Process Observer Discussion

[JChristophNolte]

This thread is dedicated to questions and discussions around the Process Observer component that is part of Business Suite.

Process Observer is used in different scenarios, including and prominently with Operational Process Intelligence.

For details on what Process observer is see here.

[Former Member]

hi,

I'm trying to model CRM activities in process observer. I was wondering if someone has done that before and how it was designed in terms of BO types, activities and tasks.

I'm using POC RAISE EVENT because CRM is not issuing the events I need, and this works well.

I have a few questions:

1)  CRM objects are quite generic, and I can have nesting objects of the same type: Complaint > Follow Up Activity Complaint > ... Follow up Activity General Task > Follow Up Activity Complain, ... and so on, it dépends on the CRM configuration. How to map this CRM model into PO model?

2) count KPIs seems to be quite limited, because it cannot count multiple tasks, unless they are part of the same activity. Is there any solution for this?

3) is it possible to have KPIs calculated upon business object IDs rather than relying on tasks only? because since I have nesting objects, I want counters per task/activity + business object ID. Is this possible?

Many thanks

Erik

[JChristophNolte]

Hi Erik,

I will try to help and give my input to your questions, let's see if this fits.

A general statement: You should always look at your business-driven process definition, which is what you should start with. What do you want/need to see? What granularity of objects and activities is required - for what? You then need to put that into the implementation layer, i.e. see how you get the relevant events/tasks.

1) Generic objects - yes, that's common. Similar thing with generic events ("change" vs. "delivery blocked" or "status changed" etc.). Look at my "general statement" above: Find out what (which objects, activities) you need first. - There are two ways: Either you are able to identifiy the specific object when you raise the event. Or you are able to identify it when you process the event. There is a BAdI: Enhance/Split Tasks, which lets you change the task. So you could get a task GENERIC_OBJECT-UPDATE and you can change that to COMPLAINT-RELEASED; you can even change one task to multiple tasks. The documentation may not be 100% clear, so here some additional advice: The BAdI presents the tasks (is_task) and if you want to change it you put the new content - possibly multiple lines - into CT_TASK. If CT_TASKS is empty, IS_TASK will be processed. - If you raise the events, it can help (if possible) to put all required information into the parameter data of the event so you don't need to read data here; anyway, consider performance.

2) Technical reply: Count KPIs can count activities or tasks. Either you fill out field Activity ID - or fields Business Object Type  and Task Type. If this is what you are looking for. Otherwise … there are, of course, BAdIs for the KPIs.  Apart from the technical solution: Look at my general statement. If you need to count tasks rather than activities … reconsider and check if you have modelled correctly. In the end tasks are technical, they are not well visible in the log. But something you count should probably be visible. You process definition should make sense on a business level. A KPI is a business thing … so it should probably be expressed on that level. But, of course, it is not always that simple.

3) If you have multiple business objects of the same type and you want to count for each business object, try the "Non aggregated" option of the count KPI. The option is available with slightly newer SPs only, so if you have a really old version it may not be there …

Let me know if this helped.

Best regards,

Christoph