SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RESPONSIVE PROCESS MANAGEMENT DRIVEN BY BUSINESS VISIBILITY AND COMPLEX EVENT PROCESSING

• US 20130018702A1
• Filed: 04/17/2012
• Published: 01/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/22/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Progress Software Corporation
• Original Assignee: Progress Software Corporation
• Inventors: BATES, John, SMITH, Daniel D., THUMMA, Prashant, BORKIN, Sheldon, PONNAN, Ayyappan, NAMBOODIRI, Subhash K., GARIMELLA, Phanendra B., CLOUTIER, Jean-Francois, MOHAN, Murali, KETABCHI, M. A.
• Granted Patent: US 10,528,906 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.36
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/067 Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A business process management (BPM) system, a business event processing system, and a business visibility system are integrated into a responsive process management platform using standardized messages to permit communication and collaboration among the systems. The BPM system has the capability to model and execute at least one monitoring process including at least one monitoring workstep. This monitoring process makes visible in the BPM system processes of interest that are executing in external systems. The business event processing system and/or the business visibility system have tools to allow users to easily configure those systems to sense events and send appropriate standardized messages to the other systems, can extract and send data to the BPM system, and can send alerts to the BPM system.

Claims

1. A responsive process management platform comprising:

a business process management system;

a business visibility system programmed to dynamically discover services deployed in an enterprise business services infrastructure; and

a business events processing system programmed to analyze business events;

wherein the business process management system is programmed to communicate with the business visibility system and with the business events processing system regarding the execution of worksteps through a standardized message format.

2. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the business process management system includes a monitoring process to model a process executing in a system external to the business process management system.

3. The responsive process management platform of claim 2, wherein the business visibility system is programmed to initiate in the business process management system an instance of a monitoring process to model a process executing in a system external to the business process management system.

4. The responsive process management platform of claim 3, wherein the business visibility system is further programmed to initiate an advance from a first workstep to a second workstep in the instance of the external business process management monitoring process in response to sensing when the first workstep completes.

5. The responsive process management platform of claim 4, wherein the business visibility system is further programmed to provide a graphical user interface to permit configuration of the sensing of events corresponding to completion of a workstep.

6. The responsive process management platform of claim 4, wherein the business visibility system is further programmed to communicate with at least one of the business process management system and the business events processing system through the standardized message format in response to sensing when the first workstep completes.

7. The responsive process management platform of claim 2, wherein the business events processing system is programmed to obtain events external to the business process management system and events from the business visibility system.

8. The responsive process management platform of claim 7, wherein the business events processing system is programmed to identify from an obtained event an event that should initiate an instance of a monitoring process.

9. The responsive process management platform of claim 8, wherein the business events processing system is further programmed to identify from an obtained event an event that should initiate an advance from a first workstep to a second workstep in the instance of the monitoring process.

10. The responsive process management platform of claim 8, wherein the instance of the monitoring process that the event should initiate corresponds to a process executing in a system external to the business process management system.

11. The responsive process management platform of claim 10, wherein the business events processing system is further programmed to provide a graphical user interface to permit configuration of the sensing of events corresponding to completion of a workstep.

12. The responsive process management platform of claim 11, wherein the business events processing system is further programmed to communicate with at least one of the business process management system and the business visibility system through the standardized message format in response to sensing when the first workstep completes.

13. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the business visibility system is programmed to extract and send data to the business process management system using the standardized message format.

14. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the business event processing system is programmed to extract and send data to the business process management system using the standardized message format.

15. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the business visibility system is programmed to send an alert to the business process management system signifying an exception condition using the standardized message format.

16. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the business event processing system is programmed to send an alert to the business process management system signifying an exception condition using the standardized message format.

17. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the standardized message format includes messages in accordance with a Java Message Service API.

18. The responsive process management platform of claim 1, wherein the standardized message format includes messages in accordance with a Web Services API.

19. A business process management system comprising:

an external monitoring process to model a process executing in a system external to the business process management system;

wherein the external monitoring process is programmed to communicate with a plurality of external systems regarding the execution of worksteps in an instance of the monitoring process through a standardized message format.

20. The business process management system of claim 19, wherein the external monitoring process is further programmed to hold for in-order execution messages for sequential execution of worksteps within the monitoring process received out of order.

21. The business process management system of claim 19, further comprising a graphical user interface having icons representing monitoring worksteps from external systems and from internal processes.

22. A responsive process management platform comprising:

a business process management system; and

a business events processing system programmed to analyze business events;

wherein the business process management system is programmed to communicate with the business events processing system regarding the execution of worksteps through a standardized message format.

23. A responsive process management platform comprising:

a business process management system; and

a business visibility system programmed to dynamically discover services deployed in an enterprise business services infrastructure;

wherein the business process management system is programmed to communicate with the business visibility system regarding the execution of worksteps through a standardized message format.

24. A responsive process management platform comprising:

a business process management system having an external monitoring process to model a process executing in a system external to the business process management system; and

a business visibility system programmed to dynamically discover services deployed in an enterprise business services infrastructure;

wherein the business process management system and the business visibility system are programmed to use a standardized message format to permit the business visibility system to initiate at the business process management system an instance of an external monitoring process.

25. A responsive process management platform comprising:

a business process management system having an external monitoring process to model a process executing in a system external to the business process management system; and

a business event processing system programmed to to analyze business events;

wherein the business process management system and the business event processing system are programmed to use a standardized message format to permit the business event processing system to initiate at the business process management system an instance of an external monitoring process.

26. A method of monitoring a business process comprising:

modeling a business process involving operations at least partially external to a business process management system;

creating an instance of a monitoring process;

updating a state of the monitoring process in response to detection of events in the corresponding business process; and

displaying the state of the monitoring process.