In this short tutorial I will show how to build a business application with the Business Process Modelling Notation – BPMN. This approach differs from the usual data-centric approach as we focus on process management instead of data processing.
Data Processing vs. Process Management
When we follow the classic approach building a Data-Centric Business Application, we usually first design a data schema. The data schema defines what kind of data can be managed. The application allows us to create new data sets, edit existing data and of course search for data.
In a Process-Centric Business Application we instead first try to answer the question how data should be processed to give each actor the best access to information to reach a specific business goal. And this kind of question becomes more and more important in our today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. BPMN offers the perfect approach to model a workflow with its business goals from the beginning to the end. BPMN models can be created with various tools like for example the Open Source BPMN designer Open-BPMN.
The big advantage of BPMN is that it does not only give all stake holders a clear understanding about the process, a BPMN 2.0 Model can also be executed by a suitable process engine. This “low-code” or “model-driven” approach leads to a much more flexible way to implement business applications. Of course, data still plays an important role and workflow engines allow us to manage business data in various ways. So let’s see how this works…
In today’s data-driven business landscape, managing data effectively is crucial for achieving organizational goals. While data processing systems play a vital role in collecting and organizing data, it is often overlooked that data should not be managed solely for its own sake. True value lies in understanding how data can be leveraged to achieve business objectives, which is where the concept of process management comes into play.
Today we live in a world where data is everywhere and every enterprise knows about the value of data. But how do we handle data? How do we create, collect analyze it? This is the area of data processing software. And we all use databases, spread sheets and data management systems to manage all kind of data. Many software systems are build around specific data domains and we use this software to create and maintain the data.
But in this context, however, it is often overlooked that data should not be managed for its own sake. The reason why we need data in companies is that we want to achieve certain business goals. And in this context, we come to the question of how corporate goals can be achieved at all? This is the area of process management.
So what’s the difference between data processing and processes management?
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the integration of advanced technologies is not just a luxury but a necessity. One such powerful combination is Business Process Management (BPM) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). At Imixs Workflow, we are excited to introduce a groundbreaking feature that leverages these technologies: Imixs Business AI. This new feature combines BPMN with AI and promises to revolutionize how businesses manage and optimize their workflows.
Understanding BPMN and AI
BPMN is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a workflow. It provides businesses with a standardized method to visualize, document, and analyze their processes, making it easier to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement.
AI, on the other hand, brings the power of machine learning and data analytics to the table. AI can learn from data, recognize patterns, and make intelligent decisions, thereby automating complex tasks that would otherwise require human intervention.
With Imixs Business AI these two technologies are now combined and you can integrate artificial intelligence into your BPMN model. This gives you new opportunities to make your company’s business processes smarter.
The Synergy of BPMN and AI
Combining BPMN and AI offers several distinct advantages:
Enhanced Process Efficiency: AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify bottlenecks in business processes designed with BPMN. By doing so, it suggests optimizations and automations, significantly speeding up operations.
Intelligent Decision Making: AI-powered systems can make real-time decisions based on historical data and predictive analytics. This capability ensures that the workflow adapts dynamically to changing circumstances, enhancing agility and responsiveness.
Predictive Maintenance: In scenarios where processes involve machinery or IT infrastructure, AI can predict potential failures and suggest maintenance schedules. This proactive approach reduces downtime and improves overall efficiency.
Personalized Customer Experience: By integrating AI with BPMN, businesses can tailor their processes to individual customer needs and preferences, providing a more personalized and satisfactory customer experience.
Cost Reduction: Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks reduces the need for manual intervention, leading to significant cost savings.
The Open Source Advantage with Imixs-Workflow
Imixs-Workflow, at its core, is an open-source BPMN-based workflow engine. Embracing open source offers multiple benefits:
Transparency and Security: With open-source software, the code is publicly available. This transparency allows for continuous scrutiny and improvement by the community, enhancing security and reliability.
Flexibility and Customization: Businesses can modify the workflow engine to meet their specific needs without being locked into proprietary solutions. This flexibility is crucial for adapting to unique business requirements and evolving market conditions.
Community Support: Open-source projects benefit from a global community of developers and users. This community-driven approach fosters innovation, rapid issue resolution, and the sharing of best practices.
Cost-Effectiveness: Utilizing open-source software eliminates licensing fees, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes.
Introducing Imixs Business AI
Our latest feature, Imixs Business AI, integrates the power of AI into the robust Imixs-Workflow engine. This integration allows businesses to:
Automate Decision-Making: AI algorithms analyze process data to make informed decisions, reducing the need for manual oversight.
Optimize Workflows: Continuous learning and data analysis help in identifying areas for process improvement, ensuring workflows are always running at peak efficiency.
Enhance Data Utilization: AI leverages data more effectively, providing insights that drive strategic business decisions.
By leveraging the synergy between BPMN and AI within the open-source framework of Imixs-Workflow, businesses can achieve unparalleled efficiency, agility, and innovation.
With our business process management suite Imixs-Office Workflow, we are committed to helping businesses harness these cutting-edge technologies to stay ahead in the competitive market. Explore our Imixs Business AI feature today and take the first step towards a smarter, more efficient future.
For more information and to see how Imixs Business AI can transform your business processes, contact us for a personalized consultation. Together, let’s revolutionize your workflows and drive your business forward.
We just released the next version of the Imixs-Cloud project! The new release 0.2.0 is marking a significant milestone in the evolution of this open-source platform project. Imixs-Cloud now supports Debian 12 and the latest Kubernetes Release 1.29.5.
About Imixs-Cloud Project
The Imixs-Cloud Project offers an easy way to build and manage a robust platform for running enterprise applications in a cloud-native environment. Leveraging the power of Kubernetes, Imixs-Cloud ensures that applications are not only scalable and resilient but also secure and easy to manage. The project is designed to simplify the management and deployment of container based business applications running on Kubernetes.
Imixs-Cloud is developed and maintained by the Imixs Software Solutions GmbH located in Munich. The open source project supports the dynamic and continuous development of a cloud infrastructure architecture for small and medium sized companies. With a focus on open-source development, the project fosters collaboration and innovation within the community, driving the creation of sustainable and adaptable business solutions.
For more information about the latest version of the Imixs-Cloud Project and to explore the new features, please visit https://imixs.github.io/imixs-cloud/.
In this short tutorial I will explain how to run a Docker container with GPU support. This becomes important if you want to run AI applications such as the Imixs-AI project within a local Docker environment or in a Kubernetes Cluster. This short tutorial is based on Debian 12 (Bookworm) and the usage of a NVIDA graphic card. I assume that you already have installed Debian and the Docker engine. Read the official install guide about how to install the Docker engine on Debian.
A BPMN Workflow engine based on the Jakarta EE Framework forms a powerful and effective combination for developing enterprise applications with a focus on business process management. Both, Jakarta EE and BPMN 2.0 are standardized and widely supported. The scalability of Jakarta EE provides a secure foundation for building enterprise applications with robust business process management capabilities. This enables developers to leverage the strengths of both technologies to create efficient, interoperable, and maintainable BPM solutions. In the following I will explain the aspects in more detail.
Today we released the latest Version of Open-BPMN. The new version includes a lot of enhancements and new additional features. This makes it more easy to model BPMN Diagrams:
Improved Layout
Property Panel can be opened by double click
BPMN Pool and Lane Design improved
Fixed minor layout issues
Open BPMN can be run in a Browser or installed on Microsoft VS-Code. You can install Open-BPMN form the VS–Code Marketplace.
BPMN 2.0 Extensibility Mechanism
One of the core features is the extensibility of Open BPMN. Open-BPMN enables you to customize it’s behavior and appearance by adapting the BPMN 2.0 extension mechanism. This extension mechanism can be used to adapt BPMN elements to the unique requirements of a vertical domain, and still have a valid BPMN Core. Open Source Workflow Engines like Imixs-Workflow already integrate Open BPMN into there tooling platforms.
But more important, Open-BPMN is based on the Eclipse Graphical Language Server Platform (GLSP). This platform provides a huge set of features and an API to extend and adapt the Modeler in various ways.
In this short tutorial I will explain a few basic design patterns helping you to build really good Business Process Management Systems based on Imixs-Workfow. For these patterns it does not matter if you build a app just with the Imixs-Workflow core engine or if you use Imixs-Office-Workflow. All patterns explain very basic concepts which will help you a lot in understanding to build and maintain your business application. So lets start!
Today we released version 1.0.0 of Open-BPMN for Visual Studio Code.
Open BPMN is a free and open modeling platform to create and maintain business models based on the BPMN 2.0 standard. Open BPMN can be used by business analysts to design a top level business process, as also by architects and developers to model the technical details of complex processing logic. Further more, Open BPMN provides an extension mechanism to adapt the modeling platform to the individual requirements in any business process project.
The goal of this project is to provide an open and extensible graphical BPMN modelling framework for an agile and innovative community around the BPMN standard.
Extensibility
BPMN 2.0 introduces an extensibility mechanism that allows extending standard BPMN elements with additional properties and behaviour. It can be used by modeling tools to add non-standard elements or Artefacts to satisfy a specific need, such as the unique requirements of a vertical domain, and still have a valid BPMN Core.
One goal of Open BPMN is to not only provide a graphical modeling tool, but also to allow developers and independent projects to easily customize the behaviour and appearance of the editor for specific BPM workflow engines that use this BPMN 2.0 extensibility mechanism.
Open Source Workflow Engines like Imixs-Workflow integrate Open BPMN into there tooling platforms and extend the core features of BPMN 2.0 with platform specific functionality.
Imixs-Workflow started a new modelling project called Open-BPMN. Open-BPMN is a free BPMN 2.0 modelling platform that can be extended and customized by any BPMN 2.0 compliant execution engine. The primary goal of this project is to provide a graphical BPMN editing framework that can be extended in various ways by different solutions to create an agile and innovative community around the BPMN standard.
For this reason we build Open BPMN based on the Eclipse Graphical Language Server Platform (GLSP). GLSP is an extensible open-source framework for building custom diagram editors based on web technologies. The platform provides a language server protocol (LSP) for diagrams that allows to adapt any kind of modelling language. GLSP splits into a server part and a client part. The server part is responsible to handle the underlying model stored in a filesystem, database or microservice and provides the graphical model meta data. The client part communicates with the server and provides the graphical representation and the modelling tools to create and modify a model.
The main advantage of GLSP is its openness and extensibility. In this way it allows us to not only provide a new flexible BPMN modelling tool but also adapt the BPMN Extensions of Imixs-Workflow within this solution. Adapting the Imixs-Workflow engine within the Open-BPMN Modeller is a first proof of concept showing the flexibility and power of this platform.
Multi IDE Support and Extensibility
GLSP can be integrated into different IDEs like Microsoft VS Code, the web based Theia IDE and of course the Eclipse Platform. This allows us to use Open-BPMN in much more different ways and projects and opens the modelling tool to a broader community.
With the extensibility of GLSP, Open-BPMN can not only be extended within the extension mechanism of BPMN 2.0, but also by additional views, editors and UI elements in various ways. For example custom Form editors, Analyse-Panels or Reporting Tools can be adapted by individual projects.
The Community
There is also a strong and agile community around this project that supports us in adapting the technology into the Imixs-Workflow project. Of course Open-BPMN is free software and we invite you to participate in it. There are different ways how you can do that. Join the Open-BPMN Project on GitHub or help us to improve the project by reporting bugs or start a new discussion.
So if you plan to customize BPMN for your own software project, then join Open-BPMN and get support from an agile community. Of course, we also offer professional support for your project.
