Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Process Modeling Concepts : Resource Patterns and Work Distribution

Resource Patterns and Work Distribution
This section describes patterns that are available to model how you want work to be distributed to resources. Resources are the people who carry out the work, and are represented in TIBCO Business Studio by participants. How these patterns are interpreted depends on your runtime environment, which may not support all the patterns.
To support the modeling of workflow patterns, the following sections are available on the Resource tab in the Properties view:
Resources (user and manual tasks)
Distribution Strategy (message events and user tasks)
Piling (user and manual tasks)
Separation of Duties (user and manual tasks)
Retain Familiar (user and manual tasks)
In addition to the patterns on the Resource tab, you can also use Chaining, which is configured on an embedded sub-process (see Chained Execution).
You can also access the Retain Familiar and Separation of Duties resource patterns by selecting tasks, right-clicking, and selecting Resource Patterns:
Resources
The participant in the Resources section is the same as the participant specified on the General tab, and specifies who or what completes the task (see Sub-Processes).
You can specify the Initial Priority, which indicates the relative urgency with which the item should be completed. By default, the priority is 200 (normal level). You can edit this to be one of the values 400, 300, 200 and 100, with 400 being the one which would be processed first.
Distribution Strategy
Set the distribution strategy for the task to offer or allocate the work to a user:
Offer To All  Select this option to specify that you want all users that match the participant definition to have the opportunity to accept or decline the work item. For example, if there is a claims handler organizational entity (such as a group), the work item is offered to all users in that group. Once a user opens the work item, it is allocated to them and removed from the work lists of other users in that group.
Offer To One  Select this option to specify that you want only one user that matches the participant definition to have the opportunity to accept or decline the work item. If the user declines the work item, it is offered to another user that matches the participant definition.
Allocate To One  Select this option to allocate automatically the work item to a user that matches the participant definition.
Re-offer Work Item Strategy
This allows a user task to be configured to re-offer the work item to any valid user (as defined in Distribution Strategy) when the user closes or cancels the work item.
Piling
Specifying that a user task may be piled means that multiple instances of that user task in a user’s work queue will be presented to the user in sequence (in preference to other work items).
To specify piling on a work item, select the May be piled checkbox and specify the maximum number of items to pile. For example:
Separation of Duties
This pattern stipulates that you want specific tasks executed by different resources. For example, the resource that prepares a contract is different from the one who witnesses it. There are several ways to specify this pattern:
On the Resources tab in the Properties view for the task
On the Task Groups tab in the Properties view for the process
Retain Familiar
This pattern stipulates that you want a specific task to be executed by the same resource that executed a previous task in the same process instance. For example, the resource that handles the initial customer contact is the same one that handles the follow-up call. Consider the following process:
In this example, all three tasks are assigned to the same organization unit. The Take Details task is allocated to a resource from the organization unit. Because the Followup task is in the same Retain Familiar group as the Take Details task, they will be allocated to the same resource as well.
If the pattern is broken for any reason the ’familiar’ resource becomes the most recent resource used. For example, resource A performs the first step in a process, but is not available when the second task is allocated, so the task is allocated to resource B. When the third task is allocated, it will be allocated to resource B, who has now become the ’familiar’ resource.
There are several ways to specify this pattern:
On the Resources tab in the Properties view for the task
On the Task Groups tab in the Properties view for the process
Chained Execution
This resource pattern specifies the intention that the workflow engine should automatically start the next work item in a case once the previous one has completed. For more information, see the workflow patterns web site:
http://workflowpatterns.com/patterns/resource/autostart/wrp39.php
This has the effect of a resource being allocated sequential work items within a process instance, and when a work item is completed, the next task is immediately initiated. This keeps the resource constantly processing a given process instance.
To provide chained execution, configure an embedded sub-process as follows:
In the Properties view for the embedded sub-process, select Chained Execution in the Properties view:
Multiple Parallel Paths in a Chaining Group
When multiple parallel paths exist in a chaining group, items will be chained in the order they are scheduled, and not the order of process flow. For example:
In the example above, User Task 1 or User Task 2 would be performed first. Both would appear in the relevant user's work list. If User Task 1 was opened first then on completion User Task 2 would be performed (it would be the only user task in the chained group available at that point). It is likely that whilst User Task 2 is completed that User Task 3 would be scheduled. This would be performed and then User Task 4 would be performed last. The user tasks would therefore be performed in scheduled order and not according to the connections between the user tasks.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved