Release and Publish Processes

Processes must be approved and published so that they can be communicated as valid processes.

The approval is usually based on the rating from a Review. The approval process determines how many reviews a process version goes through before approval, each with its own objective. It is set up for the entire Process Space: by MID, in consultation with the BPM Manager.

Approval and publication of a process version by the Process Owner is the prerequisite for being able to communicate a process to all Bpanda users.

In Bpanda, a process occurs in various phases. They differ mainly in terms of the visibility and binding nature of a process version.

Draft

A draft is a process version that a Designer has created and not yet submitted.

A draft can be an outline (consisting of a name and description), a Happy Path or a process diagram created in the integrated Modeler. Drafts can be saved and, before they are submitted as a process revision, are visible only to their respective author.
Revision

Sooner or later, processes have to be updated. A process version that has been imported into the Process Space or submitted is referred to as a revision.

An approval process that has been defined uniformly for the Process Space usually follows. At the heart of the approval process is the review: the participants rate the revision, and the Review Owner then decides on the approval.
Approved and published version

The approval of a revision as a new process version usually takes place on the basis of the rating from a review. Approved revisions can be published by the Process Owner within a validity period that they define.

A valid process version is visible to all users of a Process Space. It describes a particular workflow in a binding manner.

To enable a process version to be approved and published, the approval process has to be started. It usually contains at least one review, which serves to rate a new process version (revision) in order to prepare the decision on approval.

The following tasks therefore basically have to be completed in order to carry out the approval process:

Define the approval process

Bpanda provides several variants of the approval process that determine the sequence and the statuses. Which variant your Process Space uses is set up by MID in the account administration. If you want to change it, contact your contact person at MID — the contact channels are listed under Support.
Start the approval process

An imported process is initially visible only to certain roles, e.g. to Process Owners and Process Contributors. All other users see it only once it has been approved and published, and only during its validity period.

Every process version (revision) usually undergoes an approval process. At the heart of this process is the Review.
Create a review

The Review is at the heart of an approval process. It aims to rate and approve a process version and is created by the Process Owner or a BPM Manager. In addition to the review’s metadata, they also initially define the roles in the review. The Review Owner organizes the review and ensures that the participants provide their ratings. A review can also be created for a version that has already been published — in order to check whether it has to be changed or is affected by other changes.
Rating a process version in the review

In the Review, the participants discuss and rate a process revision. When ending it, the Review Owner decides on the approval; this decision determines the next step of the approval process.
End the review

The Review Owner ends the review, selecting one of the outcomes provided for by the approval process, in the standard approval process approved or rejected.

If the selected outcome leads to another review, you can create it now.
Publish the process

Once the process version has been approved in all reviews of the approval process, the Process Owner makes the final decision on publishing the process version.

Publication takes place for the users of the Process Space within a validity period.

What the participants do in the review is described in the Reviews section; this topic describes the view of the Process Owner.

As a BPM Manager or Process Owner, you use the Run Through Release Process action to initiate the next workflow step for several revisions of the same workflow step at once, or to discard them. With the Create Reviews action, you create a review for several published processes at once.