Model-Based User Interface Design in the Context of Workflow Models
Within ERP systems, workflow models are used by business analysts to specify which business processes the system supports. The workflow model specify which actors that performs what activity in what sequence and the required resources. Within user interfa
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stract. Within ERP systems, workflow models are used by business analysts to specify which business processes the system supports. The workflow model specify which actors that performs what activity in what sequence and the required resources. Within user interface (UI) design task models are used to develop task-centric user interfaces. Task-centric UIs can increase systems’ usability as it focuses on the end-user. In this article we will show how task models together with other models used in the field of model-based UI design can be created within the context of already existing workflow models. We show how standard tasks can be defined as editable UI components allowing role-based composition of the UI with support from the workflow model. Keywords: ERP, MBUID, Workflow, Task modeling.
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Introduction
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are off-the shelf business applications providing a tightly integrated solution to organizations’ information system needs [27]. ERP benefits include best practice business processes, real-time access to information and shared practices across the entire enterprise. One important characteristic of ERP systems is the fact that they are pre-built software packages designed to meet the general needs of a business sector instead of the unique requirements of a particular organization [1]. To be able to deliver such huge software packages, ERP vendors use different business process models in their overall description of the system to describe the supported processes and organizational structures together with the structure of data and objects [13]. The reference models are founded upon what the vendor considers being the industrial best practices, that is, the most efficient way the business processes should be structured [5]. SAP uses Event Process Chain (EPC) models to document the system’s functionality [12] while Microsoft uses Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) to describe the business domain. These are descriptive models documenting the existing software (in contrast to prescriptive models that are used as a specification of what to create) [15]. In this article we use models and information collected from a large company developing ERP systems and show how prescriptive task models can be connected to descriptive workflow models. The company currently runs a project M. Winckler, H. Johnson, and P. Palanque (Eds.): TAMODIA 2007, LNCS 4849, pp. 227–239, 2007. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
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R. Kristiansen and H. Trætteberg
where the ERP system’s functionality is modeled using workflow modeling. The intention is to use the models as documentation in implementation projects. In addition there is an interest in investigating how these models can be reused in other contexts. We want to show how they can take advantage of model-based user interface design (MBUID) to allow flexible role-centered composition of user interfaces in the context of the workflow models. Role-based access and portal solution is considered the answers to the severe usability problems identified
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