Business Processes and Process Steps (Solution Manager)

A Solution Manager business process contains a set of logically related activities (process steps) performed to achieve a business outcome. A process step is an elementary activity performed to accomplish a process. A step is carried out by a user or a system and runs in only one software component (logical component). Both business processes and process steps are based on standard BPM processes.

Each business process contains a diagram, which shows the process flow passing from step to step, with each step located in the swimlane of the logical component it requires:
Solution Manager - Process Diagram

The following tools are available in a business process diagram:

Tool	Description
	Process Step - the activity or work being performed. Can be a Human Process (activity with user input), SubProcess (references and executes another process), or Automated Process (system activity.)
	Gateway - splits or merges the sequence flow. Can be a Parallel Gateway (AND) or Exclusive Gateway (OR).
	Start Event (the start of a process flow), Intermediate Event (a message is sent or received in the process), and End Event (the end of the process flow).
	Flow
	Annotations and Connections

Note: Though you should not create logical components, organization units, master data, or project or general documentation in PowerDesigner, you can add existing instances of these objects to your diagram by dragging and dropping them from the Browser.

Process and Process Step Properties

Business processes and process steps have the properties of standard processes (see Processes (BPM)), and the following additional properties:

Property	Description
Logical Component	[steps only] Specifies the logical component that the step accesses to perform its action (see Supporting Objects (Solution Manager)).
Number ID	Specifies the place of the process or step in its parent.
Source / Source location	Specifies the name and location of the repository where the source is stored.
Original name	Specifies the name of the process or step in Solution Manager

In addition, the following tabs are available:

Process Steps - [business processes only] - lists the steps contained in the process.
General Documentation and Project Documentation - lists the documentation associated with the process or step
Transactions - [steps only] - lists the transactions associated with the process step.