Improving the Sales Order Management Process with Decision Logic

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Create and configure decision logic in the process.
  • Update an existing process.

Introduction: Improving the Process with Decision Logic

Now you will learn how to create and configure a decision. A decision consists of one or more policies. Each policy consists of a collection of rules. These rules are used to automate the decision-making parts of a business process. After you create a decision (policy), you define your business logic by adding rules to the policy or policies.

The figure illustrates the foundations of decision logic.

To learn more about Decisions and rules, watch the following video:

As next, an exercise follows. Watch the following video, to be prepared for the exercise: Create and Configure Decision Logic in the Process.

Create and Configure Decision Logic in the Process

Business Scenario

Business processes usually require different approvers depending on the actual data in the process. Approvers shouldn't be hard coded into approval steps, but should be calculated dynamically with each process run. Also, in some situations, an actual approval by a human might not even be required, but the process should be approved automatically. Decisions and decision logic are perfectly suited to handle these kinds of situations. In the following, you'll create decision logic that will approve a sales order automatically when its sales order amount is below a certain threshold.

Create a decision to determine approvers who will be authorized to approve sales order based on complex rules.

To learn more about how to create and configure decision logic in the process, follow this tutorial.

Exercise Options

To start the exercise, choose Start Exercise in the figure below.

A pop-up opens. You have the following options:

  • Choosing Start: the simulation starts. Follow the simulation to learn how to create and configure decision logic in the process.
  • Choosing Open PDF Document: a pdf opens. Based on the steps described in this document, you can perform the exercise in your own system landscape.
ExerciseStart Exercise

To add a decision, first identify the set of rules to consider in the decision-making process.

Then define the data types relevant for designing the rules. Data types will contain all the necessary fields that will be needed to model the rule. For example, if a design rule says "Sales Order Amount greater than 100000", then set the Approver e-mail as lorin@domain.com. Then, the data types are Sales Order with Amountfield, and Approver withEmailfield.

Include the Decision Logic in the Process

Business Scenario

When approvers are determined automatically via decision logic in the process, this also needs to reflect in the following approval tasks. The recipients of the approval tasks should be based on the resulting process content / variables of the decision execution step.

You'll now adapt the business process one last time to fully automate your approver selection by matching the recipients of the approval form to the one returned from the decision table.

To learn more about how to include the decision logic in the process, follow this interactive tutorial.

Exercise Options

To start the exercise, choose Start Exercise in the figure below.

A pop-up opens. You have the following options:

  • Choosing Start: the simulation starts. Follow the simulation to learn how to include the decision logic in the process.
  • Choosing Open PDF Document: a pdf opens. Based on the steps described in this document, you can perform the exercise in your own system landscape.
ExerciseStart Exercise

Run the Process Including Automation and Decision

Business Scenario

You have updated your business process with an automation and additional decision logic. Previously, you made sure that the process was running as expected. Now you need to re-validate because significant changes have been made. It is required to release and deploy the process again, and to the execute it for validation.

Run the business process with a full monitoring of the workflow instances and automation jobs.

To learn more about how to run the process including automation and decision, follow this tutorial.

Prerequisites

Before releasing and deploying your business process, please make sure you have completed the required Agent Management settings to execute the process with an automation.

Once you have taken care of the agent management settings, you can release and deploy the business process project to run the process.

Exercise Options

To start the exercise, choose Start Exercise in the figure below.

A pop-up opens. You have the following options:

  • Choosing Start: the simulation starts. Follow the simulation to learn how to run the process including automation and decision.
  • Choosing Open PDF Document: a pdf opens. Based on the steps described in this document, you can perform the exercise in your own system landscape.
ExerciseStart Exercise

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