bpmNEXT – BP3, OpenText, BonitaSoft

Full bpmNEXT program here. The format is 30 minutes per speaker: 20 minutes of demo, 10 minutes of Q&A.

Day 1, third session. Repeat after me: Mobile. Social. Mobile. Social.

BPM for Mobile, Mobile for BPM, Scott Francis, BP3 Global, Inc.

Problems with existing mobile BPM: an unprioritized activity stream as an interface for business processes is no better than email: everything is mixed together in a single view, with no process context; using desktop HTML instead of native apps ignores device constraints and capabilities. Rethinking that requires a more responsive UI to adjust to size/orientation/touch aspects of mobile screens, hybrid apps to leverage native capabilities while sharing some code with the desktop, and REST APIs to provide process-specific context. Demo shows their add-ons to IBM BPM, allowing new UI components to be added to UIs created within the IBM BPM design environment that better support mobile devices through automatic form factor (size/orientation) adjustment, gestures (e.g., iPhone swipe), and use of device capabilities (e.g., camera). Although the trend is towards native HTML5 and responsive UIs, hybrid and native apps are bridging the gap in the interim; having a common IDE for all development means that there don’t have to be separate desktop/mobile development teams that use different tools. They also advocate specific apps for major process-related functions rather than a common task list, reducing the number of clicks required to complete a task.

Social and Mobile Computing for BPM and Case Management, Rhonda Gray, OpenText

A new project at OpenText, called Touch, is looking at capturing and engaging new BPM participants, including mobile field personnel and customers. Their social BPM includes both socially-enabled software (collaborating within a complex case management environment) and social applications (activity stream task interface). Their cloud-based Touch server will provide an interface point for mobile and desktop devices to their source systems (P360, MBPM, C360, pV, mV), although desktop applications can also access the source systems directly. The iPad app demo showed the activity stream interface, controlling it through subscriptions to specific people and topics, microblogging and collaboration on cases. A user can request that another user follow a specific topic; topics can be pinned to the menu or added to the activity stream. The app uses device features including camera and GPS. The same social activity stream can be embedded in a desktop web application, e.g., alongside standard case management functions, allowing it to be a common source of social activity across all platforms.

Connecting BPM to Social Feeds Improves User Adoption, Mac McConnell, BonitaSoft

BPM exists in different social contexts, including both internal collaboration and responding to social media mentions and complaints. For internal collaboration, the demo showed notifications of pending process tasks exposed in Chatter: essentially, Chatter is acting as an inbox for process tasks, if the users are already using that as their most common access point. Task completion still required going to the Bonita screens, hence Chatter (or Yammer) is just used as a notification inbox. For external social media monitoring, tweets to a specific account were monitored, allowing the user to either respond directly and mark the situation as resolved, or kick off a process to route the tweet to someone who can deal with the situation. By integrating social listening directly into the Bonita application, instantiating processes is a single-click operation rather than having to transfer information from a social monitoring tool to a BPM environment. First live demo by a non-technical marketing guy, bravo!