Getting started with process blueprints

This tutorial takes you through the steps for creating a simple process blueprint.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

Create a process blueprint that represents a simple request process for a security badge.
Use a discovery map to quickly capture the basic steps in a business process.
Create a process diagram from your discovery map.
Use swimlanes to capture the roles that perform the different steps.
Use gateways to capture different paths through the process.
Group related tasks into subprocesses.
Add details to your process and your process activities to fully document the business process.
Playback your process diagram to review the process with stakeholders.

Introduction

You can use process blueprints to document business processes for review and analysis.

In this tutorial, you create a simple process blueprint that represents a business process for requesting, manufacturing, and delivering a security badge. In this business process:

An employee submits a request for a new or replacement security badge.
The Security team reviews the request to verify the security level of the requesting employee. If they approve the requested security level, the request is passed to Facilities for manufacturing. If the request is rejected because of inadequate security clearance, or for some other reason, the requesting employee is notified and the process ends.
Before Facilities can manufacture the security badge, they schedule a time for the employee to come down to the security desk to have their photo taken.
After the photo is taken, Facilities prints and laminates the badge. Then, they notify the employee when it is ready for pickup.

This tutorial should take approximately 60 minutes to finish. If you explore other concepts that are related to this tutorial, it might take longer to complete.

Skill level: Introductory
Prerequisites: You must have access to a space where you will create your process blueprint. It is recommended that you create a new space to hold your tutorial work and remove all default participants except yourself so that other users in your account cannot access or link to your tutorial artifacts.

Create a discovery map

Create the process blueprint and add process activities to your discovery map.

Required time: 10 minutes

From within your space, create a new process blueprint by clicking New > Process Blueprint.
Name your process blueprint "Security Badge Request" and click Create.
Your process blueprint opens in the Discovery Map view. From here you can add milestones and activities, either by typing a list in the Process Outline or by using the Add Milestone and Add Activity buttons.
In the Process Outline, rename the first milestone by selecting Milestone 1 and typing Request.
Select the first activity and rename it Submit Badge Request.
Rename the milestone 2 to Review and press Enter.
A third milestone is created.
Change this milestone to an activity by pressing Tab. Name this activity Review Request.
Now, use the Add Milestone button to create another milestone called Manufacture, and the Add Activity button to create three activities called Create Badge, Schedule Photo, and Send Pickup Details.
Because the Schedule Photo activity comes before the Create Badge activity, drag Schedule Photo and drop it above Create Badge.

Results: Your discovery map should look like the following:

Generate a process diagram

Process diagrams allow you to represent paths through your process and allow you to organize your activities into swimlanes that represent the different roles or teams that participate in the process.

Required time: 10 minutes

First, generate a process diagram by switching from the Discovery Map view to the Process Diagram view in the toolbar and clicking Create Diagram.
By default, your process diagram has a start event, an end event, and all the activities are contained in a single swimlane.
Not all of these activities are performed by the same individual or team. To represent the different participants who will be performing these activities, you add swimlanes, which are associated with different participants. Associate the first swimlane with a participant by clicking in the swimlane label. In the Swimlane Participant field, type Employee. The Swimlane Group field associates the swimlane with a user group that is defined in your Blueworks Live account. Leave this blank for now.
When the window closes, the label of the swimlane is updated to "Employee".
Right click the Review Request activity and select Edit Details.
Notice that the value for the Participant field has already been filled with "Employee" as a result of the activity that belongs to the Employee swimlane.
Delete the "Employee" value in the Participant field and enter Security Team instead.
A new swimlane is automatically created that is associated with the "Security Team" participant, and the Review Request activity is moved into that swimlane.
Create a third swimlane by clicking the Add Swimlane button.
Click the label of this swimlane and enter Facilities for the Swimlane Participant.
The Participant fields for these activities are automatically changed to Facilities when they are moved into this swimlane.
Drag the Schedule Photo and Create Badge activities into the Facilities swimlane.
Reorder the swimlanes so that the Employee swimlane is at the top and the Facilities swimlane is at the bottom by clicking the swimlane labels and dragging the swimlanes into the correct positions.

Results: Your diagram should now look similar to the following:

Add gateways for alternative flows

Gateways allow you to represent alternative paths through your process.

Required time: 10 minutes

In this example, the security team reviews the badge request to make sure that the employee has the required security clearance that is being requested. If the security team approves the request, the request is passed on to the Facilities team. If not, the security team notifies the employee that their request was rejected and the process ends. You can represent these alternative scenarios by using a gateway whose outgoing paths reflect the approved and rejected flows.

Hover over the connection line between Review Request and the Schedule Photo activities until the insert button appears and select Insert an Exclusive Gateway.
Two outgoing paths are automatically generated with default labels Yes and No. These labels can be modified to represent the different process scenarios you need to represent.
Gateways often represent a point in your process where some value or condition is evaluated, so they are often named in the form of a question and the names of outgoing paths represent the answer to that question. Change the gateway name by clicking the label and entering Approved?.
When the security team does not approve the request, they send an email to the employee notifying them of the decision. Hover over the No path until the insert button appears and select Insert an Activity. Name this activity Send Notification.
The Send Notification activity is part of the reviewing phase of the process, so drag it back to the Review milestone along with the End event that completes the path.

Results: Your diagram should now look similar to the following:

Group activities into a subprocess

Subprocesses allow you to group related activities and hide lower-level complexity in your process.

Required time: 5 minutes

In the Security Badge Request process, there are two activities that are related to manufacturing the security badge. For some stakeholders, it might be important to know the details about the activities involved in creating a badge, but for other stakeholders, it might be enough to know simply that there is a step in the process where badges are created, without knowing the substeps involved. You can use a subprocess to group related activities and that subprocess can be expanded or collapsed according to the level of detail that is required by reviewers and stakeholders.

Select the Schedule Photo and Create Badge activities by using Ctrl+click. Right-click and select Convert to Subprocess.
The two activities are put into a subprocess with a start event and an end event.
Rename the subprocess by selecting the default name and entering Manufacture Badge.

Results: Tip: You can expand and collapse your subprocess by using the + and - at the bottom of the subprocess activity.

Your diagram should now look similar to the following:

Add activity and process details

A process diagram can contain more information than what activities and participants are involved in a process. To provide more comprehensive documentation about a process, you can add details to individual activities and to the overall process.

Required time: 5 minutes

The type of details you can specify in your processes might vary depending on the customization of your Blueworks Live account. You might have more details categories that are specific to your organization, or you might have a subset of the default categories.

Details are added in the Details view for a process or element. Let's add some details to the Submit Badge Request activity by right-clicking the activity and selecting Details.
The Details view for this activity already has a value for Participant, which matches the participant that is associated with the activity's swimlane. If your account makes these categories available, you can also add values for attributes like the business owner for the activity or the systems or software used. Many of these detail fields use items from your account glossary, so when you begin to type in a field, matching terms from the glossary are presented to you.
During the Submit Badge Request activity, the employee fills out a form requesting a new badge. This is the output of the activity. In the Outputs field, enter Completed Access Badge Request.
The form that the employee fills out is reviewed in the next activity, Review Request. Open the Details view of the Review Request activity.
To copy the outputs of the previous activity into the inputs of this activity, click Add Outputs from Previous Activity.
The result of the security team's review is an approval or rejection. In the Outputs field, enter Approval Status.
There is also other information that you could add to document the Review Request activity. For example, if there were related policies defined in Blueworks Live, you could link to those policies in the Policies tab. If there were other reference documents, you could add them as attachments in the Attachments tab. Or, you could add a brief description of the activity in the Documentation tab.

Play back your process for stakeholders

When you are documenting a process, there are often several stakeholders that you want feedback from. You can walk your stakeholders through the details of the process by using the Playback function.

Required time: 10 minutes

Process Playback is a way for you to step reviewers through the different paths of your process diagram, stopping at each step to examine the details and the comments that are associated with that step.

Click to change to Playback mode.
Specify a path through the process by selecting a set of connected elements. In this example, select Submit Badge Request, Review Request, Approved?, and Send Notification. Call this playback Rejection Path to distinguish it from other playback scenarios that follow alternative paths.
Click Play to step through each activity in the playback that you just created.
On the right side of the canvas, you can view the details, documentation, change history, and comments associated with each activity. Use the playback control buttons to move forward and back through the selected path.
To exit playback mode, click Exit in the playback controls.

Results: Your diagram should now look similar to the following: