The Pennsylvania State University - Administrative Information Services, a unit of Information Technology Services

Glossary

Workflow Definitions
 
Activity/Action - A specific component within a process that is generally completed by an individual with the appropriate role. An activity also specifies any electronic forms associated with the task and the personnel assigned to carry out the task.

Business Process - A set of one or more linked procedures or activities that collectively complete a business objective or policy goal, normally within the context of an organizational structure defining functional roles and relationships.

Business Process Analyst - deals with the more tactical aspects of discovering, validating, documenting, and communicating business-process-related knowledge through modeling, simulating, and analyzing current and future states. Focus is on business outcomes versus technical "how to."

Condition - A decision point; the iBPM (Interstage® Business Process Manager) engine evaluates the specified condition and chooses the appropriate path.

EASY - Electronic Approval System (Penn State’s current online approval system)

Flow - The movement of a form through the lifecycle of a process.

IBIS - Integrated Business Information System.

iBPM - Interstage® Business Process Manager (software); the Fujitsu workflow engine.

LDAP Group - A “static” set of attributes that can be applied to all members of the group.

LDAP Attribute - A characteristic of an individual that provides a definition of who they are or what they can do.

Mnemonic - Groups or budgets used for security and access purposes.

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

OHR - Office of Human Resources

Or/And Nodes - The Or and And nodes are typically used to split and synchronize the process flow. When an Or node is reached, the node generates events on all of its outgoing arrows, splitting the process into parallel paths. When these parallel paths reach the And node, the process will not continue until all of the required events (incoming arrows) have completed successfully.

OSD Team - The Open Standards Development (OSD) Team was formed in late February 2005. They are a dedicated resource to the Workflow Project and consist of one manager and 6 developers.

PAWS (Penn State Administrative Web Suite) - A web application that serves as a central launch point for many administrative applications across the University as well as being an environment where new applications, such as Workflow, can be created.

Policy - The definition of the template upon which the process is built.

Process - A formalized view of a business process, represented as a coordinated (parallel and/or serial) set of process activities that are connected in order to achieve a common goal.

Process Design Team - Established for each Workflow process. Membership includes Process Steward, business rules experts, stakeholders, users, and Workflow application developer.

Process Steward (Owner) - is responsible for overseeing the business rules associated with the process to ensure adherence to University policy. Participates on Process Design Team.

Role - Authorization(s) that can be applied to an individual or a group.

Role Assigner - Identifies and assigns approval roles and authority to PSU employees for processes for which they will serve as an approver within their area of authority.

Role-based Approval - utilizes an approval path based on roles (Dean, Budget Admin, Financial Officer, etc.) that are required by policy for the approval of financial, academic, and administrative processes.

Role Steward - oversees and maintains central, policy-based roles and associated attributes for financial, academic, and administrative areas within their authority. Designate and authorize Role Assigners.

Sub-process - A whole process within a process. Allow the hierarchical decomposition and construction of nested processes, dramatically simplifying the construction of templates. Sub-process nodes enable users to specify which data items should be passed to the sub-process and what data the sub-process is expected to return to its parent process.

Template - A component of iBPM that models the real-world process flow within the computer world. The template is the component that defines the flow of the process.

Voting Activity - Used when the process has a task that is to be performed by every member of a group. Responses are recorded and tallied. The process continues when a condition on the outgoing arrows is met, or when a pre-set time limit is reached.

WebAccess - Penn State’s Single Sign-On (SSO) solution for Web-based services that require authentication with a Penn State Access Account userid and password.

Workflow - The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information, or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.

Workflow Application - A general term for a software program that interacts with a workflow enactment service, handling part of the processing required to support a particular activity (or activities).

Worklist - A list of work items associated with a Workflow user who serves in an approval role. The worklist is displayed upon login to the Workflow system via a Web browser.

Content Questions: Beth Hayes | Support Questions: Workflow Support