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Donka Dimitrova and Ral f Schaub, SAP AG
Technical column | SAP NetWeaver Unleashed
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This article appeared in the Jan n Feb n Mar 2009 issue of SAP Insider and appears here with permission from the publisher, Wellesley Information Services (WIS), www.WISpubs.com.
All companies have internal corporate processes —
such as order-to-cash or procure-to-pay — by which
they do business. But these processes are often
cumbersome, unwieldy, and error-prone, involving
many manual steps. We’re sure you can think of at
least one process within your company where it takes
an email or a phone call to alert a co-worker that a
certain task is awaiting his or her review and approval.
What’s more, not all companies have standardized
or documented their processes, and even fewer can
say that they’ve optimally designed their processes
to help them best achieve their corporate performance
goals. Especially in tight economic times, document-
ing your processes and making them as efficient and
productive as possible are critical priorities; to stay
competitive, companies need to have their processes
under control so that they can nimbly change them to
meet shifting customer needs.
These business reasons have prompted a new line
of solutions, business process management (BPM)
applications, which provide IT organizations with a
framework of tools to model, deploy, and execute
processes. SAP has come to market with SAP NetWeaver
Business Process Management (SAP NetWeaver BPM).
With the first release of this solution (see sidebar),
customers can document and execute their processes,
Gain Control of Your Critical Business ProcessesDesign, Document, and Deploy Them with SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management
Donka Dimitrova (donka.dimitrova @sap.com) is part of the product management team for SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management (SAP NetWeaver BPM). She is focused on early customer adoption programs, leading the SAP NetWeaver BPM Design Partner Council, which consists of 10 SAP customers selected from different industries and worldwide locations. The council’s mission is to help the SAP team validate BPM goals, concepts, and technology throughout the entire software life cycle.
easily connecting human and system activities in a
single, seamless workflow, regardless of how many
different business applications they cross.
SAP NetWeaver BPM supports a model-driven
approach to documenting and managing business
processes throughout their life cycles, and it enables
collaboration between business and IT experts via
multiple views in one process modeling environment.
This article will show you the key steps of how
to design and deploy a business process using
SAP NetWeaver BPM.
An Insider’s Look at SAP NetWeaver BPM: Functionality and ToolsSAP NetWeaver BPM consists of three building blocks
(see Figure 1):
The Process Composer is the design-time environ-
ment of SAP NetWeaver BPM. It’s a seamlessly
integrated, separate perspective of SAP NetWeaver
When Is SAP NetWeaver BPM Available?Now! SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management (SAP NetWeaver BPM) and SAP NetWeaver Business
Rules Management (SAP NetWeaver BRM) are two new components of SAP NetWeaver Composition
Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE). The components were released at the end of 2008 with enhancement
package 1 for SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1.
The integration between SAP NetWeaver BPM and SAP NetWeaver BRM allows customers to implement
executable, rule-based business processes and to achieve transparency and maintenance agility for
their corporate processes. Stay tuned for an upcoming SAP NetWeaver Unleashed column that will offer
additional information about the highlights, features, and use cases of SAP NetWeaver BRM.
FIgure 1 p The building blocks of SaP netWeaver BPm
Ralf Schaub ([email protected]) is a member of the SAP NetWeaver Solution Management organization. He has worked for more than 10 years in the SAP industry. Ralf joined SAP almost eight years ago and has held various positions throughout EMEA and Asia Pacific, from technology consultant to solution architect to product strategist. For the last two years, he has been focusing on shaping the SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management offering from a strategy perspective.
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Developer Studio, the Eclipse-based design-time tool
of SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP
NetWeaver CE). It provides business process model-
ing notation (BPMN) capabilities, which allow easy
and intuitive process modeling for both business
process experts and developers in one common
environment (see Key Term box). The Process
Composer supports all stages of process modeling —
from the high-level definition of the process down to
its actual development, deployment, and execution.
Process life cycle aspects (versioning, transport, etc.)
are also fully supported.
The Process Server is a newly developed, Java-
based engine that represents the run-time services
for SAP NetWeaver BPM.
The Process Desk is the human interaction manage-
ment part of SAP NetWeaver BPM. It’s used for manag-
ing processes and tasks and for displaying process
details. The Process Desk is composed of four tools:
Universal worklist (UWL) is the central access
point for tasks, alerts, and notifications. The UWL
is based on the portal platform.
Task execution user interface provides a UI for
any given task within a process.
Process list displays all running, completed, and
canceled processes that are relevant for the user.
Process visualization shows the process as a
diagram, similar to the visualization scheme in the
Process Composer. Using process visualization,
users can display details on individual objects — on
a task, for example.
How to Model, Deploy, and run a Process with the Process ComposerUsing the tools within the Process Composer,
business users can draw their business processes
without having to rely on IT for any manual coding.
In the Process Composer perspective, you will
find the Project Explorer view, a structured, hierar-
chical view of a process’s composition elements
(see Figure 2). Here, business users can navigate to
process-flow drawing objects, including processes,
data types, tasks, services, rules, and functions.
These process objects, which reside in the Process
Composer Palette, are grouped into five categories:
KeyTermBusiness process modeling notation (BPMN) is a standardized
graphical notation for drawing business processes in a workflow that all
business stakeholders readily understand. BPMN differentiates human
and automated activities; human activities normally trigger tasks that end
users execute, whereas automated activities are executed by a system.
¨
FIgure 2 q The Process
composer, the design-
time environment of
SaP netWeaver BPm
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Activities — Flow objects that represent different
process steps (human activity, sub-process, etc.)
Events — Flow objects that represent when some-
thing happens with the process (start event, end
event, intermediate error event, etc.)
Gateways — Flow objects that illustrate a split
or merge of the process flow (exclusive choice,
parallel split, etc.)
Connections — Flow objects that represent connec-
tions between activities, events, and gateways
(sequence flow, data flow, etc.)
Artifacts — Data objects and annotations
Users can draw the process diagram by dragging
and dropping the necessary flow objects from the
Palette or by using speed buttons that show up
around the process elements once they are dropped
into the process canvas (see Figure 3). The following
sections walk through how to draw each part, stage,
or event within a business process.
Set Up the Process Flow Diagram
Business users can represent each of their business
processes as a pool with one or several lanes (refer
back to Figure 2). A pool is a graphical container that
separates a group of activities from other pools, and
lanes are groups of activities associated with a
certain business role or function. A lane could also
represent a business system in which an automated
activity (a service) will be running.
The process diagram could contain several pools,
but only one pool is active and executed at run time.
The others are passive and contain activities external
to the main process — your supplier process, for exam-
ple — and are represented for documentation purposes
only. Once you’ve set up the basic pool or lane struc-
ture, continue to model the process based on the
events and activities that happen in your business.
Create an Event
Event objects represent actions that could happen
within a process, such as the start of the process or
an unexpected error.
Every process flow begins with a start event. Acti-
vating this start event requires a user to assign a
service interface to it. Once the process is deployed,
the call of the Web service interface will trigger
the process; a new process instance will be created.
An intermediate error event is used for capturing
errors that could happen during the process
execution — for example, if a Web service assigned to
an automated activity does not complete correctly.
An intermediate timer event is an action related
to a time constraint.
An end event is used after the process step that’s
considered the last step in the process.
A termination event is used to model a business
flow exception at the end of the process, usually
for abnormal behavior like wrong, missing, or
inconsistent business data.
Create a Human Activity
Collaborative, or “human-centric,” business processes
represent sequences of process steps performed by
humans and systems as part of one flow. The steps
performed by humans are called human activities,
and they are always associated with a task.
The task itself is a request for a human to perform
an action; it has a specific priority, UI, potential and
excluded owners, time constraints, and other proper-
ties. The task could be assigned to one or several
human activities within one process and could also be
assigned to human activities from different processes
created in the same development component.
You can create a list of common tasks in advance;
then, this list would be visible in the Process Compos-
er’s Project Explorer view for all users who are work-
ing on this specific project. When a user drags and
drops a task from the Project Explorer view into the
process canvas, the system automatically recognizes
it and creates a human activity for it.
Create an Automated Activity
Process steps that a business system performs are
represented in the process diagram as automated
activities, and they are always assigned a relevant
service interface. The Web services necessary for the
FIgure 3 u how to create
a process within a
process flow using
speed buttonsSpeed buttons
4 NoTe!
You can look at your
process diagram
through two views:
an outline view,
which shows the
hierarchy of the
process flow
elements, or a
miniature view,
which is used for
adjusting the area of
the process diagram
that’s visible in the
main process layout.
This miniature view
is especially helpful
for large, multi-lane
processes that
expand beyond the
width of your
monitor screen.
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process could be imported from three different
sources: the Enterprise Services Repository (ES
Repository), the Services Registry (SR), or a remote
location or local system.
SAP NetWeaver BPM’s out-of-the box integration
with the ES Repository and the SR is an important
piece of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) story
for SAP customers. This integration makes it easy for
customers to find and consume large numbers of
predefined Web services from SAP, helping compa-
nies build their own composite applications.
Create Sub-Processes
A sub-process is a reusable process flow element you
can use when modeling a parent process to reference
another process you’ve already modeled. Sub-processes
have a start and an end event containing the same
service operation. You can use sub-processes to
reduce the implementation effort for business
processes that have common process flow parts.
They also come in handy for reducing the complexity
of business process diagrams.
Set Up Process Contexts and Data Types
When a process executes, its relevant process data
can be stored in what’s called the process context.
The SAP NetWeaver BPM process context is repre-
sented by a data structure defined in an XML schema
definition (XSD) file. Data types could either be
imported as XSD files or defined manually. Data
types are created automatically when a task is
linked with a Web Dynpro user interface and also
when an imported WSDL file contains data type
definitions.
Dragging and dropping a data type from the Project
Explorer view into the process diagram defines the
data structure of the process context and allows
the mapping of the input/output parameters of auto-
mated activities, human activities, sub-processes,
and events. With this mapping, you’re defining the
information that is transferred from one process
step to another.
Enforce Business Rules in the Process Model
Business rules — including pricing or approval rules,
for example — complement and accelerate process
management via the automation, management, and
alignment of critical business decisions. There are
two ways to design and use business rules when
modeling a business process: You can create the
business rules directly with the Process Composer or
use the Rule Composer, which is a separate Eclipse-
based design-time perspective of SAP NetWeaver CE.
Using the Process Composer, you can model
process-specific rules and use them as a rule function
to make a gateway decision and to resolve the
mapping of different data types. You can also create
rules for dynamic task assignment and to achieve
rule-based responsibility determination — all directly
in the Process Composer.
Using the Rule Composer, you can model widely
applicable business rules, including “if/then” rules or
complex decision tables. Once deployed, business
rules created with the Rule Composer could be called
from the user interface or exposed as Web services
and very easily consumed through the automated
SaP netWeaver BPm
integrates with the
enterprise Services
Repository and the
Services Registry out
of the box. This is an
important piece of
the Soa story for
SaP customers.
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activities of the business process flows designed
using the Process Composer.
Deploy and Run the Process
Now that you’ve built your process, linked the under-
lying business data, and established any applicable
business rules, the final two steps are to deploy and
run the process. Do this by right-clicking on the
process development component, clicking “Build,”
and then clicking “Deploy.”
SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio also provides a
debugging perspective for processes created with
SAP NetWeaver BPM; you can use it to debug the
process flow, as well as to check the process behavior
and the values of the process context data at every
process step.
Once your process is up and running, you can use
SAP NetWeaver Administrator to monitor and manage
it. Because of the tight integration between SAP
NetWeaver BPM and SAP NetWeaver Administrator,
users can easily monitor the health of their business
process throughout its life cycle.
SAP NetWeaver BPM: outlook for 2009The delivery of SAP NetWeaver Business Process
Management is just the beginning of an exciting and
dynamic BPM story for SAP customers. The next
release of SAP NetWeaver BPM, planned for the end
of 2009 with the release of SAP NetWeaver 7.2, will
include additional capabilities and enhancements:
Enhanced end-user experience. To ease user
interface development, support for SAP NetWeaver
Visual Composer will be added. Support for offline
SAP Interactive Forms software by Adobe will also
be included; this software allows users to participate
in processes by receiving an email with an attached
form, completing this form, and sending it back to
the process engine for further processing.
Analytical data about process instances, tasks,
and other process-related attributes will be provided
through the Universal Data Interchange (UDI) of
SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, which allows
direct access to BPM process metadata (start time,
end time, duration, and processors, for example).
The ability to create lightweight reports on this
data through SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer is
also in the works.
Accelerated process composition. Composite process
developers will benefit from a variety of enhance-
ments in the Process Composer itself. Most note-
worthy will be the support for additional BPMN
artifacts, such as loops and exceptions.
Extended business rules integration. The integra-
tion of business rules will also be a major enhance-
ment in SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2. Adding a UI for
tactical change management will improve the agility
of deployed composite processes and allow business
users to make ad hoc rule changes at runtime.
Taking BPM to the next level. Providing SAP
NetWeaver BPM for the composition of business
processes is only the first stage. The next level will be
to provide a comprehensive process view across
application and composite processes. This will ease
composition and process management for all process
domains in the SAP business application space.
With its enhancements and new capabilities,
SAP NetWeaver BPM 7.2 will allow customers and
partners to efficiently compose and deploy
composite business processes. Customers will also
be able to gain critical insights into the efficiency of
their process execution, allowing them to discover
opportunities for process improvements that can
bolster their business.
For additional information about SAP NetWeaver
BPM, please visit https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/
nw-bpm. Here you will find a trial version of
SAP NetWeaver BPM (referred to as Project Galaxy),
which you can download and use to start modeling
your own business processes. n
...from The SAP NetWeaver/BI and Portals 2009 conference in Orlando,
March 24-27, 2009, for best practices on using SAP NetWeaver technology
(www.sapnetweaver2009.com)
SAP BPM Tools, an SAP Insider Multimedia Training CD
(www.sapinsidermultimedia.com)
Business Process Management: The SAP Roadmap by Jim Hagemann
Snabe, Ann Rosenberg, Charles Møller, and Mark Scavillo (SAP PRESS,
www.sap-press.com)
AdditionalResources...
composing business
processes with
SaP netWeaver BPm
is only the first stage.
With future releases,
customers will be able
to gain critical insights
into the efficiency of
their process execution.