin

• stagecheckout

• linkcreated

• linktravel

All events are collected during a single event inflow and sent after the inflow event has been processed. See the following sections about the properties per event type.

alert

It contains a copy of the message that is late.

stagecreated

Contains property stage with the name of the stage.

stagecheckin

Contains a copy of the event inflow message. The name of the stage is in the property configured in the Process Analyzer as Stage Property.

stagecheckout

Contains a copy of the event inflow message. The name of the stage is in the property configured in the Process Analyzer as Stage Property.

linkcreated

Contains properties sourcestage and targetstage that define the link.

linktravel

It contains a copy of the event inflow message and properties sourcestage and targetstage that define the link.

Example

This picture shows the automation part of the Process Analyzer from the Warehouse Simulation:

It acts on 2 events: Check-in to stage Shipment Ready and alert.

Shipment Ready

We act on this event to inform the customer when his order will arrive. We could send an email here, but we will send a notification to a dashboard monitor table component since it is only for demonstration.

This is what is done:

• Check for check-in on Shipment Ready (Shipment Ready?).

• Acquire the estimated time between Shipment Ready and Shipment Delivered (Path Estimate).

• Set it as a message property (Set Duration).

• Add it to the current time and format it (Set Time).

• Send it as a state message (Send State).

• Please pass this message to a Monitor Panel component that sends it to the dashboard (CustomerNotifications).

Alert

We want to inform the dashboard with an alert message.

This is what is done:

• Check for alert (Alert?).

• Send a state message (Send State).

• Please pass this message to a Monitor Panel component that sends it to the dashboard (CustomerNotifications).

Access the Process Model

Access to the process model takes place by predefined components which you can connect to the Process Analyzer at this reference connector:

You can connect as many components here as you need. Most components provide a reference of type message that can be used to, i.e., copy it into other messages.

Model Statistic

Returns a reference to a message with the process model statistics. The following properties are set:

• alertcount

• totalprocessed

• intransit

For each KPI value:

• <kpi-propertyname>_totalprocessed

• <kpi-propertyname>_intransit

Stage Defined

Checks the process model if the named stage is defined and calls the appropriate output with the input message.

Stage Statistic

Returns a reference to a message with the statistic of the named stage. The following properties are set:

• _totalcount

• _currentcount

• late (number of current late messages at this stage)

For each KPI value:

• <kpi-propertyname>_raw_total

• <kpi-propertyname>_raw_current

• <kpi-propertyname>_average

Stage Memory

Returns a reference to the memory of a stage containing all messages currently checked into that stage.

Link Defined

Checks the process model if the named link is defined and calls the appropriate output with the input message.

Link Statistic

Returns a reference to a message with the process model statistics. The following properties are set:

• _totalcount

• _delaysum (Sum of the transfer time on this link in milliseconds)

For each KPI value:

• <kpi-propertyname>_raw_total

• <kpi-propertyname>_average

Path Estimate

Predicts the average travel duration in milliseconds of a path defined by a source and a target stage. It returns the estimated average duration of the shortest path in milliseconds. The duration is -1 if the stages are not found or unreachable.

It returns a reference to a message that contains the following properties:

• sourcestage

• targetstage

• duration