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
- Open the process.
- 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.
- Enable due dates and at-risk calculations.
Due
dates and at-risk calculations are enabled for a process by default
in the
Advanced 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.
- Enable the due date. At-risk calculations
require that the due date is enabled.
- 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.
- Optional: Set values for the Work
schedule properties. Default values are available
for all the properties.
- 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.
- Enable projected path management.
Projected
path management is enabled for processes by default in the
Advanced section
on the
Overview tab. 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.
Attention: 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.
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
- 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.
- On the Overview tab, ensure that Enable
tracking field is selected.
- On the Tracking tab, ensure that Enable
Autotracking is selected.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.