TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ is powered by the TIBCO iProcess™ Engine. It is a powerful process management engine designed to meet the needs of organizations that need to handle extremely high-volume, missioncritical transactions across multiple servers while maintaining the integrity of individual transactions. TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ provides dynamic process execution, which can orchestrate sub-procedures for handling both planned and unplanned (exception) steps in a process. TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ also enables comprehensive application integration capabilities through the TIBCO BusinessWorks™ integration platform, or other third-party integration technologies.

Capabilities:

• Rich process orchestration capabilities, with full support for dynamic sub-processes and ad-hoc routing. iProcess Engine also allows modifications to single run-time process instances, such as skipping to other steps, re-routing, or suspending a single process instance or all process instances simultaneously.
• A robust process management engine, proven to handle extremely high-volume, mission-critical transactions across multiple servers while maintaining the integrity of individual transactions.
• Supports virtually unlimited scalability and extensions to accommodate current and future strategic goals.

TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ and Dynamic Processing

For most business processes, in addition to the recognized steps or activities that make up the process, there are a number of recognized exceptions that may occur along the way. At the same time, business processes contain a certain dynamic element that is driven by the inherent fluid nature of most processes. For example, in a loan application process, a recognized exception is that the applicant fails the credit check. The point in the process at which these types of exceptions may occur can be anticipated and can be built into the automated business process. At the time that exception is recognized, additional process steps may need to be added.

On the other hand there are other types of exceptions that could occur at any point within the process. Examples of these types of exceptions are: a person gets married and changes name, a person dies, or notification is received that a loan application is being investigated for fraud. In some processes the number of identified exceptions may be numerous. Any attempt to build handling for such exceptions and dynamic processes into the process would result in a very large spaghetti-like process that would be almost impossible to enhance or maintain. The most complex situation is when the occurrence of an exception means that the current status of the process is invalid. For example:

• The process should now be further advanced than it is – it needs to skip some steps.
• The process should be less advanced than it is – it needs to undo some steps.
• The process needs to be in a separate, possibly parallel, branch of the process.
• The process needs to be repositioned in a specialized piece of exception-handling process.

TIBCO Staffware Process Suite™ includes “Jump To Step” functionality that allows one or more outstanding steps to be withdrawn and a new set sent out. Since the status of the data at the point where the old steps were withdrawn may be different to that required by the new steps, the Jump To Step functionality allows case data to be updated as part of the operation.