Overview

Clips and Tacks is a fictional office supply company. In this business scenario, Clips and Tacks is processing orders for office supplies and shipping them to customers.

The following sequence of events describes the Clips and Tacks business process for handling incoming orders.

The business process is initiated when a customer submits an order.
A business rule evaluates the data from the order form and determines whether the order can be automatically approved or if it needs human approval. When the total purchase price of the order is $750.00 or less, the order is automatically approved. When the total purchase price of the order is more than $750.00, it is sent to a person for review.
For orders that are automatically approved, the customer account is checked to determine if it is in good standing. If the customer account is in good standing, then the order is sent for shipment; otherwise, the order is sent to a person for review.
If the order is approved by the person, then it is sent for shipment; otherwise, the order is cancelled and a notification is sent to the customer.
The orders that are ready for shipment are given a packaging slip number and are sent to the customer.

Data model

The following information for the business process is stored in a business object (also known as a business item) called Order:

Customer information
Items ordered
Automatic approval field, which the business rule uses
Field to include the status of the order
The packing slip number, which is used to ship the order.

In the design phase, the Order business object is created automatically when the Lotus^® Form is imported for use within the business process.

A Notification business object is used to send notification to a customer about a canceled order. It has two fields: a text field and an e-mail field. In the design phase, the Notification business object is created manually.

Human tasks

There are three human activities in this business flow:

A human activity for entering data into the order entry form . This starts the business process. This human activity is not modeled, it is the process-initiating action.
A modeled human task that represents the employee activity of reviewing the order when the total purchase amount is more than $750.00 or when the customer account is not in good standing.
A modeled human task that represents the employee activity of shipping the order to the customer.