Process Flowchart
Flowchart Analysis draws the process flow as a flowchart, where the boxes represent the event types (activities) and the arrows are flows (transitions between consecutive events). The flowchart also visualizes case/event counts, durations and costs for the events and flows. The visibility settings of the Flowchart Analysis help to show only the most important event types and flows, and the ones which occur less often can be hidden.
Flowchart Visibility Settings and Count Indicators
Using the event types and flows visibility settings in the bottom left of the screen, you can define control, how many event types and flows are shown in the flowchart. The steppers work as follows:
- The upper plus button is used to show one more event type in the flowchart, and the upper minus button is used to hide one event type. The lower plus button is used to show one more flow in the flowchart, and the lower minus button is used to hide one flow.
- The event types and flows are shown from the most important one, i.e. the one which has occurred the most often.
- The percentage number shows, how many percentage of event types or flows in the model are currently visible.
- Instead of clicking the plus and minus buttons, you can click the number and specify a new percentage. The flowchart will show the closest amount of event types and the percentage number will adjust to the corresponding number.
- When hovering the percentage number, a tooltip appears showing the number of shown event types and total number of event types in the model.
Notes regarding visibility settings:
- If there are several event types or flow which have equal amount of occurrences, they are shown or hidden at the same time. Thus it's possible that several event types or flow appear or disappear when clicking plus and minus buttons. This is of course quite uncommon, if the case and event volumes are large.
- In the flowchart, for each event type there is at least one incoming and outgoing flow. This is to make the flowchart presentation to look more like consistent process, despite some event types and flows have been hidden as less important.
The case and event count indicators are located in the left side of the Flowchart Analysis. The upper indicator shows case counts. The percentage number shows how many percentage of cases are in the currently open filter out of the total number of cases in the model. When hovering the indicator, it shows the absolute count of cases in the filter and in the model. The lower indicator shows the same information for the amount of events.
Clicking an event type or a flow selects it. To select multiple event types and/or flows, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on event types and flows. You can also select multiple event types and/or flows by first pressing long and holding down the left mouse button and then dragging the mouse to have a rectangular selection tool to be activated. Pressing Ctrl + A will select all flowchart event types and flows. Note that with the Radial graph layout, only the event type that is in the center of the graph can be selected and the popup menu opened for that event type.
Zooming and Filtering in the Flowchart
Filters can be created in the flowchart by selecting event types and/or flows and right clicking to open the popup menu. When selecting only event types, you can create filters for including/excluding cases containing all the selected event types and including/excluding event types. When selecting only flow or also flows, you can create filter to include cases containing the selected flows and event types.
Click and drag the flowchart to move it (panning). Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. You can also use the + and - buttons on the bottom right corner to zoom. On touch devices, use the pinch gesture.
The following keyboard shortcuts are available:
- Ctrl+0 sets the zoom to 100%.
- Shift+Z fits the flowchart into view.
- +' and - zoom the flowchart in and out.
- Cursor keys scroll the flowchart.
- PageUp and PageDown keys scroll the flowchart vertically up and down.
Model Settings
The Model Settings button opens a menu where the QPR ProcessAnalyzer Model can be changed. The drop-down list shows all available models in format [Project] - [Model]. When a model is opened, the default filter is used.
The Model Settings menu also contain the Filter selection. The filter list contains all filters in the currently open model. The filter contains one or several criteria (i.e. filter rules) that determines which cases and events are taken into account when analyses are calculated. Right side of the Filter list, there is a menu containing options Edit Filter and Delete Filter. The Edit Filter opens a popup menu where the filter name and privacy settings can be changed. The privacy options are Private, Public and Model Default. Private filters can be seen only by the user itself. Public filters can be seen by anyone. Model default filter is the one used when the model is opened. There can be only one model default filter per model, so the previous model default filter is changed to public when another filter is set as a model default.
The Model Settings menu shows all filter rules of the currently used filter. Individual filter rules can be removed using the recycle bin icon.
When filter rules are changed (new created or existing removed), the filter list shows (Unsaved Filter), denoting that the used filter rules are is not saved as a filter. It can be saved by clicking the Save as new Filter in the filter menu.
Flowchart Settings
In the Settings page, you can define which information is shown in the flowchart:
- Case Count KPI
- Show on Event Types: When enabled, the flowchart displays in the event type boxes the event occurrence count information both as a percentage out of all the cases in the model and also as an absolute count.
- Show on Flows: When enabled, the flowchart displays in the flow arrows, the occurrence information both as a percentage out of all the cases in the model and also as an absolute count.
- Duration KPI
- Show on Flows: Makes the flowchart display the duration for flows below the shown cost for all the flows. When enabled, allows selecting duration mode among the following choices:
- Median: Median durations are shown.
- Average: Average durations are shown.
- Average Weighted by Cost: As the average duration but in addition the calculation will be weighted by the costs of the event type or flow.
- Show on Flows: Makes the flowchart display the duration for flows below the shown cost for all the flows. When enabled, allows selecting duration mode among the following choices:
- Cost KPI
- Show on Event Types: When enabled, the flowchart displays the cost for event types above the event type name for all the event types.
- Show on Flows: When enabled, the flowchart displays cost for flows below the amounts for all the flows.
- Total: The costs are shown as total costs (sum of costs).
- Average: The costs are shown as average costs.
- Transition Type
- Unique Only: When enabled, data will be displayed in the Unique Only mode, i.e. only one occurrence per each case is counted, so that the generic flow of the process is shown, as well as the amount of occurrences of each event type. When disabled, all occurrences are counted, thus revealing if a certain step or a flow in the process is repeated several times impacting the process performance. This setting affects the values in both event types and flows.
- Graph Layout
- Layout to use in the flowchart. Options are Grid, Tree, Force Directed, Layered Digraph (default), Circular and Radial. Note that when the Radial layout is used, only a single flow can be selected in the flowchart (no multiselect is possible).
- Horizontal: Defines whether to use horizontal (from left to right) or vertical (from top to bottom) direction for layouts. Only the Tree and Layered Digraph layouts are affected by this setting.
- Radial Layers: Number of layers to display when the Radial layout is used.