BPM Overview

Similar to flows, a BPM is also a visual tool. However, it focuses on the service processes that involve user behaviors, such as approvals and ticket handling.

The differences between BPMs and flows are as follows:

• BPMs map user activities to pages, showing how users interact with the system. Flows detail the steps of a single service operation.
• BPMs come with built-in task assignment rules such as sequential approval, disjunctive signing, conjunctive signing, and voting. They can also implement complex task assignment rules based on user activities to manage intricate interaction processes.
• BPMs record a history of each user's actions, which can be reviewed in the process history. This is not necessary for non-interactive processes.

BPMs are optimal for creating interactive processes due to their capabilities in integrating page navigation, encapsulating complex task assignment rules, and enabling post-activity audits. For processes that do not involve user interaction, the utilization of flows is superfluous, and logging can impact performance.

BPMs and flows can complement each other in various scenarios. While flows manage the system's logical operations, BPMs call these flows, associating user activities with pages to facilitate human-machine interactions like approvals and ticket assignments.

BPM Designer

The BPM designer consists of the button area in the upper part, diagram element area on the left panel, canvas in the middle, and attribute configuration area on the right.

Figure 1 BPM design page

Table 1 BPM design page

No.	Area	Function
1	Button	Area for function buttons used to perform operations such activation (or deactivation), save, save as new version or new BPM, running, undo, redo, BPM tracer enabling, and version switching. Shortcut keys are supported, allowing users to operate using the keyboard without using the mouse.
2	Diagram element	BPM diagram elements. For details, see Adding Diagram Elements for BPMs.
3	Canvas	BPM design area, where you can place diagram elements to design a BPM. You can delete a diagram element or lane on the canvas.
4	Attribute configuration	Area for setting the attributes of the entire BPM, lane, or diagram element. If you click a diagram element, the configuration area on the right is the area for setting the attributes of the diagram element. If you click the blank area of the canvas, the configuration area on the right is the configuration area of the BPM. When you click a lane label, the configuration area on the right is the attribute setting area of the lane.