Use a Dynamic Process in a Structured Process
If your business process is mostly predictable (structured) but part is unpredictable and non-sequential (dynamic), accommodate both by calling a dynamic process from your structured process.
Our previous hospital emergency room example demonstrated calling a structured process (Surgery) from a dynamic process (Emergency Room). Want to learn more? See Use a Structured Process in a Dynamic Process.
But now let’s imagine a different twist in our example: Surgery (a structured process) followed by post surgery (a dynamic process).
What’s dynamic about the post surgery process?
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The patient may need no additional action, except to be discharged and go home.
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Minor complications could develop, that might require follow-up care or treatment.
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In rare cases, the patient might develop major complications and require extensive treatment.
Let’s get started creating:
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A structured process for the overall surgery tasks. The doctor begins the surgery process, and the patient gives consent. (For the purposes of our example, we’ll imagine that the surgery itself involves additional steps not covered here.)
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A dynamic process to model the unpredictable post-surgery tasks. For this example, we’ll limit the activities to discharge and, minor and major complications.
To call a dynamic process from a structured process, we’ll complete these major steps:
Create a Structured and a Dynamic Process
We’ll start a new simple process application (Emergency2) to house the structured and dynamic processes.
Add Human Task Activities to the Structured Process
Let’s add a couple of human task activities that we know will be typically performed in a simple surgery process.
Create a Form and Its Presentations
Let’s create a form with multiple presentations that you apply to the human task activities. We’ll start by creating a form and a presentation for the structured process’ start event. Then we’ll create different presentations to customize the form for the various human task activities in our process application.
Configure the Dynamic Process Input and Tasks
Define the dynamic process’ input to control what type of data starts the dynamic process. Also, implement each human task activity with a form presentation.
In our example, we have to set the input arguments such that the patient’s first and last name can be the input data for the PostSurgery dynamic process.
Configure the Structured Process to Call the Dynamic Process
Now that you’ve created the processes and form presentations for users to perform tasks, and also defined the input data for the dynamic process, let’s set up the structured process. This includes configuring the structured process to initiate the dynamic process, and configuring data association so that data flows from the structured process into the dynamic process.
Configure Data Association for the Dynamic Process Activities
Define data input and output for the human task activities in your dynamic process by configuring data associations for them.
In the PostSurgery Process, set data associations for the Patient Discharge, Minor Complications and Major Complications human task activities, so that the patient’s first and last name gets auto-populated when these activities are performed in runtime.
Try Out the Process Application in Test Mode
Now that you’ve set up the process application in design time, let’s try out the process application in runtime, as users would.
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In the structured process, the patient receives an approve task to provide consent for the post surgery treatment phase, which initiates the post surgery dynamic process.
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A health worker uses the dynamic process to perform activities that fit the patient’s post surgery status.
Begin by test activating.
Congratulations! You’ve just successfully configured a process application that calls a dynamic process from a structured process.