Software with improved view of a business process

• US 8,832,580 B2
• Filed: 11/05/2009
• Issued: 09/09/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Aurea Software Incorporated (ESW Capital, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Aurea Software Incorporated (ESW Capital, LLC)
• Inventors: Jambor-Sadeghi, Kamyar
• Primary Examiner(s): Pitaro, Ryan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Shiberou, Mahelet
• Application Number:
  US12/613,353
• Publication Number:
  US 20100115445A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,769 Days
• Field of Search: 715771-772
• US Class Current: 715/771
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/183 Tabulation, i.e. one-dimensional positioning
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/206 Drawing of charts or graphs

Abstract

The proper visualization of a business process plays a key role in analyzing, changing, simulating and monitoring the business process. Most BPMS systems today, provide a modeling environment where the business user can define and visualize business processes as BPMN diagrams. Some more advanced systems (such as Savvion Business Manager) enable monitoring of the business process at run-time via a color-coded view of the process diagram. While process diagram is an important view of the process, it lacks the level of abstraction needed to provide information in an optimal way to the business users. The proposed visualization, called the 360 degree view provides an optimal view of a business process without losing important details about the process.

Claims

1. A method including the steps of:

providing a business process comprising a plurality of business process steps;

generating, by a machine, an angular business process view corresponding to the business process;

with the angular business process view defining at least an angular direction and a radial direction;

with each business process step being represented as a corresponding angular block in the angular business process view, wherein each angular block is allocated an angular segment as a function of at least one of a number of parallel concurrent process steps and a number of alternatively concurrent process steps;

with a radial length of each angular block that is a function of the amount of time that the corresponding business process step takes to complete;

with the ordering of the angular blocks in the angular direction representing different process step chains or sub-chains and with the ordering of the angular blocks in the radial direction representing temporal order of the business process steps;

with process steps that are radially aligned, but angularly offset, representing parallel concurrent or alternatively concurrent process steps; and

creating, by a machine, a visual representation of the angular business process view.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of:

transforming matter based, at least in part, on a user'"'"'s review and understanding of the visual representation of the angular business process view.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

receiving, by a machine, user input through a user interface that includes the visual representation of the angular process view; and

editing the business process based on the user input.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying an annotation on the angular business process view.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the annotation includes information to facilitate online, targeted analysis.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising a step of generating an angular process heat-map for the business process.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the heat map is color coded.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein:

the business process comprises a plurality of worksteps;

each workstep has a respective completion time;

worksteps whose respective completion times are within a first predetermined time range are represented in a first color in the heatmap;

worksteps whose respective completion times are within a second predetermined time range are represented in a second color in the heatmap;

the first predetermined time range does not overlap with the second predetermined time range; and

the first color is different than the second color.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the angular business process view is generally circular in shape.

10. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising a business process related computer software program to configure a machine to comprise:

a business process module programmed to store at least one business process, with the business process including a plurality of business process steps; and

an angular view module programmed to display the business process as an angular business process view defining at least an angular direction and a radial direction, with each business process step being represented as a corresponding angular block in the angular business process view, wherein each angular block is allocated an angular segment as a function of at least one of a number of parallel concurrent process steps and a number of alternatively concurrent process steps, with the ordering of the angular blocks in the angular direction representing different process step chains or sub-chains and with the ordering of the angular blocks in the radial direction representing temporal order of the business process steps, with a radial length of each angular block that is a function of the amount of time that the corresponding business process step takes to complete;

wherein the angular view module is programmed such that when process steps are radially aligned, but angularly offset, the process steps represent parallel concurrent or alternatively concurrent process steps.

11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 wherein the angular view module is further programmed so that each angular block is generally arcuate in shape.

12. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 further comprising a user input module programmed to receive user input for the purposes of viewing, printing and/or editing the business process.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 further comprising a display output module programmed to display the angular business process view on a display device.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 further comprising a printer output module programmed to print the angular business process view on a printer.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 further comprising a diagram view module programmed to generate a diagram view of the business process.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 10 further comprising a tabular view module programmed to generate a tabular view of the business process.