Oracle®
Workflow delivers a complete workflow management system that supports business
process based integration. Its technology enables modeling, automation,
and continuous improvement of business processes, routing information of
any type according to user-defined business rules.
Oracle Workflow
Enables E-Business Integration
E-business is accelerating
the demand for integration of applications within the enterprise as well
as integration of a company's systems with trading partners and business-to-business
exchanges. Oracle Workflow automates and streamlines business processes
both within and beyond your enterprise, supporting traditional applications
based workflow as well as e-business integration workflow. Oracle Workflow
is unique in providing a workflow solution for both internal processes
and business process coordination between applications.
The Heart of
an E-Business
The quick changes
required of an e-business place special demands on enterprise systems to
manage business process that span trading partners, respond quickly to
market innovations, support personalized business rules, streamline and
automate transaction flows, and manage exceptions instead of transactions.
Oracle Workflow provides the capabilities to support these demands through
an extensible process driven architecture. Oracle Workflow automatically
processes and routes information of any type, according to business rules
you can easily change, to any person or system inside or outside your enterprise.
Oracle Workflow is a scalable, production workflow system tuned for the
high volumes associated with e-business integration.
Oracle Workflow
allows you to provide all parties in a business process with all the information
they need to make the right decision in an efficient manner. Oracle
Workflow can route summary and detail information to each decision maker
in your workflow process, whether that process is a self-service transaction,
a standard business document approval, or an XML document.
Oracle Workflow
lets you model and maintain your business processes using a graphical workflow
builder. Unlike other workflow systems that simply route documents
from one user to another with some approval steps, Oracle Workflow allows
you to model and automate sophisticated business processes. You can
define processes that loop, branch into parallel flows and rendezvous,
decompose into sub-flows, branch on task results, time out, and more.
Expressing business rules in the process model enables model-driven integration.
Oracle Workflow acting as a system integration hub can apply the business
rules to control and route objects between applications and systems with
minimal intrusion into those applications and systems.
Oracle Workflow
extends the reach of business process automation throughout your enterprise
and beyond to include any e-mail user, Web user, or system via standard
internet protocols. Oracle Workflow allows people to receive, analyze,
and respond to notifications needing their attention via any standard e-mail
system, or any standard Web browser. You can easily include your customers,
suppliers, and prospects in your workflows using the power and convenience
of the Internet.
The heart of
Oracle Workflow is the rules-based workflow engine residing in the Oracle9i
database. Oracle9i transactional integrity guarantees consistency
between your application and workflow, and Oracle9i Advanced Queuing
guarantees delivery of messages between systems, while Oracle9i Real
Application Clusters provide transparent application scalability. You get
the same industry-leading performance and scalability that has made Oracle9i
the database for e-business.
Oracle's E-Business
Integration Solution
Oracle Workflow
is a component of Oracle9i Integration, a comprehensive set of infrastructure
and tools for integrating enterprise applications and enabling e-business
marketplaces. Oracle Workflow leverages the Oracle technology stack, including
the Oracle9i database and Oracle Advanced Queuing, to enable application
integration at the business process level. Business event messages from
Oracle Workflow can be placed on or received from Oracle9i Advanced
Queues, providing support for Oracle Net as well as HTTP and HTTPS communication
protocols. The Oracle9i Messaging Gateway feature enables integration
between Oracle Workflow and other messaging solutions such as IBM MQSeries
and TIBCO Rendezvous.
Oracle Workflow
is also incorporated as part of Oracle9i Integration in the Oracle
E-Business Suite, an integrated suite of applications for the enterprise
designed to transform your business into an e-business. Oracle Workflow
is embedded in applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP),
Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Human Resources Management
Systems (HRMS).
Workflow Means
Continuous Process Improvement
Transforming your
business into an e-business involves changing the technology and processes
of your organization to quickly respond to market innovations. Oracle
Workflow gives you the flexibility you need to support your business.
Oracle Workflow allows complete process representation that can cross organizational
as well as company boundaries. You have the ability to incorporate
the collection of management metric data to evaluate against your performance
goals. Workflow processes can be easily adapted over time allowing
you to start now with the knowledge that your processes can be altered
and refined. Oracle Workflow maintains a complete audit trail of
processing data for time and cost analysis. You have the information
you need to continuously refine the way your company does business.
Designing Business
Processes for Change
Oracle Workflow
Builder provides a graphical drag and drop process designer. You
can easily evolve a business process to incorporate negotiated business
practices with your customers or suppliers, improve message content for
your decision makers, and re-deploy your people to "value added only" activities.
Oracle Workflow allows you to modify existing business processes without
changing applications code - a clear reduction in the cost of change and
ownership.
Oracle Workflow
provides a clear representation of a business process. Designers can use
Oracle Workflow process diagrams
to communicate
business activities and operation flows to users.
Business Process
Based Integration
The Oracle Workflow
Business Event System provides a workflow enabled solution for your enterprise
application integration requirements. The Business Event System is an application
service delivered with Oracle Workflow that uses Oracle Advanced Queuing
technology to communicate business events between systems. The Business
Event System supports the following types of integration:
-
message-based point-to-point
system integration
-
system integration
messaging hubs
-
distributed applications
messaging
Business Event
Driven Workflow
The Business
Event System enables loose coupling of systems using Oracle Advanced Queuing
for asynchronous messaging.
Model Driven
Integration
Business event
based workflow processes enable model-driven integration. Oracle Workflow
can apply the business rules
expressed in
the process model to control and route objects between applications and
systems with minimal intrusion into those
applications
and systems.
Business Events
Trigger Processing
The Oracle Workflow
Event Manager lets analysts register interesting business events for their
applications, including the functions that generate the XML event messages.
Users of those applications can register subscriptions on events that are
significant to their systems to trigger custom code, message propagation,
or workflow processes.
Analysts register
business events in the Event Manager.
When a business
event occurs, the Event Manager executes subscriptions on the event. For
local events, the subscribing code is executed in the same database transaction
as the code that raised the event. Events can also be received asynchronously
from external systems. Subscription processing can include executing custom
code on the event information, sending event information to a workflow
process, and sending event information to other queues or systems. To minimize
costly processing, the Event Manager checks whether event information is
required by subscriptions on the event before producing the XML event message.
The Business
Event System uses Oracle Advanced Queuing to propagate messages between
communication points on systems, called agents, using a specified protocol.
Events received from external systems are processed by an agent listener
that runs on the agent's queue.
Include Events
in Business Process Models
Workflow Engine
event activities let you model business events within workflow processes.
Event activities can be used to model content-based routing, transformations,
error handling, and so on. A workflow process can be started or progressed
by an inbound message, and can also send an outbound message or raise an
event to the Event Manager. XML function activities give you access to
event content data within workflow processes.
Business event
based workflow processes give you the most flexibility when implementing
your integration solution. However, the Business Event System can run independently
of the Workflow Engine to enable point-to-point messaging.
Business events
are represented within workflow processes as event activities.
Perform Complex
Transformations
You can perform
complex transformations between different formats required for your business
documents. Oracle Workflow allows you to apply a stylesheet to an XML event
message. In addition, when queues are defined within the Business Event
System, you specify the logic that is used to enqueue and dequeue messages.
This logic, called a queue handler, can include transformations.
Oracle Workflow
also allows you to take advantage of XML support in Oracle 9i. Oracle9i
delivers native support for XML with a new XML data type, which makes the
manipulation of XML data and documents in applications totally seamless
and easier than ever before. Oracle9i offers unique capabilities
to generate, massage, and transform XML data and documents inside the runtime
engine itself for unprecedented scalability and high performance.
Additionally,
Oracle Workflow is integrated with Oracle Applications InterConnect. In
the context of Oracle Applications InterConnect, Oracle Workflow is used
for business process collaborations across two or more applications. A
business process collaboration is defined as the conversation between two
or more applications in the context of a business process. Oracle Applications
InterConnect leverages the robust design time and runtime Oracle Workflow
business process definition and execution support to make these business
processes explicit and manageable. For each application participating in
a specific integration, Oracle Applications InterConnect attaches one or
more adapters to it. At runtime, the adapters retrieve the metadata from
the Repository to determine the format of messages, perform transformations
between the various data formats, and route the messages to the appropriate
queues in the Oracle Applications InterConnect hub.
Oracle Workflow
also supports integration with other tools for transformation through Oracle
Advanced Queuing.
Accurate Information
to All the Right People
Oracle Workflow
automatically notifies individuals and groups inside and outside your enterprise
electronically. Whether the message is to solicit their input or
to alert them to some exception condition, access is easy using a standard
Web browser or an e-mail application using a standard mail protocol.
Oracle Workflow sends the information inside your applications to the decision
makers who use it.
Central Worklist
Review and respond
to your business process notifications from one central window - the worklist
- using any standard Web browser. You have the flexibility to query
which tasks to work on now and to define sort criteria, giving you freedom
to organize your work the way you prefer. Group notifications by
the same type or subject to avoid jumping from one context to another.
Or sort by priority or due date to focus on time critical tasks first.
Oracle Workflow is fully integrated with the Oracle E-Business Suite, providing
the ability to drill down to any URL or Oracle E-Business Suite screen
to research or complete a transaction.
Users review
their tasks using the Worklist.
Drill down to
any URL or Oracle E-Business Suite screen to research or complete a transaction.
Personalized
User Experience
Accommodating the
preferences of your enterprise users and partners is a key element of operating
as an e-business. Workflow notifications can be viewed through
a standard Web browser or through e-mail. Notification messages can
be summary or detail, plain text or HTML. Message content can be
dynamically generated from your Oracle-based application data and personalized
to each recipient.
Save Time and
Prevent Decision Bottlenecks
Oracle Workflow
notification routing rules save you time and give you flexibility to assign
responsibility for notifications in a variety of circumstances. Maybe
you have front line support to review certain requests to make sure that
all information needed is present before making a decision. Oracle Workflow
can automatically forward these notifications to your front line.
Perhaps your assistant executes your decisions on routine matters.
Why not delegate those messages automatically and focus your attention
on the exceptional requests that come your way? Or perhaps you are
going on vacation and want certain notifications to be handled by your
backup support while you are gone. Oracle Workflow can transfer some notifications
while allowing others to wait in your worklist until you return.
Handle the time period in advance, specifying a fixed window or leaving
it open-ended. By using notification routing rules you can give the
appropriate level of coverage to all your business-driven notifications,
preventing process bottlenecks.
Easily Shift
Your People to New Roles
Oracle Workflow
supports the quick role changes necessary in an e-business. As the
members in a group change, the individuals in that group receiving notifications
also change, without modifying the business process or applications code.
Manage Exceptions,
Not Transactions
With Oracle Workflow
notifications you are alerted to the business and process exceptions that
need your attention. Whether from the Oracle E-Business Suite or
your own Oracle-based applications, the Workflow Notification service sends
you the information you need to manage your business, not your transactions.
Web Administration
and Review of Business Processes
The Oracle Workflow
Monitor gives you freedom to work from anywhere. All you need is a standard
Web browser. The ability to review and administer your business processes
from any part of the world has powerful ramifications in terms of increased
productivity and control. Workflow administrators have the
control they need to keep your business processes running smoothly.
Workflow users have the knowledge that their business processes are on
target for successful and timely completion.
Monitor Progress
of Your Processes
The Oracle Workflow
Monitor provides a graphical Java applet to review your business processes.
In a single picture you can see which activities have completed, which
are active, and which are yet to be performed. If you need more detail
on a task it is available through detail status tabs. You use the
point-and-click interface to select the information you need.
For every business process, the Monitor provides a succinct listing of
the decision makers. The Monitor also includes a summary of key activities
based on user-specified filter criteria. You get increased understanding,
oversight, and throughput of your business processes.
End users view
the decision makers in their process.
Administer Processes
from a Single Site
As a Workflow administrator,
you view additional process details and gain additional controls using
the same Workflow Monitor available to the workflow business user.
The Workflow Monitor allows easy manual intervention whenever necessary.
You can stop or pause a process while you investigate a processing issue.
You can retry or skip any activity. You can "rewind" a business process
to an earlier state and re-execute. You get the centralized control
and simplicity of administration that are key to cost-effective operation.
Administrators
have the ability to review and control any business process through the
Workflow Monitor.
Reduced Costs
of Change and Ownership With Workflow Processing
Using workflow
to change the way your transactions are defined and controlled is a key
element of operating as an e-business. Oracle Workflow lets you easily
customize workflow-enabled transactions to reflect your business practices.
You can create alternative processing paths to accommodate trading partner
rules or introduce new procedures. You can modify message content
for improved decision making or communication. You can extend a process
to include external system processing. Workflow supports your modifications
without changing applications code. Some workflow products force
you to stop their workflow engine to make changes or to introduce new process
definitions to the system. Oracle Workflow introduces your modifications
without interrupting active processes while the Workflow engine continues
to execute.
E-Business Integration
As part of Oracle9i
Integration, Oracle Workflow helps integrate applications, streamline business
processes, and enable collaborative commerce with trading partners and
marketplaces over the Internet.
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