Integrating People, Process and Services

Integrating People, Processes and Services An Overview of ActiveVOS Capabilities

AN ACTIVE ENDPOINTS PAPER

© 2010 Active Endpoints, Inc. ActiveVOS is a trademark of Active Endpoints, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.

2010

Contents Unifying Service Orchestration and Human Workflow ........................................................ 3 ActiveVOS Task Management Components ........................................................................ 5

ActiveVOS Central ........................................................................................................... 5 Initiating Processes .................................................................................................... 5 Completing Tasks ....................................................................................................... 6 Visibility through Reports .......................................................................................... 8

Forms Auto‐Generation .................................................................................................. 8 Task List RSS Feeds ........................................................................................................ 10 JSON Binding ................................................................................................................. 11

Integrating People, Processes and Services ....................................................................... 12 Conceptual Overview of the OASIS WS‐HumanTask Standard ..................................... 12 Process “People” Activities ........................................................................................... 13 Task Escalation, Reassignment and Notifications ......................................................... 14 Assigning Users and Groups and Mapping Roles to Tasks and Notification ................. 15 Rendering a Task Form ................................................................................................. 16 Task Form Creation ....................................................................................................... 17 Process Request Forms ................................................................................................. 18 Customizing ActiveVOS Central .................................................................................... 18 Deploying Forms, Reports and ActiveVOS Central Configurations ............................... 19

Summary............................................................................................................................ 19 About Active Endpoints ..................................................................................................... 20

Copyright © 2010. Active Endpoints, Inc. Page 2 of 20

Unifying Service Orchestration and Human Workflow Business processes commonly involve both people and software applications, but automating interactions among software systems is quite different from automating interactions among people. Not surprisingly, products and technologies have typically emphasized one or the other.

Active Endpoints’ ActiveVOS business process management system (BPMS) resolves this dichotomy by providing a unified solution that addresses both needs. To see why this is a challenge, think about the characteristics of automated interactions among software systems. Typically known as orchestration, application interactions are usually predictable and relatively static. The logic that directs this interaction can be defined once, and then used over and over without changes. Systems typically exchange structured, well‐defined data, such as XML documents, that can be effectively processed by software without human intervention.

Contrast this with human workflow, which coordinates interactions among people. Applications interacting on behalf of people tend to need much more flexibility than those that interact purely with software systems. People change their minds, introduce new ideas and exceptions, decide to cancel a process unexpectedly and do other things that make effective human workflows significantly more dynamic than system workflows. Human workflows also typically work with less‐structured, human‐readable data, such as email and text documents, rather than the structured information used in system orchestration.

Given the different requirements of these two perspectives, it’s not surprising that addressing both in a single technology has been challenging for vendors. Solutions available today tend to be proprietary, expensive and complicated, and thus difficult and infeasible to adopt widely throughout an enterprise

ActiveVOS makes it possible to use service‐oriented standards to combine people, processes and services into a unified whole. ActiveVOS includes a rich task management system for users to work on the activities that have been assigned to them by a business process. The forms that are used for these tasks are not simple HTML forms, but are rich Internet applications that can access and present information that is relevant to the user’s task even when that information is not part of the


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business process. The ability to perform ad‐hoc activities or request help is readily available to the user.

ActiveVOS leverages AJAX technologies so that the web browser is the entire presentation tier of the task system. This means that the browser communicates with the server using web service calls instead of simple HTML over HTTP. This eliminates the need for a presentation tier on the server and greatly simplifies the architecture of the entire system, offering users a rich and appealing working environment that can be built quickly with skill sets available today within the enterprise.

Using ActiveVOS, human activity is integrated into the business process in the same way as systems and services are integrated. The outcome of integrating people, processes and services is unsurpassed visibility into what’s happening. This enables true business process management.

The results of using standards include improved freedom of choice, the ability to apply technology across a broad set of usages and reduced vendor lock in. ActiveVOS’s task list system is an implementation of the OASIS WS‐HumanTask standard. The WS‐HumanTask specification and BPEL4People companion BPEL version 2 extension specification allow human and system interactions to be integrated into unified services‐based applications. By leveraging standards to incorporate human activity and services in composite applications, project teams can reuse skills learned across a variety of applications. As a result, the flexibility and efficiencies gained by these teams in delivering standards‐based solutions are greatly expanded.

In addition to providing architectural simplicity and powerful capabilities for creating a rich end user experience, ActiveVOS also includes forms generation and editing tools that permit new tasks to be created quickly and easily.

This document describes ActiveVOS task management components, the relationship between human and system activity, how to be effective with task execution and management and what means to offer end users to carry out tasks, while arming managers with the tools needed to maintain visibility over the processes they are responsible for.


ActiveVOS Task Management Components

ActiveVOS Central As process‐driven human tasks become an increasingly common part of day‐to‐day work, the ability to link these tasks with the request that initiated them becomes increasingly important. Having the ability to look up progress for ongoing work is equally important. When reviewing tasks, it is also likely that work might need to be initiated for others to carry out. And, it is necessary to be able to see reports that detail status and throughput. In other words, as process‐based applications become more and more common, users need a central place to interact with these business processes, to check on their status and to manage additional work that processes may require.

To meet these needs, ActiveVOS includes ActiveVOS Central – a rich Internet application ‐ that consolidates in one place the ability to initiate processes via forms or perform lookups for status of a request, carry out tasks and access reports to help users and managers better manage work.

ActiveVOS Central is configurable and role‐based. Through configuration, you can organize navigation and make relevant to your users their tasks, reports that are pertinent to them and specific forms they can use to start a particular process.

Initiating Processes ActiveVOS Central’s request navigation pane is a launch pad for users wanting to initiate work by invoking a process. Users do so by selecting a request form from one or more folders that have been created for them. These folders are configured on a per‐role basis by an administrator or a developer using ActiveVOS Designer. In addition, roles can be associated with specific forms making it possible to enable role‐based task initiation.

The following image shows the request navigation pane used to navigate to locate a form of interest.


Completing Tasks Using ActiveVOS Central’s integrated and role‐based task list, users can:

• Claim and complete tasks assigned to them, and managers can assign or reassign tasks to users

• Quickly preview tasks and comment on tasks

• Attach documents and view comments provided by others on the task or in earlier steps of the process.

• Open multiple tasks in separate tabs allowing work on multiple tasks at once

• Organize work using simple filters for open or closed tasks, or filters pre‐configured for users by administrators to group tasks in arbitrary ways


When a task is selected, the form is displayed in a preview pane (shown above) and the user can process the task. Double‐clicking or selecting the “Open in Tab” action on the toolbar opens the form in a new tab as shown below.


Visibility through Reports The reports navigation pane consolidates access to ActiveVOS’s dashboards and reports. As is the case for other ActiveVOS Central navigation panes, report availability can be configured by user role.

Developers creating new reports using ActiveVOS Designer’s Eclipse‐based Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) reporting framework can easily configure access to their reports for users’ convenience in ActiveVOS Central.

Developers can integrate ActiveVOS reports in portals and Web pages using ActiveVOS’s ability to expose report execution or access to a cached report via a URL. ActiveVOS can also be used to generate reports and email these to users according to a schedule. Among a number of options is the ability to specify optional report output format, allowing the report to be exposed as .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt or .xml formats, in addition to the default HTML format.

Forms AutoGeneration ActiveVOS Designer makes it easy for developers to create attractive, easy‐to‐use forms that have the look and feel they want. Forms design is fully integrated within ActiveVOS’s development environment. Using ActiveVOS Designer, a developer creates request forms to initiate a


process or perform a status lookup of a running process, or task forms used to complete tasks.

ActiveVOS Designer auto‐generates task and request forms. ActiveVOS forms are comprised of auto‐generated HTML and JavaScript. These forms use modern and standard approaches to constructing HTML pages that are styled through CSS style sheets. Auto‐generated forms can be deployed to the server as is, without any change – no coding is required. It just works.

HTML allows developers to leverage the skills they have today to create attractive task and process forms. HTML allows developers and the Web developers they work with to modify and visually enhance forms using the built‐in HTML editor or any HTML editor of the user’s choice. The use of auto‐generated jQuery‐based JavaScript makes it easy for developers to create sophisticated forms and customize them at will.

Editing label text, selecting column styles, organizing content of the form and incorporating rich controls are performed directly on the canvas and property sheets.

Forms are saved within the ActiveVOS Designer workspace in which they are defined, and are packaged and then deployed to the ActiveVOS Server Catalog along with the process.


ActiveVOS Designer also makes it possible to create information‐rich forms that mashup information from different sources including web pages via iFrames or web services. This provides end users with contextual information that helps them complete a task or initiate a process.

ActiveVOS Designer gives total control over the form’s content, such as the ability to expose collapsible sections or tabs. Using ActiveVOS Designer or a favorite web page designer, developers can create a compelling and rich UI with little effort.

Task forms call directly into the WS‐HumanTask service and request forms invoke the services exposed by ActiveVOS. As previously mentioned, forms can also embed the ability to invoke services to present contextual information to users. This approach to user interface creation eliminates the need to build and maintain a separate presentation tier on the application server. All that is required is HTML, Javascript and the services these consume.

Task List RSS Feeds Businesses and their employees have a wide variety of office productivity tools at their disposal. Many of these tools (e.g. portals and mail clients) can integrate data from other applications by subscribing to RSS feeds. ActiveVOS automatically produces RSS and ATOM feeds for task lists. These tasks lists can then be easily integrated into RSS/ATOM‐aware productivity tools and portals.


JSON Binding ActiveVOS exposes its processes and services via the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) binding in addition to SOAP, REST and JMS. The JSON binding is used by all ActiveVOS Central forms.

This makes it easy for developers already familiar with JavaScript to invoke processes and obtain responses from them, freeing them from the need to learn and obtain SOAP libraries to build applications that leverage ActiveVOS service‐based processes. JavaScript developers can now use various libraries such as jQuery that ships with ActiveVOS or others such as those offered with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to build process‐enabled applications. Of course, developers familiar with XML can continue to use the SOAP, REST and JMS bindings.


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Integrating People, Processes and Services In this section we describe the concepts of tasks and notifications, task management capabilities, roles, forms and customization of ActiveVOS Central.

Conceptual Overview of the OASIS WSHumanTask Standard The OASIS WS‐HumanTask standard and its companion BPEL4People BPEL version 2 extension are the standards that ActiveVOS implements to integrate people, processes and services.

Human tasks, or simply tasks, enable the incorporation of people in service‐oriented applications that are built using ActiveVOS. In essence, tasks are services “executed” by people.

Here, an approval task for a personal loan, which is an example of a human task, is outlined. The process starts with the processing of loan application information that has been gathered from a borrower by a customer service representative. If the loan amount exceeds a prescribed limit or risk or an anomaly is detected, a BPEL process will route the request to a person. It does so by creating a task for a specific individual or a group of individuals. Using WS‐HumanTask, this is achieved when the process invokes a human approval “service” (a person) that is responsible for performing the work – in this case, an approval.

When the process invokes the human approval service, a task is added to the task list of potential approvers. There may be one or more approvers. Approvers can then claim the task, evaluate the loan data and complete the task by either approving or rejecting it. If a single potential approver


exists, the task will automatically be assigned and auto‐claimed for that person.

The approver’s response returned to the process indicates whether the loan has been approved or not, and the process can then proceed to execute its remaining activities.

A human task has two interfaces. One interface exposes the “service” offered by people (e.g. an approval service). The second interface allows the individual using a task list client like ActiveVOS Central to interact with tasks such as obtaining a list of tasks waiting for them or viewing the details of tasks.

Tasks can be defined to react to timeouts, triggering an appropriate escalation action. This also holds true for notifications. A notification is a special type of human task that notifies users and managers of noteworthy business events. Notifications are one‐way. ActiveVOS’s task management system simply issues notifications to individuals without waiting for an acknowledgement of receipt.

Process “People” Activities A People activity represented here as a BPMN activity is a BPEL version 2 construct introduced by the BPEL4People specification. A People activity is used to create a task or a notification. It uses process variables as input and output to the task or notification.


Additionally properties of a People activity can be used to:

• Defer activation of a task, or expire a task. You can specify when a task becomes active. For example: “Activation of this task is deferred until the time specified in its input data.” You can specify the expiration of a task using a duration of time or a specific date. For example: “This task expires if not completed within 14 days after having been activated.”

• Specify the assignment of tasks to an individual, a group of individuals or a role

• Specify the priority of a task.

The inputs to a task or a notification may include various elements of information in addition to attachments and comments from prior steps in the process. Task output capabilities are the same.

Task Escalation, Reassignment, Notifications Tasks also have properties. You can define start and completion deadlines for a task as shown here.

If a deadline is not met, a notification to the user can be issued, tasks can be reassigned, a service can be invoked to take specific action or email can be sent.


These capabilities ensure that tasks are always handled on time. This is supplemented by built‐in task management reports and the ability to define reports that provides business users with the means to know the status of work directly from ActiveVOS Central.

Assigning Users and Groups and Mapping Roles to Tasks and Notification A task or notification can be assigned to a specific user, a specific group of users or roles that when resolved at runtime, map to users and groups. ActiveVOS provides multiple means by which to make such assignments: they can be computed by the process dynamically or assigned statically at design‐time. They can also be resolved at runtime using an identity provider such as LDAP or performing a lookup in a database.

Once resolved, a user’s role is used by ActiveVOS Central to present navigational elements, forms, reports and task filters that have been assigned to that role, and the ActiveVOS task list presents tasks assigned or available to the user to work on.

The construct used to perform the mapping is a Logical People Group. A Logical People Group is a named list that represents users or groups defined by an identity provider, such as your company’s LDAP directory. ActiveVOS’s Identity Service can be configured to perform user and


group resolution at runtime. Instead of naming the actual users or groups who can manage processes and tasks, you can refer indirectly to them from a Logical People Group. Doing so allows you to change the composition of groups without requiring a change to the process.

A Logical People Group can also have parameters, such as “customer service representatives from the eastern region,” that can be associated with a query at deployment time. At runtime, the parameters get resolved.

Rendering a Task Form A process can have a number of different tasks and notifications it presents to users. Each may have different inputs (fields, attachments, and comments) and tasks may likely differ in the output they return. How information is presented to a user is specified by what is called task and notification rendering.

Rendering is the association of a user friendly form for the task’s interface input and output messages. When a user views a task the details are displayed in an HTML form. A user reads the input information and uses a variety of form controls to enter and submit a response.

ActiveVOS Central’s task list uses this rendering information to present the correct form to users at runtime.

ActiveVOS Task Rendering

Creating and associating rendering forms is simple with ActiveVOS. When ActiveVOS Designer auto‐generates Task and Notification forms it automatically annotates the process with the information necessary for a task list client like ActiveVOS Central to select the appropriate form to show users at runtime.

Auto‐Generated Rendering Forms

The rendering auto‐generation performed by ActiveVOS Designer automates the creation of all visual HTML form elements for tasks, notification and request forms. The supporting and embedded JavaScript is also auto‐generated. Each part of the input, output and fault message structures received and returned to the process are auto‐generated.


ActiveVOS Designer automatically generates appropriate fields on forms using the data type information associated with input and output fields. Simple data types are rendered as HTML controls as follows:

Data Type HTML Control

boolean radio button

numeric text input

date text input (includes a date time chooser)

datetime 2 text input (includes date chooser & time chooser)

string text input

xsi any text area (User must enter well formed xml content to pass validation)

enumeration selection box

Repeating elements are also supported.

The use of HTML and JavaScript then makes it possible for developers to provide logic to the form to pre‐compute and provide sophisticated validation of form fields.

Task Form Creation To start creating a task form, a developer selects the “Create Form” button from the task’s “Renderings” tab, as shown below. The form is then ready to use and deploy immediately based on a default layout.

Developers can then use the embedded HTML designer or tool of their choice to enhance the layout and look of the form.


Process Request Forms ActiveVOS Designer makes it easy for a developer to select a service interface and start designing the form used to invoke the process. It does so by automatically inspecting the process service interface which it presents to the developer as a list of input and output elements. It used this information to auto‐generate the form used to invoke the process or call an operation of the process to obtain status information for example.

Customizing ActiveVOS Central Which forms, tasks and reports are displayed to a user role and which navigational elements are present is configured using the ActiveVOS Central Configuration document.

Using ActiveVOS Designer developers generate a configuration document for all or specific processes to tailor user experience. This document provides the means by which to configure role‐based access to categories of requests, tasks and reports.

When deployed configurations can be enabled or disabled as is the case for the configuration that ships with ActiveVOS. This provides an extremely powerful and declarative means to configure ActiveVOS Central.


This same approach to configuration is what enables ActiveVOS to support customization of help links, graphics and localization resource bundles required to support use of ActiveVOS Central and forms in multiple languages.

Deploying Forms, Reports, and ActiveVOS Central Configurations Forms and ActiveVOS Central configurations deploy the same way as process definitions do: via web service based deployment, ANT‐based scripted deployment or file‐based deployment.

Deploying changes to forms, reports and configurations is a simple point and click operation. A simple browser refresh or a user login in is all that is required for users to obtain access to the update.

Summary ActiveVOS helps teams deliver unified and integrated business process applications that integrate people, processes and services in one easy‐to‐use product.

This document described ActiveVOS task management components, the relationship between human and system activity and the means offered to end users and managers to carry out and manage work.

ActiveVOS is a model‐based process development and execution system that allows developers, architects, project/development managers and business analysts collaborate on process design and implementation using the standardized Business Process Modeling (BPMN) notation. This collaboration extends to form design to create a rich and contextual user experience that helps users carry out their work. ActiveVOS Central then consolidates in one place the ability to initiate processes, carry out tasks, and access the information necessary to users and managers to better manage work.

ActiveVOS makes it possible to use service‐oriented standards to combine people, processes and services into a unified whole. Using ActiveVOS, human activity is integrated into the business process in the same way as systems and services are integrated. The outcome of integrating people, processes and services is unsurpassed visibility into what’s happening. This enables true business process management.



About Active Endpoints Active Endpoints, Inc., (www.activevos.com) is a leading platform provider for building custom, service‐oriented business process applications. ActiveVOS, the company’s flagship product, empowers project‐based development teams to create business process management (BPM) applications using services, making their businesses more agile and effective. ActiveVOS promotes mass adoption of SOA‐enabled BPM applications by focusing on accelerating project delivery time with a complete, affordable and easy‐to‐use system. Active Endpoints is headquartered in Waltham, MA with development facilities in Shelton, CT.

To find out how Active Endpoints can help your business, visit http://www.activevos.com, call +1 781 547 2900 and press 1 for Sales, or email us at [email protected].

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Integrating People, Process and Services

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