Process Flowchart

The Process Flowchart visualizes eventlogs as a process flow, where boxes represent the event types (activities) and arrows are flows (transitions between consecutive events). Flowchart also shows measures/KPI's calculated for the event types and flows, such as case/event counts, durations or costs. Visibility settings of the flowchart help to visualize only the main event types and flows, and the ones which occur less often can be hidden.

Event type name is by default shown as the first text line in the event type box, but it can also be hidden to show customized text. Event type measures can be mapped to Label, 2nd label and 3rd label, which are shown in the next lines in the box. Flows are shown as arrows connecting the event types, and the arrow is also indicating the process flow direction. Flow measures can be mapped to Label, 2nd label and 3rd label, which are shown in separate lines in the middle of the flow. The starting and ending flows are shown as dashed lines. When an event type is hovered, its incoming (light blue) and outgoing (dark blue) flows are highlighted.

There are two kinds of flowcharts available: Snowflake flowchart and In-memory flowchart. The latter performs processing using the in-memory calculation engine (requiring to load models into memory). Both flowcharts have similar functionality, except available event type and flow measures are different, as the Snowflake flowchart has same measures available as the Snowflake chart. Also in Snowflake flowchart, a filter can be set for each individual event and flow measure.

Visibility settings

Often the real-life processes are very complex, and trying to show all realized event types and flows don't provide a very illustrative presentation. This is why the flowchart shows only the most important event types and flows, which is based on the variations as follows: You will choose the number of most common variations, and only the event types and flows that appear in those most common variations are shown. Variations are a natural way to draw the flowchart, because variations represent a continuous flow of cases from start to end.

There is a numeric box in the bottom left of the flowchart, where the shown number of top variations can be specified using the keyboard. In addition, there are the + and - buttons to increase and decrease the shown variations. When the buttons are pressed, each time the new event types or flows appear or disappear in the flowchart. Note that some variations are skipped, if they don't provide new event types or flows to the flowchart. This is why the stepper may change in more than in a single variation steps.

Note that the visibility settings and filtering are different things: even though visibility of event types and flows is limited, all the shown measures are calculated based on the entire eventlog (not just for the shown variations). The eventlog may be filtered by the filter rules either in the dashboard header or in the flowchart settings. Note that the behavior can be changed using the Exclude hidden variations setting, which will link the shown variations and the filtering.

Zooming and filtering

The flowchart can be moved by mouse dragging (i.e. keep the left mouse button pressed while moving the mouse cursor). Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out while the cursor is over the flowchart. You can also use the + and - buttons on the bottom right corner, which increase and decrease the zoom level by 10% in each step.

There are two resets of the zoom and position available, Window width and 100% zoom, which can be toggled by clicking the Reset zoom button in the bottom right. When zoom is 100%, Window width mode is activated, and when zoom is other than 100%, 100% zoom is activated.

Event type and flow based filter rules can be created from the flowchart by selecting the event types and flows. When selecting only event types, you can create a filter which includes and excludes cases containing any the selected event types. In addition, you can include and exclude the selected event types (i.e. filter the events based on event types). When selecting only flows (or both event types and flows), you can create a filter to include only cases containing the selected flows and event types.

Event type and flow KPI's

Flowchart is able to show and visualize measures calculated for the event types and flows. First define the measure either from the ready-made measures/KPI's or write a custom expression. Then map the measure to the flowchart, e.g. show it as a measure value or visualize the measure using colors.

For event types, the following visualizations are available:

• Color: Event type box background color is determined based on this measure. The lowest measure value gets the lightest blue, the highest value gets the darkest blue, and other values get scaled colors between the extremes.
• Label: Measure value is shown below the event type name in the event type box. There can be several measures mapped to this, which are shown in the same line separated by a pipe (|) character.
• 2nd label: Measure value is shown below the Label. Like the Label, there can be several measures mapped to this.
• 3rd label: Measure value is shown below the 2nd label. Like the Label, there can be several measures mapped to this.

For flows, the following visualizations are available:

• Flow thickness: Flow line thickness is determined based on this measure. The lowest available value is shown as the thinnest line, the highest value is shown as the thickest line, and other values with thicknesses between the extremes.
• Color: Color of the flow line. The lowest available value is shown as the lightest gray, the highest value is shown as the darkest gray, and other values get scaled colors between the extremes.
• Label: Measure value is shown in the middle of the flow. There can be several measures mapped to this, which are shown in the same line separated by a pipe (|) character.
• 2nd label: Measure value is shown below the Label. Like the Label, there can be several measures mapped to this.
• 3rd label: Measure value is shown below the 2nd label. Like the Label, there can be several measures mapped to this.

Flowchart general settings

Flowchart settings can be opened by clicking the flowchart so that it gets selected, and then clicking the settings button on the top right of the flowchart. Flowchart has the following settings in the General tab:

• Diagram initial zoom: Zoom level used when the dashboard containing the flowchart is opened. Available options:
  • Window size: Flowchart fits to the visible screen entirely while being as large as possible.
  • Window width: Flowchart width takes the entire area width. If height is greater than area, the top part of the flowchart is visible. In other case, flowchart is positioned vertically in the middle of the canvas.
  • 50/80/100/120/150/200% zoom: Flowchart zoom level is set to the defined percentage and top of the flowchart is aligned with the top of the canvas. If this would lead to empty space below the flowchart, position the flowchart in the center of the canvas instead.
• Exclude hidden event types: For the event type and flow measure calculations, adds an event type filter to include only the shown event types (added as the last filter rule). This filter affects especially the flow measures calculation, because not visible event types are excluded and flows go between the visible event types.
• Exclude hidden variations: For the event type and flow measure calculations, adds a variation filter to include only the shown variations (added as the last filter rule).
• Show event type names: Shows or hides event type names that are visible in the event type boxes.
• Highlight incoming and outgoing flows: When enabled, incoming and outgoing flows are highlighted when an event type is hovered with the mouse.
• Allow multiselect event types and flows: When enabled, several event types and flows can be selected at the same time. When disabled, only one event type or flow can be selected at a time.
• Allow zooming flowchart: Zooming the flowchart is allowed (using the mouse wheel and the zoom buttons). When not allowed, the zoom controls are not visible.
• Allow moving flowchart: Moving the flowchart in the canvas is allowed (using the mouse drag).
• Title: User defined title visible above the flowchart.
• On-screen settings: Event type and flow measure parameters can be defined as on-screen settings, similar to in charts.
• Export: The flowchart can be exported as png or svg image file.
• Event type mapping: Defines the event attribute used as the event type for this flowchart, to visualize the process flow from different angles (e.g., the social mining usecase). For more information about the event type mapping, see chart settings. This setting is available only for the Snowflake flowchart. When the mapping is used, Cases by Event Attribute and Events by Attribute type of filter rules are created when event types are selected (instead of event type filter rules), to avoid the mismatch if charts have different event type selections.

Flowchart layout settings

Layout tab has following settings:

• Show legend: The legend, explaining the event type and flow measures, is shown in the top left corner of the flowchart.
• Show variation stepper: Variation stepper, to set the shown number of event types and flows, is shown in the bottom left corner of the flowchart.
• Show zoom buttons: Zoom controls are shown in the right bottom corner of the flowchart.
• Start/end symbol color: Color of the process start and end symbols in the flowchart.

Other layout settings are same as in the chart.

Flowchart advanced settings

Advanced tab has following settings:

• Model: Select model that is shown by the flowchart. This model selection overrides the model selection in the main header, allowing to create dashboards showing flowcharts from several models.
• Cases Sample Size (Snowflake): Defines how many cases are randomly selected when determining variations. When not defined, sampling is not applied. Sampling is only applied for the variation calculation, and it's never applied for the event type and flow calculation. Purpose of sampling is to improve performance because instead of entire dataset only a subset is used in the variation calculation.
• Visible Case Attributes: Case attributes that are shown in the case attribute selector lists. This setting can be used to hide unneeded attributes for simplicity.
• Visible Event Attributes: Similar setting as the previous, except for the event attribute selector lists.
• Visible Event Types: Similar setting as the previous, except for the event type selector lists.
• Linked Settings: Same functionality for flowcharts as for Linked Settings in Charts. When referring to event measures and flow measures, use types eventtypemeasure and flowmeasure.
• Chart Settings (editable): Contain the flowchart settings in the json format. Editing the json is also possible.

Visualize KPI's with conditional formatting

For details how to define conditional formatting, see the documentation for tables. For conditional formatting of event types, the following formatting types are available:

• backgroundColor: Color of the event type box background.
• borderColor: Color of the event type box border.
• textColor: Color of the textual information shown in the event type boxes.

For conditional formatting of flows, the following formatting types are available:

• color: Color of the flow line.
• textColor: Color of the textual information shown in the flows.

Below is an example of event type background color (green when >10000, yellow when 5000-10000 and red when <5000). Add the following code to the conditional formatting of the event type measure that determines the background colors:

{
  "backgroundColor": {
    "rules": [
      {
        "color": "#EF5254",
        "value": 10000,
        "comparison": ">="
      },
      {
        "color": "#FFD851",
        "value": 5000,
        "comparison": ">="
      },
      {
        "color": "#68DD8F"
      }
    ]
  }
}