Artifact templates

When you're defining the process for your project don't forget that a major part of this is defining the standards for the files, documents and records (artifacts) that are created, modified and qualified as a result of the process. xProcess provides excellent support for defining the types of artifacts that will be used in a process. Furthermore it stores both the document templates and the resulting documents within its version control system so you can not only reliably access the most up to date version, but also compare it with previous versions if necessary. Here's a task pattern showing artifact templates that have been added to each of the subtasks in the pattern.
You can do this simply by right-clicking on the task and adding a "reference" to a new artifact - an attached file, form or hyperlink. (To learn more about the different types of artifacts supported in xProcess see Creating Artifacts in the Help system). Once you've done this, every time you make an instance of this pattern a clone of your artifact template will be created for use with that instance. Another nice feature is that you can substitute text in the file when you instantiate it, using the values that the user enters into the parameters of the pattern.

Actually parameters of patterns are discussed in the next article in this series, so see Using parameters in task patterns for more details.

Document-driven processes

Many processes are driven by documents. Documents are the resulting artifacts from tasks of the process, as well as being the inputs or informing artifacts for subsequent tasks. Examples of such processes range from drug administration, planning applications, legal processes of many kinds and financial control. Since many of these processes are also subject to regulatory control and audits it makes sense to define and monitor them within an environment like xProcess, which not only provides feedback on the forecasts and targets for task completion, but also can handle the version control of the document templates, and the documents themselves.

Modelling these processes requires understanding of what the key documents are, their format (which can be captured as document templates) and the transformation work which takes place through the process (which can be captured as task patterns). The quality control to be executed at each stage can be captured as gateways.

Here's a simple example.