Need a BPM Solution? You May Already Have the Key Component!
If you use Microsoft® SharePoint® as a business collaboration platform, you already have a viable business process management (BPM) solution in-house. SharePoint provides basic business process management tools that can help you manage workflows, streamline processes and evaluate performance. In addition to its out-of-the-box capabilities, SharePoint also allows users to customize their own BPM solution without any coding.
If you are currently using SharePoint for other purposes, you might not be aware of its BPM capabilities or how they compare to other packages designed specifically for business process management. Most enterprise BPM solutions consist of a business process modeling user interface, a backend workflow engine, a business rules engine, business activity monitoring (BAM) reporting and web service integration capabilities. SharePoint’s workflow features are built on a very robust workflow API from Microsoft called Workflow Foundation. SharePoint utilizes this workflow in the following ways:
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Basic BPM Functionality
SharePoint workflow allows for the automation of simple and commonly used business processes, such as financial and other approvals, document management or simple HR applications. Because these types of tasks do not typically require tight integration with other data systems or complex exception processing, modeling, optimization and monitoring, they are good candidates for SharePoint’s BPM tools. -
Preconfigured Workflows: Out-of-the-Box
SharePoint offers a few basic, preconfigured, out-of-the-box workflows. These tools are useful to list owners and those who maintain document libraries, as they allow for basic workflows and lifecycles to be added to the items within a list or library. However, these out-of-the-box workflows are not customizable. -
Configurable Workflows: SharePoint Designer
SharePoint Designer enables users to create a custom BPM solution in response to business needs. No coding knowledge is required, as SharePoint Designer allows individuals to create workflow steps with conditions and activities connected via “if/else” branches. A much wider range of workflow activities can be incorporated with SharePoint Designer than with the preconfigured options, and users are also able to add their own custom activities. However, workflows created with SharePoint Designer cannot be reused; new workflows must be created for each individual list. -
Customized Workflows: Visual Studio
Visual Studio, a developer tool with a graphical user interface (GUI), enables SharePoint users to create a highly customized BPM solution. The GUI allows users to create a visual workflow; however, developing these workflows requires .NET and Workflow Foundation knowledge. The advantage of Visual Studio is that customized workflows created with it can be reused once deployed.
Once the necessary workflows have been developed using one of the options above, users who wish to achieve the functionality of an enterprise BPM solution can do so by integrating the workflows with web services using SharePoint Designer:
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Web Services Integration
In order to achieve web services integration, users should create an assembly for a set of service operations based on a relevant grouping. Setting this up in a SharePoint environment is fairly simple, and involves the following steps:- Determine the web services that will need to be invoked, and create a Web Reference (stub) for those services using Visual Studio.
- Create a custom Activity class.
- Create an XML file for the activity and define all of the necessary inputs and outputs. This is the file SharePoint Designer will reference during workflow creation.
- Within the XML file, create a field that enables the workflow creator to select the inputs and outputs and specify the web service to be called.
While this article provides a brief overview of how to use SharePoint to create a BPM solution, formal business process management training can provide the knowledge you need to choose and implement the best BPM solution for your organization.
