Using tracking groups and timing intervals

The following transcript is for the "Using tracking groups and timing intervals in IBM® Business Process Manager" video.

Table 1. Introduction
Step Audio Onscreen action
 

Welcome to "Using tracking groups and timing intervals in IBM Business Process Manager".

The welcome screen shows the title of the video, "Using tracking groups and timing intervals in IBM Business Process Manager" and "Copyright 2013, IBM Corporation".
 

To gain insight into how your process applications are running at a particular point in time or across many executions, you can collect data about your process applications. For example, you can find out how many tasks are currently at risk of not completing on time or how long on average a particular task takes to complete if you track process information.

In this video, you will learn about the different ways to collect data about your process applications, including how to automatically track predefined metrics, how to use collect custom data by using tracking groups, and how to measure the elapsed time between arbitrary points within a process flow by using timing intervals.

The following text is displayed:

In this video, you will learn how to achieve the following goals:
  • Automatically track predefined metrics.
  • Collect custom sets of data.
  • Measure the elapsed time between arbitrary points within a process flow.
Table 2. Using tracking groups and timing intervals
Step Audio Onscreen action
 

Every business process definition, or "BPD", contains predefined tracking points at the entry and exit of every activity and gateway.

The screen shows a basic BPD with three tasks. For each task and for the start and end elements of the BPD, a check mark is added to the incoming and outgoing connection points.

 

To gather data from these tracking points, for example, to determine the duration of activities within your process application, you can enable autotracking.

To enable autotracking, select Enable Autotracking on the Tracking tab of the BPD.

The user clicks the Tracking tab, and selects Enable Autotracking.
 

To track information that is not included in these predefined metrics, such as across BPDs and across process applications, you use tracking groups.

Three images of the same BPD are shown, one on top of the other.
 

One reason to use tracking groups is to gather information about timing intervals, or subsections, of your process flow. For example, in a three-step process you might want to know how long on average it takes to complete steps one and two. You can use timing intervals and tracking groups to gather this information.

In the three-step BPD, flags marking tracking points are added before the first task and after the second task. The connection paths between these tracking points are highlighted.

 

In this example, we use the Standard HR Open New Position BPD, which ships as a sample with IBM BPM Version 8.5.

Imagine that we want to track the average time that elapses between the start of the Submit job requisition task and the completion of the Approve or reject requisition task.

Process Designer is open and the Standard HR Open New Position BPD is displayed.
 

The first step is to add tracking points to the BPD to mark the beginning and end of the timing intervals that you want to track.

Drag an Intermediate event from the palette and connect it in the flow. Name this event Start submission. In the Implementation tab, make this event a Tracking event.

The user drags an Intermediate event from the palette to between the Start event and Submit job requisition task and connects the event to the process flow.

The user renames the event to Start submission.

In the Implementation tab, the user selects Tracking event as the Implementation type.
 

To contain the data that is collected at the tracking points, you must create a tracking group. Tracking groups gather information about process variables. Using tracking groups, you can group data gathered from different but related BPDs. For example, if you have different versions of the same process application running at the same time and you want to combine the data that is gathered from both versions in one place, you use a tracking group.

Next to Tracking group, the user clicks New. The New Tracking Group wizard launches.

The user names the tracking group MyTrackingGroup and clicks Finish.
 

Add two more tracking events to mark the ends of the timing intervals that you want to track.

Because you want to compare how long on average it takes to complete steps one and two when the request is approved as compared to when the request is rejected, you need to add tracking events to both of these outgoing paths from the Approve or reject requisition task.

The user drags an Intermediate event from the palette to between the Approve or reject requisition task and the Notify hiring manager task and connects the event to the flow.

The user renames the event to Rejected.

In the Implementation tab, the user selects Tracking event as the Implementation type and for Tracking group field and selects MyTrackingGroup.

The user drags an Intermediate event from the palette to between the Approve or reject requisition task and the Find job candidates task and connects the event to the flow.

The user renames the event to Approved.

In the Implementation tab, the user selects Tracking event as the Implementation type and for Tracking group field and selects MyTrackingGroup.
 

Now you create timing intervals using the tracking points to define the beginning and end of each timing interval. In this example, we will create two timing intervals: one for process executions that follow the approved path and one for the rejected path.

Select the Submission begins tracking point as the starting point and the Approved tracking point as the end point.

Do the same with the second timing interval: selecting Rejected as the end point of the timing interval.

The user clicks the plus sign next to Performance and selects Timing Interval. The New Timing Interval wizard launches.

The user names this first timing interval Approved Path and clicks Finish.

Under Start Points, the user clicks Add and then selects the Start submission tracking event.

Under End Points, the user clicks Add then selects the Approved tracking event.

The user clicks the plus sign next to Performance and selects Timing Interval. The New Timing Interval wizard launches.

The user names this first timing interval Rejected Path and clicks Finish.

Under Start Points, the user clicks Add and then selects the Start submission tracking event.

Under End Points, the user clicks Add and then selects the Rejected tracking event.
 

Save all your changes, and then submit your updated tracking definitions to the Performance Data Warehouse by going to File > Update Tracking Definitions.

The user clicks Save, and then goes to File > Update Tracking Definitions.
 

After allowing the updated process application to run for a while and the Performance Data Warehouse tables to be populated with data, you can see the results of your performance tracking from the Process Portal Dashboards.

By default, Process Portal includes a Process Performance dashboard for viewing both autotracked performance data and timing interval data that you've configured in your BPD.

Select the process application to which the timing interval data applies. To see the average durations for the defined timing intervals, click Timing Intervals.

Our example reveals a pattern of rejections that take far less time on average than approvals, something that might prompt further investigation.

Process Portal is displayed.

The user clicks the Process Performance tab and selects the Standard HR Open New Position process.

The user clicks Timing Intervals and a bar chart that reflects the Approved Path and Rejected Path intervals are shown.
Table 3. Conclusion
Step Audio Onscreen actions
 

In this video, you learned about the different ways to collect data about your process applications, including how to automatically track predefined metrics, how to collect custom sets of data by using tracking groups, and how to measure the elapsed time between arbitrary points within a process flow by using timing intervals.

The following text is displayed.

In this video, you learned how to achieve the following goals:
  • Automatically track of predefined metrics.
  • Collect custom sets of data by use tracking groups.
  • Measure the elapsed time between arbitrary points within a process flow by using timing intervals.
 

For more information about IBM Business Process Manager, browse our other YouTube videos or visit these other official resources.

The following text is displayed:

For more information about IBM Business Process Manager, browse our other YouTube videos or visit these other official resources: