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Developing BPM Applications with Developer Studio
Introducing Path Analysis : Exploring the Path Analysis view
 

Exploring the Path Analysis view

To open the Path Analysis view for any process template (for instance, the process shown in Figure 9), open the process template and then click the Path Analysis content pane tab.
The Path Analysis view displays the name of each task and the following default columns.
Table 29. Column Information In Path Browser
Column
Description
Name
Displays the task name, with the adjoining icon indicating the shape used.
Est. Start
Indicates the time interval in which the task is estimated to start. If there is no time interval, this column displays “(none)” (for instance, in the case of the Start workstep). This value is derived by adding the duration for previous tasks. For instance, the estimated start of 4 hours for the Notify Reject task is a sum of the duration for Review Request and Exec Approve tasks. An asterisk beside an estimate (in this case, for “Request Status” and “End1” tasks), indicates that the estimate may not be accurate because there are parallel paths to reach that point..
Duration
Displays the time required to complete the task. The colors representing the duration are indicated as follows and are relative to the duration of the other tasks.
*Red for the tasks with the maximum duration (in this case, Review Request and Exec Approve).
*Green for the tasks with the minimum duration (in this case, Notify Reject and Notify Submit).
*Yellow for the tasks with the average duration (that is, an average of maximum and minimum duration values). For some processes, if all the tasks have the same duration, their duration is also represented in yellow.
*All durations that measure between the average and maximum values are represented in gradient colors from yellow to red.
*All durations that measure between the minimum and average values are represented in gradient colors from green to yellow.
Priority
Displays the workstep priority. Supported values are: Low, Medium, High, Critical, or dataslot name.
Performer
Displays the performer for Activity, Adapter, and Subprocess worksteps.
Timeline
Provides a visual representation of the Estimated Start and Duration data for each task, without displaying the actual numbers. Each timeline starts from the Estimated Start value and continues for the specified Duration. The timeline is tabulated based on the total process time (in this case, 6 hours) with each task timeline representing the work breakdown structure. Timelines also depict the dependencies between tasks (that is, a particular task cannot start before another task is completed). If the timeline for a particular task is displayed in orange (in this case, the Request Status task), it indicates that the estimated start time may not be accurate because there are parallel paths to reach that point..
Note: You can expand (and collapse) the process path in order to view (or hide) all elements. To expand the list, click the Click to expand all nodes ( ) icon. To collapse the list, click the Click to collapse all nodes ( ) icon.
The Path Analysis view displays all the possible paths that a process execution can take. When you search a particular workstep type (or name) by entering the keyword in the Search box ( ), the Path Analysis view displays only those paths that contain the keyword you have searched.
You can also filter the paths by selecting the appropriate filtering criteria. You can apply filtering on basis of the type of tasks (for example, Adapter) and on basis of advanced properties (for example, "Worksteps that have loop" and "Worksteps that can be skipped").
To apply filtering:
1. Click the Click to filter () icon.
The Filter dialog box appears.
2. To enable filtering, select the Enable filtering check box.
To filter the paths on basis of the workstep type, select one (or more) check boxes in the Type list. To filter the list of tasks on basis of advanced workstep properties, select one (or more) check boxes in the Advanced list.
3. Click OK to apply the selected filtering to the paths in the Path Analysis view.