Every heterogeneous business revolves around tasks that need human interactions. There are computerized procedures that execute much of these bulky tasks. Still they have to be incorporated with human communications. In a business process flow, there are multiple tasks performed by multiple Human Roles and Human Users. Some need to be synchronized, while some needs the pipeline implementation.
For an instance, consider Tasks A and B and Human Roles X and Y that would be completed synchronously. Task A will be accomplished by Human Role X. For the invoke of next task, Task B in line which will be handled by Human Role Y needs a trigger after the completion of Task A. This activator should be prompted for the particular Role Y; not for the Task B.
WS-BPEL standards facilitated the integration of Human Interaction onto the Process flow. This has been demonstrated by a sample implemented for the WSO2 Product Pack Release Process Automation flow.
Existing Work Flow of Product Release Process
Build Manager is a person who triggers this process at first place. A build manager can play any role within any product team. He is solely responsible for building products for testing. In the milestones that development teams come across routinely, the build manager builds the products and releases the built pack for the QA for testing.
Once the issues are being tracked in the product, those are reported and assigned to a developer to resolve. When the issues are fixed by the assignees and after thorough sessions of testing, those products are released as Release Candidates (RC). These RCs too are built by Build Manager and notifications are sent through mails to Carbon – Dev. If they come across any more issues or bugs, then again they are fixed and build the packs again. There can be versions of RCs like RC1, RC2 etc. These package builds are being uploaded to a location where accessible via web. This is followed by checking published packs which includes, ensuring that the binaries are functioning appropriately and completing preparation of documentation and release notes. Then a notification is sent to the relevant groups informing that the particular RC is equipped for the release.
Then the product managers download the packs and sign them using their private key and upload the signature in a separate location different from the RC hosting site. When that task is completed, the infrastructure people upload the RCs to the relevant correct server where all the finalized releases are maintained.
Subsequently Oxygen Tank (OT) staff takes up the task of creating a page for the newly done RC and publish it on OT and host the pack there as showed in [1].
Ultimately the Product Release Process comes to an end when the release notes are sent to the relevant mailing lists and forums and blogs are properly updated.
Automated Product Release Process
Currently no means of automation is involved with this Product Release Process. Synchronization issues and tracking issues engrossed in the manual release process, will be easily resolved by this automation initiative making the process flow less complicated.
The process is triggered or initialized when an RC is being finalized for the release by the Build Manager. Then the normal work flow will be followed and tasks will be assigned to various members. There will be a “TASK” list for each party who is involved with the process which will display the tasks that have been assigned to each ‘User Role’. This has become a convenient and efficient way of tracking the tasks that takes place during the process. Even the bottle necks of the process, the current progress etc. too can be identified without much difficulty through this system.
Once a member finishes a task, the system generates a notification saying that the task is ‘COMPLETED’ and the task next in-line will be triggered for the relevant User Role with the ‘READY’ tag. Then all the synchronizations take place and the relevant places get updated appropriately with the proper notices.
The detailed configuration for Human Task related process automation will be posted soon...
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