Procx 2.1 is out!

Today we have gone live with the new version of
Procx. There are some exciting
new features in the
product including:

• The ability to start a process from an email.
• Create Microsoft Word and Excel documents in the process.
• Start a process from a database table.
• Support for global variables.

Also an important offering we now have is the
services offering.
Now you can buy from our online store, besides the licenses you need for Procx,
also services like the creation of InfoPath and other type of forms, Web
Services for database integration and other related services, allowing you to
buy the whole solution and starting to benefit from Procx right away.

There are many other details in the product that will make the creation of
processes and flow definition event more creative.

We have also made available a series of movies where you can see Procx in
action and how the integration with SharePoint and InfoPath works. You can see
them here.

Procx Tip #5 – Organizational Charts

When working with general users in the enterprise, we always need to understand how they relate to each other. Thinking about a person as an entity can bring us a lot of trouble when we are trying to model a process for the organization.

Users don’t do tasks for themselves, they always need information (either from the customer or from colleagues) so they are always in constant contact with other employees in the company and with their direct superior. This last person act as facilitator in process execution.

So, what’s the best way we can use to model users in the organization? The most common way to do it: Organizational Charts. They give us an easy way to create roles, create hierocracies of roles, define departments and assign final users of these roles and the levels they belong to. Levels give us another easy way to handle hierocracy in the company. In this case, the organizational chart has the intelligence to know who are the managers or directors of a certain department.

When building a process, assigning roles to execute the activities is as simple as selecting them from the organizationa, chart. At the time of execution, though, is where the magic comes in. when you assign for example, a direct role to an activity, Procx will go and get the actual user from the organizational chart. But, we can also assign an activity to a manager, and depending on who started the process, Procx can know automatically who’s department manager to sent the request.

This kind of modeling give us full power when working with processes and activities through the organization and let us view it as a whole.

Procx Tip #4 – Integration

When you are orchestrating business processes in the organization, what you are controlling is the flow of information. This information can be used for taking decisions using business rules, creating documents, etc. In some time of the process, generally at then, the information needs to be persisted in some sort of system for later consultation and reporting.

Procx provide this capability using industry standard Web Services. Inside processes, you can place web services activities and send information from forms through them. This allows you integrate with third party systems like accountant systems or customer relationship management systems. In a expense approval process for example, at the end you may want to send this information to the accounts payable system directly. Even more, if your third party application supports it, you can print the check also. Possibilities are endless.

Not only you can send information, but you can also receive information inside processes using Procx. You can use this for example for taking decisions. In a loan application, during the process you may want to check the credit score of the applicant, and make decisions based on that.

When talking about integration, web services are the best technology tool to use. They are easy to build by developers and almost any new software application is coming with pre-built web services for integration purposes.

Procx Tip #3 – Workload Balancing

Assigning tasks to people in an organization is what defines the everyday operations of a company. Request can come from anywhere in the organization or from outside and they must handled in a certain way. For example, a bank must handle loan requests from customers or the accounts payable department must handle expense request forms from any department.

As the company grows, the amount of requests also grows. Sometimes we need to balance the amount of work between several group of people. We can assign requests to them base for example in a one by one basis. We assign one loan request form to official 1, the next one to official 2 and so on until starting again from official 1. Or, we can assign more requests to the fastests official, so we can increase productivity.

Both models of assignment are supported in SkyXoft Procx activities. You can configure the group of roles that will handle requests and the type of assignment. You’re incrementing the performance of processes automatically besides the performance gain from automating them.

Procx Tip #2 – SharePoint Integration

If you are using a business process management or workflow application like Procx, you can maximize the benefit and your ROI if you use a document management system.

A document management system provides a central repository for documents (any kind of documents), versioning, metadata for documents, advance search capabilities and other collaboration tools (like discussion forums, contact lists, task management, schedules, etc.) that will let you collaborate with the whole company in a better way.

Out of the box, SkyXoft Procx supports Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services (the free version) as a document management system (also supports physical folders). But not only provides support, it also adds integration and a series of tasks that can be used at any moment during your process.

When you define a process in Procx, you can attach it to a document library in SharePoint. Any document created or saved in the the library will automatically start the process. You can also assign processes to folders inside document libraries, and not having to create multiple document libraries for various processes.

Some of the tasks you can use in your process include the Lock Document and Unlock Document that allows you to check-in and check-out a document from a document library and preventing other people from modifying it during the process execution. You also have the Copy Document and Move Document that allows, as the name implies, to copy or move a document. But, not only do this, it can copy or move the document across document libraries or across document libraries of different sites and also (as is this was not enough ) the document keeps it’s version history.

Other useful task is the Document Library that allows you to use the already defined custom fields (the metadata) of the document library where the document resides. You can use this fields for creating business rules in the process, filling out forms or send them to other third party systems using Web Services. A field list from the document library will look like the figure on the right.

This kind of integration will provide the most benefit to any SharePoint installation and also, to any Procx installation, letting you master and coordinate your company processes altogether.