First Process

This video we will use BonitaBPM to build a simple process.

Our goal is not to overwhelm you.

BonitaBPM is a powerful software, and allows for as much complexity as you would like, but that isn’t necessary to get started.

At it’s simplest business process management is just using a set of standard shapes to make a visual flow chart; taking something that happens and breaking it down into steps.

You can draw them on a whiteboard.

So lets look at BonitaBPM. We can simply use it to draw those same diagrams into our computer.

In front of me is the start of a process but I want to show everything from the beginning so I’m going to delete the two elements that are on here.

Drag and select around both elements and right click – delete, or you can use the delete button [function delete] as a shortcut.

Now it doesn’t matter what you want to map out, processes are everywhere. For this example, let’s try making a cup of coffee.

Click on the process and head down to the General Tab.

We’re gonna change the name to Making Coffee

I’m going to show you the different types of elements in more detail in future videos but for now – lets just get comfortable working in BonitaBPM.

Essentially, we’re just dragging elements from our menu of elements on the left side of the screen into our process in the center.

We start off our process with a start and drop it in to our process. We could give it a different name here but I’m just gonna stick with “Start”.

Next, we need a task, for this exercise I’m only going to use the abstract task.

It is used as a placeholder when something needs to happen but we don’t care about the specifics which works just fine in this exercise. You can always go back and change the specifics later. Again, I can change the task name underneath General and this one is going to be called “Get Beans”.

Now, the only thing missing is an arrow that connects the two elements and shows the direction. This arrow is known as a flow. To draw in, simply select it… then drag from one element to another.

For this next element which will be our first gateway, I’m gonna show you a shortcut wherein it’s possible to simply drag off of the last element you have selected, grab one of these shortcuts and watch what happens.

The flow is generated automatically.

Again I drag a task off of that.

I’m gonna change the type of this task back to abstract.

I’m selecting the flow here and giving it a description “No”

Going back to my gateway, I’ll draw a flow directly to Put Grounds in Pot if we already have our coffee grounds

You can always drag the elements around to change the aesthetic of it.

And here, I’m just gonna speed up the footage. Finish up the process of making coffee.

Here, we will use our last simple element, an end event.

There we have it, our very first process.