Glossary
De Business Process Management, BPM and Workflow Automation Wiki | BizAgi BPMS
Contents |
GLOSSARY
A
Activity: a single task, which is performed within a process. It is used when the work in the process is not analyzed in detail within the flow.
Automatic activity: a representation of a task performed by the system without human intervention.
Attribute: a characteristic of the entity that can be defined as a basic and indivisible unit of information about an entity or relation; attributes are used to identify and describe entities.
Application: a program or group of programs designed for end users, which group or organize interrelated processes to reach a business objective.
Application Entity: The entity where the case information is stored. This entity is automatically generated when the application is created and its name corresponds to the same of the application.
Annotations: a written explanation that is added to the BPMN diagram so that the modeler or business analyst can provide additional information.
Alarms: notification or messages that are sent to different recipients according to time criteria when an activity will expire soon or has already expired.
Assignment Principle: Refers to the principle used to enter the cases in the application or the form in which the processes are administered.
Asynchronous task: The asynchronous activities correspond to automatic tasks of the process flow, which are designed to call external interfaces and integrate client’s proprietary systems.
B
BizAgi Processes Automation: the automatic generation of a Web application starting off with the process flow chart. This procedure of automation is executed in such a form that, when any element of the process (flow, data, and resources) is modified, the changes are automatically reflected in the corresponding Web application.
BizAgi: the Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) developed by Software Vision, which is useful to automate and to modify complex and dynamic business processes with greater rapidity and flexibility than any other market solution and to support the continuous improvement of the organizations critical processes.
Bizagi Control Panel: a tool that installs the basic components of BizAgi and defines the configuration and components to structure a project
BizAgi Modeler: This tool offers a set of figures or templates to draw processes flow charts; the figures available are part of the BPMN notation, which makes possible the standardization in the processes layout.
Business Rules: A Business rule in BizAgi describes the operations, definitions, and constrains that apply to an organization in achieving its goals. Business rules are a fundamental component of BizAgi, which are stored and classified in such a form that can be reused in the application (process).
Business Policies: The policies allow the organization to be able to adapt itself in an agile and flexible form to the business changes controlled by rules.
BPMN: Business Process Modeling Notation is a graphical notation that describes the logic of the Business process steps. This notation has been especially designed to coordinate the sequence of the processes and the messages that flow between the participants of the different activities.
BPMN is a formal language that allows modeling, simulating and, possibly, executing businesses processes. Their syntax is based on graphical elements, but such elements one by one have a relation with instructions in Language BPEL, which allows generating feasible code BPEL from a model BPMN.
C
Category: Corresponds to a group of processes, which implies that a process is associated to a category. The categories allow visualizing the hierarchy of the company processes.
Child Process: Processes that are executed from another process (the parent process), which can be sub processes or modules.
Component Library: Defines the repository of components that perform independent tasks, such as interfaces and specific business operations, which can be invoked from any business rule and used anywhere in a process.
Context: Corresponds to a set of attributes that compose at a certain moment the process information. The context uniquely identifies the information.
D
Data model: The relational model of the process where organizations, attributes and the relations that exist among them are specified; this approach makes possible the grouping of the information in a simple and logical way.
Deployment: The process of transferring new developments from a design environment to a test or production environment.
Design Time:Time defined when the process is modeled.
E
Entity: A logical representation of a database’s table defined by a set of attributes that contains information about the business.
Entity Replication: They are used to synchronize parametric organizations with the information that resides in other data sources within the organization.
Entities Virtualization: A BizAgi mechanism, which makes it possible the access the different external data sources (RDBMS, XMLs etc.) and present them as part of the business process.
End Terminal Event:It indicates the end of a process.
End Event: It indicates the temporary end of a process
Execution Rule: The principle or condition that customarily governs the process execution.
F
Figure (Shape): Figure used to diagram a process. In BizAgi, 23 figures are available, of which the functional areas, the start, the end, the phases, and the transitions are required.
Form: A data set associated to an entity, which is displayed somehow in a screen of the application.
G, I, L
Global Form: The form associated to the process, which is visualized by the user registered in the application when a case has no pending activities or is closed.
Inquiry Form: The form used to specify the data that are part of the business case or process and that later can be used to make searches.
Library Rule: A rule encompassing business rules that can be applied to any process defined by the organization. A library rule contains the definition of a macro business rule.
Intermediate Timer Event: It represents a delay (period of time) within the process.
M
Master Entity: The entity directly related to the business.
Mapping: Data mapping is the process of creating data element mappings between two distinct data models. Mapping is required when sub-processes or multiple sub-processes are invoked.
Modeling: Process layout or drawing. Process modeling is one of the first steps in the implementation of BizAgi.
Module: A group of tasks connected among them, which can be included within a process. Unlike sub-processes, a module cannot be a process itself (although it is created in the same way). The module is very useful to avoid the repetition of process components; modules are displayed in the application as consecutive and non-separated activities similar to the sub-processes.
Multiple Sub-processes: This property of the sub process allows the creation of multiple instances. Each instance represents a value in a one-to-many relation within the process.
N,O
Nested Sub-process: A process or activity self-contained within a larger process, which retains its identity and characteristics for reporting and analysis.
Nested category: A category encapsulated within another category.
Notifications: These are messages sent by electronic mail, which offers information or current status on the case to people related to the process.
New Process Version: This option allows creating a new version of a process or processes and all associated components.
Organization: An organization in BizAgi stores the information about the organizational structure of the members of a company and the definition of its characteristics (position, areas) along with the characteristics that make them unique within a team and that allow organizations to be active members in the processes of the application (roles, skills, geographic location).
P
Parameter Entity: Entities containing the different values that a variable can take; they store the basic information of the application.
Phase: a sub partition within a track that will be extended in vertical form. The phases are used to organize and to categorize activities showing the possible states that processes can have during their lifecycle.
Process: A process is a logical and defined sequence of activities, which accomplish a particular business objective. In BizAgi, a process itself or a sub-process of another one defines a process, or a set of activities that are used as a module. Anyway, all of them are created in the same way and only the value of the process type for each case is modified.
Process Case Instance:The cases generate pending activities for the users; therefore, they could be considered pending, expired, or closed.
Process Cloning: The option to make an identical copy of a process or processes and associated components.
Programmed tasks: A set of steps that can be periodically performed on demand or according to the date and time specified to validate the successful execution of business rules.
Project: The product unit in which all the business information (applications, categories, processes) stored in a database and presented through a Web application is integrated.
Parent Process: A process that holds a sub-process within its boundaries.
Proxy: A component that acts as an intermediary between a workstation user and the Internet. Proxy improves the efficiency of the system, facilitate the access, and/or protect she non-authorized uses of the system.
Project: Refers to the global process to be optimized or automate.
R
Registry (Render): A forms record or entity attribute with all defined conditions of visualization.
Relationship: An association among two or more entities.
Rules Family: A group of rules that have a common characteristic. They allow the easy classification and location of the business rules.
Runtime: The period of time during which a program is executed.
S
Scheduler: The service of BizAgi used to send alarms and control the time and delays of the activities.
Sequence Flow or Transition: A Sequence Flow is a solid graphical line that is used to show the performing order of activities in a process. Each flow has only one source and only one target. The Sequence flow connects two Figures in the process flow.
Sub-Process: A collection of related activities and tasks within a process.
Start Event: A Start Event indicates where a particular process will start. In terms of Sequence Flow, the Start Event starts the flow of the Process, and thus, will not have any incoming sequence flow.
Stateless: Modern applications maintain the state, which means, “they remember” the last time the application was executed along with the entire configuration. This feature is very useful because the application can be tailored according to the user’s work preferences.
Status Log: A tool that makes reference to the case history. It shows each one of the steps for which the process has passed.
Summary Form: is associated to the process and allows the user to view the progress information when clicking the Stoplight of the pending cases. The form is viewed in the lower part of the web application.
System Entities: Entities that belong to the BizAgi data model and allows the operation of BizAgi.
T
Template: A file that may contain styles and settings for a particular kind of drawings in VISIO. BizAgi has its own template, which is used to draw the process flows.
Template: A document with rich text format that contains a letter’s body. The attribute’s values are associated with variables.
Track: The track represents a process participant. A track corresponds to the people, roles or work parties who take part in the process (areas of the organization and users types, among others)
Token: A descriptive construct used to describe how the flow of a process will proceed at runtime.
U, V, W, X, Y ,Z
User: A user is defined as someone who interacts with BizAgi's web application carrying out activities in processes, or managing business information.
Each user has an account through which he or she is identified in BizAgi. All the properties defined in the account allow or restrict the interaction with the application.
User fields: a functionality of BizAgi that allows extending the controls offered by BizAgi; these fields are used when the render types predefined by BizAgi Studio are not sufficient to cover client’s requirements.
User groups: They are profiles of users or a set of characteristics of employees of the organization, which allow defining levels of access to the different sections or pages from the web application.
Xpath: The XPath allows the easy access of any data related with the application entity without requiring any knowledge on programming languages. Furthermore, those data can be filtered according to conditions previously specified to obtain the required results.
Wizard Form: A form associated to an activity, which is composed of several pages or screens. In the Web application the wizard form allows the navigation between its pages forwards or backwards, until all the information of the activity is completed.
WSDL: An XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information.
