Enabling process instance management

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In Process Portal, process owners can use the Process Performance dashboard to review the progress of processes and their instances. If the business process is enabled and process owners are authorized, they can also act on individual process instances in the Gantt chart to resolve issues, such as bottlenecks.

About this task

If the business process is enabled for process instance management, process owners can use the Process Performance dashboard and the Gantt chart to complete the following tasks:
  • View and change the projected path for a running instance.
  • Determine whether a running process instance is on track for completion.
  • Change the due date of a running process instance.
  • Adjust the due dates and durations of tasks in a process instance.

Procedure

  1. Open the process.
  2. Grant users access to the Process Performance dashboard.

    Without this access, users cannot see the Process Performance dashboard in Process Portal. To grant access, on the Overview tab for the process, assign a group to the Expose Performance Metrics option.

  3. Enable due dates and at-risk calculations.
    Due dates and at-risk calculations are enabled for a process by default in the Details section on the Overview tab. At run time, due dates are calculated from the creation time of the process instance based on the value of the Due in field and the settings for the work schedule properties. For more information about due date calculations, see Due dates for process instances and activities. Due dates are used in Process Portal to determine whether a process instance is on track for timely completion. A process instance becomes at risk of not completing in time when the average time to complete the process exceeds the amount of time left to the due date for the process instance:
    "Process at risk" = (Current Time + Avg Historical Time to Process Completion) > Process Due Date
    If there is no historical data for this process, the process instance is not at risk.
    1. Enable the due date.
      At-risk calculations require that the due date is enabled.
    2. Set the expected duration of process instances in the Due in field.
      By default, each instance is due 8 hours after it is started. If you select Days for the duration, you can also add hours and minutes to the elapsed time, for example 2 days, 4 hours, and 30 minutes.
    3. Optional: Set values for the Work schedule properties.
      Default values are available for all the properties.
    4. Optional: Enable at-risk calculations.

    Due dates are shown for the instances of this process in Process Portal. Process owners can modify the due dates in the Gantt chart.

  4. Enable projected path management.

    In the Details section on the Overview tab, select the Allow projected path management check box to enable projected path management.

    By default, projected path management is disabled.

    There are several routes, or paths, that can be followed to complete a process. With projected path management enabled, the projected path for an instance can be displayed on the Gantt chart if distinct paths from the start to end nodes are found.

    If projected path management is not enabled, the Process Performance dashboard and the Gantt chart are affected in the following ways:
    • Process Performance dashboard: No estimated completion time for entries in the Instances in progress list.
    • Gantt chart Set Path page: No projected path.
    • Gantt chart Gantt View page:
      • No future tasks
      • No estimated completion time
      • Task durations are not editable
    Attention: When projected path management is enabled, the following modeling constructs can cause performance issues with the projected path calculation at run time and might cause the process to end abnormally:
    • A gateway that causes the process flow to repeatedly loop over a sequence of activities in the flow path, for example, a flow repeatedly goes from activity1 to activity2 to activity3, then back to activity1 to start processing the sequence of activities again.
    • A gateway that has multiple available paths, which can cause the process to return to a previous activity in the flow. As a result, part of the process might be repeated multiple times, with infinite possible permutations of the process path.
    • A process with a lot of events that start new processes or cause the process flow to return to previous activities in the flow. Do not include timer events because the projected path cannot be calculated at all, as it is not known how long the calculation will need to wait for the timer.
  5. Optional: Enable the collection of historical data in the Performance Data Warehouse.

    Historical data is used in the Set Path page of the Gantt chart to display the traversed path and calculate the projected path for a running process instance.

    1. On the Overview tab, ensure that Enable tracking field is selected.
    2. On the Tracking tab, ensure that Enable Autotracking is selected.
    3. Send the updated tracking definitions to the Business Performance Data Warehouse.
    If autotracking is not enabled, the Gantt chart is affected in the following ways:
    • Historical path information is not available for the instance.
    • The projected path through the instance is based on the longest (pessimistic) path and not the typical historical path.
  6. Optional: Enable process owners to analyze the average amount of time that elapses between steps in the process.

    To enable time lapses to be analyzed, include tracking points in the process and create a timing interval to capture the time between the defined points. If tracking points are defined for the process, timing intervals are sent to the Performance Data Warehouse and the Process Performance dashboard includes timing intervals on the Overview page.

  7. Click Save or Finish Editing.

Results

The Process Performance dashboards for processes and instances in Process Portal are enabled for process management.

Important: The following Process Portal action policies determine who is authorized to view and change the projected path:
  • ACTION_VIEW_PROCESS_DIAGRAM
  • ACTION_VIEW_CRITICAL_PATH
  • ACTION_CHANGE_CRITICAL_PATH
  • ACTION_CHANGE_INSTANCE_DUEDATE
The action policies are contained in the BPMActionPolicy configuration object. Administrators can modify the set of users who are assigned to these policies.

What to do next

Define the work schedule for the process and set the due date for individual activities.