Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ulrich Keil
SAP AG, 06/25/2004
Future Plans
A Bit of History
Part of SAP basis since R/3 Release 3.0 (pre-historic Version 2.0) First release in conjunction with first release of the business object repository (BOR)
Release 6.10: Major re-design to support UNICODE Release 6.20: Support for ABAP-OO, First integration with XI Release 6.40: Process Engine Redesign, BPE as part of XI
Costs for inefficient document handling, based on a volume of 12.000 docs per month:
$20 in labor is spent per document to file, retrieve and store. 70% of cost = transportation cost => $168.000 3% of all documents are misfiled. $120 in labor spent locating misfiled docs => $4.300
=> $15.000
RESULTS
Reduce validation errors by 50%
3
60%
Reduce the cycle time by two days Reduce the review process time by 50% Reduce lost document research by 30%
Future Plans
Workflow Modeler
Create and maintain runtime models
Inbox
Base for user interaction
Process Engine
Execute runtime models
Common Services
Container, Expressions, Data Binding, Rules, Eventing, Deadline Monitoring,
UI Technologies
UWL (Inbox) SAP GUI BSP- and iView- Inbox Groupware Integration
Task Repository
Reusable activities Data and event interface of activities Link to Org.Mgmt Link to Object Repository
Modeler
Engine
Inbox Operational
APIs
Model access Instance access Engine operations Inbox functions Ad hoc functions Eventing
SAP AG 2004, SAP Business Workflow / Ulrich Keil / #
Common Services
Communication
SAP Office (mail) ITS / AS-Webserver (HTTP) XI messaging
Operational
Reporting: LIS / BI Archiving toolkit
XI IB
BPM Process Builder
UWL UWL User Userinterface interface (iViews, (iViews, WebDynpro) WebDynpro) + Ad hoc workflow
Workflow Builder
Integration
Task Repository
Import Single Step Task Multistep Task
Def.Services
XI-BPM-Process BPEL/BPML
HTTP Server
Activation
Import/Export R
Wokflow API
Transport / Versioning R
XI Runtime
WF Engine
Workflow Manager (Flow Execution Control)
Runtime Services
Deadline Handling Conditions
HR Organisational Management
Basis Services
R R
Instance Storage
Dataflow
(Mapping) R
Expressions Workitem Manager (Step Execution Control) R R Container Event Mgr. & Correlations
Event API
R
SAP Applications
SAP AG 2004, SAP Business Workflow / Ulrich Keil / #
Committed
The workitem manager WF Application Starts methods, passes control to the Context WF application change (tRFC) WF Processes method results Application Evaluates pre- and post conditions WF Ensures transactional behavior on step level Application WF
The workflow system accesses application functionality only via the object layer, to ensure long-term stability of workflow processes.
In NW04, workflow and XI integration engine co-operate on an adapter level and, via a small set of XI services.
To dispatch a message to a ccBPM process (message-to-event bridge):
A process adapter is called by the XI pipeline. The adapter raises a workflow event associated to the message type. Event manager uses a flexible correlation mechanism to dispatch the event to a process (instance) registered as listener for that event.
The workflow engine invokes XI services to send a message (implemented as a sub- workflow) and to access mapping and receiver determination (single step tasks).
Automatically generated Message proxy objects are used to access payload and header of XI messages from within a workflow.
Future Plans
Demo
We will create a simple workflow to create and approve a leave of absence request. This will serve as a tour through the most prominent components of SAP Business Workflow: Workflow Builder Workflow Log
Workflow Inbox
Future Plans
These requirements translate into architecture requirements for the existing workflow system.
Move from a workflow engine to a process engine as platform for process oriented applications (workflow, ccBPM, GP, VIP,).
Persistence and transactional behavior are configurable properties of a process model Engine-owned execution model with full API Support other execution paradigms, e.g. rule based, state driven, etc. High performance integration with the XI integration engine Serialization of process instances (migration, load balancing, ...)
Expose re-usable service components, in particular: Eventing, Rule Repository and Deadline handling