OmniFlow - FAQs

Workflow is a sequence of actions or work-steps in a business process, involving human and system inputs to achieve a defined outcome.

Business Process Management (BPM) is a disciplined approach to design, execute, monitor, measure and control business processes for consistent achievement of required results, which align with organization's strategic goals. BPM provides technology-oriented, end-to-end business processes that drive business results, create value and enable an organization to meet its business objectives with more agility.

OmniFlow is a highly scalable, platform-independent BPM solution that enables companies across the industries to automate, streamline and optimize their business processes.

Workstep is a logical unit of work in a business process, where a manual user or the system performs the intended task/operation.

In an OmniFlow process, work-item is the unit or basic component of task which flows from one work-step to another where work or operations are performed on it.

Major components of OmniFlow are: Process Modeler, Process Manager, Process Client, Simulator, Dashboard and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).

Process Modeler is a module for designing business processes, by business users. Usage of standard notations, drag-and-drop facility with user-friendly, advanced graphical interface, the module makes process designing very easy.

Process Manager is a web administration console for business/users to administer and manage their business processes by detailed and customised analysis of their business processes.

Process Client is the OmniFlow module into which a user logs in to process work-items. Process Client gives the user a list view of all the work-items that are to be processed by her.

A company policy, which determines the execution of a business process, is called the business rule for that process.(eg: In scenario 1, the work gets routed to person A while in scenario 2, it gets routed to person B.)

Parallel workflow is supported through the concept of conditional distribution and collection. Through this concept, multiple instances of the same work-item is sent for parallel processing and are later collected or accumulated as per the business rules. Dynamic splitting facility enables creation of dynamic instances of same work-item, which can be distributed among various users based upon dynamic rules for parallel processing.

Sub-process is a complete process, which can be used in another process as a component.

This can be better explained using an example. Let’s say, the process of issuing a credit or debit card is already deployed or designed. An appropriate card needs to be shared with the customer for Savings account/ Current account/ Joint Account. In the processes for opening accounts, one can initiate a process instance in card issuance process, thereby decreasing the complexity of the processes designed.

Any business would involve some actions to be done on occurrence of a business event. Event triggers in OmniFlow are the tools that help Process Designer define the business actions on occurrence of events.

Every business user has a definite set of operations to perform. To-do list is a check-list of mandatory actions that enforces the user to complete his work before sending it further in the process.

Business data is vital for every organization, and sharing of this data in a proper way is required among applications. Apart from the integration-centric standard methods, OmniFlow has Export Utility, which exposes the business data captured by OmniFlow in the form of standard Excel sheets with customized formatting. This feature is useful for integration with Business Intelligence or CRM tools.

Any business involves documents like applications, notices, invoices, etc. Business actions and decisions are taken on the basis of the data contained in these documents. Business users, therefore, require these documents to perform business operations. True advantage of a BPM solution would be acquired only if the business users are able to see the business documents on the screen along with their concerned forms.

OmniFlow is a queue based BPM solution, making it easy for both the business owner and user to work on the solution. Users can be allocated to various work queues for easy updation and assignment of work-items.

Yes. With dynamically changing business environment, companies need to revise their business rules at run time to be abreast with the competition and to capture markets. OmniFlow allows business owners to change the business rules on-the-fly through the concept of dynamic constants. By changing the underlying values in dynamic constants, business rules can be changed on-the-fly.

BPMN stands for Business Process Modelling Notation. It is an accepted standard for modeling business pocesses. Owing to its easy comprehensibility, the standard has become widely accepted.

OmniFlow supports BPMN standard by allowing the business process designer to view or design the process in BPMN mode. Business process designer can design the process in Newgen proprietary designing standard and view it in BPMN mode also.

BPEL stands for Business Process Execution Language. BPEL is an XML-based standard for defining business processes that exclusively uses web services for integration. As this standard helps organizations become SOA compliant, organizations are increasingly looking forward for compliance of BPM solution with this standard.

OmniFlow supports BPEL 2.0 by allowing users to import any BPEL2.0 compliant process for web services into OmniFlow. The imported process can be further worked upon as if the process is designed in OmniFlow itself for any further modifications.

OmniFlow helps organizations become SOA compliant by supporting the following integration Methodologies:

Web Service: Integration with web services for synchronous, asynchronous and fire-&-forget mode of communication. Now, business processes designed in OmniFlow can also be exposed as web services.

Support of JMS: OmniFlow supports Java Messaging Services (JMS) for integration supporting both queue and topic modes of communication.

Simulator is a component of OmniFlow that helps the process owner derisk the investment or business decision, by allowing the business user to create scenarios based on production-data, and anticipating potential bottlenecks even before implementing the process in a live environment. It acts as a window to future using which business owner can make better amendments. Simulator aids the business owner to take better decision through exhaustive reports and multiple-scenario comparision.

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is an augmenting concept in BPM, allowing real time reporting on the process participants. Business Activity Monitor is a module that allows the business or process owner to have the complete perspective of the current situation of business processes. It enables the process owner to take timely actions as per the resource allocation for streamlining the business operations.

As part of BAM, custom reports allow the business owner to design and define the user interfaces of various reports as per his roles, responsibilities and convenience. Customized reports help the business owner have a 360-degree view of the current business situation.