1. Workflows and business process modelling for CERN's Electronic Document Handling system Rostislav Titov, GS-AIS-EB Section Leader, CERN

2. CERN e – Business EDH Electronic Document Handling @ CERN

3. CERN e – Business Paper Purchase Order

4. CERN e – Business Almost any Procedure

5. CERN e – Business Accelerator Material Storage Annual Appraisal Automatic Small Order (< 500CHF) Change of the local address Contract Request Declaration of family situation Emergency contacts End of probation period authorization End-of contract authorization Export Formalities request External Training Request Fire Permit Identification of Radioactive Waste Illness declaration Import Formalities declaration Induction Interview follow-up Inter-departmental funds transfer Internal Purchase Requisition Invoice authorization Language Training Reimbursement Leave Request Official Travel Claim Official Trip On-site Training Request Opening of Post Request Overtime request Part-time working schedule request Payment to Third Party Pro-forma invoice request Reception of Goods Reimbursement of Candidate’s Expenses Request for an Advance Request for External Funds Request to Access Computer Centre Request to Access Restricted Areas Request to Drive CERN vehicle Request to Enable/Disable Alarm Request to Import merchandise (EU or Switzerland) Request to Perform Maintenance Work Request to Purchase from Stores Request to transit the French/Swiss Tunnel Request to use Forklift Truck/Tractor/Crane School fees Reimbursement Skills Inventory Staff Selection Subsistence Claim Sundry Expenses Claim Telephone Subscription Request Temporary Labour request Termination check-sheet Tracking of interventions Travel To Home Station e-business “CERN’s EDH enables staff to focus on CORE activities by to focus on CORE activities by minimizing the overhead of minimizing the overhead of business processes” business processes” > 270’000 documents in 2010 > 14’000 users from many countries Used by all CERN personnel

6. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

7. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

8. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

9. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action ********

10. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action Already Approved

11. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action XML Order

12. CERN e – Business Workflow in Action

13. CERN e – Business Business processes - Collection of activities that produce a service or product - Can be represented by a graph (WF-net)

14. CERN e – Business Workflow Management System Workflow engine Notification management Visual process designer Process visualization Debugging Error handling and exception management Software for designing and executing workflows

15. CERN e – Business Workflow Standards 2000/05 XLang (Microsoft) 2001/03 BPML (Intallio et al) 2001/05 WSFL (IBM) 2001/06 BPSS (ebXML) 2002/03 BPEL4WS 1.0 (IBM, Microsoft) BPEL4WS 1.1 (OASIS) 2002/062003/01 WS-Choreography (W3C) 2003/04 WSCI (Sun et al) WSCL (HP) 2002/082007/05 WS-BPEL 2.0 BPEL and BPMN are Industry Standards –Standards based approach ensure longevity of the workflow engine –Supported by the big players in the industry (Microsoft, IBM, SUN, Oracle…) 2004/05 BPMN 1.0 (BPMI) 2009/01 BPMN 1.2 (OMG) 2011/01 BPMN 2.0

16. CERN e – Business BPEL Web Services Business Process Execution Language Developed by IBM, Microsoft and SAP in 2003 WS-BPEL 2.0 - 2004 BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask - 2007

17. CERN e – Business BPEL XML language for defining behaviour of a process –that provides web-service(s) –that uses web-services –everything it sees is a web-service no other external interactions Definition: OASIS

18. CERN e – Business BPEL Process Example

19. CERN e – Business BPEL Process Example ns15:docId cern:getExpression('S', '10000M', $budget/ns14:budgetCode, $doctype) ns15:expression 3 ns15:signatureDelay ns15:exclusionList 'STD_FIN_UNLIMITED_SIGN_ENG_MSG' ns15:engMessage 'STD_FIN_UNLIMITED_SIGN_FRE_MSG' ns15:freMessage

20. CERN e – Business BPEL Design IDE

21. CERN e – Business BPEL Activities Structured activities – can contain other activities one after the other in parallel choose by inbound message choose by expression evaluation iteration nest, with declarations and handlers, synchronize Communication send msg to partner; possibly receive response accept msg from partner send msg to partner as response to Other manipulate variables for duration / until time end the process run compensation handler of inner scope exit with fault to outer scope do nothing

22. CERN e – Business BPEL Engines Evaluation DesignerLinks in designer XPATH tools Open source Java basedHalt on fault and retry DebuggingProcess versioning Web based tools Active BPEL Oracle BPEL IBM WebSphere PXE Cape Clear Parasoft BPEL Maestro Vergil VCAB Twister / Agila BPEL IT Pearl BEA Weblogic workshop SupportedPartly supportedNot supported

23. CERN e – Business Our Choice: ActiveVOS Robust server with a good track record –One of the first BPEL vendors on the market The core engine was open source –Widely used / well tested –Fully supports the standards ActiveVOS Enterprise builds on the OS Engine and adds: –Process versioning –Halt on fault/retry –Clustering –Multi-tenancy Persistent data is clear XML

24. CERN e – Business Integration with applications Two ways to interface with other applications –Through a Web Service Invocation Native to BPEL Creates “noise” in the process More complex to implement Can interface to any language In EDH used for read/write functions –Custom XPath functions Not completely standard (part of JAXEN) Lightweight mechanism in Java BPEL engines Can be called in assigns or in the condition statements In EDH used for read only functions

25. CERN e – Business BPEL Strong Points BPEL is a standard! –Supported on different platforms –Interfaces to various languages Web Service interface Good integration with Java Easy to integrate in development/deployment environment

26. CERN e – Business BPEL weak points Verbose and heavy language (WSDL interface, technical activities e.g. assign) Loops have to be explicitly declared (links back to already executed steps are not allowed) Rigid process model (even when debugging) Transaction management (currently)

27. CERN e – Business BPMN Business Process Modelling Notation Maintained by the OMG consortium (they also maintain UML specs)

28. CERN e – Business BPMN Graphical representation of a business process –can be used both by developers and business analysts –no standard executable translation –can be translated to BPEL

29. CERN e – Business BPMN Elements Events – something that happens in the system Activities – some work to be done Gateways – split or merge paths depending on conditions Connections – connect elements Swimlanes – used to define roles Sequence flow Conditional flow Default flow Pool Lane Closed lane

30. CERN e – Business BPMN Process Example Source: Wikipedia Seller Buyer Sales Manager Sales Representative Make proposal Consider proposal Change proposal Send proposal to the client Handle order Close the case Receive request Not approved Approved Inform the client about processing Order received Proposal rejected

31. CERN e – Business BPMN Events Message Start Timer Cancel Error Compensation Conditional Signal Link Complex Terminate IntermediateEnd ThrowingProcessing Plain Plain events–usually indicate beginning or end of a process. Message events–indicate sending or receiving a message Timer events–regularly happening events, time periods and timeouts Error events–error generation and handling Cancel events–cancel a transaction or react to a cancellation Compensation events–start a compensation process or compensate Conditional events–integrate business rules in the process Signal events–exchange signals between processes Complexevents–choose from multiple events Link events–link processes (for example, on multiple pages) Terminate events–immediately stop without error handling or compensation

32. CERN e – Business BPMN Activities Multiple instance – this task has to be done multiple times for each object Task Multiple instance ||| Loop Task – a task to be done Loop activity – do task until the loop condition is met Subprocess – a complex task (a process within process)

33. CERN e – Business BPMN Gateways X Exclusive OR (data-based) – Choose one outbound path. Synchronization: process continues once any inbound path has been completed O + Exclusive OR (event-based) – Choose a path where an event happens. The next element should be an event or an event-handling activity Parallel gateway – split a process into parallel branches, all of which run at the same time. Synchronization: wait for all processes to finish and then continue Inclusive gateway – Choose one or multiple outbound paths. Synchronization: process continues once any inbound path has been completed Complex gateway – split or merge the process based on a complex rule

34. CERN e – Business BPMN Connections Simple Conditional Default Sequence Flow – shows the order in which activities are executed Message Flow – shows exchange of messages Associations – logical associations between elements

35. CERN e – Business BPMN Strong Points Intuitive Can be used both by developers and business analysts –Bridging the gap between process design and implementation

36. CERN e – Business BPMN weak points Converting to executable environments is still not obvious

37. CERN e – Business Signature Event Signature event is a task for interacting with people (e.g. ask to approve or reject a document) BPEL4People: “WS-HumanTask” ( definition of human tasks and notifications)  2KCHF signature Approved Rejected

38. CERN e – Business Thank You E-mail: Rostislav.Titov@cern.ch For More Information

39. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Sequence - First A, then B, then C

40. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Parallel Split - B and C start together once A finishes

41. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Synchronization (AND-Join) - C starts once A and B finish

42. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Choice - If Condition1 then B, if Condition2 then C,...

43. CERN e – Business Basic Workflow Patterns Merge - D starts when B ends or when C ends