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.
Model Settings
The Model Settings button opens a menu where the QPR ProcessAnalyzer Model can be changed. The drop-down list shows all model in the system in format: [Project - Model]. When a model is opened, the default filter is selected.
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 taken into account when all the analysis are calculated and shown.
Right side of the Filter list, there is 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 on 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 active 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 currently used filter is not saved, and it can be saved by clicking the Save as new Filter in the filter menu.
Cases and Event Count Indicators
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.
Event Types and Flows Visibility Settings
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.
Panning and Zooming
Click and drag the flowchart to pan. 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 in use:
- Ctrl+0: set the zoom to 100%.
- Shift+Z: fit the flowchart into view.
- +' and -: zoom in and out.
- Cursor keys: scroll the flowchart.
- PageUp and PageDown keys: scroll the flowchart vertically up and down.
Analysis Settings
On the Settings page, you can configure which information is shown in the flowchart. The following settings are available:
- Case Count KPI
- Show on Event Types: Makes the flowchart display the event type occurrence count and the percentage of occurrences within all the cases in the view. These are shown below the event type name for all the event types as "<percentage> % (<count>)"
- Show on Flows: Makes the flowchart display the flow occurrence count and the percentage of occurrences within all the cases in the view. These are shown on top of flow detail texts for all the flows as "<percentage> % (<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 duration will be shown.
- Average: Average duration will be shown.
- Average Weighted by Cost: As "Average" but in addition the calculation will be weighted using the costs of the event type or flow as the weight.
- 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: Makes the flowchart display the cost for event types above the event type name for all the event types.
- Show on Flow: Makes the flowchart display cost for flows below the amounts for all the flows.
- Total: Total cost will be shown as element cost.
- Average: Average cost will be shown as element cost.
- 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 settign affects the values in both event types and flows.
- Graph Layout
- Layout method: Layout method 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 multiselection is possible).
- Horizontal: Use vertical (top to bottom) or horizontal (left to right) direction for layouts. Only Tree and Layered Digraph layout methods support this setting.
- Radial Layers: Number of layers to display when Radial layout is used.
Selecting Event Types and Flows
Clicking an event type or a flow will select it. To select multiple event types and/or flows, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on event types and flows. You can also select multiple event types and/or flows by first pressing 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. Every time an event type or a flow is selected in the flowchart, SelectedActivities and SelectedTransitions context variables will be updated with the identifiers of the selected objects.
Filtering in the Flowchart Analysis
Filters can be created in the flowchart analysis 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.
Information Page
The Information Page displays additional details about the currently selected objects or the context of the whole flowchart displayed in PAPO if there are no other selections currently. If there are no current selections, Model Information is shown, where there is e.g. duration for generating the flowchart, model name, project name, filter name, model size metrics and filter rule details.