The Microsoft® Platform for Business Process Automation ...



Business Process Automation for the Enterprise

White Paper

Published: September 2003

For the latest information, please see

[pic]

Contents

Introduction 1

Executive Summary 2

Microsoft’s Vision of Business Process Automation and Collaboration 3

Empowering Information Workers 3

Use of XML Throughout the Platform 4

Intelligent Applications 4

Connecting People to Data 4

An Integrated Platform for End-to-End Solutions 5

Microsoft Platform for Business Process Automation 6

Architecture 6

Enabling Technologies 9

Support for XML in the Microsoft Office System Programs 9

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 9

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 10

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 10

Microsoft Office Visio® 2003 11

Windows Server 2003 Operating System Services 11

Developer Tools 12

Solution Accelerators and Microsoft Partners 14

Business Scenarios 15

Response to Request for Proposal (RFP) 15

Insurance Claims Processing 16

Purchase Order Routing 17

Conclusion 19

Introduction

Since the dawn of civilization, information was captured in some kind of “document” form, whether written on stone tablets or vellum scrolls or, later, printed on paper. These early documents represented people’s first efforts at managing unstructured data. People have always used business documents to engage in transactions. Today’s businesses create, capture, and manage information in myriad forms: as structured data in operational systems, as documents that are published and shared, and in countless e-mail messages.

In recent decades, we have established methods for storing and managing structured information, for example, numerical data in databases or financial records and statistics; however, a significant portion of the information created in the business environment has remained unstructured and, as a result, has not been captured in any meaningful way.

Microsoft solutions for Business Process Automation help organizations manage their document-based information as effectively as they do their numerical, tabular, and operational data. The convergence of these two models—the capability to manage structured and unstructured data in an integrated fashion—represents a new paradigm.

This paradigm shift will be epitomized by a revolution in business processes, blurring the lines between unstructured business documents and the transactional enterprise data stores; integrating the collaborative processes that draw on the collective knowledge of the organization; and enabling companies to aggregate, parse, search, manage, and reuse documents and domain knowledge in the same way they do their business data.

If you can’t integrate your business processes, you cannot respond well to changing business conditions. Too often companies are tied down to custom-built, inflexible systems that can’t adapt to changing business needs. Critical data is locked away in proprietary, stand-alone systems and line-of-business financial, manufacturing, or human resources applications. The recent introduction of important technologies, including workflow engines and Web services, has solved some of the problems associated with integration and automation. But organizations still face the daunting challenge of heterogeneous platforms, multiple systems, and front-end applications that don’t integrate well with back-end systems.

Only in recent years has the marketplace introduced products that put the power to automate a business process—simple or complex—in the hands of the information worker. Many believe that the effects of empowering information workers to define and implement process automation will be as significant to business as the impact of the word processor or the spreadsheet.

Executive Summary

Facing dramatic changes in the business world, organizations are finding it essential but difficult to manage business processes end to end. Tied down to custom-built, inflexible systems that often can’t adapt to changing business needs, companies find they need new strategies, structures and operational practices to manage change, and create and sustain advantage. Businesses need not only to make faster, more informed decisions, but also to manage the flow of information—by inexpensively connecting applications, people, partners, and data. Achieving efficient process automation requires companies to approach system integration and business process automation with a planned, systematic approach. The Microsoft Platform for Business Process Automation provides a complete platform for end-to-end processes, solving problems common to many organizations today:

• Efficiency. Streamlining and automating repetitive processes allows people to work more efficiently, increasing productivity enterprise-wide.

• Time-to-market. Eliminating manual steps and information handling reduces response times and speeds the delivery of both goods and services.

• Quality of service. Deploying processes around best practices ensures quality and consistency in products and customer service.

• Access to information. Integrating the desktop applications with line-of-business and back-office applications and enterprise data silos allows people to work more effectively.

• IT costs. Empowering information workers to define their own processes reduces the need for IT departments to be involved with lines of business on a daily basis. Further, reliance on industry standards, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), reduces costly point-to-point integration and eliminates many of the costs associated with creating and maintaining custom solutions.

• Leveraging existing investment in software and systems. By building business process solutions on the Microsoft Windows® platform and the Microsoft Office System, and by integrating their line-of-business and back-office applications that are already in place, organizations increase the value of their investment in these systems and avoid the cost of replacing software.

Microsoft’s Vision of Business Process Automation and Collaboration

Microsoft’s vision of business process automation is a vision of end-to-end processes, which empower information workers not only to initiate and execute processes that extend from the desktop to enterprise data silos, but also to define and create these processes from their desktops in a simple, straightforward manner.

The key to this vision is a complete, integrated platform for enterprise technologies, including world-class desktop productivity applications, seamless integration with Microsoft enterprise servers, and interoperability with heterogeneous platforms, as well as support for XML and other industry standard and Internet technologies.

Empowering Information Workers

With the Microsoft Office System installed on 300 million desktops worldwide, Microsoft products play an instrumental role in the creation and flow of information throughout many major organizations. The Microsoft Office System programs, servers, and services empower information workers by connecting the desktop environment to enterprise data, by providing tools that enable sophisticated analysis and reporting, and by improving on the applications and programs to make workers more productive.

With the release of the Microsoft Office System, Windows ServerTM 2003, and a host of new server products, Microsoft is empowering information workers further by enabling them to engage in business processes from within the Office applications, and to create both ad hoc and permanent business processes from within Microsoft Office System programs. These solutions increase productivity by eliminating daily and repetitive information handling.

This empowerment enables organizations to capture business process knowledge at the source: the information workers who define and execute these processes on a daily basis. Further, it reduces the burden on IT to create, deploy, and maintain custom or one-off solutions for specific workflow or process flows.

Microsoft automates the business process in two ways: by focusing on information-centric or document-centric processes and by providing the familiar business productivity applications that drive these processes.

Document-Based Processes

At the heart of every enterprise are numerous document-driven business processes that determine how information is to be collected, reported, published, shared, and stored. Document-based processes, including financial reporting, proposal management, contract management, recruiting and other business activities, influence the ways organizations collaborate on work; how they communicate with partners, customers, and shareholders; and how they store or archive information for reuse and retrieval.

The Microsoft Office System represents the world’s leading system for creation of business documents, including forms, reports, spreadsheets, e-mail messages, presentations, and Web pages. Integrated collaboration features and document management functionality ensure that organizations can create documents efficiently, and can also share, reuse, search, protect, and manage effectively the information that these documents contain.

Familiar Business Productivity Applications

The Microsoft Office System includes numerous features that enable information workers to initiate processes from within the applications—for example, routing an expense report to review from within Microsoft Office InfoPathTM 2003, or publishing analytical results to an intranet portal from within Microsoft Office Excel 2003. Building process automation around familiar applications reduces the learning curve and helps ensure that processes will be adopted quickly and easily by the people who use them.

In particular, an overwhelming number of business processes rely on the use of forms to capture data and initiate the required actions. Through InfoPath 2003, the Microsoft Office System provides an intuitive forms-based interface that enables organizations to create rich applications based on their own forms. Forms are driven by customer-defined XML schemas, which allow the organization to define the structure and type of data that each data element in a document can contain. XML schemas can be created by a user, a company, or at the industry level, and are the key to automating document- and forms-based processes.

Use of XML Throughout the Platform

A public and widely accepted standard, XML enables exchange of data between disparate systems. For many companies, XML facilitates enterprise transactions and business-to-business data exchange, solving issues of cross-platform compatibility. Many companies have adopted also the XML Web services architecture as a way to expose data in back-end systems and to leverage the existing infrastructure for XML-based solutions. But although many businesses rely on XML for data exchange and transaction processing, and even though the necessary servers and architecture are in place on the Internet and at the enterprise level, XML has not yet been fully exploited on the desktop.

The Microsoft Office System enables rich solutions by bringing the power of XML to the desktop. Having this power on the desktop opens the door to a new generation of Office-based solutions, in which XML plays a critical role in empowering information workers and enabling companies to automate fully the processes that drive their business.

Intelligent Applications

XML offers exceptional potential for automating virtually any task that involves working with documents. Creating documents such as reports, spreadsheets, and forms with an attendant XML schema—even if that schema is hidden to the information worker—enables developers to build solutions that recognize the structure and meaning of the content within those documents and respond intelligently to the information worker. Application intelligence can be used also to validate information or data as it is input, avoiding errors and aiding in data cleansing and normalization.

With the ability to define their own schemas, companies can identify the unique regions of meaning within their documents and create solutions that correlate these structures to their own business processes. Moreover, the ability to identify sections of a document structurally—or to recognize specific content within a section—allows developers to create applications that respond intelligently to information worker input, offering context-sensitive actions and guidance, suggesting content, or providing supporting data or links to related information.

Connecting People to Data

XML Web services use open, Internet standards to allow communication between business systems and data sources, exposing the information in these systems to a broad range of applications—including programs written in different languages on different platforms. By providing XML-enabled applications on the desktop, companies take advantage of this infrastructure to empower employees, by enabling them to connect directly to enterprise systems and back-office applications and data sources.

The ability to connect the desktop environment to back-end systems, including line-of-business and back-office applications and enterprise or operational data stores, allows organizations to design seamless processes that begin or end with the information workers. Using Office-based smart client applications and XML Web services, companies can automate processes that access enterprise information directly and dynamically, and surface that information where it’s needed: in the spreadsheet, word processor, or application that will be used to analyze, format, or publish the information. Likewise, they can create processes that begin on the desktop, capturing data input by the information worker in a form, document, or e-mail message and initiating actions that eventually write this information to the appropriate database or document repository.

An Integrated Platform for End-to-End Solutions

Enterprise customers benefit from seamless processes, solutions that automate every aspect of a business process, from the creation of information through the consumption, management, archival, tracking, and logging—and more. These solutions must allow integration with other systems to enable the flexibility and scalability that today’s business climate demands.

The strength of the Microsoft vision lies in the ability to seamlessly integrate the desktop productivity applications—the client for the business process—with the business logic that drives the process and the enterprise systems that house the business data. The result is a business process framework that enables our partners and enterprise customers to develop highly customized business process solutions that address the needs of specific vertical industries or lines of business, while remaining highly flexible.

By providing business solutions that incorporate the Microsoft Office System, organizations allow the information worker to engage in the entire business process from within the familiar Microsoft Office System programs, without switching to the different interface of a line-of-business or back-office application to perform certain actions related to the process.

Microsoft Platform for Business Process Automation

Architecture

The Microsoft Business Process Automation architecture uses an n-tier approach, as shown in Figure 1. This architecture takes advantage of the XML support in the Microsoft Office System programs, together with Microsoft BizTalk® Server for workflow, and Web services for context and tasks, to expose data from custom legacy applications and line-of-business systems to the desktop in a business process-specific context, where information workers can act on this information within the Microsoft Office System programs that they use every day for a majority of their daily tasks.

The Microsoft Business Process Automation architecture.

The following sections discuss each layer of the architecture in detail.

Front End: Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 and the Microsoft Office System Programs

The Microsoft Office System programs enable automation through support for customer-defined XML schemas. Intelligent applications recognize the type of information an information worker has selected based on the underlying XML elements, and allow the information worker to select from a range of actions specific to this element. For example, a smart document application could predetermine the level of review and approval required for a particular report by detecting the content within the document itself; or a smart tag can recognize a product number within a service request and prompt the customer service representative to initiate a warranty claim.

The degree of automation within Microsoft Office documents and forms can range from simple to complex, incorporating workflow and notification, and two-way interactions with back-end data silos. Actions can be initiated manually by information workers, automatically, on recognition of a term or type of data, or triggered by a user action, such as the “Save” command. In short, the XML support in the Microsoft Office System programs offers a tremendous opportunity to define intelligent information workflow and provide sophisticated management capabilities for documents and document-based processes.

Core Server Components: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004, Microsoft Office SharePointTM Portal Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 with Internet Information Services 6.0

At the heart of a Business Process Automation solution built on the Microsoft Windows® operating system are Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 with Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0. These servers act as hubs for workflow and document routing. Each includes a wide range of pre-built connectors that enable the hubs to talk to enterprise or line-of-business systems (such as SAP or Siebel), and each includes programming interfaces for custom integration and design of workflow.

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides an enterprise-class document repository with built-in search and index functionality, as well as powerful workflow capabilities. SharePoint Portal Server integrates with the Microsoft Office System programs so that information workers can read, edit, collaborate on, and save documents directly to the portal site from within these desktop applications.

• BizTalk Server offers workflow logic and workflow actions, orchestrating the flow of information through the enterprise. Through support for XML and a wide range of connectors, BizTalk Server enables developers to design processes that integrate with virtually any enterprise system. BizTalk Server also plays a key role in enabling processes that extend to partners and customers, enabling organizations to exchange data with other systems regardless of platform.

• Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0 is a complete Web server available in all versions of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. Designed for intranets, the Internet, and extranets, IIS 6.0 makes it possible for organizations of all sizes to quickly and easily deploy powerful Web sites and applications. In addition, IIS 6.0 provides a high-performance platform for applications built using the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Back End: Enterprise Servers and Data Silos

The back-end of the Microsoft Business Process Automation platform includes a wide range of technologies and services, including line-of-business and back-office applications, enterprise data stores, document portals and repositories, and directory and orchestration services that ensure the processes integrate with the organization’s computing infrastructure. Specifically:

• Line-of-business and back-office applications may include custom programs, third-party software, and financial or business applications, such as Microsoft Business Solutions—Great Plains® or Microsoft Business Solutions—Solomon, or Microsoft CRM. These applications typically expose a set of actions through a specific, proprietary interface. The interface itself may be exposed through Web services or connectors to BizTalk Server or SharePoint Portal Server, which enable processes to call the application’s APIs and exchange data as XML between custom legacy applications and back office applications, such as SAP systems, mainframe-based programs, Great Plains, third-party line-of-business software, and many others.

• Business process solutions built on the Microsoft platform can leverage Windows Server 2003 operating system services to ensure security and simplify administration. Microsoft Active Directory® can be used to authenticate users through role-based security and single sign on. Windows Digital Rights Management Server (DRM) can provide authorization, policies, encryption, and tamper-resistance of documents.

Enabling Technologies

Support for XML in the Microsoft Office System Programs

Enhanced XML support throughout the Microsoft Office System provides a tremendous opportunity for businesses to define intelligent information workflow and provide sophisticated management capabilities for documents and document-based processes.

Both Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003 include support for standard or customer-defined XML schemas, as well as the ability to define and create schemas based on the document structure. Because Word 2003 and Excel 2003 accept and render XML, business documents can be created based on a schema, thus allowing automatic and intelligent handling of documents according to tags and elements. The ability to write XML allows Word and Excel documents to immediately participate in business processes. Microsoft Office System smart documents use XML to automate document-based processes and connect the desktop productivity environment to an organization’s line-of-business and back-office systems.

Smart Documents

Support for customer-defined XML schemas allow the development of smart document applications, programmed to recognize document content and present information workers with context-sensitive guidance and choice of actions. Smart documents rely on the underlying XML schema of Word document or Excel spreadsheet to present contextually relevant information that assists information workers’ interaction with the document.

Smart documents play an important in streamlining the authoring process, and in automating document-based business processes. As the information worker interacts with a document, a smart document application can guide the person or provide menus of possible actions that are part of the business process, based on the schema elements associated with specific content.

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003

InfoPath 2003 is a powerful front end to business processes. New with the Microsoft Office System, InfoPath 2003 uses a forms metaphor to capture information according to a customer-defined XML schema, enabling customers to gather and reuse information with predefined structures and as part of a business process.

The InfoPath interface allows information workers to create and gather information easily on top of the core XML model. InfoPath associates an XSL-T (Extensible Style Sheet Language–Transformation) style sheet with the form interface, enabling information workers to view and edit XML forms. InfoPath provides all the functionality expected from a forms package, including the ability to structure and validate data, as well as the use of word processing—all within the familiar Microsoft Office user interface.

InfoPath supports complex forms with hierarchical structures, free-form text, tables, optional or repeated blocks, data validation, data aggregation, and forms with need of multiple views. In a corporate environment, InfoPath streamlines data entry and data capture; native support for XML enables companies to create InfoPath solutions that send data from the desktop environment to back-end systems via XML Web services.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

A core enabling technology in business process automation and system integration, BizTalk Server connects systems, people, and trading partners through manageable business processes, removing the barriers that hinder enterprise productivity and agility. Building on the Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM and the Microsoft .NET Framework, BizTalk Server delivers an integrated, interoperable, modular, extensible, and secure e-business solution.

BizTalk Server integrates enterprise applications so businesses can automate business processes and achieve a unified view of their data and applications—both within their organization and with their business partners—to increase revenues and decrease operating costs.

BizTalk Orchestration Designer and BizTalk Orchestration Engine help organizations with automate business processes, enabling their businesses to run predictably. Data and transformation services and the application integration features give businesses the unified view they need to manage their business and remain agile. BizTalk Server makes it possible to rapidly deploy and easily manage an integration solution. BizTalk Server enables companies to integrate systems and automate processes in a number of ways:

• Information workers can increase their productivity by making the most of the familiar Microsoft Office tools they already know.

• Information workers can monitor business activities, gaining a real-time view of running business processes with the Microsoft Office tools they already know, such as Microsoft Office Excel.

• People can integrate with the processes because the human-based workflow in BizTalk Server uses a single orchestration engine.

• For information workers, referencing and building XML Web services for orchestration becomes a simple process in the integrated development environment because of the built-in support for XML Web services standards such as Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI).

• Information workers gain the ability to establish and dynamically change business rules and processes, thereby maximizing organizational flexibility.

• Information workers can construct massively scalable messaging and orchestration-based applications through enhanced scale-out architecture.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to develop an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects information workers, teams, and knowledge so that information workers can harness enterprise information and resources across business processes to work more efficiently and collaborate more easily, making better use of company resources.

SharePoint Portal Server gives information workers a starting and ending place for business processes by enabling a single point of access to multiple systems, such as Microsoft Office System programs, business intelligence and project management systems, and existing line-of-business and back-office applications, including third-party and industry-specific programs.

Providing an enterprise-class document repository with built-in search and index functionality as well as powerful workflow capabilities, SharePoint Portal Server integrates with the Microsoft Office System programs, so people can read, edit, collaborate on, and save documents directly to the portal site from within these desktop applications. Information workers can find relevant information quickly through customization and personalization of portal content and layout, as well as by audience targeting. Organizations can target information, programs, and updates to audiences based on people’s organizational role, team membership, interest, security group, or any other membership criteria that can be defined.

The Microsoft Office System programs also include a new SharePoint Task Pane that exposes the relevant document tasks, contacts, and other activities inside the office application, bringing team collaboration context into the information worker’s personal productivity tool. Documents can be synchronized naturally by the user with the document workspace copy to enable each contributor to see the changes of others.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 uses Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2003 sites to create portal pages. The portal also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services sites with organization and management tools, and enables teams to publish information in their sites to the entire organization.

Microsoft Office Visio® 2003

Microsoft Office Visio 2003 enables information workers to define and create end-to-end business processes from their desktops in a simple, straightforward manner. An intuitive graphical interface provides a way to model these processes and communicate them visually. With its support for XML, Visio 2003 gives information workers the capability to define the structure behind the processes it illustrates and to bind the individual elements of a diagram or flowchart to a back-end system containing information about those elements.

Visio 2003 includes specialized templates for business process modeling efforts, including conceptual charts, decision trees, flow diagrams, process and procedural charts, and time and activity charts. Because the information contained in a Visio 2003 diagram can generate XML-based output files, Visio 2003 business process charts and diagrams can be exported to other applications and systems, and serve to drive the creation and automation of business processes. Ongoing work to develop broadly applicable business process and workflow standards—including Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) and Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)—will make it easier for organizations to use Visio 2003 diagrams to coordinate business processes that span platforms. Visio 2003’s support for XML Web services provides people with an easy-to-use graphical interface for viewing real-time enterprise data or business activity performance metrics.

Windows Server 2003 Operating System Services

Business process solutions built on the Microsoft platform can leverage Windows Server 2003 operating system services to ensure security and simplify administration, in particular, the following three services.

Active Directory

Active Directory can be used to authenticate users through role-based security and single sign on. This simplified but complete authentication streamlines the development and administration tasks associated with process automation by leveraging existing infrastructure and services. Perhaps more importantly, it allows organizations to implement new business processes in a manner consistent with established security policies and user roles.

Digital Rights Management

Windows DRM can provide authorization, policies, encryption, and tamper-resistance capability for documents, all based on the needs of the business process. The Microsoft Office System programs support DRM around specific content within documents, spreadsheets, and e-mail messages. Thus, sensitive business processes, such as contracts, job offers, and proposals can be made not only secure, but also tamper-proof. The DRM technology in the Microsoft Office System enables information workers to protect a document with security based on a policy established for a particular business process and based on templates that were created specifically for a specific process.

Windows SharePoint Services

Windows SharePoint Services allows teams to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration, a capability that helps increase individual and team productivity. Windows SharePoint Services is a component of the Windows Server 2003 information worker infrastructure and provides team services and sites to Microsoft Office System and other desktop programs, as well as serving as a platform for application development.

Windows SharePoint Services sites take file storage to a new level, providing communities for team collaboration and making it easier for people to work together on documents, tasks, contacts, events, and other information-gathering projects. In addition, team and site managers can coordinate site content and user activity easily. The Windows SharePoint Services environment has been designed for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

Windows SharePoint Services adds versioning and check-in and check-out capabilities to its document storage system, empowering workers to collaborate on business processes that are document-centric, such as proposals or contracts.

Developer Tools

By bringing rich XML support to the desktop, the Microsoft Office System gives developers a much greater palette of tools with which to control how documents and data intersect with business processes. Extensive support for industry-standard XML enables easier connections between the desktop and disparate computer systems, more intelligent applications that understand the semantics of the data being used, and XML storage formats that can provide more extended reuse of information.

The Microsoft Office System also includes both new and enhanced tools for developers and IT professionals. These tools improve the productivity of solution developers and programmers, enable new solution types, and simplify deployment and maintenance of these solutions to the enterprise. Following are descriptions of specific development tools.

• Task Pane: The Microsoft Office System programs include a programmable task pane that developers can use to display relevant information or links to relevant information within the application. Within a smart document, the task pane can streamline and automate what may currently be lengthy day-to-day business processes by displaying tasks and information relevant to a specific section within a document or spreadsheet based on the XML elements of the document.

Typical uses of the programmable task pane include presenting supporting information, such as data that corresponds to the document, relative help content, or calculation fields. Developers can create smart document task panes that also integrate with line-of-business and back-office systems and existing document repositories, allowing information workers to access these data sources from within the document or spreadsheet and eliminating the need for separate line-of-business and back-office client software.

• Smart Documents Software Developers Kit (SDK): Smart document applications combine the richness of Office-based solutions with the "no touch" deployment and management advantages of Web solutions. Smart document solutions can be deployed from a trusted server for increased security and easier maintainability. They are implemented through a Computer Object Model (COM) interface, or can be created using .NET-connected managed code with a primary interop assembly (PIA). Smart documents provide a framework for more secure applications while transforming documents into intelligent solutions. A Software Development Kit (SDK) is available to help developers understand how to build, configure and deploy smart document solutions.

• Smart Tags SDK: Smart tag developers will benefit from the new capabilities, which support more sophisticated actions and more intelligent smart tags. Specifically, extensible smart tag support is now available in Word and Excel, as well as Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook®, in addition to new features such as the Research Library and Shared Workspaces. Smart tags integrate with XML support in Word 2003 and Excel 2003, and smart tag actions can be linked to XML elements in documents or spreadsheets, for example, offering to pre-populate data or applying different transforms or views on XML data. Smart tags can be configured also to automatically execute actions and to modify the document, an action which opens new possibilities for automating document-based processes. The Smart Tags SDK describes the new capabilities in detail and helps developers understand how to build smart tags and how to use the new features.

• Web Services Toolkit: Support for accessing Web services from the Office programs has been enhanced as well. As in Office XP, developers can search and reference Web services from a UDDI server or interface with a local Web service using the WSDL file for that service. This toolkit can be downloaded from MSDN.

• Visual Studio® Tools for Office: The new Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System technology brings the power and productivity of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework to business solutions built on the next versions of Word and Excel. With this technology, developers using Visual Studio .NET 2003 can use Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft Visual C#® .NET to write code that executes behind Word and Excel documents; previously they would only have been able to write VBA. “Code behind” .NET-connected projects can be started in Visual Studio .NET and applied to existing Excel 2003 spreadsheets or Word 2003 documents and templates. Developers get the full, robust advantages of the Visual Studio .NET environment. Using managed code with Office 2003 allows developers to create applications with a more robust security model, restricting code that can execute only on a fully trusted corporate server. This .NET environment also simplifies deployment, saving time and money by not requiring a manual installation of code on each desktop.

• InfoPath Solutions: InfoPath 2003 makes it easy for developers to create and deploy rich, forms-based processes and implement solutions by providing developers with a facile interface for constructing dynamic, interactive forms with built-in business validations and business rules for accurate and efficient collection of information. InfoPath allows rapid solution creation without complex data mapping by using existing customer-defined data schemas, Web services, XML data, or by allowing creation from scratch. Built-in script editor, rich object model and programmable task panes allow developers to build more advanced solutions.

Forms can be connected to back-end systems and applications directly from the form, using simple point-and-click functionality. InfoPath supports XML-based Web services and database connections by way of Active Data Objects (ADO). Integration hooks with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services provide an easy way to build integrated collaborative solutions, such as sharing reports and aggregation of information. Integration with other Microsoft Office applications is easy, including built in e-mail integration with Outlook and data export to Excel.

A Web-based model for deploying and updating solution detects version changes in the process; forms will be upgraded automatically throughout the organization when someone next opens the form.

Solution Accelerators and Microsoft Partners

Microsoft has developed several solution offerings that automate common, high-value business processes. These solution offerings, termed “solution accelerators” are integrated sets of products, services, and Microsoft-authored guidance designed to solve specific customer business problems.

Solution accelerators can be deployed and integrated by Microsoft-certified partners or corporate developers familiar with solution development on the Microsoft platform. The solution accelerators offer extremely rapid deployment and leverage the Microsoft Office System, the Windows Server System, and the Windows operating system to minimize upfront purchase and licensing costs for software and servers.

Some of current solution accelerators include:

• The Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Proposals

• Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Recruitment

• Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Healthcare

For more information on the solution accelerators and Microsoft partners, visit

Business Scenarios

The following sections describe some typical Business Process Automation scenarios.

Response to Request for Proposal (RFP)

Information workers create proposals from within the familiar Microsoft Office System programs, complete with work assignments, tracking, and reuse of accumulated knowledge.

Problem

Almost every business creates proposals, whether as a response to an RFP or market-generating proposals such as financial “pitchbooks.” Because proposal-generation is a common, but labor-intensive, task, businesses of all sizes stand to gain a great deal from automating this process.

Creating a proposal is a tedious and repetitive process that typically involves research, gathering together pieces of information from multiple documents and systems. Often, the process involves several people who may work on various sections of the proposal, handing them off to other reviewers at various stages of the research process. The proposal creation process may involve many different applications and is not integrated. Tracking progress and status is difficult. The information created and assembled during the proposal process often has value beyond the completed proposal, but because the information has been “locked” in a static document, this information is typically difficult to search and reuse.

Solution

Automating the proposal process can increase a company’s productivity dramatically, on both the personal and team levels.

A Proposal Coordinator kicks off the process from within a smart document hosted in Word 2003. As the smart document opens, the Task Pane displays a list of actions specific to the proposal generation process. Selecting the Create RFP Response action starts an automatic provisioning process that:

• Creates a SharePoint workspace and a SharePoint Portal site for the response project

• Places a response template in the workspace, together with similar previous proposals

• Queries the company’s knowledge base for supporting data and places it in the workspace

• Creates a distribution list for members of the project team and schedules prep and review meetings

The response template is also a smart document. From within this document, the Coordinator can select the Assign Tasks action, which sends a request to various team members, for example to complete specific sections of the response, or to coordinate activities, or to communicate with the potential customer. Team members receive e-mail notifications of their tasks as Smart Tags, which make it easy for them to work on or delegate their tasks, or update the status of the tasks. At the same time, the Coordinator can track the progress of these tasks in the SharePoint workspace task list or graphically through a Visio 2003 diagram.

From within Word 2003, the Coordinator protects the team’s proprietary work by securing the response documents before they are sent to the proposal requestor, allowing them to be read but not forwarded. Digital Rights Management (DRM) Server enables not only security settings, but also tamper-resistant locks.

Finally, the Coordinator assembles the proposal using InfoPath 2003. The completed document includes an underlying XML schema, which defines the structure of the proposal and identifies content elements. Microsoft SQL ServerTN provides the repository for capturing and retaining the proposal data, making the data available for access by other systems within the company. The use of XML allows the organization to manage the content for later reuse, search, etc.

Synopsis

1. Information workers can generate proposals faster and more efficiently.

2. Information workers benefit from reduced repetitious work when substantial parts of the proposal process have been automated using InfoPath 2003, smart documents, and BizTalk Server 2004.

3. Information workers can have easy and intelligent access to data, such as previous proposals, market information, or customer data.

4. The company gains control and tracking of the proposal creation process from within the Microsoft Office System programs, leveraging Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 tasks and Visio 2003.

The Microsoft Office Solution Accelerator for Proposals enables organizations to compose a higher number of winning proposals with greater speed, effectiveness, and compliance.

Insurance Claims Processing

When an insured party informs an insurance company of a loss, the company initiates the claims process by collecting a variety of information. The process then moves offline with one or more claims handlers assigned to manage the remainder of the process.

Problem

Some property and casualty claims are complex, especially when they correspond to a series of events involving more than one covered item (for example, a tornado hitting an insured home and car), and may even involve some personal casualty. Other claims, like personal lines losses (theft, property damage, etc.) are less complicated, but still require accurate data handling.

The form of the data collected has been already highly standardized; ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development), a nonprofit insurance association, develops and publishes more than 450 standard insurance forms, which more than 1,000 companies use, and which meet all regulatory requirements for the U.S. property and casualty market.

The in-field assessments of the reported damage are far less controlled. Often, the high volume of claims forces insurance companies to assign claims investigations to field adjustors by their availability and physical proximity to the loss, instead of by appropriate skill set. An inexperienced adjustor can expose the insurer to the potential risk of paying fraudulent or out-of-policy claims.

Although the data collected follows a standard form, no validation is performed at time of initial customer contact. The notification process may rely on paper forms or custom software applications (depending on the size of the insurer), but regardless of format, inaccuracies introduced during this step affect the entire process—and may delay payment.

Very complex claims further complicate the claims processes, which typically involve numerous handoffs of information between different parties. Poor coordinated or incomplete documentation handoffs can result in lost or inaccurate data.

Solution

It is very important that an insurance company gather accurate data in order to make informed judgments about claims and to be able to analyze collective data for trends and risks. Automating the notification process allows insurers to ensure accuracy by eliminating transcription and other error-prone activities.

• Data Collection: An InfoPath 2003 form would standardize and streamline data collection. Building a form that uses the ACORD schema could allow the insurer to validate data at the time of entry and flag or highlight anomalies or data that falls outside a preset range. This immediate validation would minimize opportunity for inaccuracy or error at each subsequent step in an already overly complex process. In addition, the pre-tagged claim information would facilitate processing by any number of back-end systems, regardless of platform.

• Workflow Management: BizTalk Server could provide workflow management and process orchestration, automatically routing claim information, as XML packets, between insurers, banks, underwriters, and other entities, regardless of the systems or platforms used by any of the participants.

• Information Security: Because some of the claims documents that route to multiple entities outside the company contain sensitive personal information, they need to be secured. The system automatically secures the documents and establishes rights using the DRM capabilities in the Microsoft Office System applications and DRM Server, basing the rights on requirements and policies established at the enterprise level.

Synopsis

• InfoPath forms allow pre-tagging of information during data entry; the use of XML means the data entered once can be reused for multiple purposes, including workflow automation.

• Native support for industry standard and customer-defined XML schema and Web services make for easier integration with business systems.

• BizTalk Server provides a workflow solution and orchestration and automation of business processes.

Purchase Order Routing

Problem

Business transactions are generally complicated and involve numerous steps. Suppliers who make the effort to automate business processes not only improve productivity and save money, but also solidify customer relationships by simplifying processes for the customer.

Business-to-business commerce can be complicated often by a lack of standard systems for transacting business, including purchases, invoicing, payment, and order tracking. In the past, making systems communicate has required heavy investments in back-end programming. Small companies find themselves in a no-win situation: they have the most to gain from automation but often don’t have development resources and can’t spend significantly to implement automated processes, especially in a challenging economy. As a result, they must rely on labor-intensive and error-prone manual solutions, such as paper-based order forms and telephone customer service agents.

Solution

The customer deploys a set of electronic forms, including a purchase order created using InfoPath 2003. These forms capture the necessary information and automatically apply a customer-defined XML schema that represents the company’s unique processes.

When a customer-service representative completes a purchase order, the information passes to a Web service that submits the order to the supplier. BizTalk Server mapping capabilities translate the company’s unique XML schema to the supplier’s required format, so neither party has to compromise their processes to facilitate fully electronic exchange of data.

BizTalk routes the InfoPath form directly to the company’s SAP order fulfillment system using a custom SAP connector to map the required data to the fields in the SAP system. However, business rules dictate that if the order exceeds a certain value, an Invoice Manager needs to review the order before it is submitted. In this case, the system routes the order to the Invoice Manager in an e-mail message that appears in Outlook 2003, with a deadline set and reminder flagged. The Invoice Manager reviews the order and notes approval in the InfoPath form. A custom SAP connector lets the InfoPath form interface with the SAP system.

Synopsis

The solution described in this scenario—

• Provides seamless integration across systems.

• Leverages existing enterprise systems.

• Increases automation of the ordering process.

• Strengthens customer/supplier relationship.

Conclusion

The ability to manage the flow of information—by connecting applications, people, partners, and data—increases an organization’s operational efficiency, improves productivity, and reduces costs. Connecting people to data and to one another enables faster, more informed decisions and more highly empowered employees; and makes the most of a company’s human capital and information assets. Connecting people and data also maximizes the supply chain and solidifies supplier relationships.

The Microsoft platform for Business Process Automation provides a complete, end-to-end integrated platform for enterprise technologies, which includes world-class desktop productivity applications, seamless integration with Microsoft enterprise servers, and interoperability with heterogeneous platforms, as well as support for XML and other industry standard and Internet technologies. The Microsoft platform for Business Process Automation provides the core technologies that:

• Remove barriers and connect applications, people and data.

• Increase productivity across the organization.

• Let the organization meet new objectives without draining existing resources.

• Result in a positive return on investment.

• Provide world-class reliability and scalability for future growth.

This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the software described herein.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

This white paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS

DOCUMENT.

Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Microsoft, BizTalk, InfoPath, Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains, Outlook, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Visio, Windows, and Windows Server 2003 are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

-----------------------

[pic]

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download