A dynamic workflow authorization method based on participant expression rules

Many requirements for a business process depend on the workflow execution data that includes common data for all the population of processes, state of resources, state of processes, etc. The natural way to specify and implement such requirements is to put them into the process definition. In order to do it, we need: (1) a generalised workflow metamodel that includes data on the workflow environment, process definitions, and process execution; (2) a powerful and flexible query language addressing the metamodel; (3) integration of a query language with a business process definition language. In this paper the mentioned workflow metamodel together with the business process query language BPQL is presented. BPQL is integrated with the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) increasing significantly its expressiveness and flexibility. We also present practical results for application of the proposed language in the OfficeObjects® WorkFlow system.

Current workflow products can support more complex modeling of business processes, workflow engine mechanism is well researched, but the link between organizational elements and process activities is less well understood. In access control, most products can only support fixed role-based task assignment, not enough in considering more complex security policies, such as DSOD, task binding of duties, and temporal constraints, that important in dynamic workflow system. This paper examines workflow access control requirement in practice, analyzes WFMC workflow meta-model, and adopts the R&TBAC approach to separate role-based organization and task-based authorization-step modeling, and especially designs an agent-based dynamic policy enforcement mechanism to bridge the gap. The intelligent task assigning agent to be defined as a virtual participant in workflow process definition, and creating within workflow engine controlled available task instance, acts as to evaluate task dynamic authorization policy to provide eligible task participant role-set based on its information model. This paper gives a formal specification of the workflow authorization model, and designs the agent information model, assigning policy model, and function model in detail. The modeling approach can widely adapt to various existing workflow systems and can automatically change policy as enterprise organization or business process definition need changing.

During the early 1990s, workflow technologies were the only ones to offer a transversal integration capacity to the enterprise applications, thus allowing the representation and the enactment of business processes. However, the formalisms developed for workflow specifications were almost systematically activity oriented. Consequently, the resulting process definitions have the advantage to be easily transformable in executable code, but the disadvantage of being prescriptive and rigid. Recent works underline the needs in term of flexible and adaptive workflows, whose execution can evolve according to situations that cannot always be prescribed. In fact, a flexible representation of business processes is an asset to maintain the fit between business processes and their supporting systems in an evolving environment. This article proposes a conceptual framework for an intention‐driven modeling of flexible workflow applications. The purpose of the underlying modeling formalism is to define an integration/orchestration for islands of business process chunks and their support systems in order to create and to maintain the fit between them. The modeling framework offers the ability to represent in the same business process definition the well‐structured process chunks as well as the ill‐structured orad hocones. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) emerged as a leading framework in the process of value creation for firms. Its core notion complements the premise of the resource-based view of the firm and is considered an important theoretical and management framework in modern information systems research. However, despite DCT's significant contributions, its strength and core focus are essentially in its use for historical firm performance explanation. Furthermore, valuable contributions have been made by several researchers to extend the DCT to fit the constantly changing IT environments and other imperative drivers for competitive performance. However, no DCT extension has been developed which allows firms to integrally assess their current state of maturity to derive imperative steps for further performance enhancements. In light of empirical advancement, this article aims to develop a strategic alignment model for IT flexibility and dynamic capabilities and empirically validates proposed hypotheses using correlation and regression analyses on a large data sample of 322 international firms. The authors conjecture that the combined synergetic effect of the underlying dimensions of a firm's IT flexibility architecture and dynamic capabilities enables organizations to cope with changing environmental conditions and drive competitive firm performance. Findings of this study suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between firms' degree of strategic alignment—defined as the degree of balance between all dimensions—and competitive firm performance. Strategic alignment can, therefore, be seen as an important condition that significantly influences a firm's competitive advantage in constantly changing environments. The proposed framework helps firms assess and improve their maturity and alignment of IT flexibility and dynamic capabilities. This article concludes with a discussion, suggestions for future research and managerial implications are also discussed.

Проблемы мировой экономики, вызванные пандемией COVID-19, оказали существенное влияние на уровень и качество жизни населения многих стран. Корректно идентифицированные и выстроенные бизнес-процессы, способность их быстрого анализа и корректировки в условиях новой действительности позволили государствам снизить риски стагнации национальной экономики. В статье исследованы теоретические аспекты бизнес-процессов, история их становления, разобраны труды наиболее ярких представителей научного мира, посвятивших себя этой проблеме, сформулированы основанные на их достижениях и недостатках новые определения актуальные на сегодняшний день, а также представлено авторское определение бизнес-процессов. The problems of the global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a significant impact on the level and quality of life of the population of many countries. Correctly identified and structured business processes, the ability to quickly analyze and adjust them in the conditions of the new reality allowed states to reduce the risks of stagnation of the national economy. The article examines the theoretical aspects of business processes, the history of their formation, analyzes the works of the most prominent representatives of the scientific world who devoted themselves to this problem, formulates new definitions based on their achievements and shortcomings that are relevant today, and also presents the author's definition of business processes.

Plugins and workflow activities are compiled as assemblies and run in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Some of the most complex CRM development is found in the .NET code associated with these two types of components. With CRM 2011, JScript and REST services provide a great deal of additional functionality that was not readily available in previous versions, such as creating and updating data. However, for many process and business requirements, plugin and workflow activity assemblies are still required.

The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) specification enables process designers to represent the decision logic and requirements of business processes. When integrating DMN models into processes it needs to be assured that the correctness of the process is not impaired. The precise semantics for executing DMN models in the context of a business process permits to broaden existing soundness notions for workflow verification to encompass such decision-aware processes. This paper presents correctness notions for processes referring to DMN conform decision models and groups them in a manner that follows the intuition of the well established soundness notions for workflow nets. In doing so, we also make use of the different possible states the process can be in at the point at which a decision is made.

Context: Business Process Automation (BPA) is adopted by organizations to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase overall business performance. Traditional Business Process Automation (TBPA) is one of the three approaches employed to develop a BPA. TBPA entails developing BPA in a programming language for integrating the relevant applications in the digital ecosystem to execute a given process. Process variability and practitioner unavailability encumber the requirements specification for TBPA software. Objective: This work proposes a log-based approach for TBPA software to make software more adaptable to process changes and reduce dependence on practitioners, by providing a higher alignment among business process requirements and software architecture, and employing process mining to semi-automatically discover the business process during requirements elicitation. Method: The research conducted a case study in a technology institute to assess the approach and report its results in practice. Results: The results revealed significant improvements in adaptability to business process changes and decreased the time spent with practitioners, and, efficiency in development. The approach also presented limitations, including human intervention to accurately obtain the business process, complexity to trace the process into the architecture, data privacy concerns, and risk of network traffic overload. Conclusion: This research demonstrated the effectiveness of traceability between process requirements and software architecture, as well as the use of logs and process mining. These methods made TBPA software enhanced the software adaptability to changes and minimized the dependence on practitioners during requirements elicitation respectively.

Nowadays, the problem in business process management (BPM) is that BPM systems should both be easy to use for business process developers and be based on a sound formal method. Business process management systems are often based on semiformal modeling techniques such as event-driven process chains (EPC) or UML. Unlike semiformal modeling techniques, the process calculus CSP comes with mature verification sup- port. Surprisingly little work has been done on using CSP for business process modeling and management. In this paper, we present our approach to business process management, which is based on the observation that CSP is well suited not only for specifying business processes and verifying work???ows but also for executing work???ows using our CSP4J framework. We report on a work???ow server, which is specified in CSP and implemented using our CSP4J framework. The server accepts work???ows that are modeled in CSP and also implemented using CSP4J. This allows us to integrate the mature verification support of CSP into both the management system itself and the development process of the end users’ business process definitions.

Workflow systems have won widespread enterprise adoption due to their role in automation of executive processes. It leads to the development of a wide-range of workflow systems with different design technologies which aid design and implementation of workflows. Though difference in implementation issues, all workflow systems conform to a generic paradigm, which is exposed by abstract substrate of Workflow Patterns. Workflow patterns provide a coherent template for design of workflow systems. However, the dynamism presented in business environments, demands support and management of dynamic changes in the workflow systems designed. To accommodate dynamic change management, we introduce Workflow Change Patterns. Workflow change patterns, abstracting the dynamic behavior of workflow systems, provide a sound substrate for management of dynamism in workflow systems. Based on this idea, we capture and introduce a portion of change behavior of workflow systems in the form of control-flow and data change patterns.

Summary form only given. Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are usually designed to run with the workflow (process) definitions and artifact definitions from repository. The static characteristics for process definitions might reduce the practicability of the systems. The cost to develop a WfMS is so high that it is reasonable to take the flexibility of system architecture into account. In this paper, we present an approach to adapt to dynamic changes on workflow definitions with agents. In our agent-based workflow system, the definition of a workflow can be modified by the agent itself. Therefore, agents can modify their guidance for workers, and the system is more flexible to meet the specification modification.

It has recently been demonstrated that checklists can enable significant improvements to patient safety. However, their clinical acceptance is significantly lower than expected. This is due to the lack of good support systems. Specifically, support systems are too static: this holds for paper-based support as well as for electronic systems that digitize paper-based support naively. Both approaches are independent from clinical process and clinical context. In this paper, we propose a process-oriented and context-aware dynamic checklist support system: Trace book. This system supports the execution of complex clinical processes and rules involving data from Electronic Medical Record systems. Workflow activities and forms are specific to individual patients based on clinical rules and they are dispatched to the right user automatically based on a process model. Besides describing the Trace book functionality in general, this paper demonstrates the support system specifically on an example application that we are preparing for a controlled clinical evaluation. At last we discuss the limitations of Trace book.

Intraoperative image documentation is becoming more and more important for quality management in medicine, in terms of forensic documentation, research and teaching. Up to now, no software‐based OR‐image‐documentation system fits satisfactorily into an OR‐workflow. The objective of this study is to transparently show system integration in a clinical workflow for evaluating demands on future system developments. An example of the OR‐workflow is presented for the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Tuebingen (Germany). Twelve representative gynecologic laparoscopic surgeries were analyzed by using the critical path method (CPM). CPM network diagrams are shown for an actual laparoscopic workflow and for a workflow including an OR‐image‐documentation system. With the objective not to increase the total time of actual workflow, the maximum system operation time can be calculated for each period of time. Before surgery the maximum system operation time is xmax = 7,3 minutes. After surgery it has to be assumed that system operation will increase total workflow time. Using the CPM to analyze requirements for system integration in a medical workflow has not yet been investigated. It is an appropriate method to transparently show integration possibilities and to define workflow‐based requirements for the development process of new systems.

In September 2008, Origin completed a $9.6 billion transaction with ConocoPhillips to form Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG)—a fifty-fifty coal seam gas to liquified natural gas joint venture. As the upstream operator, Origin is planning to ramp up production to more than five times present production levels. In a two-year period, Origin tripled Queensland CSG production volumes to 300 Tj per day. This expansion was based on existing business systems and processes and it was recognised that additional capability would be required to further ramp up production and associated activities. A project was commissioned to build operational capability and capacity—processes, systems, organisation design and people—to efficiently drill the required number of production wells. This priority project addressed a business objective to step up the drilling of CSG production wells from approximately 60 to 350–400 per annum. The transformational solution comprised three key components: business process re-engineering, technology development, and organisational re-design. The solution included the definition, documentation and transformation of business processes—this ensured consistent, repeatable and scalable processes capable of drilling of 350–400 wells per annum. The processes are now enabled by resource scheduling and document management systems that are fully integrated. The resultant well delivery system is managed by a team that provides the business with decision making information regarding the resource use required to support the delivery of the APLNG commitments. Given the transformational nature of the solution, the delivery of all three components was under-pinned with change management impact assessments, education, communications and deployment. The total solution was deployed in August 2010.

Recent studies explore context-awareness as a new paradigm and principle in BPM (Business Process Management). However, there is still a lack of consensus on the meaning of context related concepts in the BPM area. While most people tacitly understand what context is and use context to optimize business processes, they find it hard to define. Researchers commonly provide their own definitions according to their own background and expertise, which leads to diversity and inconsistency. Hence, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the context concepts of context-aware BPM based on an extensive literature review. We excessively review and analyze existing definitions of the context concept, and propose a pyramid model to depict the trade-off between generalization and specification. Definitions of context-aware business processes have been derived from various perspectives of how a business process can potentially benefit from being aware of its context, which can be broadly classified to three categories including process flexibility, personalized services and knowledge-intensive tasks. Then we propose our definitions of the context of a business process and the context-aware business process, which can be used in general applications. In addition, context related concepts of business processes, including context-sensitive, -aware and -adaptive business processes, are clarified and distinguished to set the theoretical foundation of context-aware BPM consistently.